The Let's Play Archive
Part 28: Vukodlak & The Antidiluvians
Part 26 - Vukodlak & The Antidiluvians ~ by OAquinas, Ramc, Vicissitude, Xarlaxas, & Xenocides
Xenocides posted:
Ramc posted:
I'm kind of curious what Vukodvlak's plan for offing the Antediluvians was. Assume Chiropteran Marauder form and bums rush 'em? Is his plan "Get 'em?". How is he even going to find them? Hunting down his own Ante is going to be like a horrific twist on one of those inspirational stories.
"And in the end, it turns out that Tzimisce was in us all along!"
Actually your last line is one of the Gehenna endings......seriously.....Tzimisce in us all and all mortals and vampires become mutated almost mindless things.
Vukodvlak could never pull it off. There are other Methusalehs out there as old as he is and some of them are awake. Only two antediluvians ever 'died' at the hands of vampires of lesser stature and in both cases (Saulot and Cappadocius) they allowed it to happen. The others they think they killed all faked their deaths to go into hiding. The only possible real kill was Troile eating Brujah. Ravnos died too but that was at the hands of three methusalehs combined with the actions of multiple solar mirrors augmented by a group of mages.
Looking at a few.
Nosferatu is at the bottom of the sea and has used an advanced Obfuscate power to blank the memory of his name from everyone so he can hide.
Ennoia (Gangrel) melded with the earth. Good luck figuring out how to kill her.
Malkav (if he is still corporeal and not just part of the Madness network) is under Jerusalem and any kindred who enters the city goes mad.
Toreador is probably in Greece and may even be awake.
Lasombra melded with the Plane of Shadow (the Abyss) and is morphing into something else.
Yeah........how do you kill them?
Vicissitude posted:
Assamite: Haqim. Advanced Quietus to the point where he literally IS the sirocco, the blood wind. Went around assassinating infidels upon his return, purging the clan of those who followed any Path or faith other than the Path of Blood. Ur-Shulgi, his childe, began that work upon his awakening. Fatima al-Faqadi was the only 'infidel' spared due to the strength of her conviction that she could serve both Allah and Haqim equally. In fact, he blessed her for it, giving her a blood kiss on her forehead before disappearing entirely.
Brujah: No official name given, but in one of the Gehenna scenarios he went by the name Ilyes. Also, officially dead by diablerie by his childe Troile. In the Lilith sceneario, he was able to save himself by using Temporis to fling himself forward in time. Unfortunately, due to the quirks in vampire disciplines, he ended up spending about 10 times as long in temporal limbo than the actual time that had passed. Considering that was ~5000 years ago, he's been angry for a long time. But that's just one story, not the official one.
Followers of Set: Set/Mekhet. Officially dead and gone. In various stories, though, he's still awake in the Shadowlands and waiting for the stars to be right so his clan can revive him. In one scenario he returns, but in another, the ritual fails miserably and he doesn't rise. What's even funnier is that he implants a suicide compulsion in his clan. If he can't be with them in the mortal world, they'll join him in the underworld.
Gangrel: Ennoia. Supposedly she merged with the earth as the pinacle of Protean. Whether this means she was annihilated by the fiery core or if she had enough Fortitude to withstand it is a matter of debate. Officially her status is unknown, but she shows up and does a few impressive things by proxy in one of the better Gehenna scenarios. The earth opens up into a giant maw and devours cities to feed her. After the scenario ends, she goes back to a semi-fitful torpor. Occasionally the landscape will take the shape of a woman at rest, or just shift on its own.
Giovanni: Augustus. Diablerized Cappadocious and became the head of a 'new' clan, his own family. The rest of the Cappadocians were sealed in a cave to rot. Sadly they got out and became the Harbingers of Skulls. It's never outright said what happened to Augustus, but the implication is that the old clan got to him. I'm sure they made him suffer.
Lasombra: No official name. Officially diablerized, but could have just been 'according to plan' like [Tzimisce]. In the expanded stuff, it became a part of the Abyss, a being of pure shadow-stuff. During Gehenna, it blocks out the sun and disappears after 3 days, never to be seen again. Personally, I think it overestimated its power and was done in by the sun and its own hubris.
Malkavian: Malkav. Nothing much is stated definitively, but while his body may be in Jerusalem, he's long since checked out. Most likely, he IS the Madness Network the Malkavians use to get messages to each other and pull truths from seemingly nowhere. During Gehenna, his power extends outward and he takes over almost the entire clan and many mortals, infecting them with greater insanity and turning them into roving mobs of crazy people. Occasionally overtakes one vessel when he needs to communicate with others.
