V5 Chronicle Tips
It's been awhile since our last Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition article but that was mostly due to my attention being drawn to other personal projects. However, the thing about my love of V:TM is it is as timeless as the immortals it depicts. In this case, today's article is about an interesting subject for Storytellers: how the Second Inquisition can be resolved as a plot in your campaign.
This may strike players and STs alike as a strange idea. After all, 5th Edition went to an elaborate length to set up the Second Inquisition as a permanent change to the status quo. It has its own supplement and everything. However, the Second Inquisition is a controversial element because it either must continue to its natural conclusion (victory, the Masquerade broken, vampires destroyed) or defeat. Unlike the Sabbat, Camarilla, and Anarchs there is no status quo between the living and dead. The war must accelerate, expand, peter out, or some other combination of events.
In out-of-game terms, the Second Inquisition is fine to have something lurking the background of most campaigns. V:TM characters are the opposite of most tabletop games in that their protagonists are perfectly fine with saying, "Not my problem" when dealing with larger campaign issues. However, for those who want longer-lasting Transylvania Chronicles campaigns or to involve PCs in global events then they might want to "resolve" this plot. So here is eight suggestions for how events may play out in the future of the World of Darkness.
Mind you, one of the most realistic things about the World of Darkness is that its politics are profoundly messy and any of these following suggestions could well end up being combined with others or morphing into wholly different ideas. A few of these are inappropriate for continuing campaigns like Leopold's Triumphant and Broken Masquerade but these might be interesting epilogues or perhaps the start of a wholly different sort of game. The rest are devoted instead to showing how the Second Inquisition will lose the war as I believe is probably more likely in most games.
1:] Leopold Triumphant (Inquisition Victory): The "Second Inquisition Wins" scenario where they successfully manage to destroy vampire society as we know it. The Camarilla falls, the Anarchs are scattered, and the Sabbat is left as a continuing plague of individual members making hordes of shovelheads to assault humanity like pop-ups of plague. Leopold Triumphant is a narrative where vampires were unable to unite against the threat and the Second Inquisition remains cooperative as well as perhaps gains the patronage of other supernaturals.
The Masquerade remains intact in this scenario, at least regarding the general public, and the surveillance state keeps all remaining blank body "samples" in special prisons. Thin Bloods are experimented on along with those who are still human enough to harnessed. Weapons of mass destruction like vampire diseases or immunizations for humanity may have been deployed.
The Second Inquisition may soon turn its attention to other supernaturals even if it is patronized but for now they simply loom over a world that is vampire free. The Antediluvians still live in this world, though, and many other ancients who simply will wait out this disaster to spread the curse anew. The player characters may be among the few survivors of vampire society living in small rural communities or the underground of a major city with strict protocols to avoid getting caught. Preventing this scenario is also something some players might be inclined to do, either with a Malkavian vision of what is to come or a last ditch effort by a Nosferatu hacker who is not believed by his superiors due to the information coming from computers.
2:] Broken Masquerade (Neutral): The Second Inquisition makes a calculated decision that the only way to maintain their momentum against the blank body scourge is to come clean. The Masquerade is broken repeatedly and in such a way as to be undeniable. The leaders think that humanity will unite and destroy the undead menace. Unfortunately, for the Inquisition, they have forgotten that mankind cannot collectively agree water is wet.
Some react with hatred, horror, and a desire to eradicate the undead. Others, however, believe them to be victims of a terrible disease or people that can be coexisted with. Others still don't care about the morality of it and see only a cure for death, illness, and the mundanity of their lives. The world is re-arranged among vampire kingdoms, vampire war zones, and places with elaborate sets of laws to deal with the undead. Other supernaturals may struggle with the fact they are also outed but do not wish to be lumped with humanity's predators. The Second Inquisition loses its greatest weapon during this time: unaccountability.
3:]
Divided They Fall (Kindred Victory): The Second Inquisition is a house of cards united only their fear of the undead. Hatred is a poor unifier, though, especially when dealing with global phenomenon. It can carry you far but not over the finish line. The Arcanum, Society of Leopold, Special Affairs Division, Bob Snoblin, and various other hunter orgs have fundamentally incompatible goals. Eventually, someone will want to make deals with the Kindred or use them or destroy only the "bad ones" before things start falling apart.
The SI is divided by geography, nation state, ideology, and religion. Eventually, suspicion and distrust will take root even without Kindred recognizing this. The SI doesn't so much end as it dramatically scales down its efforts to focus on local groups. It may even sabotage the efforts of others, viewing them as traitors or rivals. Information and resource sharing ceases until the Kindred find themselves in a more dangerous world but one wholly manageable.
