The Aftermath (Vampire the Requiem) (OCC)

The Aftermath:

At some point, A war ends, and this one was no different.  It had dragged on and cost hundreds of thousands of human lives, (Not counting the two wars overseas, designed by certain Kindred to distract and draw off resources from the war on Kindred.Yeah, that money and those weapons disappearing was no accident.) No one is entirely sure how many kindred lost their lives in the conflict, But a lot of them did.

Groups of Carthians began popping up in various places and approaching lone, young Invictus and handing them a proposition. "What if you could be part of the team that enables us to find peace and balance again with the humans, and with no thrice-damned Masquerade hanging over our heads any longer. Wouldn't that be a world worth living in?"

It's a potent question and when asked enough times, it got the Invictus talking. And finally, once the Invictus got back to the Carthians they asked in return, "How would you accomplish this?"

The answer, of course, was money.  The money that the Carthians and the Ordo Dracul had poured into research before the war had started in earnest had borne fruit in terms of medical advances, and patents, and in a synthetic blood that vampires could use to sustain themselves. Additionally, they had found ways to extend the life of Vitae away from the body of a vampire. Mixed together and saved over a long period it could literally treat damn near any illness or injury.

Calls were made. People were reached out to. The whole thing was done via conference call and webcam so there could be no undue tampering with human minds. And once certain hard realities were laid out on the table, the vampires sued for peace.  And that peace was accepted. Cessation of hostilities would commence immediately provided that Vampiric Americans could seek equal protection under the law.

Does this seem simplistic? Maybe so.  It doesn't really take into account the months of groundwork that the Invictus and the Carthians spent creating multi-billion dollar industries that sprang up seemingly overnight.  It also doesn't take into account the massive boost to revenue and employment that came about when nearly every industry realized that they could ALL run 3 shifts of workers. 

The peace process took a little time and wasn't without bumps. The Invictus and Carthian movement had to essentially stand on the throat of the Lancea Sanctum. Which was fine for all the vampires who had had doubts before the war, or developed them during. But for the zealots and hardliners, it was hard going for several months. Most of the church is now two drinks bound to local authorities and they intend to keep them that way for a while at least.

Additionally, It was explained to the federal government who these VII guys were, and who these Belial's brood fellows were, and how the vampire nation had NO problems with you greasing those bastards.  But since that could still fan the fires of internecine violence, it was decided that the vampires would try to handle it in-house and shop them to the mortal authorities if they had too many numbers.  While the brood still exists in pockets, The VII tried to step up their game and got hunted nearly to extinction for it.

The War (Vampire: The Requiem)(O.C.C.)

To say that people on both sides of the living/dead divide reacted poorly would be an understatement deeper than the Marianas Trench. It isn't as if there was some kind of orgiastic freak-out one night and then the fight turned to more conventional warfare.  It started, as many things do, small.

It started with random vampires being pulled out of buildings in broad daylight. Not police or military groups. That all came later.  No, for the most part, it started with people noticing, "Hey…You know, I've known Tony from down the block for years, but I don't think I've ever seen him in the daylight hours." Certainly, there were a number of third shift workers that also got dragged out into the sun, but none of them burst into flames…

Hunter groups sprang up overnight. Task Force Valkyrie got a HUGE bump in resources and manpower because it was apparent that the American military had never conceived of having to create military solutions for a war with creatures that didn't exist…

Hundreds of cold cases were reopened and reexamined. The DCA chip making the review of video evidence into a very different story. A number of kindred were caught in these sweeps and in many cases, destroyed. Princes far and wide reacted in the ways they've always reacted, and to little effect.  Widespread human belief in vampires effectively crippled most Masquerade strategies in a way no one had ever seen.  Anyone in a position of power who decried the very idea of vampires publicly got subjected to a good deal of private scrutiny. and if the scrutiny lead to an unprepared vampire, it usually resulted in ashes on the wind

As Pinky "Came out of the Coffin", So too did additional young kindred with a hunger for fame and not much sense. Sometimes this ended badly. The destruction of Tommy Devore on live TV was something of a cause celebre. He'd gotten a package deal to do a reality show with 6 humans and 4 episodes in he'd gotten slain in a nightclub by a couple of dudes who hadn't noticed the cameras. The very first Human on Vampire crime was dismissed at arraignment, because as Judge Weber stated. "How exactly do I put two fine young men in prison for killing a man who is already dead?"

