"Here, we never reinstall Bloodlines...Because it's always on the computer!"

This is my epic virtual shrine for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a 2004 action-RPG by Troika Games, based on White Wolf's tabletop RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade. Here, you can find some rambles, fun information and resources for fellow Kindred!

So come inside, Neonate! (We got Ministry!! And some yummy blood bags!! Don't ask where I got em.)

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About the Game

"Bloodlines is just LaCroix screaming from the comfort of his racecar bed."
~ Pearl

When you start the game, you have the option to either pick your clan straight away or take a personality quiz to see which clan you are. There are seven playable clans in this game, all with their own unique powers and weaknesses:

The raging punk Brujah, the lone (literal) wolf Gangrel, the prophetic madness of the Malkavians, the stealthy and unsurprising-looking Nosferatu, the glamorous Toreador, the warlock Tremere, and last but not least, the aristocratic Ventrue who will drink only yuppie blood.*.

Naturally I took the quiz for my first time, because I am clinically addicted to quizzes. (Thanks Pokemon Mystery Dungeon!) I got Gangrel btw, AWOO!

In VtMB, you are suddenly yanked into the world of Vampires when some Anarch lick embraces you. However, appears they didn't have a loiscence for that, so you and your bastard ass are snatched away by the Camarilla, to be executed! Oh noes!! Thankfully, Nines interrupts your execution and it's canceled, thank god. Without a Sire, you're left to navigate the nights of Los Angeles on your own, full of crazy Kindred and weird humans alike. Oh, right, Vampires call themselves "Kindred" in this. All the while, you're forced to obey the whims of the Camarilla Prince, Sebastian LaCroix, who will scream the Venture Tower down if you don't get him the Ankharan Sarcophagus NOW!

Welcome to the World of Darkness!

As an action-RPG, there's two sides of VtMB:

One is the action side, wherein you have to juggle upholding the Masquerade (not telling anyone you're a Vampire), feeding yourself properly and protecting yourself from the dangers of Kindred life, normal and extraordinary; one minute, you're whooping someone's ass for beating up Mercurio and stealing his shit, the next, you're beating up Andrei the Tzimisce in his flesh house. And then he runs away. And you'll have to go kick the shit out of him again. This is far from boring, considering you'll find yourself in all sorts of batshit scenarios where you must whoop thy ass, but the combat's a little...Clunky. Though man, it is so satisfying to fully drain an enemy human. Mmm, bad guy blood!

Where it really shines is the other half: the RPG side. Roleplaying. You can't just smack your way through Kindred society and expect everything to go smoothly; sure, you can smack a Sabbat shovelhead up in your grill, but the hell you gonna do when Therese and Jeanette just don't get along...And they're a DID system, so they're in the same body. And also Therese is refusing to work with Bertram, the guy you need to come out of hiding to blow up the Sabbat warehouse, because Jeanette fucked him. Yeah. Or what about the different sects? Are you gonna stick to the Camarilla, or are you gonna defect? Is said defection for the Anarchs or are you just flying solo. And if you do stick with the Camarilla, are you here for the system itself? Or do you have only 1 in Intelligence, and stick to LaCroix until the bitter (and explosive) end?

Each of the characters in VtMB, no matter if they're grand, major Vampire character or just some dinky human guy who sells you shit, is a person with their own life, and there's many ways to interact with them. You can play it simple and just be a persuasive charmer, or you can be straight up seducing people into doing your bidding (especially if you play as a female character...2004, man). You can be an asshole and intimidate and threaten your way around. You can be a relatively nice Vampire who just has to get shit done, you can be a violent, heartless monster who should be a damn Wight by now, or somewhere in between for the sake of cold, convenient connections. And that's just the beginning! The Tremere and Ventrue get Dominate, allowing special dialogue options to just force your poor subject to do as you say when you get to a high enough level. Or, try to. It's not working on Therese, though. Just go to the sewer, you big baby!

This aspect is only further illuminated when you play Malkavian, where all of your dialogue is adjusted to match the fact that they're legitimately insane, and characters will respond appropriately, struggling to understand what you said or why you talk like that. Even better, Malkavians have Dementate, and this means they can temporarily distort someone else's perception of. Everything. And get them to do stuff using it. Samantha about to threaten the Masquerade? Trick her into thinking you're just her lost pet turtle! It'll be fine! Vandal banned you from his cringe fail blood store? Just give him the gigglies, he'll let you back in, faster than you can say "Crazy to Crazy communication"! If all of that wasn't insane enough, the Malkavian's dialogue options are notoriously hard to read for most people, meaning it's easy to accidentally offend the fuck out of people or just talk yourself into a whole mess. To be honest, this is just how trying to write feels for me.

