Regarding her age and being a ghoul. Ghouls need to feed on, at minimum, one blood point per month. Even assuming she can harvest enough blood points from a single vampire to last for a year (which is overly generous, half that amount being more likely), this would still mean she has personally killed, at the very least, well over two hundred vampires, which should by all rights make her The Dreaded and a top priority on the Camarilla's hit list, yet no vampire views her as anything other than yet another generic hunter Mook.
It's possible she was a vampire's servant for some time before she became a free and independent ghoul. Plenty of ghouls are freed from their master's control when their master dies and then have no reason to obey other Kindred. Some even come to hate their former masters as the blood bond fades.
It's possible the Camarilla isn't aware that she's responsible for all the deaths of vampires that she is. If they were, they'd probably have killed her.
It should be noted that Agent Donati's background is similar to Caiaphas Smith, a Puritan Witch Hunter who has survived 200+ years as an independent ghoul. There have also been others like the Society of Leopold leader in Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption.
Original poster here, I wasn't actually trying to make this a question or discussion, lol, just trying to find some trope to point out that she seems to have an extremely high kil count. But since this is now a Headscratcher, let's see if we can figure this out together anyway.
Vampire servant: Possible, yes, but doesn't really change much. She explicitly states she's been a hunter for the last 100 years at the very least. 100-200 vampire kills vs 200-400 doesn't really make much of a difference at this stage.
Camarilla not knowing: Also possible, but a bit odd, since they're normally positively obsessed with that kind of thing, see the Red List and such. Donati doesn't seem like much of a mastermind, and the Camarilla has figured out vampires much more skillful in intrigue. Also, note the contrast to Caiaphas Smith mentioned above. The Camarilla executes Princes who mishandle that guy, the situation is that serious to them.
Caiaphas Smith: Interesting character, thanks for the heads-up. Besides what I just wrote about the difference in reputation, though, I also noticed a big difference in mechanics there when reading his wiki entry. The rules I learned there was that if a ghoul is denied their monthly blood-meal even once, they immediately catch up to their actual age, and if beyond their natural lifespan, turn to dust. Smith missed his meal several times and just aged normally in that time-frame. That might be related to having both True Faith and Hedge Magic (which I think violates Hunter rules, by the way), I dunno. The wiki even says he won't die from blood-denial until starved for another twenty years. Point is, Donati would naturally have a much, much lower kill count if it worked that way for her too, but rather than what happened to Smith being the norm, it seems more to me like whoever wrote that character was being overly generous with the ghoul rules?
It's also possible she's keeping vampires prisoner for the blood and is one of those rare humans who is immune to the Blood Bond.
She explicitly says that she keeps around only their heads, impaled on a spike. This is slightly confusing to me, since I think decapitation is still fatal for Kindred, and in general, it doesn't seem to bring any advantages to preserve them that way?
Just finished the Camarilla ending and it's wrong, she says she keeps spikes in their heads. Which is so she can feed on them forever. So, we have our answer as to how she stays alive. She keeps torporous vampires to feed off of.
Interesting, although can you stake vampires through the head? Or does that refer to the tech-y kind of spike? Or has she also staked them conventionally and it's more a blood-draining mechanism?
If she has enough of them, she doesn't even need to be immune. Blood bonds actually decay pretty fast (1 month without drinking from the regnant=bond goes down by 1), so about five vampires minimum should be enough for her to never rise about a level 1 bond on any of them. And for Donati, that's not nearly enough to make her do anything, especially since the vampires in question can't talk or use Disciplines.
Riga at the gas station.
Why was Riga guarding the gas station at the beginning? At first it seems like she knows Modian is in there and is trying to keep people away, but the Hispanic refugees come in after dark without being stopped, and Lettow gives no indication of having expected Modian to have been there. Not to mention, Riga's often on reconnaissance and it's unusual for her to stand guard over anything. So what's up with that?
She's not guarding, just keeping an eye on the Courier, who happened to have the bad luck of running across that particular building at that time. He admits to using Riga for surveillance a lot. It's the Courier who guesses she must be guarding the place.
Modian's Final Death (or lack thereof).
If you don't kill Modian, then either Lettow orders Dove to handle it, or Dove volunteers to execute him herself. Either way, she's given a deadline of ten nights. Then in the Reremouse mission, Modian shows up, long after the ten-night deadline. Lettow makes absolutely no mention of Dove's failure to kill him and it's never referred to again. Is this deliberately done to show Lettow's relationship with Dove — that she defied him but he's compassionate enough to let it go — or was this an oversight by the writer?
I think it's partly compassion and partly that the night directly after Dove is given that mission, couriers start showing up dead at the hands of the Second Inquisition. They're closing in and Lettow needs manpower.
When Aila was Diablerised, if she wasn't alive, asleep or in torpor, what the hell was she doing that she was able to be conscious for her Diablerisation at the hands of the Courier?
Near the end of the story, Julian claims Aila was "dead":
Julian: You know that she was dead when we found her. Not slumbering or in torpor or 'destroyed' or anything like that [...] Aila was dead. Finished. Her will to live extinguished. [...] She was waiting to die. She didn't stop us. She could have. But she didn't. She let us kill her.
... But the Courier has clear memories of Aila's last moment of looking up at the Courier when she was about to be Diablerised. In fact, Julian says in the same paragraph that Aila let the Courier Diablerise her. So if she wasn't alive, how would she remember that or be conscious enough to allow the Courier to Diablerise her? And if she wasn't sleeping or in torpor, what the hell was she doing in there, then, that she was covered in dust? Was she just spending her nights staring at the ceiling in one hell of a depressed funk? Was Lettow sustaining her and feeding her during this time? If she wasn't in torpor, what was she doing?
Julian's exaggerating for effect; he's claiming she was passively suicidal. She was in torpor, but in Julian's view had no plans to wake up again. He's not exactly saying she was literally dead but that she had no will to live and also no will to end it herself.
What was Jasper Knowles up to that his death was so important?
His connection to Invidia Caul was obvious — he funded her. But why did Olivecrona and Pattermuster need to know about his death, and what was his involvement with them both?
An old friend and powerful elder, I think. That's all. Lettow was also using the excuse to check up on them and possibly kick them into shape.
For Olivecrona and Pattermuster, delivering the news about his demise was pretty much a courtesy call on Lettow's part. The most important message to deliver to both of them didn't have anything to do with his death.
How does Aila know what clan you and Julian are in?
In Aila's flashback, she opens her eyes and immediately identifies you and Julian as being clans (whatever) and Banu Haqim. She clearly does not know either of you. How does she know?
Flashback: And one last memory, one that you know isn't yours: you remember forcing your eyes open after years of darkness and looking up at two eager fledglings (from your own clan/one from your own clan, one from clan X). You remember watching, frozen, as the younger one's fangs slide out.
I wondered about that. Maybe she could tell by the scent of their blood or something? She was pretty old.
The most probable explanation is that it's just a choice by the author in order to shock a first-time player or dissuade them from thinking that the perpetrators were just Julian and some other unimportant flunkie. If one is to dig into the source material's mechanics, it's possible to come up with two explanations. However, both are kind of a stretch. First: According to V5 rules (in which both Tremere Thaumaturgy and Assamite Quietus were made into a single Discipline named Blood Sorcery), there is a standard power named "A Taste for Blood", which allows the vampire to discern some basic traits of someone whose blood they tasted. Aila, being a Banu Haqim Elder, probably knew of it. However, there is no mention of her ever coming across the Courier's blood. Second: If Aila was versed in Auspex, she could have used "Premonition" to know what was about to happen, including hints on who would do it.
