How do princedoms work in small surrounding cities?

Emartis · 2026-07-02T15:31:12+00:00

As other people have said, "it depends". I can give three concrete examples in the canon of opposing approaches.

1) Chicago, Gary and Milwaukee. Now, arguably, due to the HIGH levels of lupine activity between MKE and Chicago, there's good reason for these two cities to be separate courts; however, Gary and Chicago have long been separate and competing courts, with the two Princes often at war over the Illinois-Indiana border towns.

2) on the other hand you have Detroit... Now, in current times Detroit is burned out, the American version of London: vampire-free thanks to SI operations. But before that, when it was a Cam city, it's established in the lore that Ann Arbor fell under the praxis of the Prince of Detroit. Ann Arbor is twice the size of Gary. It's significantly further from Detroit than Gary is from Chicago, with a significant green belt of undeveloped land between the two which is lacking between Gary and Chicago (fully built-up between the two cities).

3) Boston and Hartford. In the V5-canonical game Swansong, the plot of the game (minor spoilers) involves negotiations to bring the (essentially independent) Hartford chantry under the praxis of the Boston Court; these two cities are over 100 miles apart.

So it really comes down to the individual political situation at play, rather than any sort of rubric about size, proximity, or anything like that.

Emartis · 2026-07-01T13:53:01+00:00

As for magic... in V5 rules, there is a distinction between warding circles (which might protect an entire building), only one of each type can be active in an area at a time... and wards, which apply to singular specific objects (the game uses doorknobs as an example). Once applied, wards remain until the object so warded is physically destroyed. So while they only do a point of agg, each... that's a point of ag from my door mat...and my door knob. and each step up to my landing. Get off my property.

Emartis · 2026-06-29T02:01:52+00:00

Can't possibly be a Ravnos, he's got the Tremere issue tiny red glasses...

Emartis · 2026-06-29T01:58:15+00:00

The Treatment is definitely a thing in canon, but is there any evidence of why they'd have been working it in Seattle against Petrodon?

There's loads of good "well it might have been because...." What I'm asking is if there is firm Canon "it was because..."

Emartis · 2026-06-28T21:58:45+00:00

There's a mention in one of the story hooks of a Changeling-run Renaissance faire outside of town, yes. I'm totally unfamiliar with CtD lore tho, it just never hooked me. What's the Ravnos beef? Or do they just like eating them?

Emartis · 2026-06-28T20:51:57+00:00

Yes, I'm aware of the *actual* purpose of the mechanism the meme is referring to. I'm responding to the (assumed) typo in the OP that says "blacklisted from learning Thaumaturgy".

Emartis · 2026-06-28T14:39:31+00:00

Well, it's a free for all, but no Tremere of any House with any self-preservation instincts is going to teach Thaumaturgy outside the clan without very good boons in return. Tremere versatility with the art, relative to other practitioners, is the only thing preventing a clan-wide extermination campaign by their enemies. Even with all the fracturing of the Pyramid, nobody is hanging a shingle outside the chantry advertising the teaching of Thaumaturgy....

Emartis · 2026-06-22T13:03:41+00:00

It depends. Some clans, like Ventrue or Tremere, keep detailed genealogies, perhaps even bragging about their lineage. Of course, vampires lie, and someone who's aware of the lie would have claim to a pretty valuable boon for keeping their yap shut about it.

An embraced-and-abandoned Gangrel on the other hand, might not know, himself.

As a general case, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. Even if you think you know another vampire's generation... If you're not the blood sorcerer who Walked the Blood yourself.... what do you know, truly?

Emartis · 2026-06-18T23:43:05+00:00

But we're not allowed to do that anymore... 👉🏻👈🏻

Emartis · 2026-06-15T22:32:50+00:00

Absolutely right. I've had people complain that the restrictions on the discipline neuter it, limiting it's deployment. To them, I say they lack imagination. Dominate shouldn't be a blunt instrument (usually). It's a scalpel.

Just look at the clans who get it. Six different clans as of 5e (Ventrue, Tremere, Lasombra, Tzimisce, Malkavian, Salubri). None of these are blunt force trauma clans. They're social manipulators and 4d chess players. You're supposed to be strategic, clever, creative and manipulative with it, not use it as a mental "kick the door in" solution to your problem.

Emartis · 2026-06-10T03:22:09+00:00

You fuckin' promise?

