Humans

Many vampires see the kine simply as prey, and themselves as all-powerful lords of the night who have nothing to fear from what are, in their minds, are simple, lesser beings. The older, or wiser, kind know that while that’s mostly true when it comes to individual humans, there are always exceptions, and that even the unexceptional kind are dangerous in a group. There are a good number of Kindred in London who remember the Blitz, and how many ancient and powerful creatures perished, not even because humans wanted to do away with them, but almost by accident.

And, truth be told, that’s how the majority of them still cause problems today. Yes, there are the occasional “vampire hunters” who genuinely know what they’re doing and have some idea of what they’re facing, and these are among the more dangerous enemies that a vampire can have other than their own kind. By and large, however, humans cause problems to the Kindred in other ways. Chatting up someone at the Rack who the vampire had their eye on, for instance. Firebombing the building where they make their haven to make a political statement. Bribing a politician to take exactly the position the Kindred didn’t want them to take. Just being concerned about their spouse/child/best friend’s strange behavior.

It doesn’t take a lot for even ordinary everyday humans to present problems that Kindred may have to put some work into solving. It may not be as glamorous as facing off against the hordes of the Sabbat, but it’s also substantially less likely to result in being staked and left out for the morning sun …

Unlife

The fact is, just existing as a vampire from night to night is fraught with difficulties that living beings don’t have. You need to find blood. You need to have a safe place to sleep that’s out of the sunlight and that isn’t likely to have curious mortals poking around it. You probably need to come up with a way to interact with human society that doesn’t make anyone curious about why you’re cold to the touch or your skin is pale or you never seem to eat and drink or you aren’t willing to come meet them for lunch the next day. And you need to do all these things without giving up your own Humanity in the process.

Most of these challenges can be handled in many different ways, some of them quite easily. But how a character chooses to handle them — and how they react when their normal ways of doing so are disrupted, whether it’s because their house burned down or their favorite Blood Doll went on vacation to Ibiza — are marvelous grist for roleplay. Sometimes the stakes being a little on the low side allows for more time and attention to be focused on the characters.

Each Other

Kindred society is fiercely and ruthlessly competitive. Gaining prestige within one’s sect, one’s clan, and even one’s coterie is, by and large, a zero-sum game, and it is also the only way to have something like security when it comes to one’s own existence. Sure, vampires from different groups will work together against a sufficiently significant level of threat — two Ventrue who hate each other working against the Tremere, a Ventrue and a Tremere who hate each other working against the Sabbat — but the moment that threat is gone or is no longer perceived to be a danger, they’ll go right back to trying to figure out how to improve their own standing at the others’ expense.

TowersMUX has specific rules when it comes to one character actually removing another from play. But things that fall short of that are generally fair game, and are in fact more or less ICly expected in the Vampire sphere. Framing another Kindred for something they didn’t do? Sure. Engineering a plan to have them stripped of their territory, with it being awarded to you instead? Absolutely. Firebombing their prized vintage sports car? A-OK. Undermining their influence in the shipping industry? Of course! It’s all part of the nightly give and take of Kindred politics, and vampires who don’t play the game are likely to fall behind those who do. Even playing and losing is better than not playing at all.

Please remember that, while character-vs-character conflict is great, player-vs-player conflict is not. The IC Camarilla (and the Anarch Baronies) may be competitive; TowersMUX, at the OOC level, is not. Be open, friendly, and agreeable with other players, even if your characters are fierce rivals.

The Sabbat

Everyone loves to hate the Sabbat — often including other Sabbat. Between their unapologetic embrace of the monstrous and the horrifying, and their habit of mass-Embracing unwitting victims to use as cannon fodder, there’s almost always both a reason and an opportunity to get into conflict with them. It can be something as indirect as trying to find out which of several NPCs is actually the Sabbat infiltrator, or something as visceral as running into a pack of shovelheads in Subterranean London.

Sabbat enemies don’t necessarily have to be threats on a purely, or even primarily, violent level — the Sabbat are perfectly capable of sending someone into the city to try and steal a particular important document from the British museum, or to plant explosives under a Primogen’s haven, and so on. And it is possible for Sabbat NPCs to be sympathetic in their own way — there’re plenty of vampires who are exploited and destroyed by the sect, in spite of their own professed high ideals, and some of those victims are well aware of what’s going on. That said, please remember that the Sabbat on TowersMUX is an NPC antagonist faction, and that it should generally be portrayed as worse than the Camarilla. That doesn’t mean portraying the Camarilla as good guys — just being careful to make them a small but important amount less morally reprobate than the Sabbat are.

Autarkis

The Prince isn’t big on vampires in her territory who disregard her authority, and her idea of what constitutes her territory is fairly expansive. The Anarchs are somewhat more tolerant, but even they get tetchy about people who continually give them the metaphorical finger. And the Independent Clans don’t feel any obligation to anyone other than their own. What they have in common, in London, at least, is that none of them are going to extend their protection to so-called “Autarkis” Kindred who happen to be unlucky enough to be hanging around the city and unwise enough to make it obvious.