Weirdly, Lara X managed to keep writing her Vampire Blog in the height of the war.  After it was over, she revealed that she had been posing as a sex advice columnist. Lara's blog managed to put a more human face on the "Vampire Situation" for a lot of humans.  

The Religious angle was, of course, swift denunciation of Vampires and the threat they represent, with a side order of indoctrination into "Church Security Outreach Programs". The only groups that seemed to abstain from the fervor were Unitarian and Quakers organizations.  Certain Wiccan people looked up and realized suddenly that they were in pagan vampire cults and in many cases it was now too late to leave. Atheists split denouncing the whole thing as crazy or in trying to deal with a slew of all new questions.  Scientologists issued no formal statement and struggled to go on as always.  Many assumed vampire control at the top levels. The truth may never be known on that one.

The Vampires struggled to fight back but they were somewhat hamstrung. The Carthian Movement had chosen to completely distance themselves from mainstream kindred society. This was wise, as most kindred wanted to destroy them on sight. Many cities adopted a "Kill Carthians on Sight" policy, and in the case of Carthian run cities there were uprisings, refugees, and occasionally sorties from neighboring cities. The Carthians lost a lot in those nights and some of them are still bitter about not being told what was happening in their own covenant.

Many Kindred died in low-level conflicts all across the world, touching off a series of retaliatory strikes and a rash of suicides from their ghouls. Whole Ghoul families have been lost. A number of other Kindred went into voluntary torpor causing similar problems. In any case, the controls of society that kindred had had in places for centuries had suddenly been prized off and things got ugly quickly.

The whole thing probably would have stayed at the level of a cold war if it hadn't been for 2 factors.

On December 7th of 2002, a group of Belial's Brood went on a city-wide goon binge in the city of Chicago. Using Joliet penitentiary as a staging area/Buffet, They struck with utter impunity for 8 nights, creating a reign of terror not seen since the fire. They also Embraced over 50 new vampires in those eight nights and turned them loose to hunt the city. The incursion was only abated when a fuel-air explosive was dropped on the place by the Air Force.

The VII took this as a cue, They began a see-saw strategy of attacking Kindred enclaves and as the kindred tried to pick the pieces, turning around and attacking American military and police targets. This had the double advantage of keeping the kindred off balance and upsetting the mortals around them.

All of the above is not to say that the Vampires didn't hit back in the war. They did. Just as the humans had a lock on things in the day time, the Vampires owned the night.  They had all of the gifts that enabled them to put control structures at their fingertips very quickly. Their blood is addictive, and even the least martially inclined among them can spend blood to become temporarily faster or stronger. A vampire alone, surprised and outnumbered is hosed. Take away any of those and the shoe is on the other foot.  The Lance asked to lead the charge against the humans and it was given to them to do so.

Another serious factor in the war was fatigue. Vampires don't get it. Vampires are patient and willing to wait. Once the vampires realized that the longer they strung out the conflict, the worse the humans responded, It turned the tide.  Also, Vampires had the option of capturing people and turning them into vampires themselves.  In many cases, this caused horrible tragic betrayals from people who just one night ago, were thought to be friends.

Measures were instituted. Unless a business was an absolute necessity and heavily fortified (Like a hospital) curfew was set at sundown.  This lasted for about 3 weeks. It did create a hunger problem for the kindred at the time, but the economy, already in rotten shape, simply could not sustain it. Gun sales and stake sales skyrocketed as second and third shift workers took their lives in their hands each night

Every major American city supports a number of kindred, so the cities were the big battlegrounds in the war. Gangrel could go from city to city easily and avoid the werewolves better than any of the rest of them. So battle groups of young to ancillae Gangrel made their way from place to place carving swaths of destruction as they went. Secure facilities discovered how unsecured they actually were in the face of an enemy who could assume mist form.

