I think I got some good feedback here, in particular about me nixing the conventional Covenants without offering elaborate game mechanics for my new ones, and the setting itself being too alien for your average player. If I make another attempt at a WoD/CofD MUSH in the future, these two critiques in particular will be taken to heart.
B E I J I N G
北 京
Crimson Dynasties is a Vampire: the Requiem, Second Edition game set in modern Beijing. In it, you will play as one of the Kindred, the parasitic, immortal predators that secretly run human societies. Beijing is an exciting and terrifying city filled with intrigue, corruption, adventure, and politics that these vile monsters treat as their playground. There is no place on this planet where people are more disposable, making it extremely inviting feeding grounds for the Kindred.
In it, you will play as one of the five Clans and one of the three custom Covenants.
C R I M S O N C LA N S
All five of the major Kindred Clans reside within modern Beijing, and each of them have their place in its structure. There is no real hierarchy among these Clans, such that one Clan is consistently higher than the others in the pecking order. However, inter- and intra-Clan politics are the norm everywhere else, and so they are here as well. Chinese regard their Clan almost as they do their Clan or ethnic subgroup within Beijing, and that is of course tinted with a particularly malicious flavor. Most Kindred resent the other Clans and their members, but that is hidden, thinly, behind a veil of politeness.
D A E V A
You want to believe them
These are the glamorous ones, the ones you wish you were, who have the veneer and the appearance of the perfect life or, if you're at least partially aware of what's really up, unlife. They wear the best clothes and drive fast cars. They are sexy, and their credit cards never seem to get declined. They run their social media accounts like they're rock stars, and even though very few people know who they are, they pull that LARP off with some degree of credibility.
These corpses invoke necrophilia in even the most staid and restrained mortals, and their power among Beijing Kindred relies on how everybody wants to be them, and how everybody wants to be around them. With a few whispers in the dark, they can destroy reputations and lower social credit scores. With their endorsement, your scam service or piece of junk product can sell even after your customers figure out you ripped them off. They are faux legitimacy incarnate, and everybody knows it, and everybody falls for it anyway.
These Kindred do not hold formal government positions in the city for the most part, or in the Kindred courts for that matter, but they hold sway in those things regardless. When dealing with them, expect them to have connections they should not, for better or worse. Hey, you might even get to be one of those connections, if you're lucky.
G A N G R E L
They don't make the rules,
They don't obey the rules,
But they do enforce them
These guys are tough. They don't respect laws, and try as they might, local police consistently get wrecked when they try to. Higher authorities write them off as hooligans, but they know better. How can you enforce the rules against the people who are capable of enough violence to make the police just go away? You effectively cannot. And so, in Kindred society, these are the ones who are paid off and kept happy so that they themselves can enforce whatever the needs of their benefactors are.
Often living from place to place, not holding down steady jobs for long because they can't be controlled and not paying rent because they don't have to, the Gangrel are regarded as the bad boys of Kindred society. This might seem contradictory with their role as enforcers, but the line between cop and criminal has always been blurred, and that becomes even more the case in Beijing Kindred society, where laws only count until they don't.
Those who don't pointedly defy the police infiltrate them, removing criminal elements of society while making it look like citizen-on-citizen crime to their superiors. Anything that reduces the amount of paperwork one has to do is welcome. Some even coerce local cops to give them police officer titles so that they can engage in their savager without causing as much of a ruckus. It's not like China has a huge issue with police brutality.
V E N T R U E
Bureaucrats from Before
The Ventrue always win, or so they remind you, pretty much every opportunity they get. These Kindred have a natural attraction to bureaucratic positions within Beijing because of how much power they hold. Some of that power is merely nominal, but who's counting? Besides, being the one who approves or denies your request. It's also common for Ventrue to be big investors and members of the millionaire and billionaire caste
Ventrue function as the fonts of institutional authority and official stature in Beijing. Nothing seems to resolve in favor of anybody without at least one Ventrue assenting to it at some level. There might be some things that slip past these staid parental figures, but it rarely goes public, and when it does, there are consistently rather severe consequences.
Ventrue are also overall the Clan with the oldest average age across Beijing. Many have been around since well before the Qing dynasty. Rumor has it that there are one or two lurking around who are older even than that, but these rumors have thus far been unproven. This centuries-long experience is leveraged mercilessly, and other Clans both fear and resent them for this.
N O S F E R A T U
The progenitors of urban legends
Nosferatu are creepy in disgusting in all of the world, but the Chinese have their own unique views on these monsters. Some regard their origination as the result of dishonored ancestors returned to haunt them. Others think they are disgruntled poor people who have been forgotten by the Party, kept in an unlife after their betrayal. Stories of and about the Nosferatu, both by mortals and by the Kindred, are rife with speculation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends.
