Vampires and the Infected have been around since 2011..

How is it not possible that the more intelligent Infected aka the Vampires, Banshees and Nosferatu have not created a hidden empire of Infected/Vampires?

I mean,., humans are afraid of death, right? I would think that lots of humans would jump at the chance at immortality and become more beautiful in the process.. thus the number of vampires and vampire wannabe fans should be much higher than is written in the books right?

Of course, some of you may ask.. how is it possible that vampires can create a hidden empire of Infected/Vampires?

Well, just take a look at the history of the Camillara/Sabbath in Vampire the Masquerade.. or watch the Underworld and Twilight movies.. think about Gothic clubs where vampires and humans mix, think about maybe more than one vampire/infected mega-corporation in existence which are at odds with one another...

If the ghouls can create a kingdom, surely the vampires can do much better than that.. a vampire arcology for example sounds extremely cool...

Surely we can import the ideas of a hidden Vampire Kingdom/AA Mega into Shadowrun can't we?

But if you were to do this, how would you go about creating a long-term Vampire Kingdom campaign in SR?

Let's start the ball rolling and for my detractors, no this vampire AA mega are not owned by my toxics.. they are one of the main adversaries for my toxics.. thanks..

btw .. i was trying to come up with the ideal number of vampires in SR if I were to import the concept of vampire kingdoms from Masquerade into SR..

Came across this thread which states the RAW for vampire human ratio in Masquerade which is one vampire to every 50,000 humans..

http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/p/27762/569203.aspx

so i divided 6 billion humans by 50,000 equates 120,000 vampires ..

since running wild quotes

Since
2011, HMHVV has Infected, worldwide, hundreds of thousands of
individuals from six sapient species; that number rises into the tens
of millions when you count ghouls

120,000 vampires seem just about right and might even be on the conservative side of the estimation..

yup, the idea of a vampire kingdom(s) sound extremely plausible...

Well, there already is a ghoul kingdom in Africa and an Orc underground in Seattle, so I guess that's a neat story.
Write up the story or supplement, post it and let me know if you want notes or copy.

You're putting a ghoul kingdom and the ork underground in Seattle into the same basket? Dude....

I'd drop humanis in there too. There's a ghoul kingdom, an ork underground, let caucasian humans have their own country too!

We situated a group of vampire diamond traders in Amsterdam. Gives 'blood diamond' a whole new definition.

The thing I see working against vampires ganging is the paranoid, misanthropic, insular mindset, that popular culture seems to attribute to them.

I've not read any 4th Ed books on it, but in the unfinished Shadows of Latin America fragments, isn't one of the resort islands in bed with the infected now? (Caribleague final draft?)

That's a great position - fluid population, no hint of traditional vampire haunts and a populace that's too opressed to do much about it apart from work quietly and get the hell out, if they can.

Of course the vamps would have to police their own, so, yes, it looks like a good sport to start, really.

...All you'd have to do is look for where all the glitter is being shipped, and firebomb accordingly.


-Tir.

Please go back to reading Twilight...

Aha - Trinidad!

Any news on it in Shadows of <4th Ed?>? Sounded like a great place to meet up with Stalker as he owes us a favour for finding him a Weapon Foci when he needed it.

_Tir.

1:50.000 yes and no. As the thread you link to also states, the "official" ratio for Camarilla cities are 1:100.000, but the Sabbat probably operate closer to the 1:50.000 stated. But then you also have to keep in mind that you won't find very many Kindred in the Far East, where the Kuei Jin holds sway, and while they might be a form of vampires, they certainly aren't Kindred. At the end of the day a lot of numbers have been kicked around on various VtM and WoD boards over the years, but I believe that the general consensus is that the global population of Kindred and Cainites (Camarilla and Sabbat vampires) are in the area of 100.000, so not too far from you calculated 120.000.

