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

A New Beginning?
The fi nal phase of the story deals with the new regime’s fall from idealism into a new tyranny.
Your fi rst thought might be to have the new Prince simply reveal the full extent of her
ambition, and that the whole coup was simply a cunning scheme to seize power. The famous
dictum about power corrupting also springs to mind. The story’s theme, however, is supposed
to be one of disillusionment and entrapment. Instead of simply revealing the new Prince as a
villain equal to the one before, you could lure the characters themselves into becoming part
of the “corruption” and “abuse of power.”
In the previous phase of the story, the characters made a lot of promises. Now the Kindred
who supported the coup want payoffs. Whatever reforms the Prince and the characters
propose, someone whose support they need says, in effect, “What’s in it for me and what’s
it worth to you?” Someone else fi nds that the reform hurts his own interests and opposes it
no matter what sweetener the characters offer. Those characters who supported the rise of
the new Prince also fi nd that fulfi lling their earlier promises means bending their reformist
principles a little… then a lot, as other Kindred test the limits of what they can claim or extort
from the new Prince. The various demands and promises inevitably confl ict, too: What do
you do when you fi nd that you’ve promised two Kindred your help in circumventing the
other one?
Eventually the new Prince might decide that she needs to make an example of the most
troublesome and demanding Kindred in the city, to show the rest that her administration
won’t be pushed around. You can make the target a real sonofabitch, so the characters don’t
feel so bad about hauling him in for a forced Vinculum or some other penalty. Loyalties
might be divided if that character is one of the players — and is part of a group of characters
that is active in your setting. That makes it easier when they fi nd that two Kindred have
irreconcilable differences and one of them has to go, for the good of the community. Let
each story show the Prince giving a harsher response to challenges to her power, and a more
abrupt, less diplomatic answer to disputes. For a sub-climax, let her order something very
much like a command of the old Prince’s that especially offended the characters: Maybe she
orders a blood hunt against some neonate who made himself inconvenient, or as a way to
pay off a political debt.
Once the characters realize that the new regime is turning as bad as the old one, they face
their fi nal tests of loyalty and integrity. Will some characters stick with the new Prince as a
fi rm investment? Perhaps another starts lining up support for another coup, using the same
techniques that worked for the previous political maneuver, while avoiding its mistakes. After
all, it’s been shown how it could be done. You as a Storyteller might even face multiple coup
plots, as ambitious Kindred think, “Why shouldn’t I be Prince?”
Thus does the story come full circle. Some of the characters may have become the authority
fi gures they once hated and envied, except they are less powerful since they lack their
predecessors’ age and experience. How do they respond to the new revolution? Try to fi ght
it? Join it, try to convince the new young fi rebrands that it isn’t a devious plot to destroy
them, and hope that they can do it right this time? Say, “A plague on all your houses!” and
try to trip-up all the Kindred scrambling for power? Where, fi nally, does honor lie in the
world of the Damned?
Summation
This is an example of a simple framework for your chronicle’s main plot, with the main
challenges and choices that all of your players’ characters will face. As you play through the
chronicle, the characters’ individual goals and backgrounds will spawn smaller plots. You can
tie some of these subplots in to your main plot. Other subplots will surely remain separate,
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mind’s chapter eye four: theatre: storytelling requiem