After the Masquarade

[hyzmarca]

The basic idea is simple. It's the year 2016. Cell phone have cameras in them. Everyone has one. Quadrotor drones piloted by assholes cut through the skies, filming your fenced backyards in the off chance that an attractive woman sunbathes topless.

And worse of all, the fledgings today have no respect for the Traditions of their sires and grandsires. All they care about are their Youbooks, Facetubes, and Twatters. Youth today is just worse than the youth of previous ages. Everything is getting worse. It's truly the end of nights.

And was a matter of time before something happened. A lot of somethings did.

It wasn't any one thing that broke the dam. The masquerade was full of tiny cracks, haphazardly speckled over by its enforcers. At the end of the day, it was all just too much.


Government announced that vampires were real, and that the public shouldn't panic, they had everything under control.

Scientists announced that vampires were real and obviously supernatural and it was awesome because fucking magic. This overturned everything they knew about the laws of nature and they're going to science it as hard as they can while still remaining within ethical bounds.

News programs put up bounties for interviews with vampires. Some jumped at the chance to get rich, some just wanted to tell their stories.

The Masquarade is gone, shattered.

It's been a week.

Everyone, Kindred and Kine is still adjusting. There is no new status quo yet. Just a lot of worry, a lot of tension, a lot of excitement. Speculation of rampant. There's rhetoric about open conquest flying about in the Camarilla and the Sabbat alike. Cooler heads say that this is stupid. A few loudmouth Kine are screaming about exterminating the predators hidden in their midst. Others talk of understanding and openness.


No one expected this, even though they should have. No one has a plan. And you have choices to make. How are you going to survive this? Who are you going to throw in with. Will you seek wealth and fame as a vampire rock star, and hope the public doesn't turn against your kind? Will you sulk in the shadows, as vampires are wont to do?
Will you lead the charge to put the kine in their place, once and for all? Are will you take the more measured, peaceful approach of careful image management and spin-doctoring?

[Scrivener]

Isn't this the basic outline of true blood?

[koz]

Isn't this the basic outline of true blood?

Basically this. Also Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (except in a different way).

[souran]

The problem with the "everybody knows about the supernatural" is that it's boring. Without the mystery and secrecy vampires are really just a weird ass disease.

This is why True blood ended up just being a really stupid version of Buffy. Quite frankly like the majority of predictors the power of the various supernatural beings comes from surprise and ability to overpower isolated individuals. The various conspiracys of wod can't all be true simultaneously. So unless vampires already controlled the governments of most of the world (and therefore have no need to reveal) humans could wipe out most supernaturals in a few months.

[Mechalich]

The problem with the "everybody knows about the supernatural" is that it's boring. Without the mystery and secrecy vampires are really just a weird ass disease.

A weird ass disease that also provides superpowers, but yes.

Of course, the Vampires of WoD are explicitly supernatural and tied in to a single specific supernatural explanation derived from a twisted interpretation of Genesis, and yet at the same time the Kuei-Jin also exist and are tied to a very different supernatural explanation that directly contradicts the Genesis one.

The WoD squared this circle by implicitly saying that MtA consensual reality ultimately trumps all the other games and none of the Vampire myths are actually meaningful in the end anyway (which all the VtM fans mostly ignored).

As much as the WoD tried to pretend the various games were separate, the Metaplot explicitly crossed game lines at various points and so we can't talk about the fall of the Masquerade without talking about the Technocracy, at which point it stops being a VtM-based discussion at all and becomes a MtA discussion because ultimately the Technocracy outvotes everyone else.

[Korwin]

Well, but this isn't really an VtM WoD discussion?

[Username17]

Basically, in a post-Masquerade world, you have several places it can go. It depends massively on what kind of vampires you have, who does the press conference where the Masquerade is officially toast, and how politically savvy and connected your vampires were before the Masquerade is scrapped.

If your vampires are few in number and kill people frequently, then the masquerade probably gets taken out by hunters who finally demonstrate proof that Vampires Are Real. Then we get a brutal war that looks like Sentinels vs. X-Men if your sympathies are with the vampires, and Aliens if they aren't.

If your vampires don't kill people and live forever and just are generally awesome, then pretty much no matter who takes the Masquerade apart you are very rapidly going to be living in Day Breakers. Mortality is the disease, vampirism is the cure, society goes nocturnal and vegetables are grown only to feed to livestock and children.

If your vampires come out of the closet themselves you are probably looking at True Blood or Ultra Violet.