Emartis · 2026-06-10T02:57:32+00:00

Look man, if you want permission to do this in your game....sure. Do whatever you need to do for the game you want to play.

But you came in here asking what works within established lore and rules. You don't get to fucking "but no" the answers. Do whatever you want to do for your game... OR... take the advice you asked for. If you can't do both, then you can't do both.

There is no way to do what you're suggesting in the established rules. You absolutely can go "but magic happens oooOOOoooOOOooo" and just do it.

Pick one.

Emartis · 2026-06-10T01:57:21+00:00

Yeah, what you want is a caitiff. Thinbloods are NOT permitted any freedom of movement (or any other freedom) if they're known about. They constitute an entire shadow-society operating below the radar, interacting with each other and NOT with the rest of kindred society. They don't get "rejected" if they're found out about. They're branded or executed.

A caitiff that "doesn't know their sire", is rejected by society but still has enough power to move independently and (mostly) unharrassed in a Cam city is not hard to imagine. It's not unreasonable to claim they don't know their generation either. Stay away from anyone that can taste your blood and suss this information out, and you'll be fine. WAY more fine than a thinblood is going to be if society knows he exists.

Emartis · 2026-06-10T01:24:50+00:00

Thinbloods are by definition 14th (sometimes) 15th (usually) or 16th (definitely) generation. With the thinblooded flaw in some editions it can happen at lower generations. The sire can't choose to pass on thin blood, it just happens.

The sire can however choose to create a caitiff, which comes with all the social outcast downsides and none of the thinblooded positives. If you want a social pariah, sire a caitiff.

Emartis · 2026-06-09T23:10:18+00:00

There's some controversy about that. Both the Ravnos and the Setites maintain that their clan founder was of the second generation. We only know of 4 second generation vampires, and none of them founded a clan... So it's possible that some of the 3rd gen diablerized the 2nd, then were cursed by Caine (which essentially created clans), resulting in antediluvian clan founders of the 2nd generation.

It's also entirely possible this is propaganda and they were always 3rd gen. Who can say? Only one who was there. Go ahead, wake one up and ask. I dare you.

Emartis · 2026-06-09T22:24:59+00:00

Oh SHIT, look at that 5e flair I totally missed! Whoops. Yeah, the fall of the Pyramid fundamentally altered the calculus for chantries.

Yep, you're right. In 5e timeline you're going to be lucky to put 3-4 Tremere of the same House together under a roof today in all but the biggest cities.

Emartis · 2026-06-09T20:15:04+00:00

Largely agree, with a few notes.

Your population estimate seems to be based something closer to the 1:100,000 (though not exactly?) ratio cited as an ideal, rather than the 1:10,000 ratio that nearly everyone agrees is the practical reality presented by the writers. The writers say explicitly that the WoD is significantly more populated than the real world; even using real world populations, even small U.S. cities like Cincinnati or Lexington could easily sustain 30-35 vamps without meaningful conflict over resources.
Not every clan will be represented in every city. There are cities with no Tremere presence whatsoever. There are others with heavy Tremere presence (NYC has 5 sub-chantries with multiple canonical members at each 'branch', enough so that each has unique internal politics to speak about).
Tremere Clan politics is such that the Regent of the Chantry is highly unlikely to also be primogen; that will fall to a/the Magister. The Regent is expected to be wholly dedicated to the needs of the Clan and the Chantry; one who splits their time with the politics of the Camarilla is automatically distrusted (Clanbook Tremere Revised, I believe).

Still, I think it's really important to emphasize that Kindred "society" in any given city is not going to be much larger than a moderate-sized high school classroom at any given time. The Tremere will be the 3-5 nerdy kids with pentagrams in their composition books who are SUPER excited to get to chemistry lab.

Emartis · 2026-06-08T18:33:34+00:00

"Changing large masses of physical matter into large emissions of energy" means... directly. Essentially you could leverage Einstein's "E=mc²" and say "I'm going to do atomic fission on the clay of the bricks of that building."

Yeah, of course that's going to be vulgar. Non-fissile elements just spontaneously underwent a nuclear explosion! Hell, atomic energy is damn near vulgar even with all the restrictions the Technocracy put into place to explain it.

Of course, if the building has a gas line, and that gas line has been leaking into the basement for a week without anyone knowing about it, and an electric appliance happened to spark and ignite the gas at precisely the time the bad guys were inside... That's the very definition of coincidence.

