Parliament of Knives: The Original Pitches

I thought I'd upload these behind the scenes snippets just for fun before the next Werewolves chapter drops on Friday.

When I was approached by Choice of Games to write one of their first batch of Vampire: the Masquerade games, I was asked by my editor to make two one-paragraph pitches to sell him on. Here are the very first pitches I made. Guess which one made the cut!

Pitch 1: Your prince has felt the call of the Beckoning and left the city for the first time in almost a century, leaving his seneschal in power for the duration of his absence. Or so the seneschal claims. Few kindred actually saw the Prince on the night of his departure, and those who did have begun to vanish or go mad. Naturally, the city’s primogen suspect foul play and employ their own spies and agents to divine the truth of the matter. As an agent of the seneschal, you have been tasked with unraveling the mysteries surrounding the disappearances, or, failing that, providing proper misdirection to keep the heat off your mistress. Do you believe her claims of innocence and wish to help save her from the circling fangs as they draw ever nearer? Or will you use the events to seize power for yourself, betraying the seneschal’s trust and working against her with her enemies? Use your vampiric gifts to spy from the shadows, dominate the social scene, or strong-arm the weak into becoming your thralls! When the jaws of the trap finally slam shut, you must be prepared to survive, protect your allies, and destroy your foes in a political game of life or death!

Pitch 2: You are a ‘digital fixer’ employed by an Archon to travel from domain to domain shoring up their security against the ever-felt presence of the Second Inquisition. (Note for Patreon: in V:tM ver 5, the Camarilla takes internet usage very seriously due to entire domains being burned to the ground by increasingly savvy mortals catching on to vampire communications.) You arrive in (city) under the pretense of a standard job: sniffing out unlawful activity on the Internet and chastising young kindred about their cell-phone usage, but your true mission is something else entirely. The prince (or other elder) of (city) has displeased powerful political rivals, and they’ve tapped you and your expertise to subtly sabotage their declining digital presence and draw the second inquisition like a moth to the flame, preferably without implicating yourself in the process. Will you follow your orders and bring the city’s power structure to its knees at the behest of your master or defy them, working with (city’s) agents to feign ruin and draw your former master into a trap? Or perhaps you can broker a deal with an unscrupulous primogen, offering them the chance to survive the slaughter in exchange for power and influence? Navigate the politics of an unfamiliar domain, gaining trust and influence as the noose pulls ever-tighter. Choose your alliances and confidants carefully—once the fuse is lit only the best-prepared Kindred will survive to see another night.