During the last year of the war, the Kindred attempted to take and hold the city of Cleveland Ohio. They did this through brilliant tactics and by making the city a place you'd want to flee if you had any sense. The endgame in the scenario was to use a (Chemical Weapons)  that had been bought on the black market. The plan went flawlessly. The bomb slew every living thing in the city and the vampires moved in en masse to take and hold the city. At which point the bulk of the American military showed up and blockaded the city. The gangrel escaped just fine of course, but the rest fell to eating one another within a week and were easily mopped up.  Pissed off people who still hold a grudge or who had family there often say "Remember Cleveland" before pulling a pin or a trigger.

Politically, behind the scenes, it was an utter clusterfuck. The Carthians had disappeared more or less, and the longer things dragged on, the Ordo Dracul became less and less interested in vampire politics. Granted survival had become a huge thing in the years of the war, but the Ordo was taking the long view. Sooner or later the war would end, and then where would be? "Fuck these Reindeer games" became a common refrain from the Ordo Dracul contingent.  The Crone were never powerful enough as a large entity to really move and direct policy, and the Lance had fallen so far into zealotry and a belief that the war was "God's LAST test" that they march to damn near the bloody last.  The Invictus, like the Lance, had as much trouble adapting to the new world and the new order of things. This was borne out during a meeting of formal court in Des Moines, Iowa, where an Invictus Prince lost his mind because of a report of a battle gone badly, He ordered the messenger destroyed, and was quite surprised when his entire court rose up against him and slew him, And then went after any other Invictus that even looked like they would say some shit.

Childer were created fast in those days. Many treated like Fire-And-Forget missiles aimed at the vast horde of humanity. Some survived and others thrived. Vampires became battle-hardened very quickly in those nights. Between the vampires gone to rest and those gone to ash, the median average age of vampire became around 14 years undead. Whole swaths of vampire history were lost or no longer available. Nobody noticed at the time.

Crazy but tolerated elders also became something that fell by the wayside. There was simply no time to cater to their baggage. A number of Ventrue were either destroyed or driven into sleep. No one could afford to allow the crazy people call the shots anymore. A number of young and intelligent Ventrue devised a system that could help them check their fellow classmates and it got around on the net. Ventrue now work very hard to keep the crazy at bay.

Operation Prom Dress (Vampire: The Requiem)

Operation Prom Dress:

At first, it was just an idea. Probably not even a good one really, but you know, Carthians in the higher level study groups need something to do.  The original idea came about after a largish breach of the Masquerade in the city of Detroit Michigan. The prince of that city issued an "All Hands on Deck" and asked each able-bodied kindred in the city to use their powers and social influence to smooth over the waters. It took time and effort, and naturally, the Invictus didn't seem to be pulling their weight much, but the waters got smoothed anyway.   But as the kindred of that city worked their asses off to cover up the problem, the leader of the carthians there, a woman by the name of Rada James became increasingly agitated at how the city seemed to slip back into its old patterns.  Carthians that had been gifted for service with greater feeding ground, domain, or status found that it was taken away months later under some pretext or another.

Rada reasoned that the political system was never going to favor Carthians even in the face of a disaster that the Carthians didn't cause, and had helped clean up. (The Sanctified had actually caused the mess in question. and other than two executions, lost no status as a whole)  No. In order to shake up the political process, you'd have to upset the entire applecart.

Rada was a member of a Carthian study group and she brought the problem to them.  

Resolved: The Masquerade is hurting both Kindred and Kine alike and needs to be dispensed with.

As you can imagine, the debate raged for months. Carthians do love a good argument.  Many interesting questions came up during this time. Like: Is it even possible to destroy the Masquerade? How would you go about it?  Could you do it in such a way that it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle?  So a separate, and by its very nature, secretive study group was formed to explore these ideas and determine if this were both desirable and feasible.

Plans began in earnest in 1995

Dominate is used to set up a reliable cell structure and the Carthians start working towards using their powers and influence in new arenas. Some create city influence that is more of an "Open Secret" than is usual. Others pour money and time into serology, gene therapy, and stem cell research.  Not only that, but they manage in many cases to convince and encourage the Ordo Dracul to do the same. After all, if they can create a synthetic blood substitute that vampires can live on, the possibilities are endless.

The media played and continues to play a role. Originally vampires were antagonists and a thinly veiled metaphor for syphilis. Now they were Emo and misunderstood. Passionate and in some cases, sparkly. The entire genre of paranormal romance novels has sprung up in the space of only a few short years and is now a multi-million dollar industry. That's no accident.

