r/ChroniclesofDarkness • u/CardiologistOk1614 • Jul 23 '25
Vampires vs. Mages
I've got an idea for my campaign, but need advice on how to pull off the story while keeping it believable but not ending in a TPK.
The Prince keeps tabs on the local consilium to the best of his ability, because mages have a troubling amount of power. He doesn't want to antagonize them but doesn't want to be caught off guard if they are doing something that presents a threat to the kindred population.
I want some rumors of an atlantean artifact to inspire a bit more digging, and when it's revealed the "artifact" they've recovered looks human and is speaking, the Prince wonders of it might be an incredibly ancient vampire that they have found. He wants to put together a team (my players coterie obvs frontrunners for the task) to investigate further than his mortal agents have been able to and, if necessary, recover the "artifact" by whatever means necessary.
I have a lot of fun stuff planned that will lead to a big crossover event with vampires, werewolves and mages working together in the end, but I'm struggling to come up with how to get from where we are to the party being able to talk to this thing. Any suggestions welcome.
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u/Mundamala Jul 23 '25
Mages aren't like, gun-toting vigilantes out for some twisted version of justice, there's no to little reason for them to kill a bunch of vampires. In fact they have a lot of ways to avoid killing one another because bursts of vengeance and mass murder tend to be so detrimental to them.
So unless the vampires decide, "Hey this weird guy thinks he's a wizard, we need to steal this thing he's guarding, lets kill his entire family," you probably wouldn't have much reason for the guy to wipe out the entire coterie in turn. Even if they did manage to "recover" it it would be far easier for most mages to just take it back and secure it better than kill everyone.
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u/Noahjam325 Jul 23 '25
Kind of like real life, free and open trade/exchange of information is just more valuable than nuking each other on sight. You could also have the artifact only react a certain way with vampires specifically. Meaning the Mages can't just decimate them or ruin a perfectly good Mystery.
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u/Nordic_Scandinavian Jul 23 '25
This. Even if both sides are incentivised (or just selfish enough) to keep the artifact to themselves. I see it likely end up more like VtM Bloodlines' ankharan sarchopagous. Just keeps getting stolen and traded around by interested and self-interested parties.
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u/CardiologistOk1614 Jul 23 '25
I do like this. If the hubris was overcoming the wisdom of the cabal, they may have been attempting to forcibly extract information or power, and it may be unwilling to share either with them. If the vampires offer a path to something other than a stonewall, they may have more bargaining power.
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u/Noahjam325 Jul 23 '25
Bingo. Depending on how far you want to involve Mage politics; you could even have different members of the Consillium want to handle it differently. Becoming completely deadlocked by bureaucracy. With just 1 cabal tasked with resolving the matter. Making you not need to include the greater Consillium.
Especially since the Mages are NPC's you don't need to get into the nitty gritty details of how their magic works. Sleepers can make a great shield against Mages. Threatening Paradox and dissonance (i think that's the term, been a while since I played mage).
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u/CardiologistOk1614 Jul 23 '25
Hmmm... I don't think my players would know the power of sleepers here, but I do really like the idea of a cabal being tasked with essentially babysitting the artifact while the consilium argues about what to do with it. I could also possibly include a defense mechanism of the artifact that makes the mages at least as concerned with the ramifications of creative thaumaturgy in its vicinity using the challenges presented by sleepers as a guide.
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u/Valuable_Parfait592 Jul 23 '25
Ok, for me to answer this I'll need to dip into my own story lore. As you may know, CofD doesn't have a set meta story, but rather points of interest that you can connect anyway you want, and makes sense. So with that out of the way:
In Chicago (but really this could be whatever city you desire) there was a rumor of an artifact called the Celestial Flange. What it did was unknown as it defied any reasonable study - even with magic. Some said it was a flange, like any other with no importantr properties outside of plumbing. Others said it held more mana than a whole city of Mages. Still other complete forgot it ever existed, while a few were driven made with desire to get it for themselves. Mages in particular seem prone to be adversely affected by the artifact.
What it is? Well you see, there are things greater than you and I. Things to large and fantastical that our hearts and minds would melt just trying to understand a fraction of what they really are. At the beating heart of it all is the God-Machine. What is the God-Machine? It is the answer to all of the questions, that explains almost nothing.
Long ago, in ages past, magic was not rare or even hidden. One could simply spend the time to attune themselves to understand the Truth behind the Lie of existence, and Awaken to higher plains of existence. Eventually these early Mages built the city of Atlantis and shared there knowledge freely. However, there were those who were frustrated with their lack of understanding, and wanted more for themselves. They constructed the Ladder (which in my game is a person, but I can't take ALL of the tangets) to take them to the Supernal, as physical beings. Of course the Supernal wasn't vacant, but the Mages didn't care; like all colonizers they carried out the genocide of the gods. This had the unintended effect of throwing the whole universe into chaos, thus creating the Abyss and nearly taking our world straight into it.
What about the artifact? Well, the Mages of Atlantis quickly built something to replace the god . . . the God-Machine. It started small, but quickly started building and growing until it could stabilize the world and pull everything farther from the Abyss. The damage was done, however, and the Fallen World would never be free from the lure of the Abyss, try as the God-Machine might. There are other things going on with the God-Machine to explain why it can't fully devote to pulling Earth out of the Abyss but . . . I need to keep this focused.