Nosferatu: Absimiliard. Resting for years in the belly of a giant ghoul reptile underneath Antarctica. During Gehenna, rises up and commands giant primordial beasts to devour Kindred and kine alike to feed himself. Is eaten by the Scuptor when she seeks him out to empower herself. There's some implication that he isn't actually the Antediluvian of the clan, but that the true 3rd generation made the world forget about it with Obfuscate. Possibly the master of the Niktuku, the boogeymen that Nosferatu tell stories about, just as other clans tell stories about the Sewer Rats.
Ravnos: Ravenna/Zapathasura. Went to torpor, woke up hungry. Ate most of his clan. Nuked by the Technocrats. Sucks for you, buddy.
Toreador: Arikel/Ishtar. No official word. Probably the Sculptor who you meet in the good Gehenna scenario. Diablerizes Absimiliard, then is eaten in turn by Ennoia. Survives, since the PCs see various monuments to themselves on a grand scale as thanks for their help in the epilogue.
Tremere: Tremere. This one will take a while... I'll get back to you.
Tzimisce: Dracian?/Sutekh: Got diablerized, but didn't really. Instead, inhabited the body of the one who devoured him long enough to be carried to New York, where it spilled out in a tiny seed-like form and began to take root. Decided that it needed to progress through the evolution of life from beginning to end in a 'natural' evolution. It's physical form died (becoming undead thanks to the vitae in its system) while the Antediluvian's essence spread throughout the biosphere, essentially infecting everything. Like Malkav, can concentrate and take over individual plants/animals, but for the most part it just does its evolution thing. Doesn't impact the story unless it needs to feed and the characters are convenient.
Ventrue: Lucian/Lucius/Dracian? Offically dead long ago. Doesn't show up in Gehenna except possibly in one scenario, and then not for very long.
And then there's the bloodlines. Let's not get into those, though 
OAquinas posted:
Vicissitude posted:
Tremere: Tremere. This one will take a while... I'll get back to you.
I'll get you set up here:
Tremere embraces himself with Tzimisce blood, along with his two best friends Etrius and Goratrix (well, actually Goratrix came up with the plan, which wasn't supposed to turn them into vampires). This is important for later. They diablerize themselves to 4th gen.
He then Diablerizes Saulot, but Saulot invades his mind and they wrestle for control of the body in torpor--which thanks to the vicissitude he inherited from the Tzimisce blood, the body reflects the turmoil within (growing a third eye, features shifting, etc). Etrius keeps him in a vault in Vienna.
Saulot ultimately wins the fight, gains full control of the body, and Tremere's soul flees and crashes on Etrius's couch (that is, his body). Etrius then tricks Goratrix (who had split off centuries ago to form the Sabbat Tremere antitribu), and Tremere expelled HIS soul into a mirror, taking over his 4th gen body. Tremere-as-Goratrix then calls all the Tremere Antitribu to one location to do a massive ritual...which nicely destroys all the antitribu (save one TWO!) and re-elevates Tremere to 3rd gen status all in one shot.
Edit: VVV Like I said, that's merely the set up for Tremere's Gehenna shenanigans.
Xarlaxas posted:
That's not even the end of the Tremere story at all, not by a long shot. . . .
In the 
Gehenna chronicle where all the Antediluvians, Methuselahs etc. wake up everything goes to hell in a handcart. The Antediluvians and their lackeys are taking over massive population centres, basically the vampires have taken over. Tremere pops up and has a great idea on how to deal with all the other vampires: he's going to use a Thaumaturgy power that lets him lower his generation to that of Cain, and then, using the human genome project and the Mormon Genealogies (yeah) he's going to cast a Dominate ritual that will affect everyone in the world, including the other Antedlivuans, and with it he will tell them to all go and take a walk outside in the sunlight. That'll be the end of Gehenna, right?
Sadly, it doesn't quite work out as he had hoped. He is successful in lowering himself to first generation, yes, and the ritual succeeds. Except, it turns out that turning yourself into a vampire using Tzimisce's blood was a bad idea, as he takes over once the ritual is successful, and instead makes everyone in the world (barring the player characters, who were taking part in the ritual) become hideous flesh-monsters, joining him in his glorious gestalt entity.
Then, Saulot shows up, tells the surviving players that the only way to save the world is to go inside Tzimisce, and then pray to God to save the world. Which translates to literally praying to the Storyteller to let the players win. If the GM is pleased then God finally gets off his butt and rids the world of the vampire menace, letting humanity rebuild after its apocalyptic brush with the supernatural, if the coterie had really high humanity then they actually get cured of their vampirism and get to be humans wandering around in remnants of the world. Oh, and Cain's still about, because he's still too stubborn to ask for forgiveness.