V:tDA Campaign Story
(11/11/00) The year was 459 CE. We awoke one night in the middle of a deserted battlefield. A mysterious messenger told us "the Grey King" wanted to speak to us, and named a town where we were to meet him. On our way there, everyone in the party decided they hated everyone else. We also ran into the Saxon army, who were fighting against the Celts, and they offered us an escort through the forest. Under very bizarre circumstances, Tamar Embraced one of the soldiers, only to have Laurel torture him to death shortly thereafter, leading Tamar and J'oa to begin plotting against Laurel. We reached the Grey King's fortress, and he told us only that we had been called to "hinder the cause of the Celts." We decided to accomplish this by "joining" the Celts and messing with them from within. As we left the Grey King, we were attacked by four other vampires for reasons still unknown; we killed them, and Tamar diablerized two of them.
(11/12/00) We learned that the Celts were commanded by a werewolf named Owain and advised by a powerful mage. Despite a botched negotiation attempt during which Laurel essentially gave away our entire plan, we managed to gain Owain's confidence. Ange, Raeli, and Tamar ended up blood bonded to Laurel.
(11/18/00) Owain gave us a mission to defend a Druidic ritual in which some of his people were taking part. Some other vampires and their mercenaries attempted to disrupt the ritual, but we subdued the perpetrators. (Unfortunately, Ange disappeared during the battle and was never seen again.) From the survivors, Laurel learned that an elder in London had ordered the raid, and we set out to find him. Along the way, Laurel and J'oa were nearly killed by a mage hiding in a cave. We experienced another strange time shift which brought us closer to London and also introduced Natalie and two Asian gentlemen, Duong-mu and Hunori. They agreed to help our cause, although we never figured out their real origins, identities, or motives. In London, we got on the prince's bad side by being reluctant to disclose our sympathies in the Saxon-Celtic conflict. (Ulitmately it turned out he was in league with the Grey King.)
(12/02/00) To prove our loyalty to him, the prince sent us into the sewers of London to track down some Nosferatu traitors. Beforehand, Raeli stole a full suit of Roman armor by walking out of a dinner party while wearing it. After a brief battle, we made an agreement with the Nosferatu to spare their lives if they would help us get revenge on the elder who orchestrated the druidic raid. After getting our next assignment to deliver some letters to Owain, we went elder hunting and dispatched the guy with relative ease. Upon reaching the Celtic encampment, we learned that a major battle was brewing and decided to strike. We set out on a poorly planned, extremely ill-advised commando raid which involved wild animals, poison in the well, high levels of Obfuscate, Chimerstry, Vicissitude, and Dementation, and obscene nursery rhymes sung loudly at three in the morning. The chaos we created led to the Celts being routed the next morning--but Owain's mage also staked and captured Raeli and Tamar. Feeling a maternal bond toward her thralls, Laurel stormed back and demanded their return. A battle ensued in which J'oa killed Owain, Raeli and Tamar were freed, and Laurel was staked.
(12/08/00) Laurel bought her freedom by agreeing to participate in the mage's medical experiments. Duong-mu and Hunori disappeared as mysteriously as they had appeared. We returned to London, where the prince congratulated us and awarded each of us a large sum of money and some property--but also gave us another task. A heretic bishop wanted us to journey to the Middle East and locate the Holy Grail before a powerful Setite could get to it, promising us amazing riches if we were successful. We agreed to the quest, and started out by going back to the Grey King to ask for his help. He was unable to tell us anything, but offered us a better deal if we brought the Grail to him instead. We proceeded to Rome to research the Grail, and on the way had a brief and friendly encounter with the characters from our Mage campaign. From Rome we journeyed to Alexandria, where we searched the famed library for more information and discovered that the Grail was most likely in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, J'oa followed a lead from a mysterious woman in green which led him to a cave that hid the Grail. Against all odds, he recovered it and brought it back to us, where we used Vicissitude to hide it inside a camel's hump. Holy Camel in tow, we began the trek back to London. But the Setite found out about us, caught up to us, and demanded the Grail. We refused, fought them valiantly, and killed all but one of his henchmen, but he proved too much for us and sent us all into torpor. When we awoke, we found ourselves staked in the middle of the desert with only a little while left before sunrise.
