Princes of Darkness is a Game Mod for Crusader Kings III, is set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade.
The year is 1230 and Constantinople was just sacked in the Fourth Crusade. But behind the Masquerade, vampire Princes battle and scheme against each other. In addition to accumulating their own power and gaining enough blood to sustain their existence, these vampires also seek to keep a force called the Beast from taking over.
While the Vampires are concerned with this, humans are not merely content to wait and be fed upon. The First Inquisition has emerged and, under the guidance of the Catholic Church, is prepared to fight against Vampires.
The mod can be found here
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This Game Mod provides examples of:
- Action Girl:
- Vampires are extremely formidable compared to mortal humans, regardless of gender.
- The Sisters of St. John this, being an are all-female Inquisitor Order based in Britain. Any female Hunters in other orders (or independents) are likely to be this if they survive for any length of time.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The first version of the mod only let you play as vampires, and that is still the main focus of the game. But later updates added ghouls, inquisitors, demons, mummies, wraiths, and werewolves.
- Badass Normal:
- Subverted with Great Men. They are spawned in Vampire realms by events, but this is usually so the local Prince can embrace or ghoul them.
- Averted with Inquisitors. Though they began their careers as normal humans, upon ordination they are blessed with divine powers.
- Badass Bookworm:
- The Tremere are an order of occultists who specialize in blood magic.
- The Cappadocians generally seek knowledge above all else.
- The Red Order gets bonuses to their learning and use this to great effect when hunting the undead.
- Beauty Is Bad: The only Nosferatu with no deformities is a Lukas of the Drowned Abbey, a Sinister Minister who was embraced as punishment for his vanity and who subsequently swore allegiance to demons in exchange for having his beauty back.
- Big Damn Heroes: This is how Josef Svi, the Prince of Prague, became a vampire. In life he was the son of a rabbi who was beaten almost to death by Christians, and a Nosferatu turned him in order to save his life. All Josef’s side asked in return was that Svi use his new powers to protect others.
- Big Good: The unique decision for Cabiri mummies involves becoming this. One of the requirements involves using supernatural powers to stop no less than seven natural disasters.
- Corrupt Church: Zigzagged. Some church officials are secretly vampires, and one of the holding buildings that vampires can build represents corrupting the local clergy, but the Inquisition is zealously devoted to their mission and can always rely on the Pope to send them funding on a regular interval.
- Deal with the Devil: This is a discipline favored by the Baali bloodline but available to any vampire.
- Divine Punishment: Hunters with True Faith can gain the ability to request this. The results are random, ranging from a light wounding to instant death, and lower ranking targets are more likely to receive major injuries or be killed. You can also increase the chance of badly wounding or killing the target by praying really hard, though this causes stress.
- The Dog Bites Back: Calomina’s Foresaken is this. The “kingdom” is a Bogomilist uprising lead by a pair of ghoul brothers who broke free from their regnant and now seek to liberate Constantinople for all of ghoulkind.
- Evil Makes You Ugly:
- Upon being embraced, a Nosferatu usually gains either a trait from the ugly line or a deformity trait.
- The Cappadocians gradually become pale, thin, and corpse-like after being embraced.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Even during the Middle Ages kindred society was worried about Gehenna and the risk of being annihilated by the Antediluvians.
- Inbred and Evil: Ghouls, Revenants, and Zagrua are allowed to engage in close-kin marriages. Most of the families of these groups are explicitly stated to be sadistic and selfish.
- Fire Purifies: Inquisitors get piety and dynasty renown for executing vampires, and they get a little extra of the former for specifically choosing the pyre as the mode of execution.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: A compassionate vampire following a benevolent road may well be this trope. Though such vampires are the exception, not the norm.
- A God Am I: Some vampires, such as Mithras, have used their powers to convince mortals to worship them as gods.
- He Knows Too Much: One event involves a mortal outside the masquerade catching one of your followers feeding. After you bribe or kill him, you can punish your vassal for being so careless.
