Previously in our Vampire: the Masquerade readthrough:
- Vampire: the Masquerade first edition core
- Blood Nativity and Alien Hunger
- Ashes to Ashes
- Blood at Dawn and Blood Bond
We have reached a historical moment: the very first World of Darkness citybook! Interestingly, the city so honoured isn’t one of the commonly romanticised American cities like New York or Los Angeles, but Chicago, a place that the book’s own introduction admits lacks a distinct character. In many ways, though, I think that’s a strength of the supplement and the early game in general. Anyone can be gothic-punk when living in an ancient, decaying metropolis. The tone of early VtM captured something a lot closer to earth and with more obvious connection to the game’s target audience: “I’m an interestingly dark, soulful creature of the night… so why am I stuck in this lame-ass dump?!” It’s about being an immortal, blood-sucking fiend in Flyover Country, and I feel like the game lost something when it gradually transitioned out towards the coastal enclaves.
Anyway, let’s dig in.
The book starts out with the expected flourishes, including by a Theme (“nothing is what it seems”) and Mood (“chaos”), as well as insincere assurances that of course you can change anything you want. There is also something I think is very interesting, though: an actual explanation for why the World of Darkness is so gothic-punk.
It’s like this. Vampires are old, and they tend to think of themselves as cultured. So they tend to encourage businesses that cater to a more traditional aesthetics and highbrow esoteric interests, artificially propping them up long after they would, in our vampire-free world, have collapsed from changing customs and public tastes. But vampires are also fundamentally parasites, and it is in their nature to always take a little too much. Thus, they gradually bleed their favoured institutions dry even as they’re holding them in place, resulting in a world where everything seems perpetually sickly and decaying while also stubbornly refusing to die. And of course, vampires are also completely heartless about anything that makes them money, resulting in rampant crime and plenty of down-and-outs, drug addicts, bums, untreated mentally ill people, and just general drifting losers… who, probably not coincidentally, no one will care about if they suddenly go missing because a vampire is feeling peckish.
Which makes a morbid sort of sense, and anchors the flavour of the setting firmly in the failings and dysfunctions of the game’s main characters. It’s a world a la vampire. That’s cool in a way that the other game lines never were, because they always placed the blame somewhere else – it was the Wyrm, it was the Technocracy, it was those filthy soulless normies; at the very most you took a little of the blame for not managing to stop them, but if there had been nothing but people like you in the world everything would have been great forever. Here, though? It was you. The world is like this because you’re in it. Deal with it.
We get a word on Prince Lodin and the general power structure of Chicago. In addition to the regular Traditions, Loding enforces some rules of his own: the police and the press are his to mess with and no one else may touch them, visitors to the city may not be permanently harmed, and keep things civil during Elysium (more on that later). He’s not, however, as all-powerful as he seems, because in fact the Primogen are pulling his strings, and a pair of feuding Methuselah who hardly anyone knows about are pulling theirs. Again, nothing is what it seems.
History! Back before Chicago even properly existed, the Methuselah Menele and Helena fought a great battle there and thrashed each other into centuries-spanning torpors. While they napped, Lodin made himself Prince by driving off the previous one during the Great Chicago Fire. He promptly killed all the Ventrue who had helped him, so ever since then all Ventrue in Chicago is Lodin’s progeny. Modius (remember him?) challenged him with the backing of some socialists and unionists, but Lodin ended up first sending him packing to Gary, then having his childe Ballard wreck the American steel industry just to destroy Modius’ power base among the steel workers. Yeah, I’m thinking that ended up retconned to hell and back, but for now? The reason for the Rust Belt is that Lodin was feeling pissy. That’s canon.
After Modius was dealt with, Lodin chilled for a few decades, but then Anarchs started creeping in. He massacred them in the fifties, but they came right in the eighties under the leadership of a charismatic woman named Maldavis who was secretly backed by several of the Primogen. Maldavis managed to oust Lodin’s puppet mayor and get a progressive one elected, and went on chipping away on Lodin’s power base until he went groveling before the Primogen and got them to turn on Maldavis in return for effectively making himself their puppet ruler.
Exceeeeept all of this was actually controlled from behind the scenes by Helena and Menele who was mind-whammying people even from torpor, with Helena usually backing Lodin and Menele running the opposition. They also control about half the Primogen each, though Menele is working on turning as many of Helena’s supporters as possible and then springing a trap on her. Helena has awakened from torpor, though she’s still weak and posing as a neonate; Menele is still napping and is in fact that mysteeeeeerious corpse that the players might have encountered in Ashes to Ashes.
