Most everyone shows up: Bruce (Cyrus Billings), Tim (The Shepherd), Nick (Vincent Gray) and Chris C. (Perrin). Doug (formerly Pallis Toter) is also in attendance, but is creating a new character.
Doug's new character is Eric Himmler, a Nosferatu occultist. He was Embraced because several of the other local Nosferatu have been studying Thaumaturgy, and wanted a new student. He has been among the Kindred for about five years, during which time he has been a quick study of the Thuamaturgical arts. He moved into San Antonio recently, and doesn't know many of the secrets of the San Antonio sewer system (the local Nosferatu give him a tour of the sewers after his arrival).
The local Nosferatu are led by Nigel, who spends most of his time in the San Antonio zoo. Other Nosferatu include:
Eric establishes a haven in a quiet corner of the sewers.
The characters spend about two months going about their own business.
Vincent asks Lisa, a senior member of the Tremere in San Antonio to teach him the Obfuscate Discipline. She agrees to do this in about two weeks. In the meantime, he spends his nights on the Riverwalk, building up a Herd of 1.
After he learns his Obfuscate skills, he petitions the Prince for permission to create a ghoul. His petition is successful. He then tracks down Phil Darby, a newspaper reporter known for political stories, and arranges a meeting with him. At the meeting, Vincent dominates Phil into believing that he had a fine time talking with him, and will want to do this again sometime.
The next evening, Phil asks him what business one of Vincent's candidates (a City Council member) has at a certain downtown hotel. Vincent Dominates him into agreeing to not publish the story until Vincent tells him to. He then investigates the City Council member on his own, and finds that the City Council member is seeing a couple of 14-year-old prostitutes. Vincent (properly horrified) tells the Council member to desist, and then arranges to suppress the story. Phil apparently already has a lot of information about the Council member's previous indiscretions, but doesn't know anything about his current activities.
Over the next couple of months, Vincent uses Phil to disseminate unfavorable information about Vincent's political enemies, and to learn about his political allies' skeletons in the closet.
The Shepherd spends some time prowling through Screamin' Joe's dungeon, looking for someone promising to make into his ghoul. The available candidates include: a security guard (who objected to where Joe had parked his car), an accountant (who probably messed up some of Joe's finances), and an infantryman (who Joe said, "this man should have died: he should never have come back from the wars."). Shepherd chooses the infantryman, and forces the man to drink his blood. Unfortunately, Shepherd mentions this to Joe, who kills the man.
After his failure with Joe, Shepherd decides to find his own ghoul. He selects Theodore Lippo, an ambulance-chasing trial lawyer who is really a fairly despicable individual (Shepherd deliberately chooses someone he won't like, so he won't feel bad about abusing the guy later on). Shepherd tries to be clever about the process, but doesn't completely succeed. He successfully slips his blood to Lippo once, but ends up Dominating Lippo into drinking on the second night. After that, Lippo avoids him. Shepherd tries to track him down at home, but gets the wrong house. Shepherd then Obfuscates his way into Lippo's office at night. A dramatic encounter between Shepherd on the one side and Lippo and his bodyguard on the other ensue, in which Lippo's office is nearly destroyed, Lippo's bodyguard is nearly killed by multiple rubber bullets from Shepherd's gun, and Lippo is finally forced to drink Shepherd's blood for the third time after being pistol-whipped and shot in the back with a rubber bullet.
Lippo convinces Shepherd to take him to a hospital (for his various wounds); on the way out of the building, Shepherd tells the guard a really pathetic story about a maniac in Mr. Lippo's office. The guard responds by calling in the police. Nearly desperate, Shepherd calls Vincent for help, interrupting him in the middle of an Auspex lesson. Vincent hangs up on him. Shepherd finally manages to convince the people at the hospital that Lippo had been in a minor car accident, and hadn't been wearing a seatbelt.