Regardless of where Nosferatu actually originate, their habits are notoriosuly disgusting, terrifying, and aggressive. They are known for being rude and for flouting interpersonal rules. It's commonplace for them to cynically disobey local authorities, but not like the childish defiance of a teenager; more like the jaded monster who knows all of the rules are fake anyway, and are made-up and unenforceable. When local enforcers get uppity and consider doing their job, they usually hesitate, for fear of these creatures slithering off into the midniguht sewer systems, only to hold a grudge for a hundred years and take their revenge at the least opportune moment for their victim.
While the Nosferatu often have shorter unlifespans than other Kindred due to how extremely provocative their mere presence is, they usually make disproportionate impact for that period, and that impact is disproportionately for the worse most of the time. On those occasions that Nosferatu do survive for centuries in Beijing, their memory tends to linger in the fevered dreams of even the most stalwart, and their presence is only made obvious very occasionally for that reason.
M E K H E T
The ones you won't notice
Mekhet represent the ones who never go noticed in the first place, and that is in spite of all of the malignant power plays they make. Being quiet goes a long, long way. These Kindred focus entirely on being surgical in their approach to their use of power. They rarely go out in public to create a big scene, and when they do, it is to distract from something more important.
Matters other Clans wish to avoid, Mekhet address with careful management of risk and calm response to stress. People don't get killed when the Mekhet are involved, they just mysteriously disappear. They don't get robbed, their things just happen to turn up missing. They're not demoted, people just stop taking them as seriously. Evidence isn't planted against someone, it just wasn't there before.
This Clan is shrouded in mystery, and they like it this way. They want others to know nothing, and they usually succeed.
C R I M S O N C O V E N A N T S
Beijing has its own society and rules to the extent that the Western Covenants do not apply. It has its on pentchotomy, or division by five ways. They aren't just unique to the East or even Asia in general, but specifically to Beijing. This city is important enough that it basically is its own dimension in many ways.
Z H O N G C H E N G
忠 诚
L O Y A L T Y
The loyalists of the Qing dynasty persist over a century after that dynasty fell. If you talk to any of them, they will insist that it never fell. They will insist that Puyi was not the cruel wet noodle Communist historians insist he was. They will insist he was a strong man who was smeared and brought low.
How much of that is true, it is hard to say. What is even more dubious is that the Zohngcheng's current leader, Puyi, is the actual Puyi, as he claims. More than just claiming, at that, he will have a man killed or kill that man himself if he catches that man denying his stature.
The loyalists are stern and insist on consistency. They focus on a variation on Confucianism that deviates heavily from the ones mortals follow, but rely on the ideas and myths of mainstream Confucianism, what's left of it. This is much like the Lancea Sanctum in the West.
G U A N
官
O F F I C I A L S
The Chinese Communist Party requires absolute fealty to it, at least on paper, but in practice tons of corruption goes on. Many departments act as intermediaries between the Party and other elements of Chinese society, and without those intermediaries, that society would crumble. The CCP politburo is aware of quite a bit of the seedier goings-on, including that of Kindred society.
The Guan are the liasion between the CCP and Kindred society. Naturally, they hold serious sway in both as a consequence of this. They can make your bad social credit marks disappear, just like that. Thing is, they can also make those marks re-appear, or worse, appear without being real. They can brush crimes under the table or fabricate them wholecloth, issue or revoke licenses and permits (which are critical in Beijing if you intend on getting anything done), and offer forced cultural support or oppoition to any idea or practice.
They are second in terms of age in the Kindred gerontocracy, being outdone only by the Zhongcheng. The Guan tend to be stuffy, bureaucratic, and formulaic. However, they also tend to be reliable and consistent. When you cross one of them, their dignity culture will mandate that a third party steps in on their behalf, so that they personally must not really do anything to exact justice.
T I A N D I H U I
天 地 会
H E A V E N - A N D - E A R T H - S O C I E T Y
The Heaven and Earth Society, more commonly known as the Tiandihui, is in the strangest way a direct analog to the Zhongcheng. Just as the latter are loyalists to the Qing, the Tiandihui are loyalists to the Ming. However, one important difference between the two is that the Tiandihui have a considerably more tenuous claim to this role, and they seem to take it a lot less seriously.
In practice, the Tiandihui are the vast criminal underbelly of Beijing, even though they originate in another province. Anything that the powers that be don't want you doing on paper, you can do through the Tiandihui. Prostitution, drugs, human trafficking, numbers games, you name it.
Prostitution and human trafficking, although already mentioned, are their bread and butter for Kindred society. Cheap blood dolls are their province, and while they might need to work with the Guan to some limited extent, these creatures are the best at bypassing them, and providing what the CCP would never approve of on paper.
Character Creation: Open Now
Opening Night: Friday, February 26th, 2021, 9PM Eastern Time
Website: https://crimsondynasties.world/
Host: crimsondynasties.world port 5354
@arkandel I wrote coded sheets and a dice roller for my game, but it kind of petered out too fast.