Last time on Vampire the Masquerade – Bloodlines: we finally completed our main goal in Santa Monica, almost got killed (again) and met the local anarchies.
This time we’ll see what is the job the Prince has for us.
SPOILER WARNING: spoilers ahead for the story of this game. Proceed only if this doesn’t bother or you already finished this game. Or some other motivation that I can’t imagine right now.
First things first, I forgot to describe Lacroix office in the last post. As you can expect it is a very big, luxurious office. If you want to scream “I am rich and powerful” there is really very few ways you can do better than Lacroix when it comes to office decoration.
Also, behind him and a bit to the side is the Sheriff. We already saw him before back in the tutorial but just in case I forgot to describe or post a screenshot of him: he is a giant of a man, looking slightly bestial too and probably not someone you would like to meet in a back alley in the dark.
Nobody knows anything about the Sheriff but there are rumors that the Prince met him somewhere back in Africa.
Anyway, back to the game itself: I told Lacroix exactly what Nines said. He isn’t too impressed saying that a lot of vampires just join the Anarchs because they either didn’t get a chance to see the alternatives or were bullied into it.
The Prince then gives us the next assignment: There have been some rumors about a derelect ship that been brought to the docks recently, called the Elizabeth Dane.
The ship was found at sea with the entire crew missing and is now under investigation by the police. What caused the rumors though is one of the ship’s cargo, the Ankaran Sarcophagus, which some believe to have something supernatural associated with it.
The Prince wants some evidence that this isn’t the case. His orders are thus: 1) Get a copy of the police report. 2) A copy of the ship’s manifesto and 3) To examine the sarcophagus for anything unusual. We are however not to open the sarcophagus under any circumstances.
We are also not to kill any police officer. As he puts it there are better ways to deal with humans that don’t end up with them dead.
To get to the Dane we need to go back to Santa Monica first. At the beach Mercurio is waiting for us. This time it is just to thanks us for helping him out and not telling Lacroix how he screwed up. To show his gratitude Mercurio offers to sell us some weapons, even taking some requests.
If we did complain about him to the Prince this encounter would play completely different as Mercurio would instead be trying to kill us.
After that little encounter we take a boat to the Dane. Just as we step into the ship, a police officer whisper at us to approach him. Apparently this police officer thinks we are a reporter working for an editor that is bribing him for a scoop.
I just play along with it, even persuading him to give me a copy of the police report. The cop even helps us to get to the ship’s cabin by calling his buddy over the radio to come here.
That will make things a lot easier. Now there is a few ways to do this. You can sneak all the way to the sarcophagus, avoiding police officers as you go and directly see it. If you have the Obfuscate discipline (one that makes you invisible) it is pretty easy. Since I am a Ventrue I don’t have that discipline and need to rely on my sneak skill. That makes things harder but is doable.
Well, it is usually is anyway. This time I failed miserably at it. I tried it 3 times and always got spotted by one of the cops. I don’t know if it was just because I didn’t invest enough points into the Sneak skill or just had a bad night. Whatever the case was I gave up since I didn’t want to go on a killing rampage.
And that is another way to do it. You can kill all the cops on the ship if you want to. It will just make the Prince mad though, miss on a reward from him and I think it gives less XP for completing this quest too.
Since my attempt at stealth failed I decided to try a different method: I just went to the ship’s cabin, used the password to the computer that the police officer gave to me, and accessed the ship’s cameras. Through that I was able to check on the Sarcophagus. It was open and it looked like something broke out of its container from the inside.
As for the ship’s manifesto, it was inside a locked room under the cabin which wasn’t too hard to get to. With all the goals completed I sneaked my way out of the ship.
Back in Downtown we end up meeting that girl from the hospital that we fed our blood. Her name is Heather, she asked around to discover where to find us. Apparently she went through all this trouble just so to thank us for saving her life. Or so she says.
What happened is that she became our ghoul. As a side effect of it she pretty much worships us now. She might also be addicted to our blood and really wants to stay by our side.
There are a few options on how to go with this. I decide to be as nice as possible while still allowing her to live with me. The main reason for it is because it is an easy access to fresh blood. I can just drink some of her blood between main quests and get replenished.
Of course, when I meet her back in my apartment she doesn’t really believe that I am a vampire at first. But she accepts it pretty easily.
We can even ask about her background: Heather used to live with her grandmother since her parents died in a car accident a few years back. She also used to study fashion design in a university though she dropped that to come live with us.
Interestingly enough she doesn’t mention how she end up in that hospital in Santa Monica nor can we ask her about it.
Oh, and we can also ask her to give some money or to change her appearance. I ask her to change to a more goth one just for the sake of showing it off in this blog. :p
After this little distraction it is time to report to the Prince. As we enter the office we see some vampires leaving it. Lacroix looks visibly upset and just ask for the cliff notes of what we saw in the Dane.
I tell him there was a lot of blood everywhere and the sarcophagus looked like it was opened from the inside. This seems to actually surprise him but he just asks to give him the manifest and my notes on it for him to figure things out later.
Then he talks about the vampires who just left. It seems they are the Primogen, a council of the local elders from each clan. Apparently they are concerned because one of the Primogen, a man called Alistair Grout, hasn’t been in contact for some time. He is the the local elder of the Malkavian and the Primogen are concerned that this silence means something happened to him.
As you can guess our next job is to find out what happened to Grout. Oh, and since we did a pretty good job at the ship Lacroix rewards us with an apartment in downtown. This is the reason I didn’t want to go on a killing spree while in the Elizabeth Dane.
The apartment is a lot better than the one in Santa Monica. It is a bit fancy but not overtly so like the Prince’s office. The important thing is that it is not a dump like the one in Santa Monica. :p
Spoiler alert: This was the only reason I was sucking up to the Prince. From this point on I won’t be nearly as nice for no other reason than LULz. Yes, I am aware it doesn’t make much sense in terms of roleplaying. But my goal is to try to make this Let’s Play entertaining even if it doesn’t make much sense in-character. XD
Anyway, before we go to pay a visit to Grout we shall do some side quests in Downtown. But that will be in the next post. See you there! 🙂