As for Vampires in SR, I have to say that they have one inherrent giant challenge to deal with, compared with VtM Kindred. They don't just need blood, which regenerates in a human within a few months, but they need Essence, which does not regenerate. Sure, they have some advantages to Kindred (like not outright frying sunlight), but they also have to deal with the fact that every single mage pretty much will be able to assence them, and determine what they are, or at least that they aren’t human. Also, to an extend they also have to deal with having a harder time concealing their nature, seeing as vampire, banshee, and especially nosferatu (as I recall at least) gain a number of physical traits, which sort of sets them apart. Sure, Kindred have to deal with some similar challenges as well, but they can expend blood/Vitae in order to flush their skin with warmth etc., and Nosferatu Kindred (and other Kindred with the Obfuscate or Chimestry discipline) are able to either hide themselves in plain sight, or make themselves appear as someone else, thus helping them hide their true nature.

Might it theoretically be possible for vampires to form a sort of “hidden kingdom” amongst humans, concealing themselves within society? In theory yes, and if you want it to be possible in your game, then it is certainly possible. But to be honest, I’m not certain that it’s really all that feasible to have happen in SR. There’s really just too much surveillance everywhere, and communication and dissemination of trid information is simply too fast and too easy, in order to be able to maintain something like a VtM style Masquerade.

That being said, however, I can certainly envision some minor or medium corps having one or more vampires on the board of directors, or in some other position, which would allow the vampire to stay out of the sun, and not have to associate too much with the employees.

I'm sure one of the Threats books talked about Vampires in league with the Hermetic Druids in England (and possible silliness with cyberzombies too!?!)

The original Threats had an entry on Vampires controlling a secret society. There are three main problems that SR vamps have that Masquerade/Requiem vamps don't.

#1 The aforementioned reliance on Essence instead of blood. Victims can only regain essence through expensive gene therapy. Vamps can build sustainable societys, they must either import prey or move.

#2 The surveilance society. Quite frankly, Every Ork and Troll has thermo vision, along with a great many scanners, and all of them will spot something wrong with SR vamps. That's ignoring the multitude of problems that can arise with Matrix data, other scanners, medical testing, etc.

#3 The mystical pecking order. Vamps in other systems are usually either the nastiest things out there or have carved out a nitch for themselves with unique powers, usually manipulation. Vamps in Masquerade, for example, aren't the most powerful magical entities by far but they do have an impressive number of unique abilities which allow them to compete. SR vamps are dragon chow and have few advantages over Immortal Elves or even powerful "normal" spellcasters. They can be powerful but they have few/no unique powers and their overall power level isn't impressive compared with the challenges they face.

VAMPIRE cha is N+2

How many of you guys have watched the Russian movies daywatch/nightwatch?

I am thinking of creating a campaign whereby the immortal blood elves are squaring off against the vampires/infected in a multi-decade inter-corp war..

The vampires shouldn't be as powerful politically and economically as shown in VtM.. otherwise they would be the ones ruling the world instead of the megas..

my point is .. both immortal elves and vampires should have power but not to the extent that they are the dominant players in the world.. sure we can make them players .. but definitely not major players..

no immortal elf or vampire mega should have more power than any of the AAAs at least.. the dragons will have struck them down first...

Illusion magic and hide aura metamagicks are definitely a must for any vampire corp i suppose..

Source?


Oh, they did. It was called the Ordo Maximus. It has also been eliminated. By the other, more powerful, and not really vampire-loving entities of the 6th world.


Wrong. Because a vampire in SR isn't that much prettier (as mentioned, it's +2, putting them on even fotting with elves) and unlike elves, vampires are known as soul-eating, often depraved and dangerous monsters. Elves, though, DO have a very significant number of fans and wannabes, to the point that an archetype from the books actually is an elf poser.


Those also are worlds without dragons, elves, human (often megacorp or agency) magicans, trolls, dwarfs, and spirits who all take offense in Vampires' existence. It cannot be compared just because both is urban magic. That's like complaining the Imperium in 40K is too mean to aliens and wanting it to be more like the Star Wars Empire just because both have an emperor who doesn't look so alive and is a powerful psychic.


It sounds extremly targetable. And with 14K Nuyen, it will sound extremly annihilated via thur shot.


--buy Threats 2
-- read the chapter on the Ordo Maximus
-- build vampire characters and play


Read the books. It's pretty much an alternative setting vor MtA. shadowrun doesn't work that way, though I HAVE used Tiger Cup as a Yakut agent more than once. Tiger combat mage shifter.