(12/16/00) As we lay helpless in the desert, along came Awari, another Assamite on the run from some mysterious pursuers. He took pity on the five of us, moved our torpored bodies into a cave, and fed us with nomads and camels until we were able to move again. J'oa told him we were looking for an artifact (although he didn't tell him it was the Grail), and Awari agreed to help us if we would help defend him from his enemies. With that, we tried to track the Setite but were mostly unsuccessful, learning only the general direction in which he was headed. We followed that trail until we reached a city and tried to determine if he'd been there. No one in the city had seen them, and the only thing of interest that we found were a large number of blind ghouls guarding scrolls in a sub-basement of the city's library. J'oa then ran into the woman in green again, who taunted him and told him we would never succeed in our quest.
(01/06/01) Deciding there was nothing more to learn in the city, we retraced our steps toward an oasis. Halfway there we ran into the bishop who had given us the quest, who had decided to track us down and lend a hand with our quest. (Because we had been fleshcrafted to appear Middle Eastern, he didn’t recognize us.) As we were speaking to him, six Assamites (who we later discovered were in the employ of the Setite) rode up looking for us, but the bishop hid us and we were able to find out where they were going. With that, we undid our fleshcrafting and split up; Laurel and Raeli followed the bishop back to the city, where they explained the situation and convinced him to help us, and J’oa, Natalie, and Tamar tried to track the Assamites but lost them. We all reunited in the city and went back to our research. In the library, Laurel and Raeli met the woman in green, who inexplicably gave them a map with three points marked with the words, “Meet me here,” “Meet us here,” and “Meet no one here.” So we split up again. Raeli went to meet “me” and found an abandoned building which contained only a set of fangs and a scrap of green fabric (which he took to mean that the woman in green had been killed). J’oa and Tamar went to meet “us” and found an abandoned tower inhabited by a large snake which tried to interrogate Tamar, got frustrated by her Malkavian-ness, and let the two of them go. Laurel and Natalie went to meet “no one” and found another abandoned building which contained a severed head. We caught up with Laurel and Natalie, studied the map for awhile, and realized that the three points formed a square with one corner unmarked. We went to that point and found the ruins of a temple which contained the remains of the Holy Camel, the Assamite mercenaries, and some very annoyed Setites. At that point, the “bishop” revealed himself to be actually the head Setite; the real bishop had been killed much earlier, and it was his severed head we had found. The Setite said that he admired our persistence and would spare our lives, but he couldn’t allow us to have the Grail, because it would be needed many centuries later in the Final Nights. With our employer dead and knowing we couldn’t defeat him in battle, everyone agreed except Natalie. To placate her, the Setite said she could join his cause and thus remain with the Grail. She agreed, and the rest of us left. J’oa journeyed to the Far East to learn more about Duong-mu and Hunori. Laurel and Natalie spent their time soaking up forgotten knowledge. Raeli, tired of being the eternal trickster, wandered the world, decided that people were stupid, and became a grumpy old man in his later years. Tamar went to Rome and continued trying to change the Chuch from the bottom up. 700 years passed...
(01/13/01) In 1226 CE, Awari, J’oa, Laurel, and Tamar all received invitations to a dinner party at the Grey King’s fortress. We all accepted and met one another again in England. The Grey King showed us some mysterious people who appeared to have no thoughts at all, were immune to Auspex, and generally seemed like stupid, mediocre peasants. However, a large group of them had slaughtered one of his foxes (which were actually powerful beings capable of killing elder vampires). Suspicious and curious, Laurel vivisected a number of the peasants while Awari, J’oa, and Tamar tracked down the ones who had killed the fox and brought them to the Grey King. However, none of us learned anything new. The Grey King told us that he had received a message that was both a request and a veiled threat, which had asked him to send us to Russia for purposes unknown. Curious about the mindless people and the situation in Russia, we agreed. Once we arrived, we found a late-night church service being attended by some hopeful yet frightened people thinking frequently about the name “Aerune,” a city burned to the ground, the Mongol hordes attacking, and a powerful being who taunted Laurel for using her thaumaturgical powers against the horde but denied being our contact.