-Username17

[maglag]

If your vampires don't kill people and live forever and just are generally awesome, then pretty much no matter who takes the Masquerade apart you are very rapidly going to be living in Day Breakers. Mortality is the disease, vampirism is the cure, society goes nocturnal and vegetables are grown only to feed to livestock and children.

I could see some other scenarios in that.

"You can only become a vampire if you belong to the elite." Humans are greedy assholes. Even if vampirism is 100% problem free besides "burn under the sun" and nobody has problems with it, I could see a world where you can still only gain it if you're somebody important enough for other vampire to consider biting you. There's lotteries and queue up lines and certain companies attract workers by saying "we'll turn you into a vampire for free" as part of their slogan.

Plus society cannot all go noctural, you need some people that can work during daytime, so certain jobs may specifically ask for non-vampires, probably offering bigger wages (and then you still turn a vampire after saving up for some time).

This is, can vampire women still get pregnant? If not, a woman that wants children needs to live a bunch of years as a mortal adult for that.

Then also "mortal hippies", where a part of the population refuses to become vampires simply because they don't trust the whole thing. Some people will always hate vampires, probably forming terrorist cells and whatnot.

[Mechalich]

The available scenarios also depend on the specifics of the vampirism you end up with. If the Vampires can feed on animals just fine or some kind of synthetic blood then they are way more appealing than if they absolutely must feed on humans and the Day Breakers scenario is incredibly likely - especially given that in the 21st century farming is so automated that it's pretty freaking easy to handle everything nocturnally.

Likewise what superheros the vampires possess, specifically matters a lot, especially if there are no other supernaturals. Depending on how much mind control you toss out you can create a situation where the Masquerade wasn't even necessary in the first place.

So there's a series of questions that has to be answered before you can even approach the post-masquerade world question:
1. How do your vampires work, exactly?
2. Why did they have to establish a Masquerade in the first place?
3. Who was responsible for the ultimate destruction of the Masquerade?

[OgreBattle]

Are the Republicans or Democrats going to accept Vampires first

[nockermensch]

Are the Republicans or Democrats going to accept Vampires first

Asking the real questions.

[Username17]

Are the Republicans or Democrats going to accept Vampires first

Depends on your vampires. If your vampires have been unable to live in the light and have been running around in the woods, burying themselves in dirt and not owning anything, then the Democrats will accept them first. If your vampires have been maintaining little plantations with human slaves and villainous wealth, then the Republicans will accept them first. And if your Masquerade ended 120 years ago, the opposite would be true.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

The problem with the "everybody knows about the supernatural" is that it's boring. Without the mystery and secrecy vampires are really just a weird ass disease.

I know you're about as sharp as a sack of sponges, but the mystery and secrecy of vampires has nothing to do with them physically being vampires. For fuck's sake, every culture has vampire myths and knows what a vampire is and does. The secrecy comes from the societal pressures that vampires have to overcome due to being vampires, and that's primarily the same shit a rich sociopath/serial killer/junkie/LGBT person/awkward teenager has to live with, depending on what your vampire allegory is.

Vampires having to be secretive is a White Wolf trope made out of world building laziness. The mystery of the vampire comes from fingering the motherfucker and/or discovering the trail of bodies. Or simply the mystery of the Other, which is cultural.

[Prak]

Are the Republicans or Democrats going to accept Vampires first

True story, there's a slight correlation between the party in power and whether vampires or zombies are more popular.

[name_here]

If your vampires need human blood but don't need to kill people in the process they'll probably wind up as a social elite that intermittently recruits on a limited basis. It comes with benefits and is not going to be generally accepted as a reason to form an angry mob with sunlamps and machine guns, but there will be some specific human-to-vampire ratio at which the vampires can be supported without needing to drain people enough that they start seriously objecting. Also odds are some of them will invest heavily into synthetic blood research and others will find some bullshit reason to object because they'll lose status if vampirism becomes universal.

Depending on your setting metaphysics feeding vampires on synthetic blood may not be even hypothetically possible, but of course freshly converted Nobel laureates won't know that for sure in advance.

2. Why did they have to establish a Masquerade in the first place?

Honestly I think V:tM and the Dresden Files have a good answer for the why. With modern technology basically every vampire is eminently killable; even in settings with vampires that could flip out on an entire armored division most of them are less hardcore. If they were public knowledge then government-backed hunters in platoon strength would be able to kick their asses. Depending on the precise nature of the vampires it might be basically guaranteed that their discovery would be swiftly followed by a Security Council resolution calling for their extermination, they might face broad but not universal opposition, or things might go quite well, but in any case a number of them are probably quite happy with not needing to worry about kill teams loaded for vampire.

