WMG / Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Wild Mass Guessing for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

---

Malkav was speaking to the Cab Driver through you, until the Cab Driver banished him back to the Madness Network

The lines such as "Is it? No, it can't be..." "But you've made that mistake before." "It's so obvious where we are headed." "FOOL, DON'T YOU SEE, WE'VE ALREADY BEEN JUDGED!" and the player character's sudden screams might be considered as Malkav's own words, rather than yours.

Neither Therese nor Jeanette were ever abused, and in fact, neither of them are the "original" person.

She's a Malkavian. Much like how, no, the TV is not really talking to the Malkavian PC (or much of the other stuff that you see), they're both aspects of a bigger madness. Whoever the original was, she's gone now. She was turned in the 1980s, at the height of the Satanic Panic, and had just read several "true stories" from it, and that formed her backstory.

The Malkavian Player Character is just fucking with people

To this day, I'm not sure if the player character is meant to be genuinely unable to communicate with anyone save through rhyme or just taking the piss at everyone around him. Given the player character DOES communicate clearly several times in the game, there's actual in-game evidence he's just screwing with people. Given he acts like no one with real mental illness does while Malkavians like Jeanette and Therese are much more traditionally Malkavian, it makes sense that the PC is just pretending to be a off-beat poet of lunacy.

• It is said that powerful Malkavians often act more insane than they really are.
• Their mental instability could easily be "idee fixe that he/she can communicate only through lunatic poetry".
• Better idea: the Malk PC is fucking with you. This would explain their Mind Screw Purple Prose Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and the "Tell the the guy playing me" answer to Beckett.
• Alternatively, the Malkavian PC could be fucking with people, but for a deliberate and sinister reason. It's the stated goal of the Malkavian Clan who make the most use out of Dementation that their ultimate goal is everyone's insanity, which would free their perceptions of reality. The Malk PC is aware that this is true, as their own insanity (probably some kind of schizophrenia, given the auditory hallucinations) is revealing the future and the motives of everyone around them. As such, rather than simply drive everyone crazy with Dementation, (s)he is feigning far stronger and far more fantastical disorders in their speech, in an effort to force others to alter their own thought patterns and keep up. As one NPC says, "I can't believe I'm starting to understand you..."
• Perhaps the Malkavian PC was a geek in life, and so when he was turned, he realized he was in an RPG, and furthermore, expected to be insane, so he decided to LARP Deadpool.

Deb of Night is actually a vampire

Deb seems unphased by all the weirdos that call in and effortlessly deflects masquerade breaches like Andrei and the fledgling left in the bathroom. It's not a stretch to imagine she's a Toreador whose job is to make all potential masquerade breaches seem ludicrous.

• Since no one ever sees her, she could even be a Nosferatu who has a nice voice and gets a kick out of trolling the general public.
  • Might also explain why she immediately went to commercial after Andrei called, she knew what it was all about and had to spread the news.
    • It may be worth noting, that every reel has three interviewers before it cuts to commercial, with one exception.
• Speaking as an actual radio DJ who is on late at night, you really do get that apathetic about the crazy people.

• There is a series of books Deb's radio show really reminds me of called Kitty Norville. Kitty is a werewolf and has a lot of the same mannerisms as Deb.

Deb of Night is a Ghoul

What vampire would do something that can easily be pawned off to a minion?

The Hotel Serial Killer is Therese and Jeanette's father.

We know that Therese and Jeanette were molested by their father, which drove them to insanity. We also have a ghost of a young woman pointing out the monster's various crimes. I think this is the real Jeanette. That's why Therese is so interested in getting the pendant and why Jeanette wants to throw it in the ocean. It's their father.

• Nope, the children who died at the hotel were a boy and a girl named Tiffany and Ed Jr. and both were killed in ways that preclude coming back as a vampire (beheaded and "chopped up like firewood.") Good theory but Jossed by material found in the hotel.
  • Still, it explains their motives toward this other abusive father pretty well.
  • Who says the twins were his only victims?
    • The actual reason is a bit less interesting - Jeanette wants to throw the pendant in the ocean just to piss off Therese, who needs the place ghost-free for business purposes.

Mandarin works for the Technocracy.

The game explicitly features vampires (obviously), werewolves and hengeyokai, wraiths (Hell Hotel), and hunters. It implicitly features changelings, as you can get a fae charm from Tseng. The only Old World of Darkness group not represented is the mages.

Now consider Mandarin. He certainly appears to be a regular human, but doesn't seem to be affiliated with the Society of Leopold. He treats the PC in a rather scientific manner, and has a suspiciously high-tech facility. All sings point to the Technocracy.

• He was explicitly working for the eastern vampires, researching for how to better kill the western version. The Technocracy already knows everything he was researching.
  • Was he? Where is that spelled out in the game? Ming seems like the most likely candidate, but it seems strange that she would use such a modern approach when the most high tech thing her people use are flaming crossbows.
  • All the more reason for her to outsource a task requiring advanced tech.
  • In a room in the Fu Syndicate there's an e-mail from "Priestess" giving instructions to him. Also, Wong Ho mentions seeing a silver-haired man leaving the Golden Temple, even though Ming will deny knowing of any person fitting that description. With the plus patch there's some restored dialogue where you can confront Ming Xiao with this and she admits it.
  • It's also worth mentioning that Technocracy actually doesn't have that much of a problem with vampires. The whole "Masquerade" thing actually serves the Technocracy's interests and goals pretty well without much effort on their part, so they mostly just leave them be unless the Cainites screw up and the Technocrats have to step in to perform damage control, like with the Week of Nightmares.
• Also the Hengeyokai is not a demon, despite what the hunter thinks. It's a Rokea, a type of Changing Breed.
  • Mummies are mentioned, but I don't recall actual demons.
  • There's a good chance that Mr. Ox is a demon based on what a Malkavian vampire has to say.

Heather is a Malkavian.

After the adventure on the boat, Heather waits for the PC outside of LaCroix's tower. She then declares that she knows where you live, and, assuming you don't tell her to beat it then and there, runs off to your apartment.

Only problem is, the PC can't have the Skyline apartment at that point. It's only given to him directly after the conversation with Heather. Therefore, either LaCroix tipped her off to where the PC would be living in about ten minutes (and why would LaCroix of all people even bother speaking to a lowly ghoul?), or Heather herself is a Malkavian, able to perceive what's about to happen five minutes before it happens. She isn't really a ghoul, you just think she is so she can drink your delicious, way more powerful than a vamp of your age should be blood on demand.

^ Lacroix could have easily told one of his vampire minions to do so. It costs him nothing to have word sent to Heather and if you survive your suicide mission it is better for him if you think he is on your side.

• Alternatively, when she went to the player's old apartment and found some guys moving the PC's stuff. When she asked them what was going on, one of the workmen explained the situation, and might have been willing to give her a lift to the Skyline place.
• Heather can't be a vamp. You have the option of feeding from her on several occasions, and you would notice if she wasn't human.
• You only get the Skyline apartment if you play as a Ventrue. As a member of other clans you can get a suite at the Tremere chantry, and other places I can't recall. This troper has always played with Heather showing up at the old apartment in Santa Monica - so Heather just stalks you to find out where you live for a while. The LaCroix-Skyline thing is just a glitch in the plotline.
  • You get the Skyline apartment if you're a Toreador, at least. I think Tremeres get a place at the Tremere chantry, Nosferatu in the Warrens, and everyone else the Skyline apartment (but Ventrues slightly earlier in the storyline).
  • The Skyline is accessible to the Ventrue, Toreador, Malkavian, Brujah and Gangrel clans. Obtaining it depends on how courteous you are towards the Prince and how good you are at following his orders. After you've built up sufficient brownie points, you get the Skyline apartment. Tremere and Nosferatu will never get access to Skyline no matter what, but Tremere will get one in the Chantry by telling Max about the Gargoyle in Hollywood and then destroying it for him without revealing his connection to it to Isaac. The Nosferatu will get a sewer den right underneath the Venture Tower after completing Chinatown.
    • Really it's more likely that Jack clued Heather in on where you live, considering the amount of Chessmastering he does throughout the game.
• There's a very simple way to disprove this WMG. If the player character uses Protean, the living and the dead display differently. Heather still shows up as having the higher body heat of the living. Auspex also gives you a way to tell Kindred from kine.

Mr. Ox is Leland Gaunt from Needful Things.

Mr. Ox is a creepy owner of a small shop, professing to sell odds and ends. He makes offhand remarks about claiming souls. Any attempts to attack him are futile, as he'll vanish in a puff of smoke. In exchange for one of his items, he sends the PC off on a "prank", which directly results in the death of the prankee. Remind you of anyone?

• I'm pretty sure he's a demon. A lot of the Malk's dialogue with him have some variation of "I'm going get the HELL out" with "hell" in all caps. Considering the lunatic savant, it's not too much of a stretch to guess that the Malk is right about that as well.
• That, and when saying goodbye he asks you to point anyone on the road to Hell looking to sell their soul towards him. He's almost certainly some sort of demon from the Thousand Hells, likely a minion of the Yama Kings.
• He could also be an infernal Nephandus. Another possible representative of the seemingly missing Mages in the game.

Jeanette and Therese are (or at least were) not the same person. And Jeanette isn't a Malkavian.

So, the game leads the player to believe that Voerman is a Malkavian with a particularly bad case of split personality. Yet, the backstory she gives you when her personalities are "fighting" implies that they used to be two separate persons. So I see only two possibilities:

Either Therese or her dad killed Jeanette when she entered their bedroom and saw her with their dad. This obviously caused a strong psychological shock to her. Her weakened personality obviously led her to become a Malkavian and, out of guilt, Therese recreated her sister's personality. The story comes full circle with the fight between the two personalities, an echo of the original murder.

Or

Therese felt guilty that she was her dad's "favorite" and/or that she has an overall better standard of living than her sister (she does seem to mother Jeanette). Thus, she redeemed herself by dedicating part of her personality to her sister, and the real Jeanette is living somewhere else.

Some people will probably argue that the same logic can be used to claim that Jeanette is the insane one, but since she slept with her father and apparently enjoyed it, Therese was already close to insanity. Plus, considering this game's tendency to take the players by surprise, it would actually fit in pretty nicely to make Jeanette, depicted as someone despicable even among vampires, the sane one.

• They are definitely the same person when the player meets them, whether or not they were ever two separate people is another matter.
  • Well, in their office there is a picture of what I assume is their father and two little girls, making it likely that they were two separate people at one point.
    • Therese does paint - she could have painted that picture. Or ordered it painted. At any rate, it proves nothing at all.
• There is an interview with one of the writers where he says he researched how split personalities develop in real life, and applied that to Jeanette/Therese: She created the other personality to help cope with her father's sexual abuse, and becoming a Malkavian turned that fracture in her mind up to eleven. As for the painting, I figured it was something she commissioned more recently to help reinforce the split.

You're a lot more powerful than you think you are

You start off as the standard weak childe, but by the end of the game, you are a 'roided out force of nature. By the end of the game, you have crushed far older vampires, destroyed demons, annihilated and entire order of hunters,massacred ancient Kuei-Jin, and generally left a trail of destruction thirty feet wide all over LA. The answer to this is that Caine turned you rather than your "sire." After turning you, he set you in bed with your sire as a set up, then watched the ensuing chaos as a brand new second generation vampire ran around.