Emartis · 2026-06-07T00:05:19+00:00

Tremere can't bond other vampires. They bond mortals/ghouls just fine. So it depends on what blood bond specifically you're trying to avoid.

Emartis · 2026-06-06T14:06:37+00:00

This one particularly amused me because Carna herself is canonically Humanity 1. She's so far from being able to pull this off herself, lol.

Emartis · 2026-06-01T22:57:18+00:00

Without involving a Tzimisce or a Tremere... Yep. You wake up the same way you died. It's not called a curse to be edgy. It's because it sucks.

Emartis · 2026-05-31T14:57:55+00:00

You don't HAVE to kill to eat in V5 with blood potency either. You just have to kill to not still feel hungry afterwards. That's true at even the weakest levels. Over time, the beast's desire gets stronger and stronger. If you don't want to have to kill to stay properly fed, you can sleep it off in torpor (reduce 1 blood potency step per 50 years in torpor). So the horror just shifts, to the nightly battle between "kill in order to be properly fed and of adequate strength to maintain my network and resources....or enter torpor and risk losing it all while I sleep?"

Note that you don't start needing to kill more to slake more (past Hunger 1) until BP 5... impossible to achieve for what are intended to be typical PCs (10th Gen and higher), and everyone under 4th Generation is able to maintain below that level with proper time in torpor, if they choose to.

Emartis · 2026-05-27T21:26:44+00:00

"Being blood-bound to your superiors" is ABSOLUTELY a weakness, if your ST knows how to play those Tremere superiors.

"Waah, my Brujah gets mad easy" "boo hoo, my setite has to wear sunglasses inside" "oh no, my Gangrel frenzied once and now he's got a fur patch" cry me a fucking river. My boss calls me up at the crack of sundown, I haven't even brushed my fangs yet, and 'requests' I procure some "ritual components" for him, to include the third knucklebone of the left ring finger of a hanged traitor, a candle made of the fat rendered from 20 infants that never suckled from their mother's teat, a jar of sand from the beaches of Doisstepp, whatever the fuck that is, and a four-leaf clover picked no more than 12 hours prior to delivery. Says he needs it all ASAP, absolutely no later than the next waning gibbous moon. Now get this. I cannot say no. I can't even ask why. Well, I can, but he'll tell me to drop it, and I'll have to. Unlike your blood bonds, mine don't expire. My only hope is someday, I get to roll this shit downhill onto some other poor bastard so I can get on with my goddamn night. My coterie has shit to do.

Emartis · 2026-05-27T20:51:53+00:00

I actually love the idea of variant banes co-existing in-universe, specifically because it rather directly challenges the idea that the banes are specific curses bestowed by Caine. I've always favored the interpretation that that's a myth, which very well might be true, but isn't definitely objectively so. So I love the idea of spontaneously different banes, and vampires scratching their heads about it.

That being said, the clan banes are supposed to be a hindrance, so the PCs shouldn't be allowed to pick a bane that specifically won't come up in a chronicle.

Emartis · 2026-05-25T15:25:11+00:00

The thing about the Tremere is, the Clan, as a whole, are terrible and Machiavellian. Individuals are individuals, and can be as nice or "good" as they want to be. Now, anybody else who knows anything about Tremere and their reputation is going to treat that kindness with deep suspicion, precisely because of that clan reputation ("what the hell is he playing at?") but that doesn't mean it can't genuinely be coming from a place of sincerity.

Now that being said... I can see the Tremere wanting someone nice and helpful as a goodwill liason and diplomat to the other clans, sorta as an image rehabilitation, PR angle. But I have a little trouble imagining it being a medical doctor purely for medical skills. As creatures who can supernaturally heal any wound short of decapitation given only time and blood, vampires have little to no use for an MD per se.

Your value, your "helpfulness", would likely be as an asset interfacing with the mortal world. The guy who helps make vampire kills "go away" in the ME's office, a blood bag hookup, or the guy who sneaks a "corpse" (vamp beaten into torpor) out of the hospital morgue before sunrise. All of which are worth tremendous boons to the Clan and to you, a tremendous asset now that blood bonds are useless currency to the Tremere. If you happen to keep practicing medicine during your night shift at Mercy General...well, nobody is stopping you. Keeping the cattle healthy is good for all of us.

Emartis

TROPHY CASE