Oh, by the way, the game is coated in pure, unfiltered 90s to early 2000s goth, from the way major NPCs dress to how there's a goth club in all the cities you can visit, to the soundtrack, to the fact that real goth album covers are in the game. Gotta say, nothing quite like stumbling across a bunch of Collide's Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange ccovers out in the middle of Downtown! I mean, for Cain's sake, the ending theme is Lacuna Coil's Swamped, from their album Comalies! Which is also in your bedroom! You have a copy of Comalies in your room! No mods or customization required for that to happen! (Take that, Animal Crossing! ...Which has done nothing wrong to me besides Bunny Day...)

Now, if you haven't played this game before but you wanna join the darkness, beware the many glitches and the fact that it was made in 2004 and go try it! If you have already played this before and you feel it beckoning to you, go reinstall it! It's good!

* This is only how Ventrue work in Bloodlines. In the TTRPG proper, you choose a more specific type of person to feed on that they drink from exclusively. Meaning if you play Ventrue at the table, you could be drinking only women, or only men, or only blondes or what have you.

My History With VtMB

Pearl played it years ago and fell in love with the game for..Well. The everything, and eventually, she convinced me to play it. And I did and instantly fell in love with it in 2022 for the absolutely bonkers yet fleshed out characters, the focus on social navigation as opposed to just smacking things until it fell down, the worldbuilding it inherits from the source material, and of course, the epic dancing.

Beautiful.

When I played it, my mind was blown. As a goth who grew up in the 2000s and loved supernatural shit, it felt like the game was personally made for me! It was dark, brooding but then also absolutely hilarious and self-aware without subtracting what was happening. You enter The Asylum, a goth club, and are instantly greeted with a cute goth girl with big boobies, while the other patrons aren't mocked or anything. At worst, they're just another person to feed off of (mmm Blood Dolls) with silly dialogue as you bump into them. But everyone has silly noises when you bump into them, where they think out loud. It is genuinely fun to talk your way in and out of situations, whether it be feeling slick as you avoid violent confrontations or going full asshole mode just to see what happens. It's also one of the most immersive video games I haev ever played. I really did feel like I was in a World of Darkness TM, circa 2004! The music, the decaying streets juxtaposed with gothic architecture, where do I start?

Also the game literally blasts gothy music at you, come on!

I still remember when I first beat the game; I adored it up to this point. I was on the run from the Camarilla, and settled into the Anarchs, who all had my back. Nines had my back and we both had just survived fucking Werewolf attacks, Jack had my back, Damsel had my back, and so did Skelter. I knew LaCroix was a piece of shit, but calling a Bloodhunt on me? Jerk! Killed the shit out of Ming-Xiao (it was really hard), I make my way through the Venture Tower as I slaughter through the brat's guards, and finally, I, through the magic of CHEAT CONSOLE TM, I slay Sheriff's fucked up bat form. I march up to LaCroix, telling him I'M SICK! OF HIS SHIT! And stab him. Initially, I was confused why I didn't take the Sarcophagus from him...Then, I see him open it and it blows him up. I'm back over to Jack, watching that damn tower burn as the credits roll. Whew...Wished the game didn't end, holy shit! But it did, and it literally goes out in a bang!

Right as I beat this game, that fateful day in 2022, I suddenly received a can of LaCroix at my doorstep along with my groceries. I had no memory of ordering LaCroix. Either my dad did and this was an insane coincidence, or I am currently in a creepypasta.

Then, I looked into the TTRPG VtMB was adapted from, and after a few trips to the White Wolf Wiki and getting a copy of V5, I realized I'm not here just for VtMB. I'm here for the entire World of Darkness. And Chronicles. And I guess the new one? it gets confusing. For real, this thing comes with a whole world where every supernatural is this over the top antihero in a dark gritty world that they have to fight through and also the world is apparently ending?? Broooooo WHAT!? AND THERE'S WEREWOLVES? AND CHANGELING FAE CREATURES? DEMONS!? LEMME IN!

So now I own V5's Rulebook and would like to purchase the Classic World of Darkness books to have at my hand, forever! I used to roleplay actively online! I didn't do any specific TTRPG systems, it was all freehand Pokemon RPs, but man, I miss roleplaying! ...Only problem is, no one I know wants to RP with me. And I've had so many shitty experiences I refuse to do anything with strangers. Uh...I play the game in my head? ????? I'm smart.