Geography! My least favourite subject in school, except for PE, and time hasn’t improved it! It doesn’t help that the chapter is all jumbled up – roughly speaking, it describes areas and neighbourhood from a mundane, mortal perspective first, then goes back over them to explain how they’re important to vampires, but information is scattered throughout both sections and it all makes it terribly hard to keep track of what part of town I’m even reading about. A few highlights include the fact that Ballard (that obese Tim Burton-ish vampire who the players met in Ashes to Ashes) has nearly run his favourite restaurant out of business by insisting on taking a central table and then eating until everyone around him is sick. He has learned to keep the food down instead of immediately puking it up as vampires usually do when they try to eat regular food, but this apparently only makes the display slightly less sickening. Heh.
Also, there are occult temples in Lincoln Park that can teach you thaumaturgy – not very well, but they can, because thaumaturgy isn’t unique to vampires but is really just “magic.” See, this is one thing that I love about these early books – they weren’t so up their own asses about how vampires/werewolves/mages/whatever were SUPER SPECIAL AND BEYOND YOUR LIMITED COMPREHENSION. Regular people could learn some magic tricks, it was just easier for magical people. And conversely, there were things like Vampire Louis Pasteur inventing a de-vamp-ifying serum, because science and technology could actually interact with supernatural things. None of it was easy, there were practical reasons why it didn’t happen very often, but it wasn’t strictly gated away where the filthy normies couldn’t get to it.
Vampires refer to just about anything outside of Chicago proper but which is still technically part of the city as “the Outlands,” because they’re pretentious bastards. The Outlands include the airports and the Brookfield Zoo (handy for grabbing some low-grade blood when you’re desperate). Whether they include the city of Gary depends on whether you want to terminally piss off Modius by saying they do or you want to terminally piss off Lodin by saying they don’t (pro-tip: it’s safer to piss off Modius).
Elysium! This will later be a universal part of the setting, but here it’s described as a custom specific to Chicago. Basically, the Primogen like to be able to go to the opera or other highbrow places and discreetly scheme with each other there, and they would prefer it if no one interrupted them. So certain hoity-toity establishments are declared “Elysium” and you’d better not make trouble there or so help you. They’re also open to all vampires who want to attend, though if you do everyone will think you’re sucking up to the elders (which you probably are). Also, you can’t talk politics at an Elysium (because this is a place of respite from worldly concerns and and shame on you for trying to ruin the vibe), unless a Primogen brings up the subject first in which case it’s not only fine but mandatory (because of course addressing this incredibly important issue comes before your silly enjoyment). So basically, they’re kind of like the power-tripping admins of any online forum I’ve ever been on.
The Rack is the polar opposite of the Elysium, being the hot clubs where Anarchs hang out. The Succubus Club (which will get its own book, so be patient) is mentioned, and so is The Cave, which is this rugged working-class bar for manly blue-collar men, and The Blue Velvet, which is seemingly mortal-owned but oddly accommodating to vampires. The concept of Blood Dolls is also described, which is nice because it’s the kind of phrase that later books throw around and assume you’re familiar with. Basically, they’re humans trying very hard to act like vampires (without actually knowing that real vampires exist), including by sharing blood – which is very convenient for actual vampires, because it makes them look about 100% less suspicious when they’re in a Blood Doll hangout.
The part of downtown south of the river is called “the Hive” by the Kindred, the implication being that mortals are scurrying insects. Okay, I’m starting to think the Garou have the right idea re: the Kindred needing to have their undead asses kicked. Anyway, it’s described as both crime-ridden and inhabited mostly by poor ethnic minorities and the centre of business and politics in the city, and I’m not sure if that’s just bad writing or if it was a contradiction that really did exist in the real Chicago of 1992.
“The Barrens,” finally, is the vampire all-purpose name for any and every place where they don’t wanna go, apparently usually because it’s full of disagreeable poor people. You’d think they’d be especially interested in going there, then, since poor people can make less of a fuss about people chewing on them than rich people, but okay… Two examples are the Michigan Avenue Underground, where the street runs in two levels and the lower street is perpetually in darkness and vagrants tend to live there to stay out of the rain, and the Cabrini Green Housing Project, which is a ghetto for the poor that’s filled with street crime encouraged by real estate developers who want to drive the poor out so they can put up actual profitable building there. Well, that’s suitably bleak!
The real meat of the book is of course the NPC section, which does not disappoint. Something I really like is how it presents entire lineages of vampires, so you can read about why Vampire A sired Vampire B, how Vampire B inevitably failed to play the practical or emotional role that Vampire A had hoped it would, and how Vampire B then went on to sire Vampire C for its own reasons and to its own eventual disappointment. You really get a sense of dysfunctional family histories, with each generation resenting the one before and expecting too much of the one after it.
