World of Darkness: A Place to Belong

Back when I lived in Columbia, (South Carolina not South America, you’d be amazed how often I need to clarify that here in North Carolina) I got exposed to the World of Darkness… No, not the terrible hellscape world that started in 2015 and only seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes on. This World of Darkness (or WoD) was somehow brighter and more hopeful than I’ve been finding our own world, making it a fantastic escape. Like the world of Fallout and the 41st Millenium. You know, brighter. 

In all seriousness, there is something about these worlds, despite their dark and terrible themes, that do make them feel brighter: the ability to affect change or exert power over them, not just as a game master, but as a player. In Wod, you can take on the role of many a monster: Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, Mage, Fae, or even Demon. As a player, you have agency and, even if your character dies, you can bloody the nose of whatever forces try to hurt you. As a vampire (the most common game is Vampire: the Masquerade) you may need to deal with the stuffy Camarilla and their draconian laws, the human hunters who seek to kill you for existing as you are, the religious zealots of the Sabbat, or a plethora of many more. 

When WoD announced a sequel to its fantastic video game, Bloodlines, they started what was called the “Month of Darkness” over on their Discord server. What this was, was a list of prompts, probably for people to draw their OC characters in, but I’ve never been much of an artist myself. Rather, I took a look at these prompts and decided, having not done much actual writing for a while, that I should utilize them as writing prompts to get myself back into the swing of writing again. I reached out to my dear friend Nicole, thinking she would want to take the opportunity to draw the prompts, as she is much more artistically inclined, however she too thought that it would be fun to write the prompts rather than draw them, so we decided to write stories that were connected to each other, but not the same. 

It came down to what characters we were wanting to write about, then. Would I write about my Tremere doctor, Francois who fought in the Blood Brothers War of the American Civil War? Would I write about Yen, the Navajo Tzimichie who was fighting to keep his land free from invaders looking for expansion? Would I write about Jaime, my Lasombra private investigator who sought to live by his ideals and feed off those who took from children what was taken from him?

These characters were all great, but they were all too established in games and worlds created by other people. Instead, I decided to create a new character, one that may have been a bit masturbatory in his creation. I went far beyond a self-insert when I created Grey, but there was a reason. 

See, I started to notice something about the Vampire Clans of VtM. While each one had strengths and flaws, each had something more: their compulsions. When Vampires failed so badly in a roll, they could be overcome with a compulsion that is specific to their clan. For the Tremere, it is perfectionism, the need to do something perfectly, not just successfully. For the Tzimiche its covetedness, or the need to exert control or ownership over something. For Lasombra, its ruthlessness, or the need to be brutally cunning or savagely exert control over something… and thinking of these compulsions, I began to see a pattern emerge in my thinking. 

I play Tremere more than any other clan, but these other two clans are often my go tos when I want to do something different. And when I lined them up like that, I began to realize something about myself. A perfectionist control freak… well shit. That fits me to a T. So I began thinking, what would I be like, or what would my life be like, if I were turned? If I were sired by a vampire that best fit my personality? If I had the power to affect change on the world I lived in? 

What if I were a vampire? 

Not a character, but what if it were me? I began delving into the idea, trying to use the flaws of my personality, my own compulsions, to develop an understanding of myself and my weaknesses to better understand my strengths and what I could do to affect change in my own world. What if I tried to live my life more like a Tremere? What positive changes could I create to make myself more confident, more convincing, or more influential?

I’d proposed this idea of using a TTRPG version of ourselves as a therapy tool to both my therapist and my friends months before the WoD writing prompts were released, and had even made myself a character sheet of how I would want myself to be if I were play myself, just a better and more powerful version of myself, in the World of Darkness. Nicole had done the same, creating her own character, a Malkavian (compulsion Delusion for anyone wondering), and upon remembering these versions of ourselves sitting in the VtM 5th Edition Character Sheet App on my phone, I proposed we write the stories about these versions of ourselves. 

As I said: mastabatory. 

But to me, it was both a writing exercise and a therapeutic exercise. It was a chance to explore a different version of myself. One that fed into the compulsions that affected my daily life, but in ways where the real me couldn’t take control and use them to affect the world around me. For Bryan, perfectionism is a subtle failing that creates difficult situations that I have to deal with through actively dissecting the ways they’re damaging my psyche (helped greatly by the wonderful book recommended by my therapist: How to be Enough: Self Acceptance for Self Critics and Perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen, a fantastic book for anyone dealing with similar issues). For Grey, who is just an AU Bryan, it was still a flaw in his nature, but it was a flaw that came with power to start making a difference in the world around him in ways that real world Bryan could not. 

In typical fashion for me, the single page or so for each prompt became something much more, and by the end of the month I’d written over 120k words, making this a novel twice over. Unfortunately, as the IP belongs to White Wolf and World of Darkness, I cannot publish the story as the novel it is… As a work of fan fiction however… And that, dear readers, is precisely what I plan to do. This newer segment of my blog is going to exist specifically as a means of both giving you the opportunity to read this “book” I wrote in the WoD universe in a legal and supportive way, allow me to reflect on each chapter written, and even share a little about WoD and why I love it so much. So please, come with me on this journey and enjoy the tales of what I’ve been calling: Queen City by Night.Book One: A Place to Belong.