• A fan theory is that Caine sired you /for/ Jack because he approved of Jack's scheme. In the official continuity this is jossed because the Caine who hangs out with Jack is actually a Malk, but the game continuity differs from the mainline continuity (esp. w/r/t LA politics) enough that they're probably separate continuities.
  • Well, the writers always give a Shrug of God when anyone asks them if the Cabbie is supposed to be Caine or not...
• Hang on, if you were 2nd Generation, then why do you have a clan weakness? Those were only implemented on the 3rd Generation downward, as punishment for killing the 2nd Generation.
  • Well, maybe Jack "helped" in some way during the embrace to bind you to a clan, and thus not make you look really suspicious, and as for the other thing, you are a huge newbie, and he's still an old and very experienced vampire. He's pretty much Weak, but Skilled enough to take you by surprise.
  • Hell, if you were 2nd Gen, how could LaCroix have Dominated you?
• Not likely, considering that 3rd generation Antediluvians are supposed to be god-like beings of unimaginable power, being able to do whatever the hell they want, with their powers being literal plot devices. The vampires from the second generation are even stronger. There is a reason why there aren't character sheets from Methuselahs and Kindred below 3rd generation...
• If you want to compare the game to how the PnP game works, there's already in-game proof that your character is much less removed from Caine than anyone else in town; no 13th generation vampire has fifteen blood points. This would put you at 8th generation, which gels well with the fact that LaCroix can't dominate you; most Princes are usually 8th or 9th generation. It also makes Jeanette/Therese really freaking scary. Go on, play a Ventrue and try to dominate Therese. See what happens.
  • If you try to reject some of the main storyline missions given to you by LaCroix, he WILL dominate you into doing them anyway quite successfully. This, along with remarks given by the Tzimisce boss when you battle him at the Hallowbrook Hotel, suggest you actually jump up a few generations at some point.
    • The guy you’re responding to meant that he can’t dominate you at the end, because you’ve developed your powers. He tries and fails.
    • Assuming the cab-driver is Caine, perhaps he gives the PC a power boost. The tabletop games say that he has New Powers as the Plot Demands.
    • Dominate is also why you say "Nines" killed Grout, which is canon.
  • One fan theory involves the player diablerizing vampires at some point after Jack explains it to you; I remember someone suggesting the Chang brothers, but there are a few different opportunities for it to happen.
    • It can't be the Chang Brothers. Apart from the fact that taking down two experienced Kuei-Jin is already pretty badass, Kindred cannot diablerize Kuei-Jin, only other Kindred. Also it's unlikely that the PC is diablerizing, because doing so leaves an obvious mark in one's aura. Any vampire with Auspex would see it and you'd end up hunted down long before Griffith Park.
  • There's a pretty simple at hand for why you can resist Domination at the end: Determination. The PnP rulebook says that if you are determined enough, even as a normal human, you can resist being dominated. That, or you spent a Willpower point off-screen.
    • Not exactly, to resist being Dominated, one must have the Iron Will merit, which the MC probably acquired (possibly acquiring the Daredevil merit as well) before the fight with Andrei. That can explain him commenting on you much more experienced you've gotten since your last encounter.
• On another note, the ostensibly five dot Protean ability to turn into a man/wolf hybrid? It's actually a seven dot ability in the PnP game, requiring one to be of sixth generation or lower to learn. Hardestadt The Younger, the current leader of the Camarilla is of the sixth generation.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Canon: If disciplines were exactly as they were in the PnP, Fortitude would be automatically turned on whenever you got hit, Dominate would solve literally every human encounter, the Nosferatu dynamic would be pointless because you can disguise yourself as a normal person with only 3 dots in Obfuscate, Thaumaturgy would have more diversity because of different paths, and Auspex would break most of the plot (you would be able to know when someone lied to you).

In addition to the above, your powers as a 2nd Generation vampire include Savescumming

• One of the powers granted by 2nd Gen is the ability to create a save point and load it every time you die, making you almost unkillable.

The other 2nd gen vampires were killed by nullifying there savepoints ala Chrono Cross. Caine therefore has a fuller version of this power, making him essentially unsuprisable in his role as the cabby.

Grout was the one who brought Bach to LA.

In his final recording, Grout mentions that he made a "Faustian bargain", though he never specifies the details or who he made it with. It's likely that Grout got in touch with Bach, somehow pointing him in the direction of LaCroix in a way that supposedly wouldn't also expose him as a vampire. This also may explain why he simply hid in his mansion rather than getting the hell out of Dodge - he figured that Bach would take out LaCroix before he had the chance to do anything. Unfortunately, he didn't count on how LaCroix had him killed or Bach figuring things out and setting his house on fire. As for why he didn't get any forewarning from the voices? Well, Malkavian voices aren't exactly renowned for always being correct or honest...

• This troper thinks Grout might have done that without his own knowledge. If the player reads Bach's journal, it tells how he was hunting Grout and searching for the vampire's lair. So Bach might have ended up in L.A because of the hunt.
  • The above is definitely the case, in Bach's journal he's shocked that LaCroix is there at all, and thinks LaCroix is following HIM. He was hunting Grout from the beginning.

Jack is Captain Jack Sparrow.

The anarchs tell you Jack used to be a pirate.

• They actually look alike, too. Hilariously, Smiling Jack came first.
  • Both characters were based on real-life pirate captain Calico Jack, so...

Smiling Jack is Captain Jack Sparrow, who is Captain Jack Harkness, who is Smiling Jack.

Because why the fuck not?

• Smiling Jack is based on Calico Jack, who is the inspiration for Jack Sparrow.

Meta: Troika Games was forcibly closed to uphold the Masquerade.

Asking Mercurio about Troika Games in the endgame gets you the info "RPG company in Irvine...they're working on some secret project...Camarilla are worried that they know too much." If LaCroix is willing to sabotage a restaurant for snubbing his business dealings via a bad review, then its possible that he or his successor (Strauss?) would be willing to do much more against a small company that's an active threat to vampiric seclusion.

• Of course, White Wolf continues to exist, but they're canonically owned by Pentex, so that makes sense.

The story of the game IS the Gehenna. But it's not what the Vampires thought.

The Vampires you meet who tell you about the Gehenna all seem to believe that it will mean the end of all Vampires, but at no point is there any proof that this is what the Gehenna is supposed to be, not to mention Jack and Caine seem very relaxed about this whole thing.

Now think about what the player character does throughout the game. Killing many powerful vampires who have ruled over the World of Darkness for centuries, bringing down several organizations, ending years-long feuds, stealing important artifacts, having huge fights which may well draw attention to the existence of vampires, etc... it's obvious that by the end of the game, this is the end of the World as Vampires know it and pretty much the entire Vampire society will have to be completely re-organized after centuries of living the same way, not to mention the thin blood have an advantage and are a new threat to the other vampires. And that, my friends, is what the Gehenna is really about: it's not the end of Vampires, it's the beginning of a new era for them.

• One detail I remember from sourcebooks that gels well with this; by the time the game takes place, at least two Camarilla princes in sizable, semi-important cities are caitiff. Lots of old-school elders freak out just thinking about it.
  • Totally jossed by 'Gehenna: The Final Night' novel and the Gehenna source book.
  • To reprint a quote from the main page: "Note that White Wolf's stance on their own canon is 'ignore what you don't like,' and many Bloodlines players implicitly ignore this."

Chunk the security guard is Chunk from The Goonies

After his adventures with the other Goonies Chunk grew up and ended up moving to LA with dreams of becoming a cop. Failing the entrance exam he became a security guard instead. They do both have a similiar trait in telling stories which are most likely untrue. As to where Sloth is? Perhaps he was actually a Nosferatu or maybe a thinblood decended from Nosferatu. He probably lives in the Warrens and convinced Gary to get LaCroix to give Chunk a relatively harmless job on the front desk.

The werewolf the PC faced was a metis

Okay, I admit this might sound a bit reaching, but remember, Troika knew enough of Werewolf lore to have a Rokea, and culturally correct term for it,too. So, it would make sense they knew the werewolf the PC faced was a metis. It makes also sense in canon, most tribes of garou let the metis do the dirtiest jobs that no one likes. Like patrolling almost alone near a vampire. The werewolf's anger also makes sense if it was a metis, since most young metis are very easily frenzied. Also, it stays in its war-form after death (yes I know the Rokea does too).

• Considering the werewolves were just tracking down who the hell set fire to their forest (that'd piss off any Garou), that's not really much evidence...but staying in Crinos upon death is a dead giveaway. Yes, that werewolf was metis.

LaCroix is lying about his identity

His French pronunciation is not convincing, but when he calls you his Wunderkind he pronounces it correctly. There are any number of reasons why a German vampire might want to hide what they had been involved in in three or more major wars, for example, or perhaps his knowledge of history allowed him to concoct a history with Napoleon which would make him appear older and by implication more powerful than he really is.

• Given how old some vampires are, it's possible he has had several adopted nationalities. Psuedoangloamerican being his most recent.
• Another thing to consider: LaCroix mentions that he was born in Calais, France. Calais is located near what is now the Belgian border. Also, he says that his sire was a Belgian noble. Belgium was part of the French Empire under Napoleon, but the people around that area had been speaking Germanic languages for a while before that. (And German is one of Belgium's official languages (along with Dutch and French).) Assuming he's not bullshitting, it's possible that he picked some German up from being around speakers in his childhood or from his sire.
• A lot of the Grande Armee's men were germans, and a number of german states stuck by Napoleon until the very end (with the empire including a bunch of german lands directly).

Beckett was informed about what's really in Ankaran Sarcophagus.

He did seem very intent on you not opening it when he runs up to you late game, but we know that there's no ancient vampire in there. Beckett, having not given in to the sense of doom everyone else in the rest of the game, seems like a unlikely sort to suddenly convert to that belief this late. Also there's nothing about the Sarcophagus itself that seems likely to change his mind. So I reckon either Jack or Caine/Cabbie/whoever decided he didn't want Beckett to die and told him what was going to happen if the Sarcophagus was opened, but also made sure he wouldn't tell anyone else, through threats, persuasion, bribes etc. Beckett has taken to the PC enough by this point that he does give him the warning not to open the thing, but is unable to say why.

• It would be just like Jack to note that Beckett is in town, walk up to him, and say "hey, you wanna chronicle something? Chronicle this!"

As a human, Therese suffered from undiagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder.

It was always open to debate about whether or not Therese and Jeanette were ever separate people, but my theory is that because Therese was being sexually abused by her father, she ended up with Dissociative Identity Disorder and created her Jeanette personality. Since Jeanette was always more open sexually than Therese, it made it possible for her to deal with it. Since in D.I.D, it is suggested that the different personalities have some interaction with each other and are viewed by the main personality as being a separate person, it's possible that the Jeanette personality was viewed by Therese as her "sister." When Therese mentions being "separated" from Jeanette, she could mean that after her father's death she was being treated for the disorder. After being embraced as a Malkavian, the split between Therese and Jeanette came back and was even stronger than it was when she was human.

