Previously in our Vampire: the Masquerade readthrough:
We continue stalking through the early nights of the World of Darkness. This time, we’re going to cover the adventure that came with the Storyteller’s screen, called Blood at Dawn, and another short one called Blood Bond.
Blood at Dawn takes place in Gary, last seen in the sample adventure for the core rules. The players are offered a chance to gain feeding rights at a strip club that has up to now been the domain of the Prince Modius’ childe Allicia. They have to compete with a snooty elder at the negotiation table, but the whole affair gets interrupted because someone has found a corpse, clearly dead from a vampire attack, in the parking lot. The elder hightails it and Allicia tells the players that they will, basically, get the deal if they can make the corpse disappear.
The players either succeed at this or not (the “correct” answer is apparently to cramp the corpse in a dumpster overflowing with reeking garbage, trusting that the cops that eventually show up won’t care enough to dig through it), but either way the corpse will then mysteriously go missing. It’s gotten up and walked away.
What’s happening is that a none-too-clever “magus” (the first canonical example of what would eventually become the Awakened, for those keeping track!) is out to steal some of Allicia’s blood for his arcane research, so he called up a spirit that would first possess his son and, after it got in a fight with Allicia and drew some of her blood, would jump to her instead. However, our wizard’s kid accidentally triggered a nutty Malkavian, who killed him… and now the possession has kicked in anyway.
The Malkavian eventually shows up, forcing the players to have a very confusing conversation with him (he’s got five different personalities that each kick in whenever someone says something that interests them and who aren’t aware of each other’s existence), before the possessed corpse appears again and attacks them. It’s tough, it’s mean, and it can possess anyone whose blood it sheds – the idea is to freak the players out completely with a messy, confusing fight.
The stated theme for the adventure (yes, the thing whereby every single World of Darkness product had to have its own pretentious Theeeeeeme and Moooood was there from start to finish!) is people doing things for petty reasons, and it shows, in a really nice way. Every NPC is motivated by something terribly prosaic, no one has any higher aspirations, and even the evil deeds (including at least one murder) that are committed are done less from malice and more because someone couldn’t be bothered not to commit them. I like it, it really sells the feeling of a sullen, dreary world run by apathy and petulant self-interest. In other words, a world as seen through the eyes of an angsty, disaffected teenager – which is always what the World of Darkness was best at. It was never that convincing when it tried to invoke grandness and scope, but it was always great when it remembered to keep things personal.
Oh, and the nudie bar is getting an elaborate, loving description, because of course it is. Night-time hangouts really are the main characters in this game, I swear!
Blood Bond features the first canonical look at the Sabbat, who here appears as a sort of mix between a biker gang and a skeevy occultist cult, which I got to admit I kind of love. The players get in a scrap with a Sabbat pack that’s just blown into Chicago, and in the process of it accidentally un-stake an ancient vampire named Jefferson who’s been stuck inside the wall of an opera house for the past several decades. Jefferson immediately embarks on a quest of revenge against Neally, the vampire who staked him in the first place, and things get… kind of twisted.
The backstory for Neally and Jefferson is actually kind of interesting. See, they started out as polar opposites, with Jefferson being practically a saint and Neally being a scoundrel and hedonist. Their feud started when Neally stole Jefferson’s main squeeze, Emily, and ghouled and Blood Bound her. Jefferson searched for a way to break a Blood Bond, but the only people who know how to do that is the Sabbat, so he joined up with them and got driven evil and insane in the process. Meanwhile, Neally started feeling guilty about what he’d done and trying to be a better person – he’s still not that nice a guy, but he’s more of the “can be such a jerk sometimes” sort than the “complete amoral monster” sort. Have I mentioned that I kind of dig that the game, at least in this part of its history, tried for that sort of nuance?
Anyway, Jefferson, once freed, is determined to completely destroy Neally’s attempt at redemption. To this end, he re-seduces Emily, whose relationship with Neally has cooled in the meantime, and starts feeding her his blood. Since Neally regularly feeds from Emily, before long he’s gotten Blood Bound to Jefferson, which thanks to Jefferson’s Sabbat mojo lets him mind-whammy Neally from afar, forcing him to perform acts of utter depravity.
This is all creepy as hell and I love it.
Thus, the players start encounter Neally in the process of doing horrific (and more to the point, Masquerade-violating) things, while insisting that he’s not in control of his actions. They see him walk into a crowded club, use Disciplines to draw everyone’s attention and rip a mortal’s throat out in full public view. They find a child vampire wandering the streets and it turns out that Neally has been turning the kids at an orphanage into vampires. One of the Prince’s favourites seek their protection, because Neally is randomly trying to kill her.
At the same time, one of the players is supposed to have started an affair with Emily, just to make everything even skeevier. Which of course means that this player will also get Blood Bound to Jefferson. Oh yeah, major STD metaphore here! Not sure I’d feel comfortable roleplaying out a messed-up relationship with a thoroughly broken woman with most groups, to be honest – it would have to be one I was really amazingly comfortable with and who I knew would be into that sort of thing. Still, I appreciate what the module is trying to do. It all really brings home the feeling that being a vampire means throwing all the rules out the window, and that that means that you’re at risk for a thousand things that regular squares never have to worry about.
It all culminates in the players being called upon to broker a deal between Neally and the Sabbat (which requires them to spend a night raising hell along with the Sabbat pack, by the way), where they put him through a ritual to break the Blood Bond. It involves burying him alive (beneath a tombstone with his name on it, for added creepiness) and letting him dig his way out, now free of the Blood Bond but also completely insane. Jefferson gloats and takes both Neally and Emily with him as he leaves town at the head of the Sabbat pack.
Yeah, again, not sure this would be fun to play out, and certainly not with a casual group, but… it sure packs a punch, doesn’t it? And just like in the last adventure, I like how all the melodrama is ultimately rooted in the characters. There is history, but it’s the history of three specific people, not some vast world-changing conspiracy.
Next up is another landmark: the very first city book, Chicago by Night. Stay tuned.