The Court of Ivory | Player Application

This is a game about Vampires grappling with a society at its breaking point after a devestating war. When Lodin, Chicago's ancient Prince, died in the later stages of the War of Chicago, the Primogen Council claimed control to prevent lesser factions from seizing the city. We will explore the peculiarities of an emboldened Primogen Council, centering the relationships Kindred have with their clanmates.

Themes

• Vampires are monsters in human skin, and there's no telling when the mask will break and the monster comes out. Political negotiations are tense and scary because every Kindred knows that everyone in the room could slaughter each other at any moment. How will you maintain your mask?
• Vampires are entropic; immortality is an unending slide towards decay. Bad things will happen and continue to happen. Someday, you will botch a feeding. You'll kill your niece. You'll break the Masquerade. And now, Gehenna is here. And yet, you survived a war. How will you continue to survive?
• Clan is the closest thing you have to family. Your Primogen has the potential to be your strongest advocate in the city... or the reason you become ash. Is your family your greatest ally or worst enemy? 
• Power is survival. Power is corrupting. Power is paradoxical, intoxicating. Power is stability, but power is unstable. How will you engage with power?

What You'll Do

You'll explore your character's relationship with their beast and their peers as the fabric of Chicago's Ivory Tower threatens to buckle under the weight of internal and external pressures. You'll play up to six sessions of LARP, in addition to written downtime actions and optional roleplaying scenes. You'll collaborate with your fellow players and discover how your character fits within Chicago's ecosystem.

Game Mechanics

We will be using Laws of the Night V5 for the core rules of this game.

This game depicts an incredibly tenuous time in Chicago. To reflect this tension, knowing that even the most stable individuals have the capacity to make mistakes in times of stress, this game will feature two additional mechanics:

- Hunger and feeding will be at the core of this game's tension. Before downtime actions are submitted, Storytellers will roll to see if your character will face beastly hunger during that month. Characters will be able to try and sate this hunger or risk consequences at the next Elysium.

- In conjunction with this, characters will be subject to a bad things happen roll. Some characters might find that their Domain is threatened, a Ghoul goes missing, their documents get leaked, or a diablerie is revealed. Your peers might find out. 

I'm going to steal this directly from the wiki...

On a moonlit night in 1993, a force of werewolves attacked buildings in the heart of Chicago. The focus of their rage appeared to be the Succubus Club, a well-known nightclub and secret haven for one of North America's most powerful Kindred. The attack galvanized the Kindred community, leading Prince Lodin to call a Blood Hunt against all the city's Lupines.

Few Kindred were aware of the extent of the werewolf population in the city, and none expected the sort of response the Blood Hunt drew. While at first the vampires succeeded in killing a number of Lupines, their enemy soon struck back in unbelievable numbers.

This time it was the Kindred who were killed on the streets, in their havens, or anywhere else. Werewolves struck every center of undead power, including train stations, O'Hare Airport, businesses, the Tremere chantry, and the Succubus Club yet again. Pitched battles caused great destruction on both sides, and few involved in the fighting were left unscathed.

Approximately one-third of the city's vampires died before the Primogen could arrange a truce. While many werewolves were also killed, they still maintain a strong presence in the city. Most vampires believe there will be more trouble soon, and others whisper that the Sabbat was somehow behind all the carnage. Kindred in other cities have also been keeping close eyes on the events in Chicago, afraid that the Lupines might try the same thing in their own towns. Some have visited the Windy City, hoping to learn from its experiences, but have found the city's power structure in such disarray that they could learn little.

But Inyanga, the former Gangrel Primogen, brokered a new peace treaty with the Lupines, delineating vampire and werewolf territories.

In the later stages of the war, Lodin was believed to be destoryed. The Primogen Council takes power to prevent the Anarchs or anyone else from claiming the city.

In our game, this is where we begin. The Primogen Council has seized power over Chicago after brokering a peace with the Garou. The Sabbat are dead, have fled, or are in hiding.

Vampire: The Masquerade is a political horror game. While we will absolutely do our best to ensure all players feel comfortable and safe, there are some dark themes and uncomfortable content which we are going to intentionally explore in this game; I am calling these the innate themes. If you do not feel comfortable with these innate themes, that is okay - you should decide how you will respond to them. That might mean not playing this game - that's okay! That might mean having a plan on how to remove yourself from scenes. At the very least, I recommend having an aftercare plan. We will have a safety coordinator available to assist with such plans.

What content is innate:

This game will be full of coercive relationships. Blood bonds, disciplines like Presence and Dominate, as well as blackmail and social pressure all will influence the ways characters at this LARP interact. These relationships are a core part of the Camarilla and the themes of this game.

There will be power imbalances. Other characters will be stronger than yours and you will probably lose any fair 1:1 contest with them.

There will be political subterfuge. While incredibly dangerous and likely to backfire: backstabbing, lying, and more are tactics which your character has at their disposal.

You are also playing Vampires, so there will be mention of stalking, feeding without consent, unwanted pleasure from feeding, and unwanted desire. However, feeding will not be acted out during LARP sessions.

And lastly, bad things will happen to your character. You will be able to negotiate the specifics, but not the severity; there will be times where something simply bad happens to your character and you will have to decide how they respond. Even the eldest Kindred slip; their Beast will make mistakes.

What content will not be featured:

There won't be any kind of explicit sexual violence, violence against children or animals, or severe drug or alcohol abuse. There will not be any graphic depictions of feeding.

On Consent:

We, the players, are not monsters. I will directly reference the book - please read the text screenshotted below. Alt text is available.

If you've read this far and this all sounds reasonable to you, remember this password: Vitae. Yeah, I'm doing the stupid "put the password in the end of the form" thing. Sue me. This section's important.