This game may be a bit on the jank side with the glitches, and the World of Darkness is definitely a clusterfuck, but both have brought me a lot of joy! And honestly, unless it's getting offensive, its damn fun. Video game's fun, the TTRPG is full of batshit lore and is dripping with the cheesiest of 90s edge, and my god I need to go out and try to make friends more. Or just buy that damn solo campaign supplement already.

The only bad thing this game has done to me is it gave me the worst blorbo I've ever had...More on him in a bit!

Favorite Things

☥ Favorite Clan

Malkavian! While I initially started with Gangrel, Malkavian is objectively the best. Easy as fuck to make into a broken killing machine and have unique, appropriately mad dialogue. All of the clans allow you to roleplay to some extent and get yourself in, but the Malkavian PC in VtMB actually feels like their own character. They're just a quirky crazy fish Malk!! And this is on top of the clan being genuinely interesting, both in the game (the Voerman sisters, Grout, the one ghoul I shall not name), and in the TTRPG itself. All of the initial seven clans in VtM are great, but none feel as fully realized as an individual character as the Malkavian in VtMB, though Nosferatu ain't far behind, what with how everyone is grossed out and scared of them lol.

☥ Sect of Choice

Anarchs, baby! I mean come on, they're all edgy punky people whose residence blasts Lecher Bitch, of course I picked them straight away! And I love Jack, Nines and Damsel! They're my friends!!

☥ Favorite Characters

Piss Baby Of The Year, Sebastian LaCroix. He is just way, way too much in one man. He's whiny, he's annoying, he's hilarious, he's just a total drama queen to where you just wanna watch what he does next. I love him! I want to call him a cracker and throw him across the room, I want to take his lunch money and give him a wedgie, I want to grab him by the scruff of his neck like a cat. I want him to come back somehow despite being literally blown up.

Best Girlies The Voerman sisters, oh my fucking god. I don't have DID, but a close friend of mine does and we both agreed they matched surprisingly close to the real deal. Therese is a bitch but she is genuinely sympathetic and it becomes very, very clear that her fixation on "cleanliness" and being chaste is born out of trauma, while Jeanette is an out and out maniac horny girl who...Also does it as a response to the trauma she's been through. In a way, they represent the mental sparring you get in when you have sexual trauma, especially if it occurred at a younger age, feeling simultaneously filthy, tainted, dirty but now you have all these urges you can't shake off, these images that just keep activating you. Their questlines also act as a gateway to what makes the game amazing. More on that in a bit.

The One Who Definitely Would Enjoy Headpats, Beckett is a sassy little shit. He is probably the only sane man in this entire mess and he wears a trenchcoat. And turns into a wolf. And he's up to some crazy shit in the TTRPG lore proper and even banged Dracula!? ICON!!

The Smiley Boy, Smiling Jack! Or, just Jack as he's called in the game proper. This man is a goddamn riot, he's fucking voiced by John DiMaggio, he guides you in the tutorial and though he's a Brujah who will beat ass, he'll letcha into his business, even if there's , he's my man! He literally sets up all the fuss about the Ankharan Sarcophagus just to fuck with all the Elders and even put a damn bomb in it. This man is a goddamn ICON, and him and Nines saving me was the reason I picked the Anarchs on the first playthrough, without hesitation.

Number noine, Nines Rodgriguez has to be mentioned here because bro literally saved my ass twice!! Am I really gonna go NUH-UH YOU AIN'T MY FRIEND at him??

The Angriest One, Damsel!! She's so fucking angy I love her! She is full of sheer, unfiltered rage and hates Cammies much like I would if I was in this universe, she's genuinely amusing and endearing. Also she HUNTS NAZIS FOR BLOOD!! ICONIC!! I. CON!!

The Best Ghoulie, All the Ghouls, save for Patty, are good boys (and girl in the case of Heather) who have brought me nothing but joy. Mercurio's a real one, he's helped me so much after I healed him up and kissed his booboo better with morphine, he gives you cool shit at the end of the game if you're not a snitch, and he talks like a Mafioso wiseguy.

Knox starts out as endearingly hyper about how awesome Vampires are, just gushing at you and telling you what Ghouls are...And turns out, he's a loooooot smarter than he seems, outright deceiving you if your Inspection's lower than three. I wish we got to see more of him, but what we got, I love his happy yet sneaky lil ass, and he's cute!!