- Historical Domain Character: Most of the great men who spawn in are historical figures from the era.
- Hope Bringer: One of the unique decisions for Nosferatu princes is to become this for the clan. By having 1,000 provinces in your realm, you can unite your clan and give it hope that Absimiliard can be defeated.
- I Hate You, Vampire Dad: A few examples come up.
- When the player sires a new vampire, it’s possible the childe will become your rival if you disapprove of his preferred Road or prevent him from doing as he wishes. This is especially likely if your childe was previously part of the Inquisition.
- Some canon vampires, like Dionysius, have actively rebelled against their sire’s path.
- The entire Nosferatu Clan hates and fears their Antediluvian for plotting their extermination. Both of this clan’s unique decisions are contingency plans to survive his wrath.
- I Love You, Vampire Son: None of the vampire Roads prevent a sire from marrying their childe.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: While this is one way to cover up the masquerade, it’s not the only one. A vampire hoping to be more benevolent can also bribe mortals into silence or use a discipline to make them forget what they saw.
- Off the Rails: As is natural for Crusader Kings mods based on preexisting franchises, unpausing the game causes events to go differently than they did in canon. The player can even take it further by killing characters who'd otherwise have made it to the modern nights.
- Open Secret: A vampire's generation is considered a secret trait, but if a vampire can trace his sire-lineage back to Caine then determining his generation is usually as easy as counting up.
- Master-Apprentice Chain: This is the most common form of perpetuating one's house.
- Vampires are incapable of sexual reproduction, and so must embrace new humans into Vampires. A new vampire is considered the childe of the one who turned him.
- With the exceptions of the Oculi Dei and the Murnau, Inquisitor Orders follow a Vow of Celibacy and thus can only replenish their numbers by inducting new members. In game terms, a new member of an order is considered the child of the one who inducted him and her.
- Masquerade: It's in a vampire's best interest to keep this intact, as letting it get too low will bring the attention of the inquisition.
- The Paladin: Most of the Hunters are this, especially those who have True Faith and are part of one of the knightly orders, with abilities like using holy weapons, curing illness or injury by touching someone, or asking God to smite someone.
- The Power of the Sun: Vampires die when exposed to sunlight, which is something Inquisitors and rival vampires alike can use to deadly effect in murder plots.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: As an inquisitor, one event involves a general who made an error on a campaign and got a lot of his men killed. You can either convince him he did the best he could with the information he had, recruit him to the inquisition, or solicit a bribe from him for a burial on hallowed ground.
- Token Good Teammate:
- Dionysius is a Cappadocian vampire in Athens who explicitly devoted his unlife to helping others and who founded Via Humanitatis to encourage compassion among vampires.
- Cyscek is a Tzimisce who rejected the Road of Metamorphosis in favor of Via Humanitatis. This alienated him in the eyes of his fellow Tzimisce.
“Against his monstrous kin, Cyscek won’t hesitate to make the ultimate sacrifice.” - Torches and Pitchforks: Vampires and Inquisitors can both utilize these against enemies.
- Sealed Good in a Can: Baba Yaga is this specifically from the perspective of the Nosferatu clan. One unique decision for a Nosferatu vampire is to summon her out of hiding so she can protect the clan against Absimiliard.
- She Is the King: A Vampire who rules a city is called a Prince, regardless of gender. There are no vampire Princesses.
- Swarm of Rats: One of the Nosferatu legacies allow for the training of these as retinues. They're weak and cheap, encouraging the player to use them in large numbers.
- The Syndicate: One of the holding buildings vampire princes can build represents establishing a criminal empire in the city.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Some of the unique religions decisions qualify as this trope. Brujah and Prometheus have the goal of creating the vampire utopia that existed in Carthage before the Punic Wars, while Toreadors and Via Archangel followers have the goal of cresting the vampire utopia that Michael tried to build in Constantinople.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Subverted. While vampires can feed off animal blood, it does nothing to fill their hunger meter and is only useful for advancing through the animal disciplines.