Right off the bat we get a deeper description of Menele (he’s the oldest Brujah, so he comes first in the list). Apparently he was once the king of a Greek city-state who got turned by “a Third-Generation Brujah” (not described as an Antediluvian, which might be significant) named Troile after the sacking of Troy (would you believe those bastard Troyans had stolen his wife?!). He then played a part in the founding of Carthage, here described as a Brujah-created utopia where vampires and humans managed to live together for mutual advantage. Sadly, Carthage was betrayed by Helena to its Ventrue and Malkavian enemies and their Roman pawns, leading to a long-running battle across history that included the eruption of Vesuvius and the fall of the Incan Empire (yes, really) before leading to that fateful showdown near what would become Chicago.
We also, sadly, see the beginning of power creep in that Menele has several Disciplines above 5 (yes, he’s a Methuselah, but remember how the core said that that meant he might have as many as fifteen dots of Disciplines combined? Yeah, that didn’t last long). Apparently his super-Auspex means that he can sense what’s going on around him even when in torpor, and his super-Dominate means that he can mind-whammy anyone who touches his inert form. Still not sure how those fairly modest abilities lets him be one of the power players in the city, mind you. Yes, I am simultaneously complaining that this is too much and not enough, whatsittooya?!
We’re also informed that Menele was responsible for most of the events of Ashes to Ashes, having groomed the ghoul who abducted Lodin and also nudged Modius into sending the players to Chicago to take the fall for it. He didn’t count on his body being claimed by a vampire hunter, though, so he might have gotten the players to extract it and then mind-whammied them into hiding it and forgetting where.
Other prominent Brujah include two of the Primogen, Menele’s childe Critias (a smartass Athenian sophist who fancies himself a great political philosopher, and who isn’t aware that Menele is pulling his strings) and Tyler (originally a peasant rebel against the medieval English crown, who went on to play a part in the forming of the Sabbat that she now keeps hidden, and Helena’s secret patsy). There is also as Balthazar / Sheriff, who like most other Brujah started out as a rebel and political thinker, but while most of them were some variety of socialist or civil rights activist, Sheriff was a Southern Confederate. Perhaps predictably, he didn’t get along well with his fellow Brujah and defected to become Lodin’s henchman since that offered him his best opportunity for being a smug, brutal, corrupt-hick stereotype. To thine own self be true, or something.
There are some Caitiffs (which at this point aren’t the result of “weak blood” but are just vampires who haven’t been properly raised as part of a clan), the most notable one of whom is Maldavis, who’s somehow managed to survive Lodin’s wrath. She’s interested in starting a new rebellion, but she’s mostly been replaced by other anarch leaders.
Gangrel! There is a Gangrel Primogen named Inyanga, who was a shaman way back in Africa. She’s somewhat less morally bankrupt than most elder vampires and tries to just feed off people who she thinks deserve it. She’s got some magic power tricks from her mortal days – again something that’s cool and flavourful and that wouldn’t be allowed under the later editions because RESPECT THE IRONCLAD LINES!!!! Ah well. Also somewhat creepy-cool is her childe Doyle, who worked in the butcher yards and found killing cows to be a spiritual experience that made him one with the animal’s soul. Like… ick, but iiiiiinteresting, but ick. He embraced a kind-hearted animal lover named Rose, but she got so horrified by his animal-slaying ways that she wants to kill him… and of course she’d never feed off of a poor, defenseless animal, only from those human jerks! Hee.
The Malkavians have no Primogen, though they do have a leader of sorts named Maureen who has the distinction of being the one who started the Great Chicago Fire. She runs an insane asylum and has a bunch of deranged progeny, including a pair who think they’re a stodgy married couple and their psychotic “son” (actually their sire). I love it, it’s so horrifying.
The Nosferatu Primogen is a guy named Khalid who used to be a Muslim general during the Crusades. He’s pursuing Golconda, but his anger management problem keeps getting in the way. His progeny includes a pair of abused children who killed their parents (he chose them for the embrace because he figured that becoming deformed undead monstrosities would actually be a step up for them) and who are now unwillingly served by the ghosts of said parents. First canonical appearance of wraiths? I’m not entirely sure.
The Toreador! Helena is one. She’s also from ancient Greece, though she’s not actually Helena of Troy even if parts of her backstory do involve running away from her husband to her lover’s family, only to have her husband follow and kill them all. Anyway, we already went through most things about her when talking about Menele. She’s got even more super-duper-Disciplines and can astral-project all over the place when in torpor and Dominate people from afar, which does seem like it would be more helpful in subtly directing things. She was the one who whammied Maureen into starting the Great Chicago Fire as part of her bid to get rid of the Menele-backed Prince and put Lodin in his place, by the way.