That's only possible if you massively power the elves down. They know things about magic Vampires couldn't even dream of knowing, and as the only awakened creature known can survive mana shallows.

Yopur idea that there is a vampire-operated/infiltrated corp have merit, though, and are clearly doable. I recommend one of the French corps, since France is among the nations stupid tolerant enough to have lifted the shoot on sight with extreme prejudice policy towards the soul suckers.

The source is Running Wild pg 57

Since
2011, HMHVV has Infected, worldwide, hundreds of thousands of
individuals from six sapient species; that number rises into the tens
of millions when you count ghouls

Ordo is just a small magical order.. I am talking about a vampire corp consisting of a hundred thousand vampires and their human mortal followers..

In VtM.. the general populace doesn't know much about vampires and it should stay that way in SR which will ensure that the particular vampire corp will not be targeted by the rest of the megas..

In Runner's companion, it states that

Vampires
(Homo sapiens sapiens vrykolakas)
Humans infected with a species of HMHVV I are one of
the most common forms of vampiric Infected. Aside from a
pale complexion and slightly prominent canines, they are nearly
identical to regular humans. The large body of myth and popular
culture surrounding vampires, combined with their impressive
paranormal powers, make them relatively popular—to would-be
Infected and hunters alike. Vampires are hemovores and cannot
hold down other food.

This shows that there is a movement of vampire followers in SR who want to become vampires.. now how big this movement is will be up to Gm's discretion... but obviously if you wanna run a vampire corp campaign,, the movement should be huge but subtle..

And if you wanna go to the extreme.. how about a vampire/infected toxic mage corp? hehehehe

Vampires in other genres also have one defining feature that SR vampires lack - a bond of blood. If varies from source to source, but in all cases it gives them a reason to form social ties with other vampires (either friendly or exploitative). Vampires in SR have no such ties; they do just as well (perhaps better) to work with various other allies as thier own kind, and (excluding normal bonds of family / friendship) have no reason to seek out other infected. In fact, the potential competition for resources gives them a reason to AVOID others of their kind. Like tigers, they are well suited to be lone predators, but even tigers have a reason to mate.

That is impossible to keep secret in SR. And since it isn't it's a free for all to attack and destroy. That just won't fly.

Besides, vampires are publically known. You can hardly masquerade that. Not that this masquerade would work, even if they were not well known, because merely by existing they'd step on every other (more powerful) hidden power's toes. The Masquerade might have worked in a world where Vampires are the largest and best organised otherworldly asset, it won't in a world where all the other behind-the-scenes groups are both more powerful than them and would likely be out for them on principle (competition, disgust, taking away their own followers, ect).

Besies, as Mongoose states, Vampires in SRT haven't got many incentives to form secret societies. They're loners by nature. I have as hard a time imagining a megacorp made up of ALL vampires and ALL their fans (especially keeping itself secret to boot, since megacorps need to generate revenue as I do with a mega made up of every serial killer on the planet and their fans.

Because really, serial killers is just what SR vampires are.

this is where the magical orders of vampires come into play .. geas and all that to keep vampires in line in return for power.. hehehehehe ..

how does immunity to sunlight sounds now? lol

a magical tradition of vampire mages/adepts plus possessing vampire spirits to give them powers .. that will surely be the backing of the first ever vampire corp.. heheheh...

Want the easy way?
Cross Asamondo with Aztechnology.
??????
Profit!


Aztechnology crossed with Mexico. and basically bought out the complete state of Mexiko.
Then they renamed it to Aztlan. One State, one Corp. Under evil gods!

You should read the novels. Not just because the movies are competitors for the worst adaption ever, but also because they clear up a lot of things about the universe: Vampires and bestmen are considered as inferior species of the Others. The Night Watch despises them as parasitic animals, the Day Watch looks down upon them for their weakness and lack of control, and loves to use them for forlon hope assignments. Both kinds are forced to register wherever they live, bear a seal which allows any Watcher to instantly destroy offenders, and may only feed on humans with a "hunting permit". These permits are only issued for special occasions (like reaching maturity), otherwise blood bags will have to suffice. And when caught attacking humans without a permit, they are treated like rabid dogs - like I said, by both Dark and Light Others.