This makes them ideal antagonists; they can run the gamut from violent bullyboys who are just one step away from succumbing to Wassail, all the way to almost-human intriguers in fancy dress who’d give any Ventrue a run for their money. They can be neonates themselves who have unrealistic ideas about their ability to stand up to the vampire establishment, or older vampires who’ve spent years or even decades carefully avoiding any others of their kind. Especially in a place like London, there just aren’t enough hours in the night, or enough vampires, to keep track of absolutely everyone and everything, so while it’s not an everynight occurrence, it’s also not unusual to run across a vampire who’s found some unobtrusive corner of the city to keep to themself in.

Unlike some of the other vampire sects, dealing with Autarkis can also have a moral dimension. The Camarilla is not a fundamentally moral organization, it’s a fundamentally self-interested organization, and Autarkis NPCs can be sympathetic characters who have legitimate objections to the way it does business. PCs may have to come to terms with doing things they find personally objectionable in order to advance in the sect, or disobey and accept the consequences, or find some way to disobey without being held accountable. This is certainly not the only possibility, though, and Autarkis can also be as bad as any Sabbat.

Wights

Vampires who have permanently fallen to the Beast are among the most uncomplicated antagonists a Kindred can have to deal with. There’s not much in the way of moral dilemmas or tension between what’s right and what vampiric custom demands; eliminating a threat to the Masquerade who is also a threat to one’s own existence and a threat to the kine is one of the most clear-cut situations out there.

Which is not to say that it’s easy. The Kindred who degenerate into Wassail tend to be those who’ve been in existence for a while, or who’ve had particularly brutal and vicious unlives. Combined with their unreasoning state, they’re often more than a match, physically speaking, for PC vampires, and they no longer care about keeping their existence secret, which means anyone hunting them must be doubly careful to make sure there’s no opportunity for them to stumble into the public eye. But they can still be cunning, they can still run in packs, and all these things put together make them far more dangerous as opponents than a neonate hearing about them for the first time might believe.

Wights don’t have to be a straightforward combat challenge — dealing with them can just as easily be a question of finding them at all, or of repairing damage they’ve done to the Masquerade, as one of simply putting them down once and for all. But they do make a fine choice when you’re in the mood to stake someone.

Infernalists

Actual devil-worshipping Kindred are less common than might be immediately assumed. But there are some, whether they be Baali, converts to the Baali’s ideas, or just those who’ve come to follow the dark path on their own, independent of any larger group. Both the Camarilla and the Anarchs consider such vampires, and their minions, enemies to be exterminated on sight, and therefore they are very rarely open about their activities. No matter how powerful the vampire, having a whole city’s worth of Kindred after you is rarely the sort of thing one survives for long.

Locating and stopping infernalist cults and their masters can make for entertaining storylines; there are, of course, likely to be some such vampires in the deeper parts of Subterranean London. It’s okay to use these things as plot elements, but please do so sparingly: we prefer that infernalists be kept as an occasional threat, rather than as a common or an everyday occurrence.

Other Spheres

The Kindred have long memories. The oldest Garou alive is many generations removed from the Burning Times, and only the most long-lived of magi can remember anything from that era, while there are vampires in London today whose sires were personally involved. Queen Anne’s unlife has been long enough that she recalls the last half of that period herself, and she is nowhere near the oldest vampire in Europe. More than any other sphere, therefore, they are wary of finding themselves at odds with any of the different supernatural groups that infest the World of Darkness.

That isn’t to say that there are no conflicts. The Technocratic Union’s priorities may lie elsewhere, but they are well aware of the existence of vampires and have no intention of letting what they see as the world they’ve built fall under the sway of the undead. The Nephandi have been known to collaborate with the Baali and other infernalist Kindred, with both sides convinced of the uneasy partnership convinced that the other is being played for fools. Orphans and magi outside the Traditions have been known to become ad-hoc vampire hunters, and some of the more daring of them have had the same thoughts of immortality that Tremere did so many centuries ago.

The werewolves have no fondness for vampires, either, but their numbers have dwindled, and today their focus is mainly on the most monstrous and horrible Kindred; they don’t have the resources to worry about those still putting up a facade of humanity. The creatures of the Wyrm are a different story — the Black Spiral Dancers sometimes seek to harvest vitae or vampire organs for use in their foul rites, or drag the unwilling donor back into their hives for some fate even worse than undeath. Pentex is also quite willing to eliminate vampires that it sees as standing in the way of its ambitions, and the Sabbat — and worse — who are in their ranks have few qualms about using their status to damage rival sects.

Conflicts between the fae and the undead are usually limited and are often somewhat arms’-length: vampires, by their very nature, are inimical to Glamour, and the fae don’t relish being near them even for the length of a swordfight. Still, it does happen. Some types of Dauntain deliberately seek out the Kindred, hunting them for the power of their blood; others attempt to manipulate them into destroying places of inspiration and creativity; and a few, as well as certain varieties of Thallain, take offense at the idea that something else might be a greater nightmare than they are.

Please remember that, per the rules in Storytelling, members of PC factions should not be used as antagonists without staff approval — this means no Werewolves from the 13 Tribes, no Traditions Magi, no Seelie or Unseelie Changelings, and so forth.