Subsequently, Lippo comes to believe that all the trouble was his fault, and that Shepherd is the best thing that's ever happened to him. Shepherd starts to siphon money away from Lippo (bumping his own Resources to 3 by reducing Lippo's Resources from 4 to 3). Lippo assures him that he'll easily be able to convince his (trophy) wife that nothing is wrong. Shepherd suspects that Lippo wouldn't tell him even if there was a huge problem.
The bodyguard is arrested as the "maniac" who had been stalking Lippo. The newspapers go wild with his story, including such details as forcing Lippo to drink blood. Shepherd concludes that he is a dead Kindred.
Perrin spends his time studying rituals. By the time two months have gone by, he has picked up all of the first- and second-level rituals in the Vampire rules. During this time, he lives in a sizable (but plain) room within the Tremere Chantry.
Cyrus first spends some time developing himself (spending experience to raise his Alertness, Athletics and Brawl skills). He spends a lot of time working for the SAPD as a consultant, gaining Resources 2. In the process, he researches the folks who killed him down in Chiapas. He gets a list of seven names, both known smugglers in Chiapas and "antidrug" police officers on the take, who might have been responsible for ordering his death.
Close to the end of the off period, Cyrus goes to a police auction and buys another old cruiser with the money gained from his consulting work. He then uses his Repair skills to make sure it won't break down under fire.
The Nosferatu Faceless calls Cyrus to tell him that there's a new Nosferatu in town. They agree to meet at Ye Olde Candy Shoppe to introduce the fellow. Faceless, dressed in a Highlander-style trenchcoat (from which blades can magically appear) introduces Eric to Cyrus.
Faceless asks Cyrus to introduce Eric to some of the other local Kindred, as a favor. Cyrus agrees, and pages all the other characters (the code is #GOON on his cellphone). The group all meets at a bar on the Riverwalk to talk.
During the conversation, Faceless demonstrates an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the characters' activities over the previous several months. He has also obviously seen Nazi Chimpanzees v. Allied Vampires (or at least a bootleg copy of it). After a few minutes of light verbal sparring, Faceless goes off to deal with his own errands, leaving Eric alone with the characters.
Cyrus, who hasn't met most of the local Gangrel population himself, decides to take Eric out to Kerrville to introduce him to Otto. Shepherd agrees to this plan, as he's interested in talking to some of the Malkavians living near the asylum.
Cyrus has briefly met most of these Kindred, with the obvious exception of Philip. However, he doesn't know any of them well at all.
Just before the characters leave for Kerrville, Shepherd shows up with three assault rifles, converted from their original semi-automatic status.
Type |
Difficulty |
Damage |
Range |
Rate |
Clip |
Conceal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Converted AR-15* | 7 | 7 | 150 | 3 | 42+1 | N |
| .30-06 Rifle | 8 | 8 | 200 | 1 | 5+1 | N |
The characters take Eric's rented car out to Kerrville. Otto's place is a ranch surrounded by several fences and guarded by a number of folks armed with shotguns standing around bonfires. Most of the characters are somewhat upset by the open flames.
The trip up to the house does a fair amount of damage to Eric's rental, as the unpaved drive is peppered with strange bumps and dips that drag terribly against the underbody.
The group runs into Slim and Otto on the porch of the house. They are sitting near a fire burning in a 55-gallon drum with a couple of ghouls. Slim is dressed in a truly amazing silk and rhinestone shirt, while Otto is a huge bear of a Vampire, clad in working-class clothes.
After a round of introductions, Otto asks Perrin if he could come back out sometime and teach them Thaumaturgy. In return, he offers several deals: he could teach Protean, or whip up a bunch of frenzy-mad Gangrel to rip apart one of Perrin's enemies, or give him a real good deal on some pickup trucks. He also asks Eric if he could come back and teach Obfuscate to some of the local Gangrels.
In a final gesture of neighborly spirit, Otto gives around several bottles of "Horsehead Beer." It turns out that this stuff is blood from a horse that has been force-fed beer. It doesn't taste that good, but it is just the slightest bit intoxicating.