And who could forget Heather, your sweet little Ghoul girl you can rescue and toooooootally not just take money from her. You can feed on her and she'll also give you some nice prey for you...:3 You can also get her to play dress up for you, so, uh, thank you for the eye candy? The real fun, however, is if you're a Malkavian and you Ghoul her, where she'll just go fucking bonkers instantly. Yes girlie we love a nutjob!! Only problem, I wish we had more options to dote on and spoiler her like let me give her gifts! Let me hug or kiss her, it feels a bit too one-sided even if yes I know Ghouling's inherently not good.

Wait, am I forgetting someone? I feel like I am...Hmmmmmmmmmmm....

The Worst Ghoulie...We don't talk about him.

Now, some humans, rapid-fire! First we got Fat Larry who's...Fat Larry, I do not need to elaborate. Then we have Venus Dare, my cute goth gf who gives me money and I go protect her in return. Honestly, her nightclub is so gothic I legit forget it's not Elysium (though she was apparently planned to be a Ghoul initially). And now I'm just gonna shout out Slater for selling guns at a convenience store. I really love the gas station tweaker accessiblity, and he will let you in even if he thinks you're the Southland Slasher. Sure, he's banned from Vesuvius, but if he trusts me this easily, I trust him.

☥ Favorite Quests

The Ghost Haunts at Midnight / Slashterpiece / Bad Blood / Sibling Rivalry

AKA, the Therese and Jeanette quests. I love them in part because of these quests, as they are an amazing introduction to VtMB's world. In a sense, they're when the gloves are off. You're not just dealing with dumb thugs or some random killer guy, you're dealing with an extremely unwell Malkavian DID system that is actively yanking you left, right and center, having Jyhad with themselves First off, the Ocean House Hotel made me shat my pants the first time I played it, so thanks, Therese. Second, at the end of all the chaos, you're forced to make a brutal decision, perfectly establishing the tone of this game: unless you played your cards right, you will have to basically sacrifice an alter. If you don't have "Tourette", you have the remaining sister standing in front of you, sad the other's gone. And you don't feel like you made the right decision, at all. There is no going back either, you can't "revive" her. She's gone. Forever.

This perfectly encapsulates the themes of this game: you have no one to guide you beyond the tutorial, you're forced to make terrifying, hard decisions, and you'll have to hurt someone in order to get by, no matter how much you don't want to. I did not want Therese to die. I did not want Jeanette to die. Fucking OW.

Calling Dr. Grout

This one has to be put in, just for the sheer clusterfuck of a mansion you're in, trying to survive attacks from raving mad Ghouls as you listen to recorded messages from Grout monologuing how much he misses insane asylums...Yeah. The entire location is just, well, insane, and he's a good demonstration of a Malkavian who isn't mad in the "hot mess" or the "crazy" way as much as this cold, calculating yet sadistic type of mad. I mean fuck...He ain't even alive and he still gave me the heebie-jeebies! Shame he's dead, but the mansion itself is just. Oh my god.

Dead Ex / Snuff Is Enough / Going The Way of Kings

These sets of quests are a goddamn doozy. Isaac wants a VHS tape. Alright, lemme go grab it from a fucking crypt, yanno, the most normal place ever. Give it to him, and it turns out, not only is it a snuff film, it's incomplete(the horror!) On the hunt for the second one, you get the password for the payphone guy, go to the Luckee Star motel, and soon enough, you got a key card that leads straight into the back of the Ground 0 Cafe. Goin' into the internet gamer cafe with cool ass music in the plus patch and...Oh. Oh no. OH NO. Before you know it, you descend down the stairs and stumble across Death Mask Productions studio, full of these horrible fucking Geodude but awful monsters who destroy my speakers as they attack you! Wade through this mess and you'll find out DMP didn't even make the film. They just stole it. Fuck.

Now, you got the second half of the tape, turns out, Isaac recognizes the house and the creatures; turns out ,the little shits are terrorizing Nosferatu. You go to the house on 609 King's Way, and at first, it's looking really normal aaaaaaaaaand then on the inside, it's made of flesh EWWWWW! Just this awful, disgusting flesh house! And oh fuck, there's Andrei and you gotta go whoop his ass before he runs away! Only problem with this quest is it makes you go into the Nosferatu Warrens after. *Shudders* Worth it tho, I've always been fascinated by snuff film legends and goddammit, it sent me to a flesh house. Amazing.

☥ Favorite Disciplines

Dementate, Thaumaturgy, and Protean. Dementate for how absolutely broken it is in its power and for its themes of literally spreading your crazy to other people, Thaumaturgy for its whole making people explode thing, and Protean for GRRRR I TRANSFORM I AM MONSTER!!