More secretive groups began working on other projects. One group of the Coder Clique developed a chip that had a powerful digital correction algorithm in it. Nobody is entirely sure how they pulled it off, but they made it so that if you added this chip to any digital camera, it could capture a vampire on frame. This becomes important later.

Not all of the projects went swimmingly. There are at least 4 separate instances of Carthians being forced by the higher echelons to claim membership in VII or in the Belial's Brood for being caught. All of them were executed for it.  A fact that the Carthian Movement still regrets to this night.

An effort was made to reach out, by vampires knowledgeable in such things, to the hunter group "Network Zero".  It was thought, and promised as such, that if the vampires could find a way to make the masquerade shudder, then the Network could help bring it all the way down with their footage.  At first, the Network was paranoid and refused to come to the bargaining table, but some quick work with dominate and a kidnapping or two brought them to it. and the release of DCA chip technology kept them there.

And that's where the plan was going. Television was going to have to be the vector.  It was the only medium that could reach vast numbers of people all over the world and all at once, more or less in real time. And since everything on tv turns up on the internet as well, it was a twofer.  But unfortunately, it was, paradoxically the hardest medium to establish the truth of vampirism to the world.  CGI had been around a long time, and so had stage magic. It was going to be hard to put anything on TV without dozens of pricks coming out of the woodwork shouting FAKE!

A volunteer was asked for. They got one.

His name was Pinky Berkowitz, He was a Carthian Daeva and in life, an outspoken journalist.  They secured a deal with the BBC for a series run of 6 episodes. "On The Prowl" was a unique form of reality television. It showed Pinky using his powers and telling all kinds of secrets. And feeding. The last episode culminated in a meeting with Derren Brown, Penn and Teller, and the Amazing Randi and a somewhat vigorous exhibition of vampiric powers and healing abilities. At least three of those men walked away from that meeting with their faith in skepticism shaken.

The response was slow to start at first. Most vampires, even the ones who knew Pinky personally could not believe he was on television. Moreover, they could not believe he was being seen clearly. Then, as is usual in these cases, once the disbelief wore off, every vampire in the world, bent their efforts to distort or distract the story. This of course was met with more than usual resistance by the BBC, which unlike many news organizations, has a reputation for integrity and a number of secret Network Zero people in their midst. Also, a lot of the attempts by the vampire community were at cross purposes with each other and created a number of problems and questions that aroused the interest of law enforcement and, eventually the espionage community.

But the Carthians had anticipated what was coming and although the network pulled support eventually for the program, the Carthians leaked the footage of the last four episodes to the web, where they went viral immediately.

Naturally, from that point onwards, Pinky Berkowitz went underground and for the most part stayed there. The Carthians timed this plan to coincide with a number of willful masquerade breaches, and a number of situations of causing other vampires, usually political enemies, to frenzy in places where they could be seen on camera or even, be caught by the police. Once the series concluded, the Youtube and Vimeo channels where the series leaked out became platforms for Network Zero which also exposed Werewolves to the world. a fact that has not endeared the werewolves to the vampires, or the hunters for that matter.

As it was, the shit hit the fan.

"New Shoes" (Clandestine) (Fiction)

Berlin:

"I'm outdoors and I need a pair of shoes."
"Twenty minutes, Cafe Friedrichstrasse. Be on the corner."

That had been 35 minutes ago. Warren was planning on walking away. He had to admit the cold drizzle was a factor in his deliberations, But at the moment he had no other plans and precious little in the way of resources. The operation in Bulgaria had been an unmitigated disaster and now the only thing for it was to drop off the map. Warren was chilled to his bones and shaking when the taxi man pulled up and asked him a question.


"Sprechen sie English?" Warren asked.
"A little Mein Herr. I am a bit rusty."
"Trust me, my Deutch's rustier. What did you say?"
"I was asking you if you wanted a ride. You seem as if you are out in the cold."
Warren stepped back and put his hand on his pistol. "Were you sent by someone?"
The man in the taxi looked very still but also very steady. "a cobbler sent me forth into the world if that's what you mean Mein Herr..."
"I guess I could get in out of this rain at least."

