Vampire: Bloodlines Retrospective

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a fun little write-up as the author recalls one of his experiences with Troika’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, (the spoiler-heavy) Heather and Me.

(Power Corrupts) has never been true. In my experience, Power Seduces. (Corrupt) implies it’s akin to sprinkling a little shit in an otherwise immaculate meal. The problem with power is that it just makes everything better. And when someone’s staring up at you, saying you’re the best person in the world and they’d do anything – anything – you ask, could you say no?

I thought I could. I was wrong.

I’ve been on adventures before, and I always lean towards the side of right. I tried to do that here too but since entering the World of Darkness, even best intentions twisted in my hand. Heather was the classic case. I found her, lying dying in the corner of a Santa Monica emergency ward. A college girl with market-bought Scarlet dyed hair and emo glasses, straight off an Oakland campus. Pity makes me choose to feed her a drop of my own Vampiric blood, gifting her a little of my own power enough to save her. She becomes what we call a Ghoul. Coming to, she asks me what happened. In a moment of madness, I tell her the truth. She screams, calling for the police and I make with the disappearing into the night thing my brethren and I do so well.

I forget about her. So when, much later, she turns up outside the LA Camarilla’s headquarters it’s a surprise. She’d been looking for me everywhere since that night. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about me. She just wants to be there for me, pay me back any way she can, whatever. I try and talk her out of it she really doesn’t know what she’s getting into, but she’s so insistent. I think (why not). I’ll treat her well and everything will be okay.