☥ Favorite Songs

Threeway tie between Lecher Bitch by Genitorturers, Bloodlines by Ministry and Swamped by Lacuna Coil. Though honestly, all of the songs are fire!

☥ Favorite Locations

The Asylum and Confession. They are peak goth club vibes! And you can dance in them!! :D

Memories

Or, Crazy Shit That Happened In My Playthrough

• I fed on a homeless guy in a dark alley and I got stuck behind him, to where I had to kill him to get out.


• After Vandal banned me from his cringe fail ghoul blood store, I was like "FINE, FUCK YOU, I DON'T NEED YOUR ASS! I can hunt my OWN blood!"
  Right after, I did Slashterpiece and immediately got beat up by the Blood Guardian because my Blood Pool got low.


• Crouched on the chairs in the Smoke Shop and got stuck bouncing between chairs and the table for all eternity.


• Had sex with Jeanette.


• Got stuck in Tripp's Pawnshop door.


• When I first played the game, I thought Frenzies and Humanity Losses were a lot more serious and legit than they actually were so when I was low on blood, I would hop right into the sewers and feed on whatever rats I could find because I was scared I'd kill someone.


• Used cheats for the first time (besides noclip) during the Gone Fishin' quest when I played for the first time bc I kept running out of blood and didn't wanna Frenzy and eat Yukie.


• Second playthrough, during the Wherefore Art Thou, Mercurio? mission, I sold Morphine to Vandal and had a panic attack cuz I couldn't buy it back from him, only to realize I had like, two extra bottles in my inventory.


• Jumped into a barrel on fire to see if it burned me. It did.


• Also one time I couldn't figure out how to get out of the part of the Warrens where you fight the monster lady and then I thought I just needed to grab a key attached to one of the electric box things. I crouched and mashed buttons trying to figure out how to grab it and then realized my PC (this time, male Gangrel) was hot and I got turned on.


• Jumped on LaCroix's head and then jumped on Sheriff, knocking him down. That one was taught to me by Pearl.


• Got banned from Vesuvius because I killed a guy that turned out to be Velvet's buddy? Boytoy?


• Got blown the fuck up.


• I just remembered this! On the second playthrough as Malkavian, when I killed the guard LaCroix was dominating, the game started playing, I shit you not, the All Your Base Are Belong To Us meme song! Turns out, this song's in the Unofficial Plus Patch and I guess I activated it!

RIP

Sebastian "MY FATHER WILL SUE!" LaCroix

Rest in piss, beverage. You were the funniest clown, but you had it coming (French).

Other Things That Died

• Beachhouse Thugs (NO ONE TOUCHES MERCURIO)
• Gimble
• Crab Nipple Man
• Vandal (RODENT)
• Thin-Blood Guy (tricked him...twice...It was funny!)
• A few cops (ACAB)
• Patty (GET FUCKED LOL)
• Thug guys in Downtwon (DON'T YOU TOUCH MY GOTH GF)
• Brother Kanker (made him bathe)
• Jezebel (begone thot)
• Bishop Vick (Couldn't Celerity your way outta this one, bozo)
• Samantha (NOTHIN PERSONAL JUST GOTTA UPHOLD THE MASQUERADE)
• Julius (sad man)
• Ash (Too emo to live)
• The Hash Slinging Southland Slasher
• Racist Stereotype Thugs
• Heather (RIP girlfriend)
• Andrei and his Squidward lookin ass head
• Beckett's brain cells (Him watching me go along with LaCroix)
• Werewolf (squished 2 death)
• Guys with flaming crossbows (Ming-Xiao what the fuck)
• Ming-Xiao (LaCroix's GF)
• Ming-Xiao's little babies (fuck them kids)
• Magilla Gorilla
• Ankaran Sarcophagus (it went kablooie)
• LaCroix again (he went boomboom)
• My brain
• My freetime
• My taste in men (Thanks Vandal)
• My right hand on numerous occasions (will not disclose why)
• Me (Then I went boomboom)

In Memoriam, Just In Case

One time me and Pearl were talking about VtMB and specifically what the sequel might entail and she said, out loud, on a call with me, that she hopes they don't kill off Fat Larry. She went as far to say that if they killed Fat Larry off, she'd "rip someone's fucking head off". So just in case anything bad happens to him, I have made this.

Headcanons

Cuthbert Beckett

• Not a headcanon but a reminder: in his wolf form, he is mentally the exact same as normal. When he howls, he is choosing to howl. Awoo!


• He absolutely could've opened the Ankaran Sarcophagus all by himself with brute force, but he decided not to cuz he thought it'd be funny to watch LaCroix try to feebly push it open. And then make you run down to grab a key.