• Interesting note to this, Therese is clear damaged, she is clearly hurt by the abuse, but too messed up to realise it. Jeanette,not so much. If you look at Jeanette and her reactions, she seems far more insincere with her emotions. It is possible Therese also created Jeanette to serve as the last shred of her independence and to rebel against her abuse. Hence, Jeanette is never truly sorry, and only takes what she wants. Therese on the other hand has empathy towards other people, and a want to be loved.

In any ending where the Ankaran Sarcophagus is opened, LaCroix isn't actually killed.

The LaCroix that died in the explosion was actually a ghoul LaCroix was possessing as a decoy. While the player was ascending the tower, the real LaCroix escaped by helicopter. He had intended to kill the ghoul after the sarcophagus was opened before returning and claiming whatever was inside, but when he saw the bomb Jack placed in it he immediately told his pilot to take him as far away from LA as possible so he could find a place to hide from the Camarilla and the Anarchs. Again, this only applies to endings where the sarcophagus is opened. In the Camarilla and Kuei Jin endings, the actual LaCroix is the one that's present.

• LaCroix is not that smart.
• Also, he is not a Tzimisce and cannot fleshcraft a ghoul who looks exactly like him. On the other hand, the Sheriff is, most likely, an African type of Tzimisce... but doesn't seem smart and creative enough to practice this.

LaCroix killed Bach's grandfather accidentally

LaCroix is clearly not a very strong vampire, nor a very smart one. So killing a trained hunter of a hunter organization basically made to kill vampires sounds very out of character for him. It is however possible he accidentally caused Bach the 1st's death, and started the cycle of hunts.

• Aside from the possibility that LaCroix is just plain lying about the whole story, it could just be that Bach's grandfather was a really crappy hunter.
  • Bach himself definetly has a huge hate on LaCroix specifically, so at least there is evidence it could have happened.

LaCroix didn't kill Bach's grandfather at all

The Sheriff did. LaCroix is kind of notably a wuss; grandpa Bach "chased him into Africa", presumably about two generations ago; LaCroix met the Sheriff in Africa around the same time.

The Kuei-jin ending isn't actually a Downer Ending.

They chain you to the sarcophagus and drop you into the ocean, yes. Perfect recipe for And I Must Scream, since vampires don't need to breathe and can't decompose, and Ming Xiao probably stuck to her word closely enough to drop you some place deep enough for the sun to not be a problem underwater. Stuck forever...or at least, until you wriggle free/break free/wait for the chains to rust off (going into voluntary torpor if necessary to conserve blood), swim underwater back to shore, subsisting on fish blood. Probably not back in California, but not totally dead, at least.

Really, the only actual danger is that a Rokea will spot you.

• You're tied right down all over your body. You aren't getting out by yourself. Sure, the chains will rust, but that will take years before they are too weak to hold you. You'll be in torpor long before that and you've no way to come out of it. You're down there till Gehenna.
  • Voluntary torpor solves the blood issue just fine. But not the Gehenna issue. Of course, taking Gehenna into account means you're screwed no matter what so using it to say that ending is bad falls a bit flat.
    • I was more being poetic for "you're not getting out." The only way out of torpor is to drink blood, which you won't get.

The longer a Ghoul remains a Ghoul, the more "sane" they can act. Except a Malk's Ghoul. They just go nuttier with time.

Take Mercurio, Knox and Romero. They all seem relatively level headed individuals who can converse with you normally.

Compare and contrast with Heather's personality, and its a little disturbing how devoted a "new" Ghoul is. After a "Honeymoon" period, its possible she can become "normal" in personality again.

Also, when Heather is a Malk's Ghoul, her conversations are....interesting to say the least.

• Not to disagree, I'm just going to point out that Mercurio, Knox, and Romero aren't your Ghouls. Heather is. And with that blood bond, of course she's going to act different around you. Also, those three are blood bonded to kindred far older and more experienced than you. They might know a bit more about how to give Ghouls more freedom that you, who was newly turned merely a few nights to a few weeks ago, don't really know about. No one gives the PC a crash course in "How to Care for Ghouls" despite how interesting it would be. It could be a combination of factors, including them becoming more sane like you said.
• Heather also could have had a very submissive and needy personality BEFORE she was embraced. People like Heather exist in RL.

Based on Clan, Ghoul's will actually gain some of their Master's bloodline gifts and traits

Just based on how crazy Heather seems to become as a Malk's Ghoul, the beating Mercurio survived as a Ventrue's Ghoul, Romero's assumed sharp eyed and quick gunning skills to Patty's very annoyingly snobbish and fashion focused barbs is because they are Toreador Ghouls.

Though I shudder to think what Knoxx or a Nosferatu Heather Ghoul will end up getting.

• This is very much the case in the original RPG, though the traits and disciplines Ghouls obtain are massively toned-down compared to those of their masters, and take some time to develop. As such, Knox and Heather (as Ghouled by a Nosferatu PC) won't become hideous, or even especially ugly: they simply become intensely disturbing to mortals for one reason or another. All the same, I'd still attribute Patty's snobbery to her own character traits.
  • Although Knox, getting regular Nosferatu blood, will eventually start to look as bad as his master. A fact that the developers seemed to have taken into account, as Knox's in-game model has a rash on the skin around his neck. It's starting...

  • I don't get why sending Patty to be eaten by Pisha, drained dry by Vandal or executed by you on the spot is evil and drains Humanity then. She's not innocent, she knows about Vampires and has been told repeatedly to shut up, and is such a Jerkass to you and Too Dumb to Live because she'd insult YOU, a vampire, if you don't tell what she wants to hear and letting her leave just means she'd blab on her travels, making her an even WORSE problem as she can tell more people the more she moves.
    • Because, no matter how annoying Patty is, no matter how much does she break the Masquerade, she has not attacked you or even planning to. Even worse, she isn't really sane when she speaks to you. Patty has been driven insane by her addiction to vitae, and as such, is not fully responsible for what she is saying. And lastly, no matter if she knows about vampires, you are voluntary sending a person to their death on the premise it's convenient for you to do so. Humanity is all about being the bigger man and trying to find answers to problems that do not involve killing someone.

• Hmmm. Good point. Wonder why the very convenient option of just giving Patty some of your blood never comes up though....
  • Because first, she might not take it, being blood bound to another vampire and second, that would be a temporary fix at best. She need regular blood to stay a ghoul and do you really want her hanging around you now?
    • By Caine! That would test the patience of a saint! (PS, can vampires die by suicide hanging?)
    • You know, with the Companion Mod, developed by Dheu and available https://sites.google.com/site/vtmbcompmodhome/ here, you can actually take Patty as a companion. She isn't actually any different than a generic Companion, but it isn'' much of a stretch to think that you'd have to feed her blood to avoid your other companions murdering her in her sleep.

The more powerfull a vampire, the more effect their blood has when creating Ghouls.

The reason Heather is so devoted is because your are unknowingly a rather strong vampire and thus, a few sips is enough to make her your virtual love slave while other Ghouls can discuss their master with nonchalance.

• If they are going by the source RPG, no, that's not what happens, it's a matter of how many times they've fed from you (three times is obsessively in love). But those with low Willpower scores can be affected faster. Heather likely has maybe 4 Willpower (6/7 is human average).

Most Vampire's are lousy judge's of each other's power levels

Unless they are doing something obviously impressive like juggling dumpsters or outrunning a speeding locomotive, most Vamps probably can't tell if the Vamp sitting across a table from them is a fledgling they haven't met yet or Caine himself.

Which would go a long way to explaining why certain enemies don't do the "smart" thing and RUN! when faced with you.

• I think it might have something to do with the fact that most of the vampires who decide to pick a fight with you don't possess Auspex as a clan discipline, or aren't proficient at it to get some idea of your power: Andrei, as a Tzimisce elder, does, which is why he freaked out during the second encounter with the PC.
  • Hmmm, yeah, Andrei did say something about "potent smelling blood" coming from the PC despite being drench in the gore of pretty much all the Sabbat in LA (supposedly).

So again, Andrei, a Tzimisce ELDER (with all the experience that implies) who at least has a clue by Auspex, 6th sense or some Tzimisce discipline, STILL is dumb enough to leap into battle against you.

You've invaded his base, slaughtered his guys, seem inexplicably powerful and not once does he even try to parley or beg for mercy.

• 2nd Theory. Being Evil Destroys Your Reality Senses.
• Andrei is a Tzimisce Elder indeed, meaning incredibly arrogant. The idea of backing down to a mere neonate...unthinkable!
• The same Neonate that kicked his ass in Kingsway already?
• From the sourcebooks, Tzimisce tend to be quite territorial due to their clan weakness of only being able to sleep if they have a handful of soil from their home nearby. There's a clan-specific flaw that the Tzimisce must make a willpower roll every time someone enters their haven to not go into frenzy and attack the intruder.

• Oh, so Andrei wasn' stupid so much as compelled to fight the PC to the death. Makes sense I suppose. Deep in enemy territory, his army dead, base invaded. No other move left but a defiant last stand.

The Slaughter on the Elizabeth Dane was a "Mistake"

Whoever the puppet master (Jack or Cabbie being my bet) of the whole debacle probably didn't intend for a ship full of innocents to get killed.

After all, killing an innocent, even by accident, even if its just a worthless bum, would cost a vampire a bit of their Humanity, and a shipload of innocents dead by their hands would probably be enough to let the Beast take over.

My guess is there really WAS something in the Ankharan Sarcophagus, a genuine sleeping ancient that woke up hungry and killed the whole crew.

The Masterminds(s)? who instigated the whole thing by telling an archaeologist where to find it and such, would have been paying more attention to its progress and reacted faster because they knew more and could guess how things had gone wrong and went in to stop the Ancient before it reached Santa Monica where all hell would break lose.

Their original plan was probably to swap the Ancient out with the C4 when the ship unloaded, "something" woke it up though so the swap probably happened on the Dane.

In fact, that Ancient might even be the odd looking Corpse/Mummy sitting besides Jack at the End with a stake in it to paralyze it.

• Jack might not want to wipe out the whole crew, but who can know with Cabbie? Indeed if Cabbie really is Caine the whole crew could get killed by attacking him, what with the sevenfold curse and all.
• Might have been just a run of the mill mummy (this IS the Old WOD), that woke up, killed everyone and then went back to sleep again.
  • After all, killing an innocent, even by accident, even if its just a worthless bum, would cost a vampire a bit of their Humanity - that's only until a vampire gets to Humanity 3 - afterwards killing mortals doesn't bother them at all. Even at Humanity 4 they can easily get away with it, if the human "deserved" being killed (something a Humanity 4 Kindred can easily convince themselves of). And Jack was at Humanity 4 10 years prior to Bloodlines (LA by Night). And even then Jack isn't known as the most moral person out there - he is (in)famous for siring Childer and then setting them out in the city to cause chaus and generally be a pain in the ass for the Camarilla. But mostly just for shits and giggles. And his approach is not unlike the shovelhead shocktroops the Sabbat employs. I don't really see Jack as being the kind of guy to care about the crew of the ship.