Oh dear, an ancient blood feud between secret power players...you should invest some of your creativity into making storylines and not rule interpretations.

OLDMAN! You are needed!



-k

As has been mentioned several times already, vampires and banshees are not the kind of Infected to do something like this. They're all just too inclined towards a loner lifestyle. If you REALLY want to to make a secret power player corp run and/or infiltrated by the Infected, you almost HAVE to use the batshit-crazy nosferatu instead - something like this is much more up their alley. And yes, you should go read Threats and Augmentation in the parts having to do with the Ordo Maximus. They may be a small order, but they obviously have quite a bit of influence and they are very ambitious.


Since when? The Ordo was at least still around as of Augmentation. Several of the other nosferatu-led hermetic societies are gone now, yes, but I don't remember seeing anything about the breaking up of the Ordo Maximus in any recent books.

Russian Light tube of star wars imitation! But yes, no disagreeing. It's pretty bad.


And if they look to change this they're the Big Evil of two novels and sumamrily destroyed.

Lots of goodness in there though. Really, read the novels.


Like something to be done with a level 1 spell and a spell lock. Not to mention that sunlight in SR hurts vampires but dows not (NOT) spontaneously combust them.


Why should anyone sane join these orders again (as opposed to regular magical orders)? Because they're fellow vampires (remember, Vampires in sR are NOT social creatures like in WoD) who force them to take on Geas to control them? Right.

And now vampires get their own magical tradition? Well, if you want to play Vampire the Shadowing, fine, whatever floats your boat, but then this board really is not the place to look for ideas, inspiration or encouragement.

You might not be familiar with pattyhulez, but everyone in his world willingly joins magic groups that rob them of all free will.

I borrowed a VtM corp that was created by a friend of mine for LARPing, and extended it from present day into 2070. It gave me a great base backstory (without me having to do the work) and allowed me to take off and think what would have happened to a fairly small local corp as it went through all the upheaval and chaos of the Sixth World aborning. I also went through all these same counter-arguments, because SR vampires are VERY different from VtM. To start, LUXCorp is owned by about 6 vampires, and they all have their own niches in the company, but they are very separate entities who are only cooperating out of mutual self-interest (most of the time). There is a constant turmoil (even more than VtM), because SR vamps are loners, usually. I had them also bound by a shared history, as they are all "spike babies" of sorts, who were infected long ago when a mana spike activated the virus. They are far older than other vampires, and that gives them a common bond as they look down on the "new" vamps. My players work for LUXCorp, and stumbled upon the truth about the secret board who hide behind human pawns. LUXCorp on the surface is a Medical corporation, which has just reached AA status, but is not extraterritorial, based out of the CAS. It has human leadership and a public board of directors, but the actual decisions are made by the vamps. They are the ONLY vamps in the corp, but many other unusual metahumans are employed, with an even more open policy than Evo, as they hire ghouls, shifters, merrow, etc. often, and have a much higher than average distribution of metahumanity than humans working for them. Since they own hospitals, feeding is not much of a problem... "Sorry, Junior, but your Dad didn't make it through the cybersurgery. These things happen sometimes..." Or, "I am sorry, Officer, the homeless John Doe could not survive the exposure you brought him in for..."

It can be done, but you have to scale the vampirism WAY back, and make them deeply hidden and shadowy. My vamps have a feud going on with Ordo Maximus, as they are more "shades of grey" than "evil black". It is more interesting to play them that way, and presents a moral balancing act with my players. Yes, they steal people's souls, but they USUALLY don't drain people dry, since they can feed a point here, a point there very easily, and they are honestly looking for cures for diseases: 1) you need to keep your herd healthy, and 2) there is damn good money to be made in selling a cure!

No, Dreadlord.

There's dick-all money in selling a cure.

The money is in selling a treatment .

-Tir

In my games, there is no difference between my particular brand of magic groups and triads. Both use magical geas to enforce loyalty in exchange for lots and lots of power..

If you are a normal human, wouldn't you want immortality and beauty(vampirism) and have the ability to walk in sunlight at the same time (immunity to sunlight)?

