Editing Vampire: The Masquerade (section)

==Gehenna: the end of the Masquerade==
As all things die, so did the Vampire: The Masquerade setting. The End Times book for Vampire brought us four different Gehenna scenarios of varying scope and [[awesome]]ness, giving the players four different balances of violence/diplomacy settings for their tastes. 

Details on Gehenna were printed and set in 2004. With the rise of YouTube at the start of the next year ontop of increased spread of CCTV and camera phone, all of which bring major problems for the [[Masquerade]], it’s doubtful the setting could have lasted much longer than it did. 

===Wormwood===
God has had enough of Camarilla, Sabbat, Anarchs and Inconnu fucking everything up, abducting and raping the lives of countless innocents. Seeing Zapathasura getting his shit kicked in by a nerdy Technocrat directing a bunch of satellites and a few bombers dropping their payloads, God gives up on Caine repenting and goes "Fuck it", deciding to wipe out all vampirism in one fell blow, [[HFY|declaring humans fit to inherit the world and that all monsters deserve death for trying to stop them]]. Without even disturbing his human children in their sleep, he blasts the planet with a red deluge of invisible (to humans) mists, coming from Anthelios, the red star that influenced all White Wolf settings' plotlines.

And just like last time there is a Noah. This time he's a [[Wat|fundamentalist Christian Gargoyle wearing sunglasses]] and has a [[Dhampir|half-vampire]] [[Mary Sue]] [[Loli|ward of a young girl]] and tells you to meet at a church or temple of Abrahamic faith. Then the duo tell the players to sit and wait, and the players watch the mist bombarding Earth, slowly withering all vampires into nothing. All Kindred outside of the church lose their Disciplines, become unable to keep blood down and their generation keeps going up until they die.

Now God starts to test the players subtly: Are you repentant? Do you feel remorse? Do you wish to be human again? Would you sacrifice yourself for a loved one? Of course the questions come in situations such as a suicidal man who wants to jump off the roof. Will you risk death by sunlight or Withering to save a tormented soul? Obviously God (or the GM) should understand and judge the player and his intentions. Such troubles should plague all players such as a situation demanding they leave the temple, have loved ones beg for their help via the phone, and other dark events testing your heart and humanity. The book says even a 10 level Path of Enlightenment-following beast should be given choices to feel remorse. 

Basically: God's your shrink, and you are the patient who needs an epiphany in 40 days.

At the fortieth day, the east wall collapses, letting in sunlight. Those who feel remorse and wish to be human are suddenly feeling heartbeats and flush of life; those who harbor evil burn to cinders in a painful way. [[Troll|The Gargoyle, who never questioned God's will and would do anything for it, even kill children, is also burnt to ashes]].

Wormwood is more of a calm, placid, social-focused LARP session or a relaxed social roleplay game with little place for combat. But it's compatible with other settings and is amazingly wholesome and focused on reconciliation, a rare oasis in an [[Edgy]] gaming market.

===Fair is Foul===
Lilith is back, baby, and she is mad. Gathering the craziest, most rejected fuckers in the setting she plans to kill Caine. The Crone (Caine's old teacher), Brujah (Ilyes, not Troile), Malkav's human sister and Lucifer Morningstar are just some of the few guests Lilith hosts in her garden of wonders. Long story short, she carves Kaballic runes under a city to move some alleys, uses some sea monsters for lulz, and tries to call on Abel to forgive Caine and kill him. You can betray Lilith to Laza-Omri-Bara (Lasombra) so that he consumes her and the garden. If you are stupid enough to help [[That Guy|this colossal asshole]] you get eaten as well, something which you'll richly deserve. If Lilith wins, Caine dies and his killer has vengeance taken upon them sevenfold by God, but the players can survive by submitting to Lilith and dwelling in her garden for the rest of their lives. The rest of all vampires are dead a-la Wormwood.

Just like Wormwood, when properly played, it can be done without even ruffling the Masquerade. It's more combat-oriented though.

===Nightshade===
The Masquerade is broken. The Ventrue iconic character Jan Pieterzoon gathers the players to kill what turns out to be the Tzimisce Antediluvian running amok. Once they succeed, the world realizes that oh shit vampires are real. The players meet several vampire celebrities (including famous dickflinger Sasha Vykos) and go on a world-spanning race against the clock to kill the remaining Antediluvians, and manage to kill one or two, mostly Tzimisce Antediluvian. But the rest all wake up and order all vampires to some location in the Middle-East for judgement. 