• Feeds his ghoul, Cesare, gallons of caffeine everyday. Just in case he needs to go somewhere, duh! In general, has a bad habit of feeding ghouls insane amounts of caffeine, to where he sees it as pseudo-ghouling them. "It's more ethical", he insists.


• With sunglasses on, his eyes are protected from sunlight. Which is usually really bad, because the rest of him isn't. "How bad could this-" waking up in the middle of the day, looking out the window...And suddenly catching on fire.


• Apparently in the canon he has actually pretended to be a Malkavian so my headcanon is that he tried to do it once as a young vampire, felt ridiculously embarrassed and vowed to never do it again. His dark secret only elder vampires know (and haunt him with). Even now some vampires aren't sure if he's actually Gangrel until he uses Protean in front of them.


• Path of Humanity follower, albeit distant and more focused on "Why would I harm random people for no reason" than "I wuv humans". Most of his kindness goes to his Kindred friends. With his friends, he's a lot more cuddly and his typical snark is more playful teasing than out and out "oh goodness what is it this time".


• As a Kindred scholar, he absolutely wants to learn everything about vampirism and exactly all of its mechanics...But also, if there is a cure, does it take away his wolf form? Please? Please let me keep the wolf form.


• With Protean he can definitely form a uh...Well...Let's just say you won't need Bad Dragon if he's in your pants. ;)


• Has tried to infiltrate Werewolf meetings, of varying success. Sometimes he succeeds and he gets intel on any planned attacks they're gonna do. Sometimes he gets thrown out Super Mario 64 style by the tail (accidentally said he didn't get the problem with humans. Turned out, it was a Red Talons meeting).

Sebastian LaCroix

• Hates that no one pronounces his name correctly and will correct you in an instant. It's pronounced "la-kwa" thank you very much!


• Like the player Ventrue, he can only feed on wealthy people, and will projectile vomit if he tastes blood that isn't from a yuppie!


• 5'03" ft, manlet as you'd expect. "It's average height for a man of my time!"


• Has a secret, long-standing vendetta against the National Beverage Corp (the company that makes the drink LaCroix) because they have besmirched his name! Every night, ever since that drink came out, it's always been "HAHA LACROIX DRINK MAN HAHA" and quite frankly, if it weren't for being blown up at the end of the game, he'd probably have planned to destroy the CEO as revenge.


• Learned English in London, hence his British accent despite being French. So on top of the normal French jokes, you can now pelt him with British jokes!!


• LaCroix insists that he is above carnal desires, but he is this thing called a "liar". Absolutely horny in private, female-leaning bisexual who has every sex worker on speed dial. Jeanette pegging him was not a one time thing.


• Has definitely banged Mercurio at least once. Very messy relationship, you don't even wanna know how they're going.


• Very close with Sheriff, treating him like a personal teddybear who he cries to whenever he's upset.


• Forgets Chunk exists until its convenient to get him to do something for him, or until he's in the way.

Therese and Jeanette

• Therese and Jeanette as alters are...Complicated. Initially, Therese was the sole personality, with Jeanette having been an actual sister. Sadly, the sister passed away long ago, while Therese was rather young, and so an alter formed modeled off of her. Therese and Jeanette weren't the sole alters, but they were the most consistent ones as the others came and went, and the only ones they felt safe around. When Therese was institutionalized, Jeanette was repressed heavily and went dormant, while fragments ran around trying to mask as "healthy" in hopes of being freed. The day never came, but she was embraced by a Malkavian who snuck in and then escaped with him. With the Malkavian blood, she could no longer repress Jeanette and she became far more dominant as an alter, leading to their relationship growing strained as Jeanette became fiercely independent.


• On top of DID and PTSD, Therese has OCD, specifically contamination OCD. If she feels she touched something "filthy", she can spiral into constant handwashing or bathing. On top of that, she tends to avoid physical contact, especially if she doesn't know you very well. Triggers can be her own bathroom if other people have used it (thanks Jeanette) to dust to having to shake hands with Nosferatu.


• Jeanette suffers from RSD and genuinely doesn't cope with being disliked after a certain point, but even worse than being disliked is being ignored. Many, many tears have been shed because people didn't notice her cute sexy outfit at the latest outing. Literally me! (RSD sufferer please help)


• 5'05", stands at 5'07" ft with her heels.


• Both girls have a nasty habit of throwing things when they're upset (especially Ghouls if Therese is at front). Therese is more a sharp, angry thrower who tends to aim specifically at people's heads while Jeanette more throws things on the floor and cries doing it.


