Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption Part #7

Part 7: Petrin Hill Monastery

We enter the monastery area...

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The entrance to the monestary is around the corner...

When we head inside Christof starts a conversation.

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...Retreive the Nod fragment? Did you really forget already, Christof?

Here's Vicissitude on the book of nod.

Vicissitude posted:

The Nod fragment that we'll be picking up is a piece of the long-lost Book of Nod. Effectively three books of the vampire bible, it supposedly details the life of Caine after he was cast out of Eden by his father, Adam. The various books are first- and third-person accounts of the events from his exile to Nod, meeting with Lilith, meeting with the Crone, the Founding of Enoch and the rise and fall of his childer and the curses he laid upon them.

We head straight ahead, down the left path in the room...

...and down the hallway

Here's our first mob of the dungeon: a couple Cappadocians. They aren't very difficult, but they have a tendency to run away and trigger other mobs, so what little challange they present is entirely based on how bad the combat is.

Check out our frenzy bar. If a vampire takes a hit, the frenzy bar fills up a little. If it fills up all the way, the vampire will enter a frenzy, which results in the player losing control of the character, and the character attacking or feeding on allys. Not good - but we can reduce frenzy by using Blood Healing.

After defeating the mob, we find some leather armor behind us, against the wall. We'll equip it on Wilhem, and go through the door the mob was blocking.

When we go past the door and down the staircase, Wilhem chimes in.

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Here's some info on the Cappadocians from some helpful goons from the thread

Vicissitude posted:

The Cappadocians, the necromancers. They no longer survive to the modern nights (in any recognizable form). They were scholars and keepers of the lore of the dead, but didn't really accomplish all that much. The thing that they're most well known for is their biggest mistake. Cappadocious himself decided to Embrace the patriarch of a small trading family, Augustus Giovanni. Sadly, he didn't realize just how cutthroat the Giovanni clan was. Augustus began Embracing other trustworthy members of his family and eventually rose up and overcame his sire, diablerizing him and effectively becoming a member of the legendary 3rd generation. The remaining Cappadocian clan was destroyed or sealed away forever. Or so they thought. What actually happened remains a mystery, but the bottom line is that the Cappadocians are long gone.

Feinne posted:

Yeah, Cappadocian is the third clan I alluded to being usurped, which hasn't happened yet. There are probably more Cappadocians remaining than Salubri, and obviously more than True Brujah because they shouldn't exist at all. Given that the thread which ties the usurped clans together is that their founders and membership in general were overall pretty chill for vampires it's really not a surprise that some ambitious jerk decided to grab their power. Twice of course it was ambitious jerks that their founders poorly screened which is really their own damn fault. For the Salubri, well, that'll wait for when we meet the clan that replaced them. Let's just say there is a lot of bad blood about that event even in modern nights.

ZearothK posted:

Considering how Cappadocius was obsessed with death and that he was the kind of vampire that would sleep and then read for a few centuries, some might even say it was an attempt at suicide. Before embracing Augustus Giovanni he noticed his clan was the most populous, so he organized the "Feast of Folly", where he invited his descendents to somewhere in Turkey and asked moral questions to determine their worth for humanity. Unsatisfied he went and sealed them inside, pretty much removing most of the clan and cutting out Giovanni's work for him.

A few of those sealed guys would show up again in the modern scenario as the Harbingers of Skulls, but I don't think the writters did anything interesting with them other than state in roundabout ways that "Yes, these are Cappadocians and they are pissed off".

Oh wait, it's me. I forgot I was a vampire for a second.

After we dispence with this Cappadocian, there's another mob of them up ahead.

That yellow ring means that the target within has been affected by Awe. See that zomie-looking thing in the corner?

From the manual... "The Cappadocians create Zombu from corpses and fuel them with vampiric vitae. They usually crumble to dust after three days but, while animated, are mindless and capable of only simple labour or aggression. Their saving grace is an utter absence of fear; they will battle any opponent until destroyed."