The Toreador Primogen is Helena’s grandchilde, Annabelle. She’s a vapid socialite with pretensions of being a great patron of the arts. Helena thinks she controls her, but actually Menele is only letting her believe that. She’s secretly Modius’ sire. She’s got another childe named Sophia who’s an exotic dancer because Annabelle thought that that could become the next daringly transgressive art form, but it turns out that vampires – who have no physical need for sex, though some indulge in it anyway for psychological reasons – don’t have much interest in strippers. Annabelle now treats Sophia as a failed experiment, much to Sophia’s Blood Bound heartbreak. See what I mean about the messed up family dynamics?
The Tremere are pretty few in numbers, but they do have a Primogen, named Nicolai. He’s one of those creepy perpetually-a-child vampires that you need to include in any self-respecting urban fantasy setting, though for him it’s more complicated in that he’s also a wizard of considerable knowledge and power while still being emotionally a child. He sired an old black guy named Abraham to help him deal with that pesky not-of-legal-age issue, and Abraham went on to accidentally sire Maldavis (who’s his mortal granddaughter – yeah, it gets convoluted) when she surprised him and he freaked out. Nicolai also has a number of thaumaturgical rituals that weren’t in the core (which was rather sparse on rituals in general), letting him do things like see into the past and turn into a bat (you can already do that with Protean, but of course no true Tremere would do anything like a Gangrel!).
In contrast, there are a lot of Ventrue, and they’re all Lodin’s descendants because he refuses to let any other Ventrue settle in Chicago. It’s all sort of creepy and narcissistic. Anyway, some of the more interesting ones are Ballard, our resident fat bastard with more money than God. Whose Ventrue flaw is that he must exclusively feed on his prepubescent male family members. I love Ballard, he’s so gross and terrible. Lodin uses him to run finances. There’s also Drummond, who used to be a railroad baron back when railroad barons were relevant, and who’s basically an idiotic man child who doesn’t seem to quite get that he’s a vampire. And finally, there’s Al Capone. Yes… yes, that Al Capone. Who’s a vampire. Because this is a very silly game that thinks it’s a very serious game.
Under “other” there are a couple of skeevy Sabbat vampires who are lurking around waiting for an opening that will let them take over, and an Inconnu who is supposed to just observe but has a soft spot for the Anarchs. There is also a demon in human form, long before those were retconned out and then reintroduced in Demon: the Fallen. She’s a succubus who feeds through sex, and she’s described as behaving kind of like Madonna in a music video. Also, “don’t bother describing her clothes – she doesn’t wear any.” Ooooookay, that’s somer extremely 90s grimdark fan service, I feel…
There is a few pages explaining who is in a coterie with who, which does help keep track of the politics. Notably, coteries are not portrayed as exclusive – you can be in two different coteries at once. The Primogen is considered a single coterie, for instance, but most of them are also the leader of their own mostly-clan-exclusive coteries. In addition, there are also three different anarch coteries with slightly different ideologies, the Sabbat and the Kindred of Gary are considered to be one each, and also there is a Gangrel biker gang and this vampire punk band called Baby Chorus.
The final chapter is a set of random encounters to introduce whenever the characters are wandering around Chicago and you feel like you haven’t screwed with their heads nearly enough lately. They’re divided into a number of categories that are supposed to reflect the themes of Vampire (the Beast, Paranoia, Horror, Nostalgia, etc). Examples include finding a vampire who’s drunk off his ass and ranting to a group of mortals about how horrible it is to be a vampire (breaking the Masquerade in the process); being approached by a pair of teenage girls who want to buy a pint of your blood, but can’t remember why they want that or where they got the money they’re meant to pay you with; running into an old friend from your living days, who remark on how strangely well-preserved you are; and accidentally killing a vessel only to have it immediately rise as a ghost who now exists solely to follow you around and complain at you. There are also some of the first, brief encounters with werewolves, such as one where you meet a werewolf kid who’s gotten lost and need help finding his way home, and a rather less cutesy one where you come across a massacre by rampaging lycanthropes and have to immediately roll to avoid frenzying while the the furries will likely be back any second. Most of them are pretty good, painting a picture of a world that’s at once gritty, whimsical, and a bit messed up.
Well, a few complaints aside, I really loved this book! The NPCs really pop, and the intricate relations between them feel like they’ve got a lot of potential – no one is as all-powerful or as infallible as they’d like to be, which means that anything you want to throw at the players can be some kind of scheme gone wrong. It all has a feel of some kind of dark, twisted wonderland, full of messed-up people acting on motivations that can range from the oddly sweet to the horrifically evil.
Next one up zooms in even more, and focuses on a single location of Chicago and what can happen there. Stay tuned for The Succubus Club.