In my mind, I am thinking about an Infected corp consisting of a few hundred thousand Infected with vamps at the top of the pecking order and normal metahuman minions especially humans serving as footsoldiers.

100 000 vamps means they're draining about 200 000 peoples dry yearly - maybe even twice that number if they feed on street dregs like drugheads and the like. Or over one million peoples drained a year if they go for the 'one single drink per donor' route. That sort of numbers will stand out. And that's only the essence drain. With the blood drining and it's associated mishaps 'oops sorry i fobbed that blood disease on you' or 'quick, patch that damn rippd carotid before whe have on unwanted corpse to get rid of', it will be very hard if not impossible for such a large organisation to keep it's nature a secret.

I had a look at the current 'death by accidents at work' numbers and it's 350 000 a year. The total yearly death toll is 6 millions - making the 'death by vampire' a whopping 3,5% and roughly on par with the worldwide number of murders (195 000).

Completed : With other infected thrown in the mix things improve a bit on the vampire angle, but most of the other infected can be recognized for what they are by having a good look at them. Their diet requirement will also be a pain - a ghoul needs roughly 300 kg of human flesh year. That's something like 6 human corpses a year. For each ghoul in the company... Of course they might feed of the vamps leftovers to avoid adding more death, but that means a significant number of missing persons that could possibly be traced back to the corporation.
Its also likely to cause a rather significant spread of HMVV infections where the company's operating. Which is will raise a lot of embarassing questions, especially when you've got obvious infecteds lurking in the basement of your offices.

Running Wild states that there are already hundreds of thousands of Infected from the 6 races in existence.. With ghouls, the numbers run into tens of millions.. as stated in Running Wild.. so if Running Wild states that these numbers exist, then surely the world do support that many Infected..

Now everybody assume that all these hundreds of thousands of Infected are wild and unorganized but .. What happens if a significant percentage of those Infected .. especially vamps and let's put the percentage at 50%.. organize themselves into a mafia-like corp?

We have already seen the most animalistic of the Infected the ghouls organize themselves into cabals and kingdoms .. do you think the higher end Infected like the vampires would do any less?

Not that impossible if you open your mind far enough..

Yup. Folks only need a cure once. They'll keep paying for a treatment for as long as you can keep 'em alive.




How many times are you going to come here and start a thread with an idea that is universally reviled and discordant with the existing fluff by unanimous appeal, but then you (presumably) continue with your scheme anyway...before you just stop coming here to see what people think?

I mean, why ask for opinions time and time again if you're just going to ignore them? Just go play your game and be happy.

It seems pretty clear to me from the above discussion that the big difference between vampire the masquerade and vampires in shadowrun is blood drinking vs essence drain

People get better from blood drain. They mostly don't die, and with the vampires mind wibbling powers, they either don't remember or they become addicts and hide it
People die slow lingering deaths from essence drain, and usually have to be tortured to get the emotional fix to allow the energy drain to take place. Even if they become addicts, they can only provide a small number of fixes.

This means that the numbers of vampires (the masquerade) that can hide among society unnoticed is much higher than in shadowrun. With tech and dragons and magic and thermal vision and thermal cctv everywhere, but more importantly public awareness that they exist and are real, then the vampires either have exponential growth (like a zombie apocalypse) in which case they are close to being the number one threat, or their numbers are very low.

Even physical masks don't cut it: they will get spotted if enough people are in the area.

The only way I am seeing vampires having an unnoticed but high impact on society is as a handful of vamps in positions of power and wealth but mysteriously recluse.

If you want a vampire the masquerade, then you could always change the rules on essence drain: let it heal a point a month, or just have vamps drinking blood. You get a much more believable world that way

As I said, Running Wild Raw states that the virus has been around since 2011 and there are hundreds of thousands of infected from the 6 races.. tens of millions if you count ghouls..

That clearly means that the game developers does not see that number of infected as impossible.. which means that the SR world is still able to accommodate such a high level of infected without any huge number of nations calling out for blood.. in fact.. we even have a few nations recognizing the sovereignty of the infected..

Furthermore.. an AA mega owned by megas is always capable of cloning mass number of humans for the vamps to suck their essence from..