Vampires actually do a lot of "Good" in the world.

While Vampires are monsters, they don't always have to act like Evil Monsters.

As a point of fact, the CAN'T always act like Evil Monsters without losing themselves to the Beast within.

So routinely doing "Good Deeds" might actually be a sort of insurance against turning into a mindless animal, or a calculated measure for when a Vampire knows he's about to do something horrific, he needs to do something benevolent first to help mitigate his sins.

This might even mean that Therese (a crazy, split personality Malkavian) might have been genuinely interested in hosting Charity Events because Vandal, perhaps under her orders, drains victims dry in the blood clinic.

She NEEDS to do "charity" because of how she gets her blood, being unable to control Vandal's violent blood lust or her own issues and having to drink blood poured into a glass due to some Malkavian Mental trauma or other.

Same with Pisha, since her feeding is lethal, she probably has to do a lot of off screen Pet the Dog to stay sane.

• She is VERY obviously on the Path of Death and the Soul based on her dialogue and the fact most Nagaraja are on that Path of Enlightenment.

Vampires lose Humanity only with personal INTENT to harm innocents.

While randomly shooting people on the streets would make you lose Humanity, if your Ghoul, under no orders from you, suddenly guns down people who look at you funny, will NOT make you lose Humanity.

"Accidentally" causing death probably doesn't count, so either Jack is exaggerating the dangers of losing your Humanity or his definition of "Accidentally" is open to interpretation.

• Exactly how the original RPG does things. Also you can often avoid losing Humanity by feeling really awful about what you've done.
  • In the tabletop, it's easier to lose humanity the higher it is. At 6 accidental killing no longer counts while at 3 shooting someone in the face for annoying you doesn't count (although torturing them for the same does) - don't bother trying for Humanity 10.

You becoming a Vampire wasn't part of ANYONE's plan in the game

Jack's plan of using the Sarcophagus to incite the Cam and Kuei into tearing each other to pieces while the Anarchs could be persuaded to stand back via his influence doesn't NEED you for it to work.

The fact that you became a vampire at all is probably some plot by some elder no one has even met yet....

• An unexpected newcomer in vampire politics is always a threat, young or old. Ever since you were embraced, you've been somewhat of a wildcard, not fitting in anyone's scheme. Which is why you're constantly sent off on suicide missions by everyone, to be used and disposed of in one move. While the player's embrace wasn't planned, Nines didn't exactly stand up for you out of the goodness of his heart. Nines most likely saw 1. A promising, gullible young fledgeling he could recruit(or use), and 2. An opportunity to fuck with the Camarilla.
• The only person who truly sends you on suicide missions is LaCroix and Ming Xiao. No one else specifically wants you to die, even if they don't particularly care if you do end up dead. Nines has no reason to find you "promising" in the opening scene, at that point, all you've done is kneel on a stage and look confused. For all he knows, you're a complete wimp. Moreover, if you're Nosferatu or Tremere, you're unlikely to side against your clan. If you're Ventrue you're unlikely to side against the Camarilla, and even if you do, you're probably not very useful in a fight anyways. Yet, he stands up for you all the same, goes on to save you a second time, and never uses that as leverage to get some sort of use out of you. Jack even suggests he probably just pitied you, and Jack is no sunny optimist. Nines' intervention is hardly the calculated move you make it out to be—he doesn't have Malkavian foresight, he doesn't know what type of person you are or what you're capable of. If anything, it was a risky move that could have provoked LaCroix, which would leave him fighting two wars. It's far more likely that it just pissed him off and he had an emotional outburst. He's no Damsel but he's still a Brujah, and they're kinda known for doing that a lot.

Malkav, Father of all Malkavians, is either having one very fitful slumber, or is actually awake and actively mind screwing his children

• Kinda. By the RPG his body died millenia ago, but he put his mind into, well, the minds of all his childer. At the same time. But not by controlling them. Like most things Malkavian, it's complicated.
  • When Malkav "stirs" in his childer (aka the Cowbweb has a flair-up) shit tends to get weird fast. It's hard to say if he even is conscious any more or if he's a vague sort of intelligence. As was stated, though, with most things Malkavian it's complicated and left largely to the Storyteller.

Mr. Ox is something from Demon: The Fallen

He clearly isn't with any of the mage factions, and everyone (Bar Orpherus, who has an unclear place in canon)

• He could easily be a Nephandus. Seems about right with his creepy 'road to hell' speech and gathering of weird artefacts.
• Alternatively he could be a part of one of the East Asian mage traditions.
  • He could also be a very creepy Akashic Brother or a Marauder.

Damsel is a Toreador, not a Brujah

She does sort of look like female version of a Male PC Toreador and also looks a bit like VV (an Anarch Toreador Stripper in Hollywood).

• She never said she was Brujah and claims to be all about "Passion!", something Toreadors tend to focus on. (Though unclear if referring to self or the Anarch Movement)
  • Passion is a key Brujah trait and NOT a Toreador one. So you're flat out wrong.
    • Both clans can be described as passionate. Toreador because they care a great deal about the superficial aesthetics of things, Brujah because they're really bad at controlling their emotions. Both are putting a positive spin on a negative trait, but Damsel definitely has trouble controlling her emotions, thus Brujah. Nines would come across as incredibly impatient and short-tempered if you hadn't had to pass by Damsel and Skelter to talk to him.
    • IIRC, the Vt M core rulebook states that any Toreador that actually sticks with the Anarchs (as opposed to joining them for a few months because it's "in-style" or something) tends to become extremely passionate about their ideals, and also very loud and rude as a defensive reflex (since most assume that they're just as shallow as the aforementioned bandwagon Toreadors), which seems to fit Damsel to a "T". Also, she apparently went to college and did some "tasteful nudes" while there, which is something you'd expect from a Toreador rather than a Brujah.
• So Damsel might be an overcompensating Toreador?
  • Would this mean that Damsel isn't as good in a fight?
    • Hardly. Toreador have Celerity and all the basic advantages of a vampire. And Presence can really help. If a Toreador wants to be brawler they can be a damn good one, it's just most don't. If Damsel is a Toreador she probably would.
    • The Toreador antitribu instead of being passionate about art, get pleasure when they hurt someone. They love both watching and causing pain on others. Which makes them pretty good fighters. They get off also on Tzimisce snuff films.
  • If she's just acting angry all the time, she might really be level headed enough to really be the Den Mother to the Anarchs.

Vandal is a Combat Sadomasochist

• If you go to the 6th floor Skyline Apartment, check the bed room closet for a call girl's journal. Vandal's appointment noted to bring pliers and blowtorch....
  • The fact that he seems damn near turned on if you tell him a story about horrible things you've done means he's probably at least a sadist.

The Creeper is the Sheriff

Totally insane theory, but they are both trench-coat wearing bat monsters who have flesh-warping powers.

L.A Becomes Camarilla Territory

All the endings have something in common, LaCroix dies, which is apparently the only thing that the cab driver and Jack wanted. It’s safe to assume that Strauss takes control of the Camarilla after that, with him on top of the organization I doubt the Camarilla won’t send help, and I also doubt that Nines Rodriguez could win against the hierarchical type of commanding that Strauss uses. The most probable situation would be Nines and the rest of the Anarchs getting killed.

• Unlikely unless the Player fully supports the Camarilla.
• If the player is Pro Anarch, Strauss would be daunted be the prospect of facing someone who just wiped out the Kuei Jin and LaCroix in in one night.
  • Of course, but it makes me wonder since LaCroix was being used as a long term joke for whatever reason, being reassigned to Anarch territory without the needed support to take over by the Camarilla. I believe that with help from any regular old Camarilla on top that wants to throw a bone, not even our lovely PC could stand a chance. Besides, the Tremere clan not helping themselves out of a difficult situation? Hm, doesn't sound too Tremere.
    • Even if LaCroix was a joke, wiping out the Kuei-Jin in one night is still impressive and it might become more a question of "Is throwing a bone really worth it?" when it comes to the cost of taking LA from the PC/Anarchs. Also, the Tremere ARE helping themselves by being cordial with the PC. Friendly relations with a inexplicably powerful fledgling is hardly bad for them.
    • True enough, but it also depends on what do you believe is the cause of the PC’s incredible power. If it’s by generation, if it’s because of Caine’s (or Malkavian thinking himself Caine’s) help, etc… If it’s the second theory, then you better brace yourself for what’s to come, because the only that the cab driver apparently wanted was killing LaCroix; he’s not going to be behind you during all your immortal life.
• Its also possible that the Player and Strauss have cordial relations and can smooth tensions over, effectively making L.A. a separate "nation" so to speak. This 3rd option is hinted at in Bloodline Clan Quest Mods.
  • It would be a somewhat ideal ending. However, with Anarchs such as Damsel and Camarilla people like LaCroix, it is unlikely.
    • Its quite possible. Might even become tradition due to the PC's actions. Anarch Damsels gets to rant. Camarilla LaCroixs gets to act like LaCroix and the PC gets to kill them. The Anarchs get a place to call home and the Camarilla gets a place to exile and execute their troublesome "Princes" without getting their hands dirty. Seems like a win-win. ^_^
    • Except that vampires don't do win-win. With a (very) few exceptions the Camarilla Elders run their unlives as a zero-sum game. Accepting the Anarchs wouldn't even occur to most Elders. That said the Camarilla in America is fighting off a massive Sabbat push on the East Coast at the time the game is set, they don't have resources to throw after a city that was somewhat of a liability anyway and is unlikely to launch any attacks on other Camarilla cities, at least not for a while. So I'd guess if the city goes Anarch it stays Anarch. Kuei-Jin, that would be a different matter. They will attack other cities.

• The canon truth is that L.A falls under thin-blood Anarch control after a new ex-Anarch Prince is put in place to quiet things down and then promptly ousted. Gehenna the Final Night makes this clear. Jenna Cross runs the L.A thin-bloods with Smiling Jack as some born-again Gehenna/Caine believer.

• Siding with the Camarilla might still result in a victory for the Anarchs. By the end of the campaign, the Prince is revealed as a traitor to all Kindred, you've slaughtered your way through a large chunk of the city's Ventrue and the Malkavian Primogen is dead. Additionally, the Kuei-Jin are devastated. The Anarchs haven't suffered any serious losses in the war. Strauss's responsibilities as Prince and your responsibilities as Sheriff are basically going to be to make sure you turn off all the lights in the Ivory Tower before you close up shop.

A Ghoul's Behaviour Changes With Proximity To Their Master.

We never see Knoxx, Mercurio, Patty or Paul with their Master, only Heather with the PC, so its entirely possible that something makes Ghouls act certain way with their Master. Would explain why Heather seems so devoted around you.

• Doesn't even need to be mystical. Ghouls are obsessively in love with their Domitor, so yeah, they are going to act differently.

The Blood Bond between Master and Ghoul Works Both Ways

Even if its just affection for a "pet" or property, if anything happens to a Ghoul, the Master will not be pleased...

• Not according to the source RPG, but a nice guy will obviously feel nice toward their servants.

Zerg Rush tactics using Ghouls is suicidal for most Vampires trying it.