The taxi rolled away from the curb. and the cab man became a bit more businesslike and more fluent in English. "First thing you need to know is I'm not him, and I don't know where he is or how to get directly in contact."
"Never said you were. How directly can I speak in here?"
"This cab has been thoroughly proofed against most forms of roving surveillance. Your phone won't work in here." The cabman lit up a cigarette that looked hand rolled and smelled vile. "You're not one of our regulars. How did you find out about us?"
"John Parker"
"Was he your handler?"
"He was my father."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"You ever meet him?"
"Nein. I only know him by his reputation."
"Are you taking me to the man?"
"He doesn't see anybody these days. Too many enemies. Which I tell him over and over is what he gets for playing all sides. Still, there are ways of doing business Ja?"
"I guess." Warren said as he rubbed his eyes.
The taxi man held up a brass key. "This is for locker 13, Follow the directions."

Warren held the Starbuck's in his hand and let it warm him slowly. The taste of home was palpable and he was nearly nauseous with homesickness. He had to admit that as much as he had been eager to get out and see the world, He missed Maryland and he teetered on the edge. It was entirely possible that he was blowing this entirely out of proportion. But those ex-STASI guys who had rolled up his network had been asking for him by name which meant a leak or mole and until he could figure out what was going on, going back to Langley was not going to be very helpful, not to mention there was a major league ass chewing waiting for him which he didn't really deserve. What he needed were answers. But in order to get answers, he needed distance and a goodly chunk of anonymity until he could figure out his next move.


Inside the locker was a case. Inside the case, was a phone, an ear-bead, a small note, a set of warm up clothes, underwear, socks, and a pair of slip on running shoes.

The note said, " Go to the toilet, remove ALL your personal effects and weapons and place them in this case. You will be watched at all stages. Your effects will be returned to you when you arrive at your final destination. These precautions are to ensure you aren't being followed. When you have accomplished this, take the number 11 train and then press redial on the phone.

30 minutes later:
" Hello?"
"I have to admit you're good. I never would have thought of sticking the knife in the cup of Starbucks. Do us a favor and leave the cup behind when you get off at the stop."
"Sure." Warren resisted the immediate urge to look around at the passengers on the train. "You're not still mad at me are you honey?"
"Believe it or not, " Said the modulated voice, " We have done this before. I, at least, understand that you're feeling exposed."
"You're very understanding."
"Up to a point. The phone you're using has built in GPS. We're going to lead you on a bit of a merry dance. Mostly it's for our protection but it's also to give us a bit of time for preparations and such. Surely you won't begrudge us that."
"How long?"
"You'll be glad you bought coffee. Stick to the plan please or we'll be forced to wave off and i guarantee that you won't be able to find us with the phone you have in your hands. Its chipset can be burned out with a flick of a switch."
"I understand."
"That's good. We'll see you when you get here...darling."
"I love you too." Warren hung up the phone and looked out the window, trying to see if someone was observing him in the reflections.


"You look like you've seen better days."
The man was sitting in a large wooden paneled office somewhere other than here. Here, of course, was an empty warehouse. He looked to be a bit French. The laptop had a camera and a microphone set up and it sat on the desk opposite the very nice comfy chair that warren was currently occupying. the rest of the warehouse was completely bare and carefully featureless, except for the case he had left at the train station. When he had walked in, it had had a white paper band wrapped around it that said simply "Sanitized for your Protection".

Somebody had a sense of humor.

Warren shifted in his chair. "Do you generally do business with people who are having good days?"
The Frenchman seemed to consider. "I could probably count the instances on one hand. I imagine you have questions?"
"I am endeavoring to be polite as no one knows that I'm here and I'd like to leave alive. A man as protective of his privacy as yourself must surely have something in place for someone who is overly inquisitive."
The man smiled and shrugged with Gaulic eloquence. "Just so. but I don't think such things will be necessary. You may call me Michel."
"I'm Warren."
Michel smiled again. "So...How can I be of service?"
Warren shifted in his chair. "I am in need of clean documents. I need to get low."
"But of course. in the buff folder on your right, you'll find everything you'll need. Passports, ID's driver's licenses, pocket trash. the whole ball of wax."
"I'm not really sure exactly how to pay for your services."
"Ordinarily, I would say something like, "Oftentimes I have need of the services of an intelligence professional like yourself..." and then, of course, you would either pretend to be offended or you would actually BE offended...But after a bit, we would sit down and bargain and you would walk away and go get lost for while. Happily, we have been saved from doing this sordid dance. Look in the buff folder on your left."