For the same reason you don't walk over to your local firefly hive, who offer the same conversion.


Okay, so in your games every magical group is highly opressive and has you swear death oaths?


And you don't use Tamanous because ...? Also, Vampires are NOT the top dog of the Infected food chain, that is Nosferati. Vampires are middle level to low level Infected, in terms of influence (next after Nosferati are Wendigo and their cannibal cults, then Vamps and Dzoonooqua, then Ghouls and after the smart ghouls, the gutter slime like Banshees and Goblins, stupid ghouls, lycantrophes and all their metahuman variants like stalkers, gnawers and whatnot.).


Adding even more violation of Corp Court laws to their already pretty impressive list. And by making itself an official corp, your VampyCorp becomes liable for CC law. Why don't the Megas just slam them with an omega order? Then everyone (every corp, every government, most major syndicated) would be after them. Because people in SR do not like the Infected. It's important you keep that in mind. The Infected in SR are a known fact, so there's nothing about their existence left to masquerade. The Infected in SR are a health threat and carriers of a potentially deadly disease. Before Running Wild, shooting a confirmed infected in the face wasn't only legal, it got you rewarded with money. There is no mass movement of vampire followers in SR (because the 'join us and live forever' fad has been used by other monsters already), and vampires are just another, rather medium-sized, fish in a pond full of sharks.

In the cas of Asamondo, the smart ghouls are herding and controling the feral ones. But I think you misunderstood my post (granted it wasn't clear). I didn't mean 'it's impossible to have that numbers of infected organized in a corp'. What I meant was 'it impossible to do it and keep it a secret'. Which depending on how the power players and the world at large will react to the fact will tell wether it's possible or not.

Asamondo is a special case : basicaly it's a dirt-poor african craphole nobody gives a fart about. As long as the local ghouls make sure there's no spillage out of their borders, most won't care much about what's going on inside. Outsiders will probably keep an eye on their custom service and border patrols to make sure they're effectively keeping the border airtight.

Uh yeah. Because a) 50% of all vampires sopontaneously become social animals and then decide to set up a Mafia in a high-competition environment (the SR underworld). Fpor the record, Tamanous works pretty well for the Infected underworld already, and some gangs have become undermined by paranatural threats (most notably the N'dragheta, which is basically a Wasp hive). But a totally new, out of the blue, Underworld-like Vampire mafia? Not gonna happen. They'd be shot to bits by the established powers. Same with the corporate component. Especially the Yakuza, who ARE mafia corps in SR, will take serious offense there.


Shadowrun! Is! Not! World of Darkness!

Ghouls are just as animalistic as Vampires or Wendigos. Some are stupid, raving animals (that goes for Vampires too, a bit less so for Wendigios, who are more like quiet predators), and some are pretty clever.

The really animalised types are actually Banshees and Goblins (who were nonsentient prior to SR4) and the whole Running Wild MMVV-2 troupe (who actually have animal stats).


Also, from a meta point of view, it's a writers' pet.

If, patty, you are serious about this idea, write it up in a short story/explanation/mechanics form like in Threats and post it. If you want notes, we'll be glad to give them, if not, then it'll be a thing that folks can either use or not use at their discretion.

If not, then this is probably just another What If/Elseworlds Shadowrun scenario that you are free to run, but nobody else is going to get on board with because it's kind of nebulous in this format.

Nothing shuts your distractors up more than doing the work while they do little but criticize it.

Or, you know, keep arguing on the Internet. That seems to be productive!

While people just love that trope when it comes to "teh evil big pharma", it ignores a simple principle: The vendor sets the price. So instead of selling the treatment for fifty years, simply make the cure fifty times as expensive


@Topic, the sentence Patty does so deperately cling to only states the total number of people who got infected by HMHVV since 2011. That number also includes everybody who recovered without transformation or died, either from the virus or some time after transformation.

... or was, put down as a paranormal threat, caught FAB III, or was eaten by other, more potent paranormal predators.

Those (among other causes) are what I meant when I wrote "some time after transformation".

Ah, took it as "died from hunger/suicide/going crazy and being put down fast".

Not particularly, No...