Skelter mentions that Ghouls are a weakness, and despite the rather obvious advantages of having a small army of slavishly loyal, quasi-immortal, super human minions, he may have a point above and beyond the Player Punch factor of losing Ghouls.

Ghouls develop an addiction to blood sooner or later and will track you down from their death bed across a city if they have to.

This:

1) Makes you rather easy to find. And kill.2) A "few" ghouls draining your blood is easy to take, a small horde of blood thirsty super humans who may or may not decide to take a little extra sips from your veins will drain all but the strongest vampires dry.3) In the grand scheme of things, blood used to fuel a ghoul might be more efficiently used to empower YOU.

• Umm, they might also not work because, you know, ghouls aren't really that good. Calling them "super human" is really pushing it - they don't age and get a really, really small amount of powers - fortifying their body with blood (which they don't tend to have a lot of anyway, since, as you point out, it's costly) and they may get access to level 1 Disciplines, which are rarely much more than "slightly better" compared to normal people. They get Potence 1 for free but...that's not a lot, either. By comparison, you can just embrace a bunch of people, like the Sabbat do, and let them loose. It's a one time investment of blood (though you need a sizeable amount of blood for any army) but even fledgeling vampires would be better than ghouls. On top of that, you don't even need to instruct them or anything - mass Embrace a bunch of people and throw them where you want chaos. They frenzy, they go on a rampage, then act out of horror and new bestial instincts for a grand result of - a lot of collateral damage.
  • ... Which does seem to be the start point of Vt M:B2 ...

The No-Alignment Ending Is The Real One

I’ve been speculating, talking about it here and there, and I finally came with a conclusion after reading different comments on the matter.

Everything about the game, the way the PC behaves, and how this ending is the only one always available, make me believe that the real ending (if I can refer to it as such) is the PC leaving L.A; sick of being handled like a puppet by everyone they met.

And, let’s face it, raising the middle finger to all kindred society (literally and figuratively) is perfect. It’s a perfect social suicide, according to World of Darkness.

• As the events of the game are loosely referenced in Gehenna: The Final Nights but no further mention is made of the player character, it's very likely that they are either killed shortly afterwards or drops completely off the map, either of which would gel neatly with this theory.

Patty's Problem.

• Vampires can still make mistakes. Be it deciding to fight you, opening a box full of C4 or turning the WRONG person into a Ghoul. Patty might actually be that mistake. Unlike Mercurio, Knoxx, Vandal, Romero, etc. Patty shows no signs of being a badass. Possibly excusable because the Toreador choose her for qualities similar to small, annoying, yappy pet toy dogs.
• Even by measure of devotion, Heather, a random girl turned Ghoul out of mercy because she was dying in a hospital, is even MORE devoted to you than Patty. Evidenced by the fact that when Heather is told to go, depriving her of your presence, she is either heartbroken or has to convinced she dreamed it all, at no point that Heather hint at trying to find other Vampires for Vitae, unlike Patty who exclaims: "I wouldn't drink your blood if you were the last vampire!". This may have been an unthinking emotional outburst, but it still shows that Blood Bond or not, Patty considers other Vampires for a Vitae fix.
• Skelter, and by extension, the Anarchs, know about Patty, the don't have a rule against it as "one of their boys" have a Ghoul named Paul (who lived in a much nicer apartment than the one LaCroix started you up in, and the bar the Anarchs hung around in BTW) and not ONE of them decided to adopt Patty for their own. This speaks very badly for Patty when all the Vampires of a city don't want you.

The Malkavian isn't a vampire at all.

He/She is actually a Marauder who believes he/she's a vampire. He/She clearly knows a thing or two about Kindred, which is why the pocket dimension created from her delusion resembles the Masquerade universe greatly. It also explains the fact that the fledgeling is limited to three clan disciplines, has eighteen blood points and can plow through supernatural monsters easily. These are all simply misunderstandings of Kindred society. It also explains the bizarre coincidences that happen, like a wereshark being in Chinatown or the cult of zombie-making vampires, and other generally insane things being treated nonchalantly, like the SUN NOT RISING. It also totally explains why no mages appear in the game. They all got murdered by the PC's paradox before the game even started.

Prepared, Most Vampires CAN Walk About in Daylight.

In a manner similar to a deep sea diver, or astronaut, vampires can wear suits that protect them from the normally lethal (to them) environments. Spray on flesh tone latex or even just industrial strength sunblock with special filtering contacts and even something to protect their mouths like a film of plastic could totally eliminate the need to worry about daylight and allow vamps to operate 24/7.

• Well it's not brought up in the game because the sun never rises, but in the PnP system, vampires fall asleep supernaturally during the day. Kind of a defense mechanism to prevent them doing something stupid like walking outside.
• Damn. Can't they feed some Kine a lot of coffee then feed on the Kine?
• Falling asleep as a defense mechanism seems dangerous. If you fall asleep out of doors, you'd roast under the sun, have Hunters dusting your helpless self or some other ignoble end happen that you could have easily handled if awake.
  • Agreed, but in fairness, it isn't called the CURSE of Caine for nothing.
• Hmmm....come to think of it, why don't Hunters stage the majority of their operations during the day? Going after vampires at night seems stupid.
  • This is a similar point to come up in Blade. It's probably that vampires are just so experienced hiding during the day that night really is the only time they're vulnerable. Plus, even a weak kindred probably has a home or apartment with a lock. Try breaking into one of those in broad daylight.
  • Also, vampires experience fear frenzy when exposed knowingly to sunlight or fire. However, given the fact that you can wield a FLAMETHROWER with no ill effect, this might not be a problem in Bloodlines.
    • Maybe its just the PC. He/she is inexplicably powerful after all, might mean some fire/fear resistance.
    • To sum up the PnP game system: You don't get forced into sleep during the day, you just get really, really tired. You can stay awake if you need to, say, run away, it's just hard. Hunters do go after Kindred during the day but they have to find their Haven first, which is why they hide them well. The only way for a vampire to survive at all in the sun is lots of Fortitude (which still only lasts a minute at most) or very heavy clothing (so much that you can't see).
    • Not too sure about the 'can't see' part. Video cam and goggles set up inside a modified deep sea diving suit and the Vamp is good to go. Looks like a Big Daddy but fashion crime is probably better than frying.
    • A situation that takes a lot of preparation to be incredibly noticeable and very clumsy. Not great.
  • Very heavy clothing can reduce damage from sunlight, not eliminate it completely. Now, the rulebooks don't exactly cover what happens if a vampire is covered completely in a special suit that doesn't let any sunlight penetrate, but even heavily overcast days deal some sunlight damage to vampires. One could assume that, just like UV light and reflected moonlight doesn't hurt vampires, the Curse is mystical in nature, and if a vampire is under the rays of the actual sun at all, no matter how filtered/diluted/blocked, they'll burn eventually. The only protection is being inside/underground, because they are cursed to never "walk beneath the light of the sun," or something like that.

Win or Lose, the Anarchs are DOOMED. Their BEST option is Stalemate.

Obviously if they lose, they will be no more, but if by some miracle (like a super neonate leading them to victory) they win, the Anarchs will find themselves "promoted" from The Resistance into the ones actually in charge, the very people they fight fang and fist against.

• A funny and ironic (literally) He Who Fights Monsters situation.
  • Possible, but not invitable. LA became the first Anarch Free State in 1944 and stayed as a city of free Kindred with no-one in charge (except of small areas, like Issac) until the Kuei Jin invaded in the late 1990s. If they do He Who Fights Monsters it will take a couple of centuries or so.
    • The Anarchs, and Brujah in general, have a loooong history of wrestling control of major cities away from the "oppressors" and then letting it all go to shit within a few decades before the Camarilla rolls back in and mops up without much resistance. Los Angeles was a success story as Anarch-claimed territories come, which is presumably the main reason the Camarilla sent LaCroix to keep a token presence in the city instead of seriously trying to reclaim it.
• Most sourcebooks that talk about politics confirm this. In fact, it turns out that stalemate is the best option for everyone (Maybe not as much for the Sabbat as it is for Cam and the Anarchs, but still the best outcome). The three factions are in a Prisoner's Dilemma, engaging in a perpetual war, forever winning and losing cities. Kind of like the three nations of a certain book, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
  • That is indeed why younger vampires think the Camarilla sometimes seems to not want to win the wars. It is the reason why it sent LaCroix to "take" Los Angeles but didn't provide him with neither the resources nor with enough manpower required to do so. It is why it was content with having Manhattan but were too afraid to take back the rest of New York from the Sabbat. The elders want to have their fingers in all the pies but are scared of the consequences of engaging in warfare. A loss in the WoD means death, after all, political or final.

One of the most favored vacation spots for Vampires is the poles during the 6 months or so of "Night"

• So.....30 Days of Night was a Sabbat raiding party?

One of the least favored places is the poles during the 6 months of "Day"/

Vampires could make a legitimate fortune working in underground, underwater, or outer space industries.

• Without the need to breathe, (and potentially interested in silver for Were-Pest reasons) ability to do by hand what most kine would require heavy machinery, and extra sharp vampire senses could make mining a very profitable venture for vampires.
• Ditto underwater. Simply wearing lead shoes would likely allow a vampire to simply walk from the shore towards things like ship wrecks for salvage, oil rigs to setup/repair communication cables, etc.
• The cold, dark vaccuum of outer space is probably not going to hurt a Vamp, and as long as the vamp pays attention to where the sun is and has adequate blood supplies stocked up, Space Vampire Astronauts could rule the stars!
  • That would explain a few things.

The Werewolves in Griffith Park not attacking the city despite their hatred of vampires is actually Fridge Brilliance.

• So, if an Antediluvian was actually rising in the middle of Los Angeles, you'd think a lot of spiritually aware beings like Mages, Werewolves, Demons etc. would be flooding in from all places to put down the superpowerful Entropy Spirit/Wyrm Incarna/Earthbound etc. However, we're told that Werewolves have camped literally just outside Hollywood in Griffith Park, and aside from LaCroix setting fire to the place, seem content to ignore Kindred. As spiritually aware beings, you'd think the sheer Wyrm taint of an Antediluvian would have driven them to attack LaCroix's building WAY before the PC. The reason for this, of course, is that there is not Antediluvian, and hence, they don't care what the leeches are up to. Hence, Fridge Brilliance.
  • Well, that, and the Werewolves/Mages/Demons/and so on kinda have their own things to deal with.

Part of the reason why Malkavians are so nutty is they have a tendency to Embrace lunatics in the same way Ventrue go for the rich and powerful. Possibly even with "guidance" from their primogen Malkav.

• The Pn P game outright states that Malks tend to Embrace people who were at least a bit off to begin with.
  • However it also states that Malkavian Embrace creates a mental illness even if the new vampire was perfectly sane before. Those who already possess a mental problem may keep it (possibly increased in severity), develop a new one with no sign of the old problem or, if very unlucky, get a new one and keep the pre-existing problem.

One of the secret shames of the Tremer Clan is that they DO go after Dungeons & Dragons geeks.

Vamps Blood Rape.