Humanity loses its shit and keeps a peery eye from afar, not wanting to upset the blood-sucking abominations just yet. As it turned out the Sabbat was right for the wrong reasons: the Antediluvians found their children wanting in their irresponsibility and murdered most of them. The surviving neonates are firmly ordered to get their shit together. A bitter irony is that this mass execution is very likely a self-fulfilling prophecy *because* the Sabbat have been a bunch of monsters committing crimes that had triggered the Deluge in ancient history.

At this point it's the players' job to find the reborn Saulot in Australia and a vial of blood containing the blood of Caine, which would normally destroy any vampire drinking it. Saulot downs it anyway, upon which an angel appears, accepts Saulot's penance and wrecks the collective shit of the remaining vampires. (5 points of aggravated damage straight off the bat, so if you're more than halfway wounded, kiss your ass goodbye - if not, leg it as God lays the smack down on vampires...)

===Crucible of God===
The most realistic, combat-heavy and plot-hole filled scenario. It needs some duct tape to patch things, but when its plot-holes are filled and some of the stupid shit that the scenario harbors is flushed down the toilet, it makes for an amazing scenario. 

Crucible of God sees the planet transfomed into something out of the early days of the [[Age of Strife]]. The Masquerade is broken, and it breaks HARD. Humanity, as a whole, is shocked, and after seeing the sudden and once-hidden threat, they prove Durga Syn's words of warning at Convention of Thorns right, and lash out in fear, exterminating Kindred wherever they find them. As it turns out vampires are no match for entire countries' militaries and SWAT teams operating in daylight with phosphorous rounds, flamethrowers and high-tech equipment and they are slaughered in droves. The elders, subtle and dangerous as ever, respond with sabotaging human life and civilization everwhere. No more electricity, no more sewage systems, hell, some elders even get their hands on nuclear warheads. (Think very carefully about that for a minute, though any player that unleashes a nuke will have his humanity obliterated as not even edginess can even out what he/she/it did.)

Around the same time is also The Withering, a mystical occurence that suddenly causes the blood of all Cainites to thin and their generation to start ticking upwards.

This conflict eventually results in WWIII, a war between Cainite and Kine, that keeps going equally bad for both sides. Until all the deaths, all the massacres, all the slaughters finally rouse the Antediluvians... and they wake up, turning the war against Humans and Cainites alike. Basically, all the Antediluvians save some few ruin the planet and dot it with their fiefdoms where they rule humanity:

* Absimiliard fucks up Russia, and finally exterminates the Nosferatu with the beasts he bred in the depths of the oceans. He rules Russian Kine and Kindred alike with an iron fist made out of terror. His reign turns Russia as a whole to a worse place than the Tenochtitlán (Mexico City's precursor, once ruled by the Baali Methuselah Nergal under the name of Huitzilopochtli), Chorazin (A former city in Israel cursed by Jesus in the Bible, yet another piece of land Nergal, a horrifying Malfean ruled), Mashkan-Shapir (Nergal again) Carthage ([[Khorne|BLOOD FOR BA'AL HAMMON!]]), and Transylvania under Tzimisce Voivodate reign & Kupala's shadow. As you can see, deprived of [[Baba Yaga]]'s protection and tightly clenched in Absimilard's fist, Russia is well on it's way to becoming another case of First & Second City, where mortal and immortal alike slave away for an Antediluvian. Worse, his plans after consuming his fellow Antediluvians are nothing less than the ''conquest of the entire world.'' [[Grimdark|Can you imagine?]] Hitler, Stalin and pretty much all tyrants this world ever had (with the possible exception of Caine) got nothing on this motherfucker. He looks like a misshapen creature out of [[Cthulhu Mythos]], as expected of the progenitor of the Nosferatu. He is easily one of the most frightening things in the scenario, not just because how he looks, but because of his inhuman depravity and cruelty, that can only be matched by either Tzimisce (and not even he wanted all humanity to be tortured into eternity, but took a child or two for education and had the common sense not to drain his herd) or Lasombra (who was generally an edgy bitch brooding about the endless seas and didn't give a rat's ass about humans- for good or bad). 
* Haqim rules Middle East with the reasonable fairness he always wanted, being once a human swearing to hunt Cainite corruption. Under his rule, the Middle East actually becomes better than what it was. Compared to Absimilard's Reign, Haqim turns Middle East into an echo of Eden. He had the best start in Gehenna, as his clan was a well-oiled war machine that worshipped him and was already prepared for Gehenna. They wasn't lacking in sword, sorcery, guns, jets, tanks, ships, or supplies etc. The Assamites then purge the infidels of their own (who are either the Web of Knives or the Schismatics, depending on how Haqim is portrayed) and other clans under Haqim's direction, who steadily regains his power. After his awakening, all who was blood-bound to an Assamite becomes bound to ''Haqim himself'', through the power he has over his own vitae. Despite this, Haqim never consumes the willpower and free will of his descendants, and his human/kindred servants live pretty much OK. What a cool guy. Then everything goes to hell after something takes him out. What, did you expect him to win in a [[Grimdark]] world?
* Ennoia becomes the Apex Predator by merging with the planet, turning into nature itself. However, her transformation wasn't complete, so she has to eat people all over the place, the shit that she already did for at least ten millenia, something that annoys her until the end of Gehenna, when she completes her transformation and achieves godhood, no longer needing to devour blood and souls. She is one of the two Antediluvian survivors of Gehenna, having snugly melded into the planet by the end. Good riddance.
* Laza-Omri-Bara darkens the WHOLE PLANET with a cover of shadows, drinking all the souls that die during that month. Needless to say, plant life is all but extinct, and a new Ice Age has begun. One month after his appearance, he finally dies, the shadow that was his body turns into blood and rains down, almost drowning the earth in it. No one knows what the fuck happened to him, and no one WANTS to know what the fuck killed him. Our bets are on the sun itself, which in World of Darkness has supernatural properties due to the Celestine Helios being one with it.
* Troile is missing in action, due to being buried under Carthage alongside Moloch. Oof.
* A unknown Antediluvian named Shaper helps you out, her goal being transcending the vampiric state and achieving godhood. She might be the Toreador Antediluvian, operating under a alias. She succeeds in her goal by diablerizing Absimilard, transcending the vampiric state. One of the WoD's greatest bastards was thus destroyed by her, leaving no trace of his existence, not even his soul, other than the atrocities he committed upon the world.
* Malkav fucks up reality through his childer and mortal thralls, and [[Mage: The Ascension|''tears Consensus a new asshole...'']] Imagine how much chaos it causes, when the numbers of the Awakened and Marauders skyrocket. Think [[Silent Hill]], except this time, the entire world is subject to reality-bending madness and horror, instead of one single town.
* [[Lulz|Set is already dead, appearantly. So all the Setites off themselves to be with him]].
* Ventrue is apparently dead too. To be fair, with all the swank and rulership going to hell, he's probably better off dead.
* Cappadocius dies after the [[Wraith: The Oblivion|Sixth Great Maelstrom]], which happens before Gehenna.
* Augustus gets his ass kicked, being a blood-stealing Guido who thinks he can outsmart Eldritch humanoid horrors resulting as expected.
* Tremere is currently inhabiting Goratrix's body.
* Ravnos wasn't sane enough to use Chimerstry to survive the Spirit Nukes and subsequent solar-beam killsat.
* The fates of Saulot and Tzimisce will be explained below, for they are integral to the plot.

Do not sneer at the fact that most Antediluvians are missing and dying for reasons that never specified, for it was written that way to make you fill the blanks. Did Ur-Shulgi (childe of Haqim and suspected Infernalist) kill his sire? Did Lasombra soak sunlight damage for a month and botch his Fortitude roll right at the end, or was he betrayed by his loyal slave, a Malkavian Methusalah named Louhi - also one of the most accomplished masters of Thaumaturgy, who might have been possessed by Malkav himself? 

(That said, there are no immediate excuses for the lack of Ventrue, Set, Cappadocius and Troile. Toreador Antediluvian too, but she might be the Shaper.) 

