Human Hide and Seek

On the last game night we time with the news that the humans have escaped their cell and scattered, taking to any places they can reach in the manor estate - or some even to the countryside around. They don’t get far; Claudius has keyed their collars into the necromantic ward that surrounds the property grounds to the outer stone wall. They discover they cannot cross it - it is impassable, and agonising even to try.

The host is embarrassed but quick to reassure his buyers and clients that their charges could not have gotten far. Many vampires, lacking confidence in Claudius, move to catch their own humans, and quickly, before another grabs a hold of them. Most are in debt to Claudius at this stage, and though it is a shady area of politics they agree assist him in returning the humans to the auction room and so ensure that everyone is paid.

Some vampires lie. They have no intentions of doing this.

Claudius states that he is delaying The Handover until the humans are safely back in the auction room. His family, the rest of Giovanni present (and any invested vampires of other clans) go to round up the escape artists, and haul them back to be legally sold off to the vampires who won them, and embraced by the Sires-to-be.

What they don’t expect is that there are vampires abusing this time to get a head start on them. They have rushed off after a human with intention to Embrace them, before they can be found. They find them and take them somewhere remote, or use their own power to cloak, to obfuscate, to divert minds or otherwise bury their activities away from their kind.

How this works

We negotiate our ideal outcomes in advance of this roleplay night, and we locate the other relevant participants off-game and chat it over with them - for most participants this is done in the morning during breakfast or over lunches. The roleplayer behind the human character might have experienced some particularly beautiful roleplay by one vampire participant, and would like to pursue that. Who is going to ultimately Sire who is all agreed off-game in advance, unless the human participant wants to leave it a surprise for themselves! In which case they don’t need to make any agreements, and let people know they’re entirely up for grabs as to who finds them first.

This set of partially-scripted scenes is when the humans will run away and hide (by themselves or with other humans, inside or outside of the mansion) and they are either found and returned, or they are “stolen” by another vampire, and Embraced. If the human is one of the ones found by the group, it’s because their roleplayer wants to be Embraced by the vampire who won the auction, and they will be carted back, sold, and more formally taken by their intended Sire. The character might or might not like this, but the player behind that character does.

The human participant has final decision on whether they are Embraced by the person who won the auction, or by someone else entirely in secret. If they are Embraced, they do not return to the auction room at the same time as the rest of the humans who are successfully retrieved by the search party. This is not a game where you win or lose; we will all have a lot of fun in being furious (or devastated!) about our human being stolen, or pleased for the steal we’ve made. (Or deeply worried that you’ll be caught.)

Sometimes, a human character might actually want to be Embraced by the vampire who won the auction - not just the roleplayer wanting this. Although their character was peer-pressured and bullied into escaping their cells, ad by whoever the ringleader becomes of the human escapees, all they really want is to run straight back. In such cases they will probably be the very first “found”… because they will have walked right back in to be found.

These humans do not know where anyone else has gone to hide. You can pressure anything out of them in character, but their human will have nothing to give. Even if their roleplayer knows where escapees are because they saw the room someone vanished into, the character must not. This is to let the stolen humans be able to enjoy their personal story climax and their Embrace in peace. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for drama after.

To facilitate this, we have a staged time-in on the final night.

At 3:00pm all human characters time-in. They flee to their selected hiding spot.

At 3:10pm sire thieves time in and travel to the hiding spot they have been given (by the player of the human character). Therefore the human character themselves does not need to desire the Embrace - only the player does.

Vampire players you’re with me in the big dining hall off-game area, bemoaning and laughing about who is missing. I have a short additional brief for you, and you alone.

All other vampires all time in at 3:30pm

You can go anywhere to search for humans - or go do your own thing - but you must not go into bedrooms marked with a red ribbon. A red ribbon is going to be placed, off-game, on any bedroom used by a sire thief-and-childe duo whose players who have organised a longer Embrace scene and they would like to see it through fully, and not be interrupted. This is the climax of that human’s game. For game purposes, the mansion is even bigger than the one we actually have (thanks Claudius) and the characters in those rooms are not actually in those rooms. They are somewhere else, somewhere that people do not find until it is too late.

Anywhere without a ribbon on the room they are in it’s because the players don’t mind being interrupted - or welcome being busted in on soon after their Embrace. The Embrace will still go ahead but the lack of a ribbon signifies that these roleplayers like the idea of the sire thief being caught red handed. Of course, those roleplayers may also just as easily pick a garden location or somewhere more easily found by the search party.

Why would a human be stolen?

Perhaps a human bonded with a Sire who could not afford them - or who has been hopefully outbid but intends to protect them - or perhaps the participant of the human enjoys the idea of being forced into the embrace by a sire who should not have acquired them, but takes the opportunity when they find them in their clever hiding spot. As for the vampire, there are a plethora of reasons why in the chaos they will steal another vampire’s intended human. They carry outrageous power after all, locked away in their blood.

Human participants can arrange the Sire they really want in morning off-game negotiation over breakfast and lunch, and if that vampire participant is willing, the human participant will reveal where their hiding spot will be, for the vampire to stumble onto after time-in.

What happens to the stolen humans after they are Embraced?

They will spend that time hidden away with their sire and given what little instruction they can get under such secretive circumstance.

What happens to the humans who are returned to the auction?

They are handed lawfully over to their proud new Sire, who will take them off either alone or with fellow packmates/coterie mates/clan mates/chantry fellows/who knows what to be Embraced in whatever way befits their own personal style. This may be hugely ceremonial, the Ventrue might take all of their charges to the pews in the garden or to a room for their own pursposes, to Embrace theirs. Gangrel might take to the gardens, or Tzimisce wherever they can find good earth; it is entirely up to the participants. Toreador might well just want beds.

What happens after the Embraces?

All the vampires realise pretty quickly that Claudius’ ward does not just prevent humans leaving the ground - although how he has achieved this feat of imprisoning everyone is unknown, and a subject of immediate concern to many. He is quick (and quite nervous) to reassure that will only last as long as the night, he took extra precautions when it was obvious the humans had fled, and isn’t this useful because now we can all catch the criminals, no? It is just as well that his statement has some merit, because vampires do not like being caged and there are enough angry vampires who want to know who has stolen their human.

While they are stuck in Claudius’ estate and grounds, the vampires who have been short-changed attempt to find their human.

Meanwhile the naughty vampires who have stolen and embraced those same humans plot rapidly with their new Childe, trying to create any flimsy story that will hold together to make it look as if they do not know who Embraced them - or blame it on another vampire entirely and hope they can cause enough confusion or misdirection that they can get the Childe out the next night when the ward drops. Of course, if they are a sire who stole the childe and the childe didn’t want the Embrace, they may well have to force their compliance. (With player off-game enthusiastic consent! Negotiate this beforehand.)

Most of the Sire thieves know that they cannot just come out and claim this childe as theirs. The Sire Thieves and Stolen Childer do return to the manor eventually - even the Gangrel cannot sleep in the earth, Claudius wretched ward seems to prevent their earth meld - and face the music. In the confusion no one can tell who Embraced who, only that their human is no longer human at all. It is up to the vampires what they do about this, what investigations they launch or fingers they point. They’re all stuck there for the night together.

Some don’t care; they decide they will have their “human” even if another has Embraced them. The power is still in their blood after all, and to some clans this is useful regardless. Others will reject taking on this Childe and demand recompense from Claudius or the absolution of the Boons and resources they paid him, some with painful levels of interest for their hassle.