On the way back to San Antonio, the characters' car is passed by a pickup truck that indicates that the characters should stop. When Cyrus (who is driving) ignores the truck, it speeds up past them and someone in the back throws a keg at the hood of the characters' car. Cyrus brakes and slews back behind the truck to avoid the keg, but is only partially successful. The two (?) figures in the back of the truck then take a tarp off a .50 cal machine gun mounted in the bed.
The initial fight goes very badly for the characters. When the .50 cal opens up, Cyrus takes four levels of damage (and is blinded by the flash), while Eric suffers seven levels of damage. The other characters open fire on the gunners in the truck bed, but only Shepherd's shots have much effect. He manages to wound one of the gunners after inflicting enough damage to slay any normal human.
Eric starts to recover from his wounds, and immediately goes into frenzy. While the other characters continue to blaze away at the truck, Cyrus hits the brakes to put some distance between the vehicles. Though he does not actually crash the car, he does stop rapidly enough that half of the characters are incapacitated. Someone in the truck throws a grenade, and only barely misses the car. The truck's taillights disappear into the darkness.
After the pickup truck disappears, the characters kick Eric out of the car and wait for him to recover. They then go to find a quick source of blood. After an hour's search, the characters find a field of cows and engage in a savage orgy of feeding. Cyrus simply rushes and slays one, while Shepherd shoots two (one for him and one for Eric) and Perrin uses Thaumaturgy to pull the blood from one at range. By the time the characters are done, the field is full of dead cows.
While the other characters bicker about how to siphon gasoline out of the car and into a beer bottle (the only container the characters possess), Cyrus grows claws, cuts the cow bodies into manageable pieces, and piles them all together. After the other characters return to the city, Cyrus piles brush over all the bodies and sets them on fire. Once he is convinced that the fire is burning brightly, he walks some distance away and settles into the earth.
The other characters drive back to the city to spend the night at the gun shop operated by Don, Shepherd's ghoul. Eric drops the characters off, then drives the car off to make it disappear (he sets it on fire with a potato-masher grenade that Shepherd originally salvaged from the Nazi chimpanzee people). The characters (except for Cyrus) spend a cramped evening in Don's hidey-hole.
The next evening, Cyrus pulls himself from the ground. His clothes, previously shredded by machine-gun fire, are covered in gore and dirt. Flies are swarming around him. He strips down to his boxer shorts and washes himself off (badly) in a nearby pond. He notices that someone has piled dirt over the remains of the cows' funeral pyre.
Shepherd, Eric and Perrin head to Screaming Joe's place in Don's car. Shepherd intends to manipulate Joe into providing a body that can be fed to Cyrus. Vincent declines to join them, and instead plays cards with Don.
At Joe's, the characters first enjoy "The Coach", which takes them from the edge of the property up to the "castle", and then "The Butler", who has an evil-looking eye. The Butler leads the characters into the sitting room, where Eric spends a little time reading an occult book that proves to have $20 bills inserted between the pages. He gives it to Perrin, who carefully replaces those bills that fell to the floor between the pages they came from.
Meanwhile, Shepherd petitions Joe for a ghoul. He finds Joe preparing to use a heated poker upon a victim strapped to a table, and asks if he could make him into a ghoul. Surprisingly, Joe agrees. Shepherd suspects that Joe may have been mollified by his promise to mistreat the ghoul like a noble would mistreat his serfs.
The other characters are slightly taken aback by the appearance of the victim, who has been badly burned and cut multiple times. The man mutely shuffles out to the car with the characters. They drive him out to the field where Cyrus is waiting for them. He strides out of the darkness towards them, clad only in boxer shorts and carrying a pistol. The characters make feeble efforts to tell the victim to run, though this does not stop Cyrus from falling upon him and tearing him to shreds. All the characters make Conscience rolls.
All the characters gain five experience points.