Warren's eyebrows rose. He reached into the folder and drew out a DVD disk.
"What is this?"
" A present from someone who wishes you well." Michel lit up a Gaulois. "Keep the Laptop. It's top of the line but also entirely disposable and untraceable. It even has built in spoofing hardware. Perhaps in the future, you can direct some business my way. Bon chance to you Warren."

Michel closed the connection at his end. The computer automatically went through a series of purging programs designed to make it impossible for him to be traced through this particular laptop. after 45 seconds of deletions and gyrations, the laptop settled back down, and Warren had no doubt that it would be completely impossible for even the forensic computer wonks at the NSA to find "Michel" again.

Warren opened the case and looked over the unmarked disk. Once the laptop had settled, He opened it's drive. Took a long deep breath and then let it out. He put the disk in the drive. in mere moments, it opened the DVD program and the face of his father gazed out at him.

"Hello, son. By the time you see this disk, odds are good that I've been dead for a while.
A long time ago, a very good friend of mine once told me that the essence of Intelligence work is to be ahead of the game not behind it. To anticipate instead of react. I asked him once, "How do you anticipate if you don't know that you have enemies?" and he told me "You should always anticipate that you do."
He was right, about a lot of things. I suppose I was something of a boy scout and I'm pretty sure that it got me killed...Will have gotten me killed...I guess. I'm willing to bet that the same sorts of people who punched my ticket will be causing trouble for you too son. Because if there's anything you inherited from me besides my dashing good looks...It's that same damn boy scout streak.
On this disk, you'll find codes, account numbers to overseas banks, files on my old contacts, locations of caches of equipment, and locations of safe houses and bolt holes all over Europe.
Kid, you have all the help I can give you. Show them that a boy scout knows how to be prepared."

The taxi man appeared at Warren's elbow. "So...Where do you wish to go from here."
Warren looked up at him for a long moment.


"I want you to take me to my Father."
The taxi man went still again. "What?"
"You heard me. My father is running this operation now. The old man is smart, but never believes that anybody is as smart as him. It's how he got in trouble in the first place. So take me to him."
"Let's assume that you are correct. What makes you think he needs your help?"
"Because otherwise, he wouldn't be trying to use me as a stalking horse.Oh, I'm sure he doesn't think of it that way. But tactically, that's exactly what he's doing. He also kids himself about being a boy scout. You don't get to be as respected a spy as he was by being one. He needs me right now, and I have to admit I need him too. Take me to him and maybe we can find out who set us up."
"You're just like your damned father. you know that?"
"Yeah. I know. Let's go."

Spy Settings (Clandestine)

Spy literature is a continuum of sorts. On one end, there is the work of John Le Carre who has studied the ins and outs of intelligence work and gets right down into talking about the nitty gritty of real world spy stuff. There’s only one problem with it. For the most part, real world spy stuff is as dull as dog shit.

On the other end of the spectrum is James Bond/Matt Flint/Solo-Kuryakin/Xander Cage heavily cinematic style of spy literature. And hey, you know, that stuff is fun, but it’s VERY uncomplicated and real world physics tends to jack up the narrative some. And if you’re interested in spy stuff and done ANY reading at all, you’ll find it difficult if not impossible to suspend your disbelief.

Generally, you want to walk a path where the real world holds sway but not so much sway that you can’t have any fun. So you should consider the two extremes of thought in spy literature as the pepper and salt on your dinner table. The dinner, of course, being the story YOU want to tell.