So again, about that artifact? You see the Celestial Flange is a piece of the God-Machine that fell. More than that, the Mages revealed that the Flange speaks and can protect as a person. How can it do that? Well the Celestial Flange was a person, or rather a god once. This made my group come to the horrible realization that the God-Machine is just a machine made of the gods; they were never killed.
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u/CardiologistOk1614 Jul 23 '25
I'm honestly going for something very similar, as this next series of major arcs is my CofD "Time of Judgement," so to speak. I'm beginning a series of events that will hopefully be great, epic fun, and will end in (functionally) the end of reality as we know it and the beginning of a Scion 2e campaign. I just don't want to ruin anything along the way, and this "artifact" is in a broken state and currently has very little power compared to its potential.
It's not a "Deus ex machina" thing as much as a story engine that has fragmented access to information that the coterie would not be able to find anywhere else in the physical world. It's going to attempt to lead as many powerful beings as it can towards "fixing" what the Oracles and Exarchs have broken (from its incredible, but still limited perspective).
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u/JWrongGuy Jul 24 '25
Ahhh. We had a discussion on this topic before. Vampires are more tightly wound than mages - blood ties and all that. While you're explaining it from the perspective of the vampires, go into the boots of the mages. You don't know how many vampires there are. You don't know the list of their ghouls or subverted organizations. You don't know the powers of their blood sorcerers. You don't know their alliances.
Mages value Wisdom. If they make a move and the consequences of it are unexpected, they suffer. They can't use their powers in partial human social groups and there's no way to tell a ghoul (who qualifies as a sleepwalker) from a blood doll (a charmed, but otherwise normal human) from a glance. And do they really want to court paradox?
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u/CardiologistOk1614 Jul 24 '25
That's kinda the direction I was leaning, but I wasn't sure if they could tell a ghoul or not. Probably not without a Moros or Thyrsus who has some familiarity, huh?
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u/JWrongGuy Jul 24 '25
Not a Moros or Thyrsus. Ghouls aren't half dead. But maybe a Mastigos. As Blood Bonds are a form of Sympathy.
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u/Phoogg Jul 24 '25
Some ideas you can work with:
-Work out what the general relationship between vampires and mages are in your city. Is there a treaty between the two? What are the terms? Can be as simple as 'non-aggression pact - mages and vampires don't attack each other', or 'we stay to the east end of town, you stay to the west', or 'no interfering with one another's business' or even 'we work together to keep those damn werewolves out, after the Great Woofening of '99'. There might not even be an agreement at all, and it's more an unwritten rule. Or it's a total free-for-all, and every vampire and mage are independent entities that aren't representatives of their splat, so if one of them crosses a line, they are dealt with, and no one else gets involved. In the Occultists Anonymous Actual Play, the rule was 'no fighting *in the streets*'. So vampires and mages could attack one another in buildings, away from the public. Was an interesting loophole. The main thing is to come up with *some* kind of agreement, cos it usually makes things more interesting.
-Do all five Covenants agree to the terms of this treaty? Do all five Pentacle Orders agree? What about mages that are Seers of the Throne, or Namless, or unaffiliated? What about rogue vampires? Could be fun if each Covenant has a separate agreement - some of them are more closely working with the mages, some are more estranged.
-What happens when someone violates the agreement? Do both sides haves 'police' or 'inspectors' that work together to investigate what happens when someone crosses a line? Is there a court or means by which punishments are handed out? This can be as complex or as simple as you like. Ideally there would be an ambassador on either side - a mage that vampires can approach safely and talk to, and a vampire that has ties to several mages, and can pass the word around on.
-If you want them to work together, have them start off antagonistic to one another, and then reveal that a secret third party has been manipulating them (Strix! Seers of the Throne! Changelings! The God-Machine!) that can help unite them against a common, powerful foe.
-The power dynamic is heavily skewed towards mages. So make sure that the mages in your city are few in number, and don't have a lot of very powerful members. No 5-dot Masters, or only very few. Otherwise they can mop the floor with the vamps. Hell, a plot point could be the vampires trying to find ways to protect themselves against magic. Maybe they try and find an artifact, or get a favour from other mages to cast an anti-magic shield on them (or on a building, or on specific high ranking members of the vampires). There's a basic 2-dot Prime spell that does this that is not that hard to cast. It's not foolproof, but it definitely helps when nasty spells are being flung your way!
-Mages love to work through proxies, so you can easily introduce mage minions: Sleepers, Sleepwalkers, Proximi, spirits, ghosts and more that your vampires have to fight/negotiate/trick to get what they need, without actually having to bring any proper mages in. At least not at the beginning.
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u/CardiologistOk1614 Jul 25 '25
Thanks man, that was a lot of good questions to have answers to in advance to ensure smooth play. Just reading the suggestions got my mind grinding away. I think I got too wrapped up in the potential danger to the group and forgot how much I love hidden details making the world feel real for a minute
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u/Nordic_Scandinavian Jul 23 '25
Easiest way of doing this would be to give the mages an incentive to not permanently kill vampires, even in self defense. Vampires on both VtM and VtR are known for making people "disappear" when they prove troublesome. Maybe lean in that direction? Could also add some political element by having the Prince have a non-aggression pact with the Consilium, if it fits your chronicle.