They should have had that be the case for all the enemies in the game. That running away mechanic is really fucking annoying.

I don't know if that was originally supposed to be a cutscene and they scrapped it or something... I really don't know why the text is in the worst possible spot.

The source of that shout was this mob here. These Skeleton's are a result of the Cappadocians casting Beckoning, but we'll learn more about that spell later.

After dispersing that mob, we head up and to the left to find this mural on the wall. Christof is also now wielding that bow that was in Wilhem's inventory.

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*laughtrack* We'll be right back with more Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption.

We head into the room to our right and attack with the bow!

It sucks. It's really bad. You might hit once every 10 shots, and it does barely any damage. We'll switch back to our rapier.

There's a lever we need to pull to lower bars blocking access to another side-room like this one. We'll head there...

And get attacked by another mob.

Feed can actually be used as an attack, but I've never gotten it to work. It seems pretty random, no matter how many dots you have in it. After getting rid of this mob, there's another lever we have to hit to lower more bars to progress further in the dungeon.

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Cainite Prince... Serena.. Garanol... Christof should probably find out more about all this, but he gets distracted by the shininess of his rapier and goes to attack the mob down the stairs.

But he dies because Wilhelm decided to stand in place instead of helping. Maybe because Christof ran off before Wilhem was done speaking and he felt mad.

So we have to use a Scroll of Awaken in our inventory to ressurect Christof.

There we go.

There are a couple of side rooms, but they don't have anything important. Up ahead there's a door to go to the second area of the dungeon.

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He really does have a one-track mind.

Up ahead we encounter yet another mob.

The enemy can use feed on you, and when that happens there's nothing you can do until the enemy decides it's finished, or a companion damages the enemy.

Christof kills Wilhem in a frenzy by sucking him dry.

I just want to bring attention to Wilhem's face at the bottom of the screen.

Further along, we encounter a room with a ramp on the right. Let's go up there.

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There's not much to say about this room, other than the Cappadocians come out of the ground and there's a lever we have to pull to progress further.

After that's done, we come to a room with a door to the next area of the dungeon, but first we have to fight a mob...

and it turns out there's a secret switch that hides some gold.

It also opens up a hole in the wall with another mob.

There's a table with stuff on it in the room.

Uh...

Ok... we'll keep going down to monastery 3.

Mercurio's door?

No, not that one.

It's locked, anyway.

We'll head down that path on the left.

Watch Wilhem interrupt the fight.

That door is locked, too.

It doesn't look like we can progess anywhere. The other pathways are barred.

Trust me, that switch is barely visible.

We just click on these bars to lower them. So why even have them?

The bars close behind us when we enter the room. This would have a lot more tension if Wilhem was caught outside, but that didn't happen.

To the left there's another mob on this staircase.

I don't know what this mural means.

Watch Christof state the obvious, again.

Wait.. I'm a vampire!

Vampires can feed on their vampiric companions. Let's head down this hallway.

What was the point of that? It's like they wanted to have another room, but ran out of time.

The key unlocks Garinol's study, not Mercurio's door.

Before we check out the room ahead, let's look at our character's stats.

Wilhem's rank is Ancillae. The White Wolf Wiki says...

quote:

Ranking below the elders but above neonates, the ancillae (sing. ancilla) are vampires who have proven themselves as valuable members of Kindred society. Certain ambitious younglings may achieve the rank prematurely. Ancillae often serve as aides and agents for elders or the court. Ancillae usually play their own power games as well, though these are of lesser consequence than the manipulations of the elders.

Christof is now a Neonate. From the white wolf wiki...

quote:

a neonate is a recently embraced vampire that has as passed through the initial stages of vampiric existence, the fledgling stage. It is the sire's responsibility to ensure that the childe does not embarrass itself or its sire in vampiric society. Derogatorily, a neonate is often called a whelp.