4:] Corruption from Within (Kindred Victory): At the end of the day, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to have more money. The Kindred defeated the First Inquisition via the Masquerade but also a steady campaign undermining the Catholic Church. The Camarilla's stratagem is to find members of the Second Inquisition vulnerable to bribery, extortion, seduction, and the allure of immortality. Ironically, the Inquisition is better defended against mind control and the blood bond than it is a bag of cash or beautiful ghouls. The United States and other SI supporting nation states may find themselves under assault by Kindred pawns that cause the collapse of economies or government functionality as a whole.
The SI is gradually co-opted until the true believers are purged and all that is left is another Camarilla puppet organization. The Society of Leopold may itself be purged as a "Far Right Italian terrorist organization."
5:] The Money Runs Out (Kindred Victory): Perhaps the least dramatic and most realistic ending to the Second Inquisition is the logistics they've been riding high on turn out to be far more ephemeral than they expected. The United States alphabet agencies provided the SI a massive war chest and its black budgets are not subject to typical scrutiny but massive doesn't mean infinite. Eventually, more mundane operations will want to know where their cut of the money has gone and those preserving the SI's secrecy will be hard pressed to answer without reading more people in (and that may lead to its own problems).
The undeclared war nature of the SI also hurts it. Only so many agents and soldiers can die before people start asking questions, especially if they're dying on home soil in unsanctioned ops. In this scenario, whole departments are dissolved as its members are downsized, reassigned, or jailed. Many of the less vital members of the SI may be thrown under the bus by their superiors who are more interested in covering their ass than protecting assets.
6:] Diabolus Ex Machina (Kindred Victory): At the end of the day, the Second Inquisition has no idea what the hell they're actually fighting as they're primarily victorious over the dregs of Kindred society. Their greatest victories like London, Boston, Mexico City, Montreal, and Vienna were aided by insiders attempting to use them against their enemies. As the Technocracy discovered, there are Kindred so powerful that they might as well be gods.
In this scenario, the Antediluvians or their eldest progeny are roused to act and the Second Inquisition is helpless to stop them. Perhaps all of its members lose their memories of what they were doing, its buildings all empty out overnight, or something even more overtly supernatural like them disappearing. While out of player character's hands, barring them making a deal with Kupala to do it, it is a reminder that Gehenna is always seemingly around the corner.
7:] The Purge (Kindred Victory): The least subtle of the methods that the Second Inquisition might meet its end. The Camarilla may prefer subtler means but this isn't to say they're not capable of waging war in the Old Ways either. If the player characters or some other party can get hold of the identities of the Second Inquisition's leaders or even a huge chunk of its membership as a whole then the undead will eliminate them. Over the course of several months to a a year, seemingly random tragedies will wipe out several thousand individuals. Possibly their families as well (because Kindred are very thorough).
The Justicars learn quickly and the very methods the Second Inquisition used to identify Kindred can be turned to find the hunters. Whole bases will be destroyed and their contents carried off for study. The survivors will not know who to trust and will go to ground or become easy pickings. Conspiracy theorists may speculate about the unusual number of deaths of government employees but it will join the pile of other unsolved mysteries. The most paranoid of non-Second Inquisition agents will more likely blame Russia, ISIS, or Endron Oil than vampires.
8:] Blinded Eyes (Kindred Victory): As an alternative to wiping out the Second Inquisition is to render them completely impotent. Before the Inquisition took down Schrek.net, the Nosferatu had been working on creating their own Kindred-exclusive internet. Anarch Tremere were working on technomancy countermeasures to discovery. There are other supernaturals parties that had vested interest in mortals not poking into the supernatural (be they similar to the Glass Walkers or Virtual Adepts). Every Banu Haqim den or Tremere chantry will sell you a ring that gives you a Blush of Life effect in exchange for a minor boon. Custom cell phones link to Kupala.net that has defenses guaranteed by forces best not questioned but provide the same sort of protection Hunter.net once had for its soldiers.
In this reality, the Second Inquisition's databases are corrupted as bound spirit AI wipe all relevant information despite their best attempts to preserve it. Common misinformation also renders all modern data-gathering on blank bodies unreliable. Most of the Second Inquisition believes the majority of vampirekind has been wiped out and rapidly scales back their operations to work on other projects. Time is, after all, on the Kindred's side.
Recommended Media: The Breed (movie), Daybreakers (movie), Fringe (TV show), The Laundry Files by Charles Stross (books), Slow Horses (TV show or books), True Blood, Ultraviolet (movie), Ultraviolet (TV series), X-men: Days of Future Past (comic, movie)