Anyway, sometime after the ascension of the Shaper, Tremere himself approaches the players with a plan to save humanity. It would involve hijacking the minds of all of Humanity, including vampires, by utilizing its true name then ordering everybody to walk into the sunlight. Of course, Tremere himself and the players would not be affected, which would make him the most powerful of all vampires. But hey, that's not the problem right now. The party travels to Utah, Salt Lake City where they break into the headquarters of the Mormons, [[What|who somehow just finished creating the family tree of all of humanity]]. 

Using this family tree encryted on a CD and blessing it with magic, Tremere decodes Humanity's true name and starts to work his ritual, to use the greatest ritual ever created. And then, this happens:

:''"Blood to blood, Let my sight encompass every son of Adam and daughter of Eve. Let every Child of Caine or Abel or Seth hear my voice. I have your name! I have your lineage! I have your soul!"''
:[...]
:''"It is done. Hear me, Children of Adam. I command... '''Be of me."'''''

There is one little wrench in this plan though. You see, Tremere turned himself and his kin into vampires via ''only'' Tzimisce blood. Salubri and other blood sources came later to their bloodpool. The thing is, Tzimisce can control anything that possesses his blood, so this gives him a neat backdoor into Tremere's body just waiting to be exploited. 

Just before Tremere gave his command, Tzimisce promptly took advantage of this backdoor to play a nasty little trick on Tremere and the protags. Instead of connecting all of Humanit to Tremere, he made it so it would connected to ''himself'', making everyone in the world a part of Tzimisce.

'''OH SHIT''' does not '''BEGIN''' to cover how bad this is.

Survivors of this trainwreck of a world start being warped into horrible fleshy abominations as [[Cthulhu Mythos|Tzimiscemania]] runs wild. Tremere himself warps into a horrific Vozhd that only barely gets put down by the party. By now, every human and vampire became one with Tzimsice save the player characters, who were protected thanks to the ritual, with only one exception:

''Saulot.''

He foresaw all those events millenia ago and prepared himself accordingly, although there were events that surprised even him. He sacrificed himself and his Clan to the thirsting fangs of Tremere, for the sake of this last move of the Jyhad, for the sake of not just vampires and mortals, but for the [[World of Darkness]] as a whole, to stop Tzimisce, who would otherwise be the eternal victor of the Jyhad. He tells the players to believe in God, [[HFY|believe in the potential of humanity]], and believe in themselves, before all is either saved, or consumed.

He gives them a small moment to make their peace with each other, and with their fate. After saying their last words, the coterie, aided by Saulot, prepare to [[/tg/ gets shit done|get shit done]]. The ritual starts, players and Saulot let themselves be devoured by Tzimisce via the Tzimisce blood in Saulot's veins, but they aren't consumed yet. Several Willpower and Humanity rolls later, through the power of [[HFY]], the players manage to beckon the Wrath of God, and channel it to Saulot, the Lamb of God, who then uses it to destroy Tzimisce. However, Saulot and the players perish due to being the conduits of God's wrath. 

All other vampires, who had become one with Tzimsice (basically every vampire on earth, save Ennoia and Shaper, both having managed to transcend the curse of Caine in their own ways) perish too. Perhaps for the first time in the history, the Get of Caine finally did a good thing to the world, instead of fucking it up as always, by saving the earth and going extinct. Humanity is changed back into their old forms, but they keep having nightmares about their changes and there are still bands of flesh-warped beasts in the wild. 

Meanwhile, the players get ressurected by God just after the destruction of the Tzimisce Antediluvian. While they're still vampires and still have weaknesses to sunlight and fire, they receive quite the boost in power (losing any and all clan-specific weaknesses) as a sign of God's favor. It is now their choice whether they want to make the same mistakes as their forebearers or [[Unification Wars|create a better, new world out of the ashes of old, and guide humanity towards a greater purpose, bringing unity and sense of purpose in a way that only an immortal and wise leader can bring, on this new age.]]

There is another epilogue to all the endings however, should the GM wish continue the legends... 

Somewhere in the Middle-East [[Cain|a man]] digs himself out of a shallow grave. He feels his teeth, feels the mark upon his head, and screams a curse at the heavens for not letting him die... but all he hears is the mocking laughter of God as the Jyhad begins anew. Make of that what you will.