3. Who was responsible for the ultimate destruction of the Masquerade?

A breakdown in whatever let them get away with it in the first place. Most likely computers in some fashion; if they rely on mind powers computers don't have minds, and if they rely on governmental help* governments have notorious difficulty with keeping things off the internet. I'd anticipate that the final break would come after it's clearly untenable when the vampires find their prettiest female from the past hundred years and have her put in an appearance on a major news program to try to make the best of things, though if they're more the "universally serial killers" type it'd probably come as a presidential press conference that ends with promising to hunt them down.

*The motives of the government in participating, assuming they aren't brainwashed, could vary widely. Immortality is always an excellent bribe, of course. They may also worry about witch hunts or popular opposition to their particular vampire policy. Or they may have classified vampire assets and keep them secret for the same reason they keep mundane secrets

[Ghremdal]

I think you would get major reactions from all over the world that would end up poorly for the vampires. Most would be killed, a few would hide and some would be in research labs.

A generation later you would probably have immortality cures based on Vampirism.

[OgreBattle]

In Blaster Knuckle, man-eating monsters use systematic racism and the KKK in 1850's America to eat Black people:

True story, there's a slight correlation between the party in power and whether vampires or zombies are more popular.

I imagine fear of foreigners = alien invasion

[hyzmarca]

I'm actually somewhat imagining a humans and progressive vampires vs oldskool vampires and their minions situation.


Really, VtM, ignoring the rest of of the World of Darkness, is good for this because of factionalism. Heck, the Camarilla could rightly point out that the Sabbat are mass-murdering monsters and that they're the nice and reasonable guys. The Sabbat could rightfully point out that the Camarilla controls the government and essentially runs everything as an unelected cabal.

Add in the war of ages, where young vamps are trying to get over on their elders, and you have ample justification for Sabbat vampires leading humans in revolutions against corrupt Camarilla-controlled governments, and with the Camarilla teaming up with the FBI to hunt down Sabbat packs.

And even within the sects, you'd have some vampires presenting themselves as the reasonable ones and using human forces to go after their enemies, who would generally be painted as assholes. And it probably wouldn't be hard for younger vampires to paint older vampires as assholes, because most of them are. Evidence of the seedier side of vampirism is going to come out, and it's always nice to have scapegoats you can set on fire.


So, rather than a simple human vs vampire race war, where all humans and all vampires are united against the other, you get a giant clusterfuck of factions, both revolutionary and reactionary.

[Leress]

I imagine fear of foreigners = alien invasion

That is pretty much the theme for the show Alien Nation except it was not an invasion but the crash landing of an alien slave ship and the slaves integrating into society.

[Occluded Sun]

Honestly I can't see why, having established a Masquerade, vampires would go through the trouble of letting it collapse.

Presumably they already control any human social organization with any power - even if the eldest would be slow to perceive new power structures, up-and-coming youths would be constantly seeking to gain influence themselves. So governments, the police, the media, etc., would all be headed by humans under the control of vampires.

They already call all the shots and are safe in their position as the power behind all thrones. What could possibly be gained by exposure?

I would go so far as to guess that the hardware behind such things as cameraphones is hardwired at the factory to malfunction if someone tries to take a photo that includes a vampire. And possibly sends a signal the next time the camera goes online.

[Tannhäuser]

I would go so far as to guess that the hardware behind such things as cameraphones is hardwired at the factory to malfunction if someone tries to take a photo that includes a vampire. And possibly sends a signal the next time the camera goes online.

Because that wouldn't be conspicuous. Like, at all.

[name_here]

That would require that camera phones be sophisticated enough to detect that the image would include a vampire. Which is not happening.

[hyzmarca]

Right, the reason that conspiracies don't work well in the real world is that the cover up is, itself, evidence. And the bigger the conspiracy, the more people have to be involved in the cover up, and the more potential leaks there are.

It's like the Flat Earth conspiracy theories. Well yes, it's hypothetically possible that every scientist, sailor, and airplane pilot ever is in on it. But it's highly unlikely that no one would have leaked the truth at some point.

[Occluded Sun]

Because that wouldn't be conspicuous. Like, at all.

To whom? I presume that anyone who repeatedly takes such a photograph, or begins making a fuss over a few instances, mysteriously vanishes. Or doesn't vanish and becomes the dominated slave of a vampire.

[Occluded Sun]

That would require that camera phones be sophisticated enough to detect that the image would include a vampire. Which is not happening.

Some versions of the modern mythology have vampires be somehow invisible on film. Others have them show up only as a blur. I don't see why the latter couldn't be detected.