Sort of like Mind Rape, force feeding a mortal vamp blood to make a personal ghoul seems entirely possible.

• Vandal, owned by Therese, does not seem to have volunteered to become a Ghoul by how bitter he is but then again, he might have tried to rape/kill her so...
• Also, Knoxx tried to run when he first saw Bertram so the initial dose of Vamp blood was probably force fed.
• Skelter was probably just joking about the Pope being his Ghoul but IF this was true....that sure is one powerful puppet with lots of influence and money.
  • Hard to do though. The Pope has a decent chance of possessing True Faith or being around people who do and True Faith hurts Vt M vampires.
    • "The Pope has a decent chance of possessing True Faith" that depends on how cynically you see the Catholic Church, now doesn't it? I'd say that, given the time frame, a Pope guilty of covering up that much child molestation is about as likely to possess True Faith as Bill Maher.
    • In the Pn P, true faith doesn't have to be about well, faith itself. That is, Christianity and so on, it can just be 'faith' in something. I remember reading in a guidebook about some random businessman that warded off a vampire with his credit card in a similar way a human with point one True Faith would with a cross. Don't know if this was scrapped in the later versions of the game though.
  • Hard to do but absolutely possible for a strong vampire. While the Ventrue took control of politics, the Lasombra chose to control spiritual power instead. In the Dark Age, there were even Lasombra vampires that had True Faith. Even in modern times, the Lasombra have a strong grip on the Catholic Church.
• 3 sips of blood (like 3 shots of whiskey?) taken right then and there could be enough to make them so slavishly obedient a Vamp could order them to jump off a cliff to preserve the Masquerade so it would be hard to tell how often this happens.
  • Actually no. The 3 drinks of blood to create a full Blood Bond must be one thre different nights. But the first drink can and probably will make the drinker an addict and does instill feelings of affection toward the would-be domitor so same difference usually.

The PC Had Sex With Heather

Its highly likely (if male or bi) that the PC had sex with Heather. As a Ghoul, Heather would do ANYTHING asked of her and despite Mercurio saying Vampires don't/won't/can't have sex if asked, he stills says that Jeanette (a Vampire) was rumored to have sex with other associates (possibly even you!).

• So if for nothing else other than force of habit, curiosity to see how it goes, and juvenile fantasy left over from being alive, Heather is a Love Slave and a Blood Slave.
• In the Pn P game vampires can have sex and enjoy it so long as they drink their partner's blood at the same time. So, given that Heather is quite willing to let you feed on her, very likely.
• While plausible, neither Heather nor the PC would get much of a kick off of it, as it is stated in the PnP that the act of drinking blood is Better than Sex for both parties involved. Did you get the metaphor yet? You can still fantasize about it all you want, though. You're the main character, after all.

Yuki's Bad Japanese.

• Its possible that Yuki was not from Japan, just went to Japan to become a Demon Hunter, that would explain her horrible Japanese.
• Yuki Sensei/Family/Order was not originally Japanese, they just went there to hunt Demons. Hence, bad Japanese.

Yuki and PC will have more adventures together! (assuming they did not meet a bad end)

• Yuki has already shown remarkable restraint for a Hunter by NOT trying to kill the PC on sight. If the PC assisted in killing the monster Yuki was hunting, she even shows up to offer her help when the PC is fighting "Ghost People". Its not that much of a stretch to see them co-operating as Kuei Jin are a pain in the ass to all Kindred.
  • That doesn't seem too farfetched, as she does tell you that your curse need not make you evil. She would probably see it as "Behaving" to help her out destroying misbehaving undead. It also sounds like a cool hook for a buddy cop show. She hunts the undead, He's a Vampire. Together, They Fight Crime.
    • Pretty sure it's been done a lot. Over and over. Like, seriously. How is that not a specific trope yet?

Therese Voermann killed Jeanette along with her father.

• When you talk to them, Jeanette always comes across as a bit two-dimensional while Therese is a little more fleshed-out. Digging into it, you learned that the twins were always close, and there's that huge family picture of them showing they likely used to be two people. However, you learn that at some point Therese caught her father in bed with Jeanette instead of her; in a jealous (and squicky) rage she shot her father in the back with a shotgun. She'd have you believe this was the end of it, but in reality she also shot and killed Jeanette, either deliberately with a second shot or accidentally with the first. When she was Embraced, her Malkavian madness took shape around her grief at killing her own twin sister and manifested itself as a second personality that acted how Therese thought her sister would. That's why she seems less-developed; she's simply Therese's interpretation of what Jeanette was like and that's all Therese remembers about her.
  • First, the Malkavian clanbook says that a Malk's metal illness can be cured; it's just very, very difficult and broadly pointless, as they will simply develop a new one to replace it. Second, no idea when that painting was done. Third, Malkavians don't always develop just one mental illness.

Your sire was an Anarch diablerist.

• Your character is obviously a lot stronger than anyone expected you to be for a fledgling neonate. That's because your sire was trying to make a power grab. They diablerized a much stronger elder shortly before your Embrace, intending to either wipe out the LA Camarilla (the most likely situation, considering how involved Jack is in your fate and an unvoiced line of dialogue present in the subtitles as a Tremere when Strauss mentions your sire was an Anarch) or take control from LaCroix. Your sire intended to do this with you as their Childe, who would still be generations stronger than most vampires in LA, despite being a generation lower than themselves. The only people who would notice such a thing would be Tremere and Malkavians - both of whom have Auspex and would notice your sire's aura. Tremere are exclusively a Camarilla clan - all antitribu have either been exterminated as per the P&P metaplot, or are rare to the point of notability (such as the Tremere antitribu you face during the raid on the Sabbat), and Malkavians, while semi-common in all sects, may not be taken seriously by elders or other vampires. We don't meet any anarch Malkavians or Tremere (the possible exception of the PC aside), so let's assume that the circle your sire ran in didn't have anyone who knew Auspex that might have noticed their friend had recently sucked down elder vitae.

However, your sire had to have been discovered. Presumably a member of the Camarilla (I'm inclined to think it was a Tremere, based on how influential Strauss is) noticed your sire's black-streaked aura, and notified LaCroix as to a diablerist in their midst. They catch your sire right after the Embrace - a wild card move that no one knew about. Assuming your sire is an Anarch, that puts LaCroix in a tricky position. Does he out your sire as a diablerist and risk alienating the Anarchs with a very serious charge against one of their own (not to mention YOU, a fairly low-generation neonate who doesn't know who to trust and might see you as an enemy), or does he make up some other reason and appear as the strong leader taking charge of the community? That also explains why Nines is so quick to jump to your defense and seems so angry at the trial. There's a good chance your sire was a friend of his - and LaCroix just offed them for not obeying a law that didn't even exist to Anarchs.

• Unlikely. Nines wouldn't sit and do nothing if a friend was being executed by the Cams. Nines probably didn't even know the Player's supposed sire. It was just some weird show with the Cams executing someone (one of their own even? sick bastards) as a weird show of strength. Picking on the weak though (you in this case)... Nines objects to that.
• Auspex is also a Toreador Clan Discipline.
• Your sire was Camarilla; LaCroix says outright that he considered your sire an otherwise obedient member of the community before they embraced you.

The Voerman Twins' Derangement Is NOT Multiple Personalities.

As per rules of the game, a Malkavian can never be cured of their insanity. That one can "kill" the other would, in essence, be a cure. Instead, each personality has a mental disorder of her own. Therease is an obvious megalomaniac, hellbent on gaining as much power as she can and willing to crush anybody who gets in her way. Everything comes after her rise to power. She loses her shit if people go against her or ruin a scheme that will give her more influence. Jeanette, on the other hand, is a very probable case of histrionic personality disorder. Excessively sexual behavior, shallow attachment to others, a need to constantly be the center of attention... Her behavior checks off pretty much everything in the DSM IV for the disorder.

Gehenna occurs approximately fifteen minutes after the game ends.

When someone uploads footage of a giant bat monster throwing people from the street onto a tower to Youtube, breaking the masquerade wide open.

• Otherwise the canon ending is, ironically, the one where you side with LaCroix, as it's the only ending where you don't fight the Chiropteran.
  • Not necessarily. Even if someone did publicize a video of the chiropteran behemoth, that wouldn't necessarily break the masquerade with respect to vampires. If you saw a video of a monster like that, would your first thought be 'Aha! Vampires are real!'? You might think that it was some kind of alien or demon or, a life-like robot, or, most likely, just a special-effects trick, but you probably wouldn't think it was a vampire.
    • Actually most people would think "Fake." And the Camarilla, the smarter Sabbat Elders, the Technocracy and a half dozen others would do everything in their considerable power to back that up. Helped, of course, by the fact that it's a few blocks from Hollywood.

Mitnick was a mage prior to his embrace.

Our lovely little hacker openly admits to the player character that he has pulled off such big stunts as retrieving the US nuclear missile launch codes and mailed them to the president, presumably just to piss the FBI off. Now, considering that this feat in itself is a pretty hard feat to pull off for a normal human (and even many awakened mages, for that matter), it's pretty easy to assume that Mitnick was one of the Virtual Adepts, further enforced by the fact that he targeted the US government, which certainly has a fair share of Technocracy agents operating within. In all likelihood, this is also why he was trying so hard at cracking the Nosferatu database that would eventually lead to his embrace in the first place, since most normal people would have given up after one fried computer.

• I think you may be underestimating the extent of the hackers' abilities. Sure, yes, pulling off an epic stunts like Mitnick did is hard but...not at all impossible. Look up some videos from Def Con where real life hackers talk about their accomplishments and research. They are genuinely talented individuals in what they do - there were a couple of guys who managed to rig up some malicious code that bypasses all the Windows 8 security restrictions and gains direct access to the CPU itself, thus acheiving total control of the system. To illustrate what that actually means - it installed itself in the actual BIOS flash memory which is not normally even writeable - so it persisted beyond restarts and even booting up a different OS entirely. It was completely undetectable (since it operates beyond the the OS framework of control) and it could completely brick your PC given a command. By "completely brick" it's just that - an OS reinstall wouldn't help because the malware just destroys the BIOS boot instructions. So, unless you rewrite those, you can't do anything with the PC. And the command can be given by sending normal (well, relatively normal) network packets. A software firewall wouldn't even help you because by the time it decides to drop the packets, the malware already has them and can happily execute the code they instruct it to. That's just one of the things that is not normally achievable by mortals but it is totally within the scope of Computers 4 or 5. And even then, the real life Mitnick was a social engineer, so getting some launch codes doesn't require lots of technical knowledge, either.

Caine Sired your Sire making you an Antediluvian.

My guess is that Caine was in that sarcophagus, all lilith like figures are her and all kings that accompanied here are Caine, now he was in that boat and he awoke hence he literally ate the crew hence the bloody prints, afterwards he disappears while making sure the boat shows up, afterwards he devours a random taxi driver and does with the corpse away and replaces him, afterwards he goes to drink overhears jack and nine's plan and throws in what they need a wild card, he sires a vampire and asks to sire a random person, in other words you, afterwards you enter onto action no one, not even Caine knows what can happen as you are a truly "free" vampire, you aren't tied to a sire, there is no elder for you clan (unless it's a glitch tremere elder is never shown and toreador elder is also never shown instead two venture elders do show up) and if you are malkavian your elder is dead hence no chain no leash except Camarilla of course, this all was done due to how Caine seems to hate politics he wanted to give an example to the vampire world how horrible of a choice can be a bad prince, aside that why he drives you around? you are probably the first real grandson he has, the 13 are so damn twisted they would kill him, you on the other hand are young, wild and maleable.

