Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

London, New Orleans and Chicago — the ratio can be substantially higher. Most Princes
don’t particularly keep track. As long as the population doesn’t grow so high that people take
notice of the predators among them, numbers don’t matter.
If one were to take a worldwide average, the ratio is probably around the one-per-50,000
mark. It fl uctuates so thoroughly from domain to domain that one should never assume that
any given population corresponds to that fi gure.
A GILDED CAGE
Perhaps the single greatest reason vampire society has developed as it has is the Kindred’s
unbreakable tie to the city. The undead are bound to the cities of the kine as tightly as they
are to the Blood itself. For them, the city is really a cage, gilded though it might be, and the
Kindred could no more abandon it than they could become vegetarians.
It would be foolish, of course, to suggest that Kindred never travel. If they did not, they
could never have spread as humanity has, and they would still be restricted to select areas
of the Old World. Despite all the reasons not to, reasons that have literally shaped Kindred
society as it’s known tonight, travel is sometimes necessary. It’s not that Kindred don’t travel,
it’s that they don’t travel casually.
What is it, then, about cities that holds the Kindred? Why does each city exist as its own
fi efdom, with little if any congress between it and its neighbor?
18
TRAVEL AND VAMPIRIC GATHERINGS
For live-action play, especially in chronicles with more than a handful of games, travel
becomes an interesting conundrum in and of itself. As vampires communicate between
domains, alliances and hatreds develop as covenants and clans establish relationships.
Although Requiem is city based, such relationships inevitably result in travel and
larger gatherings. Although they still consider each other to be potential enemies,
vampires in such a setting see perceive travel and meetings more as an opportunity
rather than an immediate danger: the benefi ts of gaining allies and securing one’s
position often outweigh the risks of making the trip. With the optional mechanics
for Predator’s Taint being inactive at these meetings (see page 237), Storytellers can
portray a more dynamic vampiric society that doesn’t shun travel as much as one would
expect. Remember that violence and lethal combat are still the very last resort in the
Requiem, however: you shouldn’t make a trip to another city for the purposes of
torporing or killing a vampiric enemy. It is virtually unheard of for vampiric travelers
to visit a domain and willfully breach its Elysia, for instance.
STAYING NEAR THE WELL
Perhaps the most obvious reason for the Kindred to gather in cities, and to remain there,
is that that’s where the people are. Ultimately, no matter what sort of religious, cultural or
mystical face the Kindred wish to put on it, blood is all that matters. It’s at the core of everything
they do. While hunting is never a sure thing, a Kindred can be relatively certain that,
with care and effort, she can fi nd someone on whom to feed in a city without attracting too
much attention. Cities have slums, clubs, drug dens, hospitals and, if it comes down to it,
dark alleys. Even when Kindred can fi nd people elsewhere, they don’t always present a viable
opportunity for feeding.
Certainly, it might be possible for a particularly hardy or desperate vampire to eke out an
existence outside an urban center. A rustic town of 500 people out in the middle of nowhere
might provide enough Vitae to support a particularly careful Kindred for a short time. In a
population of that size, however, someone would eventually discover his depredations when he
chapter one: society of the damned