The Various Settings of Clandestine:
Default: No magic “Unleaded”

This is the setting that Clandestine will be written in. The occult is not a thing. The real world is plenty scary enough really. Weapons of mass destruction, suicide bombers, cyber-attacks, drug cartels, paid assassins and all the rest of it. “Occult” on your usually CoD sheet will be replaced with another skill entitled “Tradecraft”

Setting two: Some magic “Unleaded Plus”

For the most part, you can certainly add supernatural elements. You can bring in half templates (Although full-blown supernatural creatures should remain terribly rare as they can probably eat an entire team of seasoned professionals for lunch.) and you can certainly drag in Second Sight Material and Reliquary. If you’re looking for inspiration in this particular vein, I can think of nothing better than “Alias”. Seriously, Americans and Soviets spent hundreds of millions on investigating the paranormal in hopes of finding some edge in the espionage game. It’s not too freakish to assume that SOME of that bore fruit. Occult goes back on the Character sheet

Setting 3: ALL THE MAGICS! “High Test”

Navigating the world of espionage is a walk through a mine field with clown shoes on. There’s a constant struggle between factions of magi, and factions of vampires, and other freakier creatures to control the levers of power both here and abroad. You’ll have to figure out to smuggle your coffin into the hot zone, and your teammate might have to figure out how to keep from going into a full-on Death-Rage because the flight’s been delayed again. If this kind of game floats your boat. I say play it and have fun, but I will tell you, that it will be nearly impossible to describe to other people. Tradecraft? Tradecraft is for plain vanilla mortals, You aren’t likely to be playing one of them.

Rule Number 1 of Espionage Storytelling (Clandestine)

Rule number one is this: No one is capable of operating in a vacuum.

Every single espionage plot that I have ever read is predicated off of 3 basic ideas.
1) We heard about a thing, and we’d like to know more.
2) We’re doing a thing, and we want to make sure that the other side can’t find out or stop us.
3) a thing happened and now we’re all scurrying around going WTF?

What this means is, it is simply not possible for world leaders or heads of conspiracies to move money, political power, personnel, or large scale tech like ships and doomsday weapons without someone noticing. There are records. There are satellites. There are people who talk. There are people on the inside who might have doubts. No operational group is airtight. Kim Jong Un has exactly no means of covertly taking over South Korea that won’t be noticed. He might use spies to infiltrate. He might use his army to attack, but there are no means to attack that can’t be seen ahead time by someone. Even if he’s got a goddamn death ray, It took scientists. It took parts. It took experiments. Those experiments needed operational security. That means soldiers. Soldiers are humans. They talk. Maybe to their wives. Maybe to their friends. Maybe to foreign agents for money and bootleg Brittany Spears CDs.

No one can operate in a vacuum.
To think otherwise is play unfairly with your players.

It’s one of those things that tends to bury any real talk about how conspiracies can do anything and nobody ever knows. Oh sure, the government was capable of filming the moon landing on a soundstage. and nobody has ever talked about it...But I can read about how generals can plan covert operations in hot zones. only to have operational details and exact coordinates tweeted to girlfriends back home.?

People are always the weak link in a conspiracy.

Which is not to say, that there aren’t cover-ups. Oh sure. Cover ups happen all the time. I mean, If I were a Senator or something like that, And I happened to slide my Lamborghini into a busload of special needs children with a head full of coke and the cooling corpses of two indeterminately sexed Thai hookers in the back seat...Well. Who am I going to call? MY WIFE? My feckless, gormless children?

No. I’m going to hit up my friend, who I was in Skull and Bones with, and who is now a federal judge, and I’m going to skate.

And that's how the morally gray world of espionage works. To believe that there are conspiracies that stretch across the globe and are monolithic, unstoppable, and almost too subtle to perceive...Is to impute them with supernatural powers.

An Introductory Post

Hello.

Over the course of the last couple of years, I have been working on various different projects for various different things. As I go along, I sometimes create something, think that I should make it into a blog all by itself, and then discover that don't have time to do it properly, the idea doesn't exactly have legs, or that the idea turns out to be fairly stand-alone.

Eh. It happens.

Also, I occasionally come up with things and don't have a specific blog to put them into, and then they languish. Unseen, Unloved. Like a lone mission bell tolling in the distance...

OK. That got a bit weird. The Whole point of "The Slushpile" is to find a home for all that stuff and not worry so damn much about it.

Those of you who have an interest in the "The Clandestine Blog" will find all of that material folded in here. (Mainly because I only get a good idea for it about once every blue moon.)

Additionally, I'll have stuff that I write for various games that are simply too good to keep stowed possibly even for games other than WoD/CoD. This might even become an outlet for bits of poetry and short fiction.  (Although I am thankful, that the pills they gave curtail much of that madness.)

-Pete Sears
Lexington, Ky.
April, 2017