Part 6: University
This is another scene that I think is very well done, so I'm not going to say much.The screen fades in to the University...
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Brujah Clan? Note that in redemption, it's pronounced broo'-zhah, but in bloodlines it's pronounced broo'-hah. I don't know which one is correct; it's possible they both might be.
Ventrue? Here's what Vicissitude has to say on the subject of Carthage.
Vicissitude posted:
(The Brujah's) great experiment was the city of Carthage in northern Africa. Their theory was that it was possible for humans and vampires to live in a sort of equilibrium. And while it did succeed, sort of, the equilibrium was more of a deranged cult compound of a trade city. The humans there would gladly offer themselves up to the vampires, who would in turn take what they wanted.
The reason Carthage was destroyed was actually due to the Baali clan setting up shop in the city. They were, and are to a limited extent, a clan of demon-worshipping vampires who even believe their clan is descended from a demon rather than a vampire. Their practices were almost out in the open and demons were running through the streets near the end and the vampires were too busy indulging themselves to really give a shit. So the Rome-based clans got together and organized the Carthaginian wars. The Roman legions destroyed Carthage, killing many, many 'tainted' vampires and driving many of them (literally) underground. The earth was salted to prevent any vampire who took refuge in the ground from arising.
This was also one of the shining moments of the Salubri clan, but who cares about them? They're just soul-eating monsters, right?
And a response from Feinne...
Feinne posted:
Also the Baali were the Salubri's fault anyway, since they were also Saulot's children, so it's not like they weren't just killing them out of self interest. But yeah for once demons pretty much did a great thing because holy shit demons can be right unpleasant in the WoD.
Hey, your fist looks like mine!
Christof winds up to throw the cross...
Aww, the subtitles cut it off! The screen fades out and we rejoin Christof, Cosmas, and Ecaterina in the center of the University.
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Christof can't bear the thought of living.. I mean unliving without Anezka, so he falls back on his crusader
Christof runs toward the exit...
But Thou Must! I don't understand this, because it was Ecaterina and Cosmas that decided to have Christof embraced. Not
Note that she pronounced even pronounced it Wilhem. I did some searching around and I found that there's a book on the name, but I'm not going to go any farther into it.
We now have Wilhem's face to look at in the bottom of the screen. You might notice some disparity with Christof's healh, and that's because I had to re-do the previous part because if you don't set the game to run in administrator mode, it won't overwright saves, but also act like it does when you try.
Actually, what's up with the bars on the bottom of the screen? It looks like mana and health have switched places and our faith has been completely drained.
Oh. We'll get into what the new stats do later, but note that Christof is a Brujah, and his new rank is 'Fledgeling'.
So we gotta go get the Nod fragment from our Cappadocian ally, Garinol.
When we exit the university, Wilhem starts a conversation.
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Wilhem never said that he did. Maybe that's more of Christof's crusader training - to
Those loony Malkavians, never helpful at all. Does Wilhem really not know about their fabled insight, or is that an oversight on the writers part?
When we head down the steps, Wilhem starts another conversation.
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Let's explore the haven.
There's not much to do in here. There's our vault chest...
...and there's a coffin which is used to increase our stats and spells. As you can see from the lower right, we actually do have some spells, finally.
Under our Common Dicipline, we've got Feed, Blood Healing, and Blood Strength
Celerity...
Potence...
Under Presence, we've got Awe. Let's quick check out Wilhem's inventory.
We'll equip him with the Halberd and exit the haven.
We can now attack the townspeople, but they'll most likely call the guards, and killing civilians or guards results in a loss of humanity. Turns out that Garinol's lair is in a monastery opposite of the golden way, so let's head to Judith Bridge.
We can enter the inn, but there's nothing to do in there except attack the drunks.
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Right click on people to feed, when feed is the selected spell.
Our bloodpool fills while our prey's decreases, as you can see in the lower left.
Wilhem interrupts us after about two seconds.
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He's actually behind me so I can't behold anything.
Speaking of Ecaterina, here's what Zeroisanumber has to say about her face
Zeroisanumber posted:
Ecaterina is a character from one of White Wolf's Dark Ages sourcebooks. IIRC, she was a villager in a town that was being sacked and had most of her lower face crushed by a mace just prior to her being turned into a vampire. In spite of her vampire-yness, the wound never healed properly and her messed-up face was the best that she could manage. She decided that function was better than nothing and just wore a scarf over the fugly lower half almost all of the time.
and a reply from Vicissitude.
Vicissitude posted:
Yeah, Ecatarina (modern name: Katherine Weiss), had her face busted up before she was saved from her attackers by her sire. He tried to fix her face up as best he can, but let's face it, medicine back then was abysmal, to say the least. The Embrace does not fix anything more than mortal wounds. They heal at an accelerated rate, but it's similar to natural healing, just super-fast. If your arm isn't set before the Embrace, it'll heal all weird and you'll be stuck like that for eternity. Vykos did something nasty like that to a tourist who the Sabbat kidnapped. He actually spit in her face so it bonecrafted a solid plate of bone over his face. As he was sitting there, writhing and suffocating, it told its lackeys to Embrace the poor bastard. Now he can't see or even feed without taking a chisel to his face and doing himself a good deal of harm. And if he heals himself, the wounds 'heal' and the bone plate grows back. His unlife is hell.
Now that we've got more blood, let's check out Blood Healing.
Health goes up, blood goes down, no miscommunication. You can't explain that!
WIlhem has these in his quickbar, which we can buy from the gypsy and will be using a lot. We haven't visited our gypsy friend in a while, so let's head there before the monastery.
As we head further down the bridge, another conversation starts.
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I like Wilhem. He's a nice, logical counterpart to Christof.
He's kind of like Christof's vampiric dad. Let's go to the gypsy.
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We can't afford anything here. Before we depart for the monastery, I want to correct myself on comments I made on the gypsy's age. Here are some comments in the thread on the subject.
inflatablefish posted:
It's perhaps worth noting that the sort of harsh life that has you dead by 50 also makes you look very old and worn down! There's also a fairly big difference between average lifespan of peasants versus people rich enough to eat well, which can often be overlooked.
Capilarean posted:
Not to mention that while the average lifespan has increased significantly since the middle ages, people would still reach ages of 80+, just a lot less commonly. No reason that magic gypsy couldn't be over 50.
Conskill posted:
Lifespans in history are usually grossly underestimated, due to the numbers often taking into account infant mortality. This is arguably the right way to do it, but if you don't know it's happening it can skew your perception something fierce. For example, "life expectancy" in medieval Britian was 30 years... unless you happen to actually survive childhood, in which case it suddenly bounced to 64, which isn't far from the modern world average.
There you go.
...but the actual dungeon will be for part 6.