Shadows Campaign, Part 2

If you want to see Part 1 of this article detailing the background to the Shadows Campaign, you can find it over here.

At about this point, Alicia Brown started speaking of torpor because her BP was so high (6) and started faking that her BP would soon be 7 by eyeing the kindred slightly as food. In order to keep peace, and because Dimloch was a blunt sledge hammer (one of the PCs) and incapable of being prince, she gave the praxis to Vivian Rogers (he was a PC), and then pretended to go into torpor.

Vivian Rogers spent three months in power before his treatment of his Brujah bikie Vinnie (who was more of a brutish Gangrel bikie than a Brujah one as he'd left America due to the psychotic nature of his old group); caused Vinnie to betray him to Dimloch and simply not attend the court gathering when Dimloch started making threats against the upstart Vivian. Dimloch staked Vivian against a wall, then decapitated him, and took praxis. Oh, and during this time, Seamus (PC) shot Dr. Taylor to death in the spirit world after his cult accidentally created a wound in the basement of the Women's & Children's Hospital so powerful that it even developed a verge. It wasn't a sanctioned death but the rest of the Ordo Dracul didn't care as they were simply happy to have the madman gone (besides, Seamus was a popular kogaian for a Vedma).

Prince Dimloch took most of his advice from the satistic sociopath, the Wyrm, who was an Ordo Dracul Nosferatu, and the Wyrm's childe, the Doctor (all PCs). The Wyrm and the Doctor were generally quiet but completely lacked even the semblance of humanity in what was otherwise a relatively high-humanity court that had figured out that the city was slowly decaying on the inside and that terrible things would happen if they pushed it over the edge.

The Ordo Dracul tried to contact Alicia Brown and even Vinnie Celino (then Sheriff) started searching to re-awaken her as the Carthians could deal with the generally decent Alicia Brown far better than the tyrannical Dimloch. Vinnie did destroy many of Alicia's artworks in her home to prove the point but did get her out of the thick stone slab that she had Earth Melded into during her 'torpor' but otherwise lurked in when she wanted to have a good think and to reduce her chances of being spotted. Being a Toreador, she was upset at the destruction of her artwork but managed to bite back a frenzy and see the compliment in Vinnie's attempts to bring her back. He was a rough-and-ready Carthian Gangrel biker, after all.

Torelli (Invictus Ventrue elder) had arrived in the city but had nowhere near as much influence on Dimloch and understood that you should let Ancients be Ancients. Far be it for him to tell an Ancient what to do. Unfortunately, his inability to salve the Ordo Dracul's fears that Dimloch wanted to kill them all (at the time, unfounded) and Duchess Alicia Brown's inability to do the same and unwillingness to get involved, provoked the Ordo Dracul into action.

The Wyrm died during a really complicated situation involving Brood (he became one over the course of the game), Dr. Taylor (a ghost-demon who requested a host and whom the Wyrm put in Seamus), and the PC Circle of the Crone Taifa Hassan (PC who had been kidnapped by Taylor-Seamus for experimentation but who somehow succeeded at about a dozen rolls during the day and Earth Melded outside). Basically, he got executed by an exorcised Seamus and a few others for his sins but they didn't do it with the prince's permission, which angered the prince, of course, and caused much of the Ordo Dracul paranoia. In truth, if he wanted to kill them, he just would've tried to do so. He wasn't subtle.

Seamus O'Baoill, Peter Walsh (an NPC with about three posts worth of story behind him), and Persephone Trent (Mekhet OD PC) all followed Gary Dodd (Nosferatu OD PC) into Nosferatu catacombs whose defences had started sagging since the destruction of Sikes (Nosferatu OD PC given up and turned Brood NPC) and the Wyrm. No one had bought up the lost merits and thus their main defences were the labrynthine passageways that Gary Dodd could navigate with ease.

They staked Dimloch and the Doctor and wanted to kill them but Walsh intervened on behalf of Dimloch as he is an impressive Ancient who would be a fantastic contribution to any formal and traditional kindred court. He offered to transport him to England or France, but as Walsh has a tendency to do, he ended up just putting him in a lock box and forgetting about it so he's in the city even in the future game.

The Ordo Dracul then deliberated and decided that as none of them wanted the position (and most of the options they put forward were NPCs), the position would go to Vinnie Celino. A lot of people had issues with Vinnie and thus there was a lot of chafing in the court but the game ended because player attrition meant there wasn't enough players to sustain a political-based LARP but few of the characters actually had any motivation to work together on a plot-based tabletop game.

So, in the future, Torelli takes praxis from Vinnie through making deals that causes a giant shudder in the web of Adelaide and causes all hell to break loose where monsters can slip through the cracks from the Other World in places of shadow and darkness; where certain segments of the city erode a vampire's sense of self and turn them into those nasty automata; and where outside of those areas vampire's feel more alive. Rather than the mere echoes of emotion, they feel real emotion ... albeit more faintly than humans do.

It was a cool premise so, since my fiance played THREE of those LARP characters I decided I could just run it as a personal game for him. It promises a variety of different campaign styles and he loves having the option of playing many characters so it should work out. Every so often, I can also invite another player over to reprise their previous character's role as well.