• Therese is terrified of cockroaches, but Jeanette isn't. So the latter likes to lay down fake rubber bugs on the floor, knowing Therese is going to fly up into the sky like the cats with cucumbers. It's NOT FUNNY, JEANETTE!!


• Therese is absolutely awful to all of her Ghouls, though Vandal naturally gets the worst of it as the smelly one with 97 mental illnesses who's banned from most public spaces. Therese is a bad boss who regularly pickpockets from anyone who works for her, yells at them and will send out Navy Seal copypasta-tier texts and emails if you make even one mistake.
  
  Jeanette is less outwardly aggressive, but you thought she was a guilt-tripper before, wait until you're her Ghoul! Now, combine that with the shit she does to her Ghouls in V5 and you'll realize how lucky you are to have to deal with her as a Vampire.


• Post-Tourette, Therese and Jeanette are nicer to each other, they're more just arguing about insanely petty shit, like who'd win in a fight, or "Why can't I shove a cactus up us but then you can go ahead and wash MY hand sixty times!?"


• Commits tax fraud.

Vandal Cleaver

• His name is actually, legally Vandal Cleaver. He manually got it changed on the first day he was officially Ghouled, thinking he was a Vampire and therefore needed a cool name. By the time all his documents updated, he had long learned he was just a Ghoul the hard way. Call him by his birth name and he will actually try to kill you.


• Mixed race Hispanic, fluent in Spanish and regularly swears in it. Once called Therese a bitch in it, unaware she had taken Spanish lessons for years prior...Uh oh!


• Has a ton of nicknames from Therese, such as "rat", "roach", "rodent" and "smelly fuck". When she actually calls him by his name, he's in trouble. Jeanette tends to call him typical flirty names like "duckling", "puppyboy", "boytoy", but one time she got really mad at him and called him a "scum-sucking road whore".


• 5'6", short, fucking hates it and will probably consider you an enemy for life if you make fun of his height enough.


• Haaaaaaaates Therese...Until she walks in the room. Then, the Ghouling's power fully activates, and suddenly, he's head over heels for her, in complete and utter simp mode. His feelings in general are a clusterfuck of bitter anger that she's locked him into this mess, sexual frustration, entitlement and yet, this sudden lovesickness that takes over his brain. Add in all the psycholgical problems he had prior, mix in the ones the Malkavian blood gives him and oh god no.


• However, the few times he's not smitten around her, he is the mouthiest, brattiest little asshole who ignores her randomly and calls her a whore, bitch, cunt, you name it. Which, uh, not a good idea when Therese is a Sixth Generation Vampire armed with seventeen types of Demenate.


• Suffers from psychotic episodes, brought on by Ghouling he did not have prior, losing contact with reality just for a moment and feeling like everything is tainted, watching him. During these episodes he has straight up inhuman levels of homicidal rage, as well as tons of paranoia. This is also why he's a tetchy, irritable guy; you try having psychosis on top of having things hurled at your head.


• In addition, he has episodes of erotomania and is convinced Therese secretly wants to fuck him but is playing hard to get, or that he just needs to prove himself to her and soon he will finally get to fuck that Therussy, depending on the episode. He's not always like this, but when he is, it gets ugly. Err, uglier.


• Misogynist, to absolutely no one's surprise, considering women "vapid whores" and has a loooooot of mommy issues where each time you talk to him about it, the backstory gets longer. He's quick to call women "bitches", "sluts", etc. and more concerningly, his favorite victim to drain are young women...Though he'll drain anyone, really. But when he has the chance, run. And this is why he's picked on the absolute most by Therese!


• While he's got hard feelings on just about every Vampire, if there's a clan he particularly hates, it's the Ventrue, solely because they make his job a million times more difficult. He now has to mark blood bags with gender, age, hair color, skin color, body weight, drug usage and god knows what else. And even then he regularly gets Neonate Ventrues barfing right in his face because whoops, he wanted diet blood instead! Tried to ban Ventrues from his shop but Therese won't let him.


• Constantly chugs coffee and energy drinks, as a result of constantly being busy with his stupid job. In addition to a caffeine problem, Vandal also likes to steal from the medicine cabinets and drink cough syrup, especially when he's feeling on edge or bored.

The (Former) Worst Blorbo

Update: Vandal is no longer worst blorbo! Not cuz he got better, he just...uh...Well...The competition for "worst man" has just stiffened by a ton. So he's still a weird, creepy goblin...But...He ain't a certain someone.