(01/19/01) Raeli and Natalie joined us in Russia, Raeli after arriving fashionably late at the Grey King’s palace, Natalie after taking a trip to the Middle East to help move the Holy Grail. After following the Mongol horde for awhile, we decided to head for the nearest major city. On our third day of travel, we awoke to find three Asian men waiting for us. Two of them gave their names as Xing Shi and Zune May, and the third kept his face hidden and did not speak. J’oa tried to find out if they were our contacts and asked them about Aerune, but they couldn’t help us on either count. When Tamar used Auspex to learn that two of them appeared to be vampires, J’oa began grilling them about their plans. Xing Shi became infuriated and spat some kind of acid at J’oa, but one of the others used a supernatural power to deflect it. It appeared a fight was going to break out, when quite suddenly a man came out of nowhere and started juggling and entertaining us. The Asian men rode off in confusion and disgust as the stranger and Raeli did some elaborate juggling. The stranger gave his name as Raegar and said he was a traveling bard of sorts, and he decided to go with us to the nearest city. When we arrived, Raegar and Raeli put on a show in a tavern which started with them buying free drinks for everyone and ended in a massive barroom brawl. We were unable to discover anything important in the city and decided to split up. J’oa, Raeli, and Tamar tried to get their contact’s attention by defending some cities from the Mongol horde; they actually managed to save one, but the inhabitants were horrified by their vampiric powers and kicked them out. Awari, Laurel, and Natalie started following the horde again; along the way, they met the woman in green (very much alive!) and an old woman named Annie who seemed to know everything but was reluctant to share it, and learned about a man in a nearby city who could help us. The man turned out to be our contact, a very strange vampire called Crazy Ivan who kept asking us if we liked his armor. After we assured him that we did, he gave us a picture of a man and a detailed map of Russia which showed the movements of the Mongol horde (and changed along with them!) and told us to “find the Heart of Darkness,” something or someone which apparently lay to the east. As we spoke to Crazy Ivan, his stronghold came under attack by the powerful being Laurel had angered, and we had to flee. We began traveling east, and after awhile learned that we were being followed by the Asian men. We asked them about the Heart of Darkness and the man in the picture and learned that he was the Khan, the leader of the Mongol hordes, and a very dangerous man. With that, the third man revealed himself to be Duong-mu, completely unchanged after 800 years. He told us he and his allies would not allow us to proceed.
(02/16/01) After a lengthy argument, we convinced Duong-mu, Xing Shi, and Zune May to let us pass. We then tracked down the Khan at his headquarters. Not knowing what else to do, J’oa killed him—after which we learned that the Heart of Darkness had been released into the world (or something like that) and that Crazy Ivan had disappeared. Completely confused, we went our separate ways and spent some time in our respective havens—until one night, we all rose to find ourselves together again in the jungle. We wandered around for awhile and found a small town of what seemed to be indigenous people. By scanning their minds, we learned that there was a larger city a few miles down the road. When we got to the city, we found three Setites. J’oa and Tamar went to visit them and scared one of the half to death. However, we did learn that they had been sent from across the ocean to research the ways of these people, a strange race who practiced human sacrifice (among other things). After learning of their ways, Laurel’s blatant megalomania took over, and she began trying to set herself up as a “god of night” among the people, to the point of demanding sacrifices. During the first ritual in her honor, Laurel appeared and caused a massive panic. At that point Duong-mu appeared in our midst and demanded that Laurel cease and desist.
(03/04/01) After Laurel’s ritual in her own honor, both she and J’oa received strange messages: paintings of lotus blossoms done on rice paper. The next night, J’oa had a meeting with strangers and came back to tell us he had learned that the presence that had brought us here, and the answers we sought, lay in a larger town several nights’ march to the north. All of us agreed to go with him except Natalie, who decided she wanted to use her blood magic to travel back to Europe. The rest of us began walking. In the middle of the second night, we heard people approaching and hid in jungle trees. It was a bunch of warriors and shamans, who had captured Natalie. J’oa snuck up behind them and heard Natalie saying something like, “You say you only want to hurt Laurel—the one in the cloak?” J’oa went back to the rest of the group and shared this with Tamar, who was so thrilled at the prospect of Laurel’s death that she dropped the Obfuscate power she had been using on everyone and ran screaming into the middle of the road, J’oa behind her. (Awari, Laurel, and Raeli used their own Obfuscate to stay hidden.) They were promptly apprehended by the shamans, taken to a nearby town, and held prisoner in the temple. Upon learning this, Awari and Raeli came to the jail and used a lovely combination of Chimerstry, Obfuscate, and Quietus to get Tamar out. However, J’oa and Laurel remained imprisoned, for purposes still unknown...
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