Last time we started to do the side quests in Santa Monica. They involved meeting some thin bloods, doing some terrible things and feeding someone our own blood.
On this post it is time to finish the side quests in this area.
SPOILER WARNING! Spoilers ahead for the content of this game. Only go on if you are okay with that.
The Werewolf Blood
Checking my e-mails back at the apartment there is a “request” by Lacroix to retrieve some werewolf blood that ended up in the local hospital. Apparently some vampire sent it there for the blood to be analyzed. Unnecessary to say this would be a huge breach of the Masquerade.
Lacroix promises to pay me for my services and assures that the vampire who caused all this trouble was severely punished.
Since the money would be useful (and the XP) I head to the clinic to do my vampiric duty. I sneak in through the back entrance, go through some offices, hacking the computers and find some passwords.
After that I go upstairs to the area where they store the blood to be analyzed. As I try to lockpick a door there I get caught up by the security guard who tells me that area is off limits. I just use Dominate on him and order him to give me the keys instead.
I thought that meant he would leave me alone. A big mistake. He completely ignores me if I am just walking around. However when I was trying to lockpick a medicine case he sees me and starts shooting. In self-defense I end up drinking all of his blood. Which makes me loose one point of humanity. And the police is outside the clinic looking for me too. Just great.
Like a complete professional who totally didn’t mess this up I get the werewolf blood, run to the exit and then go to the sewers to lay down. When the cops are gone I go back to my apartment, put the werewolf blood in the mailbox to be collected by one of the Prince’s goons and go do something else.
Later on I come back, find my payment on the mailbox and an e-mail from Lacroix thanking me for my services. This also restore the Masquerade but since I never broke it in the first place this doesn’t do anything for me. The money was nice though and so was the XP.
Murder at the Pier
Looking at one of the newspapers around Santa Monica we find out there was a a mysterious gruesome murder recently. Going to the pier we can see an area cordoned by cops and a corpse hanged by its arms to a lamp post. The corpse looks like it was slashed by something not human.
Well, this is a breach of the Masquerade as it can go. Unfortunately this is all we can do for now but we’ll be getting back to this quest later in the game.
Looking for McGee
While visiting the local bails bond office, we can chat up with the owner, Arthur Kilpatrick. During the small talk, Kilpatrick mentions that his only bounty hunter. Carson, just went missing. This being a video-game I just offer to help out for some cash.
He tells us we can probably find some clue at Carson’s apartment, even giving us the keycard to open the door.
In the apartment we discover that the bounty hunter was looking for someone called McGee and said person was hiding in a tattoo parlor. Conveniently enough the keycard to the parlor was also at Carson’s apartment (makes me wonder how he entered the place without it).
Turns out the tattoo parlor was completely empty. However a phone starts ringing, and, again this being a video-game, I decide to answer it.
The person in the phone is another man looking for McGee. Apparently McGee missed a schedule to do some modeling. Having no other clue to go on I just offer myself to model instead, which the other man is more than happy to accept. We are to meet him at a prosthetic clinic.
In the clinic we are met by the man on the phone, whose name is Stanley Gimble. He works on creating prosthetics, with the modeling job being just to take some photos to serve as reference.
Gimble also makes a bit of a creepy remark about our arms. If we ask about his prosthetic arm he tells that in order to reach mastery in prosthetics he got rid of his natural one just to know what it feels to use a prosthetic. Creepy levels increasing fast.
After our short chat he goes to the back, never to return. I just decide to go inside too. The place looks more like an abandoned warehouse with some boxes, a mannequin, some reference material, a camera and even a fridge with a pack of blood.
There is a door leading downstairs. As we go down there are rooms with some apparatus that look more out of torture room, a bloodied mattress and even a surgery table full of blood.
Eventually we reach the basement with another surgery table full of blood in the middle, a couple cells and a closed door to another room. In one of the cells we find out Carson, locked up. He asks us to help him out, saying that Gimble not only locked him and Mcgee but has been taking pieces off them for the last three days.
Before we can do anything else Gimble comes out of the other room, using a human arm as a weapon. He isn’t much of a threat being quickly dispatched. I take the human arm as my new weapon though.
Once Carson is freed he asks how did we know where to find him. I just tell him about Kilpatrick. Carson unfortunately can’t go back to being a bounty hunter since Gimble cut his trigger finger. At least he goes off to call the police.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, McGee was already dead when we arrived.
Back at the bails bond, Kilpatrick is disappointed by the news, pay us and asks for help with another job until he can hire another bounty hunter.
It is an easy one this time. Apparently a guy “with a sheet a mile long”, as he puts it, has missed his court date. His girlfriend put up a bond for him but Kilpatrick can’t reach either of them. So he wants us to find if this guy skipped down.
The guy’s name is Mike Durbin, nickname “Muddy”. Since his girlfriend was the one who put the bond Kilpatrick asks us to pay a visit to her.
The apartment happens to be in the same building we live. The door is locked and we can’t knock. So breaking and entering it is!
Inside there is an answering machine where conveniently enough Muddy left a message telling his girlfriend that he went to Downtown for some job.
Back at Kilpatrick he pays for this job and says he will assign a bounty hunter to go after Muddy. There is more to this quest but for now this is all we can do.
The asian vampire
Back at the Asylum we meet a guy called Knox. Normally we would meet him in front of the hospital but since I skipped it to focus on the main story we end meeting him up here.
Knox is pretty happy to meet a vampire. He just seems to be very enthusiastic about everything vampire-related. As we talk, Knox tell us he is a ghoul working for Bertram Tung. Unfortunately he doesn’t know where Tung is either, so no, we couldn’t use him to skip all the hoops we had to go through with Therese.
He does mention though that before Tung disappeared he gave an assignment for Knox. The job was just to keep an eye on an asian vampire that showed up in town. Knox did the job diligently but before he knew it the tables were turned and the asian vampire was the one stalking him.
Now Knox is unsure on what to do which is just another way to say that he has a quest for us. And of course I offer to help him with this because I want all the XP.
During one of the encounters with Knox, the asian vampire dropped a driver’s ID. It isn’t his own ID but rather for a man called Virgil Crumb.
A quick visit to the Bail Bonds to search through their computer reveals that Virgil Crumb is already dead with his corpse currently in the hospital’s morgue.
That is our next stop. The morgue happens to be in the basement, with the entrance hidden by a hole in the wall. Well, there is another entrance to the morgue too, this is just the easiest way for us to sneak in there. :p
Anyway, if we look at the computers we find out that the Crumb’s cause of death was attributed to heart failure. Although I think I saw in one of the e-mails saying something about his corpse lacking any blood… Maybe I am imagining it.
Crumb’s belongings are in a box inside the morgue. It requires a bit of lockpicking to get to its contents but it does give us a keycard to a warehouse called Foxy Boxes.
Going to the Foxy Boxes warehouse there is an room at the front near the entrance with a computer on it. If we check the computer there are several e-mails reporting what is going on in Santa Monica. This asian vampire wasn’t too impressed with the local vampire community and thought it would be easy for his friends to invade Santa Monica.
Further in we find a large room full of wooden boxes. The asian vampire shows up, does a greeting and then attack us. Fortunately this wasn’t too hard of a fight for me.
Back to Knox he was pretty happy to hear the news. Specially because now he won’t have to worry about having some creepy vampire stalking him. We don’t get anything from it though besides some XP.
Next time we’ll finally get to meet Bertram Tung, blow up a Sabbat warehouse and maybe even go on a cruise!