VtMB is a game full of colorful characters, from the cool yet surprisingly caring Nines to the infamous tantrum-throwing LaCroix, and this applies to everyone. Major characters are quite fleshed out, but even side characters without a lot going on are often still implied to have lives outside of your antics. As in, you feel like if you left the scene, they'd still be around doing whatever it was before your stupid Magic Missile-casting ass busted in. There's also implied character interactions through emails and things such as journals. For fuck's sake, Andrei will show up as a guest on Deb of the Night!

So, naturally my brain picked the smelly incel who jerks it to Rotten dot com.

He's getting his own section the reason SCPs get locked up: containment, except for the site's safety, not humanity's.

If you don't remember (or are actively blocking out memories of him), he's one of the many vendors of VtMB. Unlike the other vendors, however, Vandal doesn't sell you weapons or armor. Instead, his inventory is very limited, and quite specific: blood bags. That's it. Well, there's different varieties, but in practice, it's bags of blood for you to replenish your Blood Pool. That's not what makes him interesting, not on his own at least. Sure, it's useful technically (and I will admit, I probably noticed him way more because of my tendency to hoard health and mana healing items in RPGs), but you could very easily just get gud at feeding without getting caught, for free, instead of buying his overpriced juice bags.

So, what separates him from the other vendors? Especially when he's far less useful than all the others. Well, it's not about what he sells, it's about the man himself that interests me. All of the vendors are eccentric and sure as fuck shady but this guy?

This motherfucker is a creepy ass serial killer who is just absolutely rife with the most horrific implications you could ever expect, being a nurse who is super happy to tell you how much he loves killing and peeling a guy's face off. He isn't just taking whatever blood gets into their blood bank system and handing it off to you (which, would be ghastly in its own right), no, he is getting it fresh for you. Free Lily, he'll ban you from his store and only let you back in if you give him a new victim. You check Arthur's PC and find out he's got a prior conviction for stalking a woman and planning on doing something really bad to her. You open up a journal from a now deceased sex worker and you see his name in it. He wants her to bring pliers and a blowtorch.

Even his voice, done by James Arnold Taylor, is shaky, eerie, yet oh so quiet as he shifts between unbridled, literal bloodlust and barely restrained seething. His design isn't exactly comforting either; he's just a dude, but he looks like he hasn't slept...Ever, his hair is visibly greasy-looking, and the fact that he has a habit of grinning while telling you how much he loves blood isn't helping.

Also not helping my erection.

On top of that he's sexually frustrated and is clearly mad that 1. Therese won't fuck him (gee I wonder why), and 2. He's a sad pathetic cringe fail Ghoul instead of an awesome cool Vampire with awesome cool Vampire powers to kill people. Despite being insanely creepy (and insane in general), Vandal isn't any kinda main bad guy, he's not even a threat to the player. If he ever mouths off at you, you can easily threaten him and he'll backpedal so fast you'll wonder if he's got Celerity. Meaning he's a dumb little coward who can't pick on anyone who can actually stop him, and come on. He's such an obvious tweaker that in a fucked up way, he bounces right back to silly. There are men who are absolutely fucked up and evil and want to harm people (especially women), and yes, there are nurses who do not care about their patients. But if you see this guy, you know what you're in for, and it's bad news. At times, I do forget that he's an actual murderer, kidnapper and stalker and not just Therese's pet incel she keeps in a Nintendo Shit Cube.

He is among the most wretched, vile charaters in a game where you stumble across all sorts of nasty shit, and that's why I love him. He is just way too much put into one dinky, entirely optional NPC, he's genuinely freaky and every implication around him is horrific. And just a bit closer to home. You're probably never going to encounter anyone like Andrei IRL, but we've all met weird incelly guys. But then, he's so over the top in a way, whilst also being pathetic and harmless to the player that, at least to me, makes him more fun to look at and watch rather than too close to reality. Just unsettling enough for a fun NPC to be spooked by, but not enough to overshadow some of the main, actual threats; you're a Vampire who's gonna have to deal with many, many other Vampires, a ghost, a Werewolf and god knows what else, are you telling me you're afraid of some smelly human with a blood fetish? I simultaneously want to stare at him, wondering what fucked up shit he'll do next, and throw him against the wall and then throw him to Therese.

Elephant in the room, yes, I do want to fuck him. I cannot resist Men With Knvives And Longish Hair TM, and it's been that way since I was 12, and boy's so desperate he might do it with meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I CAN MAKE HIM WORSE! And then I will throw him back to Therese who will hit him with a broom and it will be really funny lol.

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