• Then why do you have clan weaknesses? Those were passed on from the 3rd generation down, for killing the 2nd generation.
  • Fridge Brilliance: the PC of the game both has and doesn't have the clan weakness. Allow me to elaborate: compared to most of their respective clans the PC seems to be the less affected by Caine's punishment, the malkavian character is able to communicate, the brujah isn't exploding in an outburst every other minute, the tremeres and toreadors are distracted that easily, the gangrel have a more direct contact with their own inner beast, the nosferatu PC dint got horribly disfigured compared to other nosferatus, this made me think that the PC needed to be cursed to be the "spanner in the works and wildcard" of Caine, but unlike the original curses he imposed out of rage and disgust he toned down the one that affects the character you select of the PC game, an alternative is that he diminished it.

L.A. Is a dumping ground for the undesirables of every vampire organization.

It is a prime territory that's heavily entrenched with Anarchs and Kuei-Jin, who are the only 'real' factions. Every other faction (Sabbat/Camarilla/Tremere etc.) basically gives the members they don't like a 'diplomatic mission' (Lacroix), 'Mission of conquest' (Andrei) or 'Orders to watch the others' (Strauss). These are essentially executions with a bit of sugar coating, and a complete win-win situation from the faction's perspective. If their idiot somehow manages to triumph, they can claim it was good planning. If they fail and die, well, too bad. Lacroix, Strauss and Andrei are all 'exiles' who screwed up in some way, but are all too arrogant to simply keep their heads down.

• It's heavily implied that's why Lacroix is there, and Andrei let that snuff film he made fall into human hands and trolls late night radio shows for fun, so it's a definite possibility. Strauss, however, doesn't seem incompetent at all (and it has been suggested that he's a Manipulative Bastard who's giving Lacroix plenty of opportunities to screw up and the PC plenty of reasons to like him) It might be that he was sent because he was TOO competent; his original city's Regent might have thought Strauss was a threat to his position, and so sent him off to be Regent of a city that doesn't seem to actually have many, if any, Tremere living in it.
  • He did have that Gargoyle escape from him, which isn't really something most Tremere want running around.

Caine doesn't have a driver's license.

• Well, of course not: the DMV isn't open at night.

There really was a vampire elder, perhaps even an Antediluvian, in the Ankaran sarcophagus: YOU.

Consider: You are much more powerful than a fledgling vampire by rights ought to be. You show up in town right around the time the sarcophagus does. Something killed the crew of the Elizabeth Dane. Here's my theory: ages ago, a powerful vampire elder, perhaps an antediluvian, about to go into torpor, was sealed in, or perhaps took shelter in, a coffin, along with an ordinary mummified corpse. Millennia later, the legends of the coffin are unearthed by Sebastien LaCroix, who manipulates Ingvar Johansen into finding the sarcophagus and bringing it to L.A., so that he, LaCroix, can diablerize the elder within. Jack and the cabbie, however, catch wind of the plan, and decide to initiate a counter-plot. Meanwhile, you awaken from torpor while on the Dane, and proceed to feed on the crew. You then swim to shore, wander around for a bit, and end up in bed with a local vampire of your own clan, but you are then surprised and staked by agents of LaCroix. The Prince, along with everyone else, naturally assumes that you, this vampire whom no one had ever seen or heard of before, must be the illicit childe of the known vampire, whom the Prince orders executed; note that your supposed sire never says anything prior to his execution, to confirm or deny his guilt. Meanwhile, Jack and the cabbie at some point get access to the sarcophagus, either while it is still on the Dane or before it is stolen from the museum, remove the mummified corpse you had shared it with, and fill it with plastic explosive instead. Why don't you seem to know your own identity? Why don't you ever say anything about any of this? Simple, you don't remember. You emerge from torpor extremely groggy, without clear memories, into a society radically different from the one you vaguely remember, which must now seem like a dream, and the memories thus fade like a dream. You are told you are the childe of this other vampire whom the Prince had executed, and so you assume that must be the truth. Sincerely believing yourself to be a fledgling vampire, you subconsciously cut yourself off from most of your powers, but you recover them fairly rapidly as the story progresses. Oh, and that voice at the beginning, when you were in bed with your "sire," that says "I want to show you something"? That was your voice.

• As a player of a male Toreador, I must say my voice is very girly....and in comprehensible modern day English despite being an Ancient.
  • Ah, but surely a powerful elder vampire would have no difficulty modifying the sound of his voice, or picking up a new language very quickly.
    • This is a good theory my friend, but it's debunked when someone from your past sees you and remembers you, but you have to cover it up and get them to just drop it in Hollywood.
    • Maybe the persuasion option where you tell her that you only just look like her friend is true, and you only need persuasion to say it convincingly enough?
    • After all, if you have no real memories and so believe that you are a fledging, why wouldn't you believe this random girl who claims to know you actually does know you? So you believe yourself to be lying when in truth you really aren't. Samantha makes it sound like you've been gone weeks or months when the timeline of the game seems to be much shorter than that given that everything takes place within driving distance and the missing sarcophagus isn't going to be something people are just going to let rest for weeks or months. No matter how much LaCroix wants you to get yourself killed, getting his hands on the sarcophagus is more important.
    • Why would you get a masquerade violation if you're not actually Samantha's friend? Her mistaking you for her missing friend doesn't matter if you're truly not them. Besides, literally every single other dialogue option pointedly admits that you are.

Jeanette is the true personality

If the sexual abuse suffered caused the one personality to create the other to protect itself then it seems more likely that the one who was not the victim of the abuse would create the one who was in order to shield themselves. If Therese were the original then why would she still be the one suffering the abuse when she had Jeanette handy?

• It probably can just be explained with: "Therese created Jeanette not to cut herself off from the abuse entirely by sending someone else in her stead, but to have someone to talk/play to/with, because she was very lonely and something extremely horrible was happening to her." Just because she's cold and morally objectionably a bad person now doesn't mean she was when she was a child. Also, we don't actually know if Jeanette was created before or during when the abuse had started.

Isaac Abrams is an agent of the Camarilla, sent to keep the Anarchs in line.

Think about it. He's charismatic, he claims domain, apparently isn't a 'prince' but a 'baron', but still makes the vampires in his domain swear him fealty and obey his rules, and even sends them on fetch quests. Taking away from Abrams' likable character and looked at objectively, he is functionally identical to a Camarilla prince, especially when you consider that Nines said that Anarchs are all equal. The game also explicitly confirms you can't trust him. I wouldn't be surprised if Abrams was a charismatic agent of the Camarilla sent to keep the Anarch rabble in line and hold off the Sabbat threat. The fact that both LaCroix and Strauss weren't informed of this just plays further into the above WMG that they've been 'exiled' for being incompetent.

• This is actually just an aspect of the setting. While Anarchs claim to be more free of restrictions that the Camarilla puts up, when they are the only sect in town, they fall into common Camarilla policies when it comes to structure. Nines and his crew can pretend to be equal to outsiders, because they have Camarilla to fight against in Downtown. Were there no Camarilla, it is likely Nines would either be a Baron himself or have another do the job.
• Besides that, resent it they may, the Anarchs are a splinter sect of the Camarilla. Despite the name, they're not truly Anarchist and still have positions of power (though smaller-scale), government, and they still uphold most of the same rules. Skelter openly admits that, saying the Cam don't hold a monopoly on their ideals. Their differences lie more in who can gain power; in the Camarilla, you have to be a rich elder of 7th or lower generation to become prince, and if you don't cozy up to enough of the right people, you might never be anything but the errand girl for eternity. The Anarchs don't subscribe to that, and anyone with enough influence can hold a barony no matter their clan, age or generation.
  • As for Nines, no, he actually isn't pretending. Self-delusion about his own place in the sect or not, he genuinely has no interest in being in charge or gaining power for himself. Supplementary material establishes that he is well aware he could be a Baron, but avoids taking the title both before and after the Camarilla came to LA.

Messerach was a Ghoul.

He drank blood, ruled for 200+ years, then died? That's could be more than just Porphyria and history erasing some kings. He might've been some elder's puppet ironically mistaken for an actual vampire later on. He might've even been the once-ghoul of the Cabbie, whoever he really was.

Mr. Ox is a Euthanatos Mage.

As the source material states: The Euthanatoi are a Tradition of mages intimately devoted to the forces of death, destiny, and karma in the world. They represent a collection of thanatotic cultists, necromancers, priests of fate, assassins, and healers.All of Ox's quests deal with manipulation of Fate and Death, either collecting items marked with a certain fate, or bestowing fate on others. Either he is the representative of Mages in the game, or if you believe Mandarin to be a Technocracy mage, Ox would be the Tradition representative.

Caine isn't being a cab driver for your benefit.

He's actually scoping out Beckett, at this point, seeing if Beckett fits his needs for chronicling Gehenna. Unfortunately, this bewildered fledgling keeps ending up in his cabs. And through (offscreen) conversations, his need to take responsibility for the mess Kindred society has become only grows. It culminates in him giving the fledgling a nudge to do what has to be done, and confirms that Beckett (who the fledgling emphasizes as one of the few that they trust) is his man for the chronicles of the End of Days.

Lily could take control of the whole city, if she wanted

Think, she was being farmed by Vandal for her blood that he was then selling on to vampires. Thing is, SHE is a vampire so anyone who bought enough of those bloodpacks is bloodbound to her, and might not even realise it.

• Interesting thought, but probably needs correcting: vampires have very little use for vampiric blood that's weaker than theirs, and Lily is thin-blooded. They'll want to purchase human blood at the bank, which is more plentiful, probably cheaper, and doesn't carry that risk. Lily's blood is likely sold to ghouls in need of a fix or other humans looking to get high. This guess would only work if Vandal tricks vampires into some of her blood without them knowing or feeling it, because it's so weak and/or that he dilutes it with human blood, which would make for a clever and dangerous scheme.

Ash Rivers is a thin-blood.

This would explain his outlook on life a lot better. He also doesn't appear to have any vampiric powers if you escape with him through the sewers and fight hunters. Furthermore, it would explain why he acts like his wounds from being tortured by the Society of Leopold are permanent, unless he was just traumatized by the whole ordeal.