A lot of vampires are probably hounded and persecuted, driving a lot of them into underdeveloped areas like the Barrens where they have better odds. But we also read that a lot of vampires are Magician, and they do get bonuses to Charisma and other attributes. A couple of them may have gotten smart and set something up.

Of course, secrecy is important. We're probably talking about secretive medical R&D AA corps, the kind that have lots of pretexts for being close-lipped about what happens in the laboratories.

Cloning is somewhat illegal, but remember that most bioware is grown in mostly-brainless clones. There are a lot of clones around. It can be easy to hide vampire livestock somewhere in the middle of all that. Being an AA corp gives you a lot of room to fiddle with the numbers, as long as you keep paying your bills and reaching a comfortable profit margin.

So, now we've got a sustainable food source for vampires (and other Infected, actually). Why would they work together?

It's obvious - mutual understanding. Most other people hate vampires (or are annoying fanboys). Other vampires make more realistic company - at a safe arm's length however.

Together, they can watch out for threats to vampirism; arrange the demise of anyone getting too good at vampire-hunting, slow down anti-vampire politics and plots of other major factions. This vampire society would probably have a very defense-obsessed culture to it.

sure, undermined a gang (like the Black Chrysantemums or that security company from that whacko Vampire Cyberzombies book). But a megacorp? No.


Essence drain only works on sentient creatures.


No, we don't. If we had, We'd have a significant sum and a lot of prestige, courtesy of Dunkelzahn.


Makes no sense. They still compete for food (because we do not have a sustainable food source). Even if we had, though, few vampires survive their transformation intact, much like ghouls. And not all vampires are mages.


And would be up against far more powerful factions who'd work together to nip them in the bud instead ofwatch them become a serious threat. Before long, the Hunt would come knocking at their doors. Or maybe corp striketeams. DIMF, Atlanteans, Firewatch ... I could see some kind of underground support, but definitly not the kind of superior, overwhelming, powerful vampiric conspiracy. Because the setting still is not WoD.

The idea about the cloning is to hide the cloning of actual sentient clones in the middle of a vast wimp clone factory. And therefore an actual sustainable food source for vampires.

Vampires won't run the show like they do in WoD, but with the amount of moral beige in SR, I think they can carve out a niche for themselves here and there. A lot of the power players probably don't really care too much about the suffering of the vampires' food, as long as the vampires have something to offer.

Considering cloning is a pretty regulatied issue for exactly that reason, that's hard to do for 100K vampires. Better enslave people and restore their esssence throuigh the cheap-ass essence drain regeneration only therapy (10K/point or something, bullshit, pandering to fantasies like these). Still wouldn't get you many friends, but at least probably not an Omega Order right away.


Sure, but not to "watch out for threats to vampirism; arrange the demise of anyone getting too good at vampire-hunting" and "slow down anti-vampire politics and plots of other major factions". They can try and work against specific threats, but mostly they'd hide, bribe and carve their niche, and that's that.


The elves will care for religious reasons, as will the church, the muslims and really, any religion that opposes the eating of souls. Some megas - notably Shiawase and parts of Ares - are very religiously influenced. Dragons will care because vampires spread and become powerful if you let them. As will other factions.

And really, what DO vampires have to offer? Prettyness and magic? You can have that with elves, and those are much easier to handle.

Well, stamping the vampires out would provide a tremendous amount of good press. Seems to me just like something Ares (defenders of the American way of life) might do. We can't allow them to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

Our Precious Bodily Fluids...

Vampires are kinda like the common cold; impossible to eliminate.

Anyway, the vampires would of course NOT advertise their existence. Let Ares have fun killing stupid street-level vampires; the few well-off vampires enjoy corporate luxuries, including either bums kidnapped from the ghetto (nobody cares about them) or harvested illegal clones (not on the books).

This vampire upper class would be secretive on a level perhaps far exceeding the Camarilla in Masquerade, since they also need to keep a low profile towards the other supernatural fractions.

Perhaps a niche for them would be in biotech and information brokering. Biotech because of the food supply concerns, info brokering because as a hated minority they put a lot of effort into finding out who is really on to them. And that kind of research leads to spinoff information.