• Seems unlikely, as that would make Isaac 13th generation. A better answer would be the fact that Ash is quite a fledgling himself, as he was an actor not too long ago, and he's still being watched by the media, even if leniently, and they haven't noticed that he hasn't aged. Besides, he probably doesn't like combat, and his depressive demeanor, combined with the fact that he's a Toreador and that he sits in his club doing nothing (when he's not out there crashing cars), only further suggests that he doesn't put any points in combat skills, and probably even Disciplines. He never asked to be a vampire, he doesn't want all that stuff.
  • Not necessarily. In Beckett's Jyhad Diary we discover that Jack, a tenth generation Brujah, had a childe that was a Thinblood. She had been dead too long due to drowning by the time he Embraced her, and it's theorised that this delay is what caused her Thinbloodedness despite being only eleventh generation as the vitae fed to her corpse could only do so much when she'd been dead a few minutes. Given that Ash Rivers overdosed and was found dead, it's totally plausible that the exact same thing happened with Ash — that Isaac got to him quickly enough to Embrace him, but not quickly enough to make him a full vampire, despite being lower generation than most Thinbloods. Think of it like the difference between reviving someone who's drowned and has had no heartbeat for ten seconds, VS reviving someone who's had no heartbeat for two minutes — the former is way more likely to come back with no damage than the latter.

Jeanette/Therese is Babydoll from Sucker Punch.

She looks the part, and the backstory fits, too. An abusive father figure who had to be killed (even if she falied in that part), a sister who was accidentally shot instead, being stuck into insane asylum and "separated" from her sister afterwards, trying to make sense of what happened to her and getting trapped in her fantasies instead (then arguably getting free)... really, one can easily imagine that The Kind Man saw her potential and Embraced her instead of performing lobotomy, then dementated the rest of clinic staff to think that the ending of the movie happened instead.

Theories regarding the protagonist's journey, origin, power level and decisions.

• So, LaCroix can Dominate you into advancing the plot if you refuse his orders, but at the end, his attempt to Dominate you falls completely flat. While the game certainly doesn't make a point of following PnP rules to the letter and this is usually a good thing, thinking about this one too hard makes it a little messy; the only way for Dominate to fail without any effort on the victim's part is if the "victim" is a lower generation, so how does he do it early in the game? Simple; he doesn't. Regardless of attitude, the player character finds it in their best interest to do his dirty work, so his attempt to Dominate you looks like it works fine.
  • Another possibility: the player diablerised the Cathayan/the Chang Brothers/Andrei the Tzimisce, lowering the generation enough to the point where LaCroix is not powerful enough to dominate them.
    • Yet another possibility: in tabletop Dominate requires a dice roll versus victim's Willpower. If Willpower is high, Dominate can fail. You see, Willpower wasn't used in Bloodlines, so we can assume, that after all those adventures the player's Willpower became stronger, and LaCroix simply failed the dice roll.
    • This actually makes plenty of sense if you decide that the difference in willpower is to blame. Think about it: early in the game, the PC was likely unsure of what to do (having recently been plunged into an ancient secret society and forced to fight for survival) and therefore not as willful. They aren't really sure of what to do with their un-life. By the endgame however, the PC is sure of why they're in Lacroix's office and will not be swayed from killing him.
    • Or maybe Gehenna has already started, and LaCroix is simply one of the first Kindred to be afflicted by the Withering.
    • The Withering explanation moves this whole Dominate debacle from Fridge Logic to Fridge Brilliance.
    • The Withering doesn't explain why Andrei noted that your blood has become much more potent than the last time he saw you though.
    • It actually does - some vampires (mostly younger ones and/or Caitiff) get a temporary boost in power. It was never really explained why and it was noted as something really rare but it is there and it is a definite possibility. The PC could have just...been a fluke.
    • A couple of dialogues suggest Caine himself has been cheating by effectively lowering the generation of the player via his godlike powers. This also explains how the player characters goes from weak whelp to destroying creatures that should be able to insta-dust him.
    • Throughout the game, you get a hold of plenty of extremely powerful artifacts, vampire and Elder blood packs, and plenty of other things that could arguably lower your generation or give you some other defense.
    • Why not go with the obvious? Throughout the game, LaCroix has basically sent your character on multiple suicide-missions and yet has seen them come out on top every time. He's a newly-instated Prince, and a rather disliked one, so his powerbase isn't exactly as strong as it could be had he been in the position longer (It's even implied that the Sherriff is his only truly loyal servant and the big brute's intimidation factor is the main reason LaCroix is still "on the throne"). The endgame attempt at Dominate fails because LaCroix has slowly realized you are a very big threat to him and his role as Prince, and despite not showing it outwardly, he's too damn scared by this revelation to concentrate enough to make it work! In short, he botched his roll.

Sometime after the events of the quest "B-Rated Writer", Velvet Velour sired David Hatter

• Think about it. His passion and creativity would make for a great Toreador, he'd probably be ecstatic to find out that everything in the script he wrote was real, and god dammit, I really want a happy ending for this guy after I was forced to destroy his magnum opus for the sake of preserving the Masquerade.

Lacroix never actually betrayed the PC, from his warped perspective.

• The strangest WMG of all, truly, but hear me out. The people who are dead-set on convincing the PC that the Prince is screwing them over are all people who would benefit from turning them against Lacroix. In reality, nothing they ever say about Lacroix's intention is ever confirmed. He, so far as I know, never actually admits to any of it. It's entirely possible that he gave the PC a genuine shot; the first couple of missions (blowing up a warehouse mostly full of mortals and then doing reconnaissance on a ship full of mortals) are far from "suicide missions" by the standards of a typical vampire like Lacroix, who likely sees mortals as little threat. Once the PC proves themselves in that regard, the following missions indicate not a desire to kill the protagonist, but a desire to utilize the new "wunderkind's" obvious talent. After almost every mission, Chunk says that Lacroix expected the PC's return after all. This only stops when it comes to dealing with the Sabbat; Chunk says that Lacroix didn't expect the PC to return from that. That doesn't necessarily mean that Lacroix wanted you to die though; he may have just thought failing was possible for you here, for once.
  • It isn't until the werewolf incident that there's serious evidence to indicate Lacroix's treachery. Even then, this happens after the PC tells him what Ming-Xiao said. It's likely that Lacroix flipped out, becoming paranoid that you'd betray him because you thought he was working with a Kuei-Jin, and tried to have you (a very powerful and dangerous vampire at this point) killed on impulse. After this, if you go to his tower to pick his ending, he takes you back with little fuss. Was this a pragmatic move or Lacroix's realization that he'd behaved rashly and in pure paranoia? I think the latter is entirely possible.
  • But there is evidence of his treachery: a direct confession from the man himself. If you play your cards right after Xiao's confession and sympathize with him instead of getting accusatory and angry, he openly admits to allying with the Kuei-jin in order to frame Nines and destroy the Anarchs. With that admission, everything else follows; if he was complicit in framing Nines, then it means he was complicit (if not the one who ordered it) in Grout's murder so that he could send you to check on him and catch "Nines" outside of the mansion. Otherwise, there's no way Xiao could have timed that, and her doing so behind his back would have certainly ended the alliance before the Giovanni Stronghold incident. It also means that the werewolf incident was indisputably him covering his ass, while trying once again to kill Nines. Moreover, if it was a knee-jerk panic, why call the bloodhunt? Why not pin the blame solely on the Kuei-jin and say they were sabotaging an Anarch/Camarilla team up? He doesn't need to pose you as a villain to rally the Anarchs against the Kuei-jin using Nines' death, but he does so anyways because he wanted you dead. The only reason he takes you back when siding with him is because, at that point, he realizes he's got a true and very skilled Yes-Man on his hands whose threat will be meaningless once he has Antediluvian power anyways. He has no reason not to say yes to that. Nah, LaCroix set the PC up, it's not up to interpretation.
  • Besides all that, LaCroix's treatment of the fledgling is basically unheard of. Fledglings are basically treated like dumb teenagers; they're usually not allowed to do much outside of the watchful eye of their sire, and that's also why traditionally, you would have been executed alongside your sire despite holding no responsibility for their actions. A fledgling becoming not just an agent of the prince, but a solo agent straight up doesn't happen for a reason. Your character is an exception, not the norm, when it comes to fledglings. That might even be why the devs decided to add Caine himself into the story; to allow for some elasticity for what you should be capable of at that point in your vampiric life. Fledglings were, after all, just normal people not too long ago. Super powers or no, the average person won't know how to fight or sufficiently control said powers without substantial practice. So for the average fledgling, yes, those initial tasks would be a lot and potentially dangerous. The Masquerade exists because the Camarilla understands that humans hold strength in numbers, after all. While the werehouse and ship are only filled with mortals, you're still massively inexperienced with the advantages of your vampiric nature and woefully outnumbered. Plausible deniability is probably exactly what LaCroix was banking for; if you did die, he could claim they were only mortals he thought you could handle.

Strauss isn't an expy of Morpheus, Morpheus is an expy of him.

• Isaac Abrams financed a big part of The Matrix's budget, and had the writers put in a parody of Strauss. Unfortunately, the production got away from him when he wasn't paying attention, and Morpheus wound up being a badass that made Strauss look good. Strauss is still smug about it, especially when young fledglings "recognize" him.

Your sire had been vying for the position of Prince of LA.

• Okay so, first of all, LaCroix's dialogue in the opening pretty cut and dry suggests that your sire was Camarilla. The player is additionally an eighth-generation vampire, which makes your sire a 7th generation. Camarilla Princes tend to fall into those generations or lower, meaning your sire is could have potentially qualified for the position. Moreover, one of the biggest mysteries about your sire is how on earth LaCroix found out about them siring you so quickly. This theory answers this: LaCroix had your sire under surveillance, either to keep track of their politicking or to find an excuse to get rid of them. Perhaps, after a year of failing to capture LA, LaCroix was growing increasingly insecure in his place as Prince, and worried someone else might steal his throne—someone like your sire. Like Grout, Nines and eventually you, perhaps your sire was the first "obstacle" in LaCroix's path to power that he had to eliminate. It would certainly explain why he seemed so smug when he had them executed.
  • It also explains why Strauss is so careful about admitting his own reservations about LaCroix's rule. If your sire was openly critical about LaCroix and wound up dead for it, his own hide was also a potential liability, given that he too is an obvious qualifier for Prince of LA.

Nosferatu weren't named after the movie, the movie was named after them.

• In real life, obviously the clan name and appearance was inspired by the 1922 film, but there are some implications that the film exists in the World Of Darkness too. Namely, the name of the Nosferatu network "SchreckNet", clearly a Shout-Out to the actor who played Count Orlok, Max Schreck. With that in mind, perhaps the name "Nosferatu" has existed for centuries, brought into the limelight when a vampire or ghoul involved in the German filmmaking community at the time suggested it as a joke to the creators of the original film.

Nines is pretty low generation, but doesn't know it.

• The PC, who is unexpectedly low generation (being 8th generation ), was only able to stand up against the werewolf by running or crushing it in hydraulic doors. While he may be the (second) oldest Anarch in LA, Nines is still not actually that old as far as vampires go, and thus likely isn't yet a master of all of his disciplines yet. Being a Brujah would have given him an edge over most kindred in a fight against a werewolf, but for him to be able to take one down one-on-one is still a tremendous feat and it suggests he's actually quite powerful. On top of that, Jack mentions Nines was also left sireless as a fledgling, making it probable that he doesn't even know his generation. That, combined with the fact that he has no stated canon generation, makes it entirely possible he's unknowingly low generation—perhaps even able to contend with the player, most Camarilla Princes, or even Therese in that regard.