You lost everything that mattered that morning when your husband burned himself to ashes. You’ve dedicated your fortune and existence to bringing about the end of those who ultimately caused his death. Like the spider at the heart of a growing web of contacts and paid minions, you are spreading your influence across the city to find them. You will show no mercy, no remorse. You will wipe out every last one of them— not only the one pack, but any more you find on the road to Hell.
The Genius Doctor (HH2 p. 172)
People always said you were greedy, but they didn’t know the life you’ve had. Your mother was diagnosed with cancer when you were young, and your childhood was pretty tough as a result. Not only did you have to watch what your mother was going through, but the rest of the family lived hand-to-mouth trying to cover the medical bills. As such, because you had so little at home, you took anything and everything that the world put in front of you, as you weren’t going to get it any other way.
Your mother pulled through, and the ordeal led to you forging a career for yourself in medicine, to put an end to the suffering in others that you had seen firsthand. It was hard filling out all the paperwork and chasing down the grants you needed to get there, but now you’re a rising star in the medical field. Based at the university hospital in the city, you’ve been working on cancer research for the last couple of years.
Despite your noble endeavors, your selfish nature remains, as you discovered following a recent problem at the hospital when blood had gone missing from the blood bank. Because you used blood samples in your research, you took an interest in the theft and took matters into your own hands before it could threaten your research. You staked out the area and caught a glimpse of someone going into the blood bank one night. Following the individual home, you returned the following morning with evidence in hand in an attempt to blackmail her. You were always hungry for more. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.
It was the decision to go back during the day that saved you. Tired and sluggish as the morning sun shone outside, you managed to run for your life back outside into the light where she couldn’t follow. In that moment, with adrenaline pumping through your veins, you couldn’t believe what you’d found. The terror of the moment yielded to wonder when you realized the potential of what lay before you. A being who could survive beyond death could have remarkable regenerative powers. If
you could harness that power, you might be able to find a cure for cancer. A Nobel Prize could be within your grasp.
Quickly gathering some improvised equipment, you returned while the sun was high in the sky, and after what seemed like an eternity trying to gather the courage to go back in again, you entered the creature’s lair with cable ties and baseball bat in hand. Again, her sluggishness was her downfall. Beating her into submission, each frantic blow fueled by fear and opportunity, you finally had the thing on the ground, tied up, immobile. Transporting the restrained being to your secure laboratory, you examined her and
then dissected her to expose her secrets. Ultimately left with
a pile of ash on the operating table, you had not failed
entirely. You had learned a great deal about the subject’s
physiology. However, you needed to know more.
Now, you scour the city for more “subjects.” Following them back to their lairs, you break in during the day with the help of interns from the hospital whom you have
paid to secure their silence. Restraining the subjects
in body bags — they simply need to be transfixed
with a wooden cotter! — you carry them back
to the hospital in an ambulance. There, you
continue your experiments to harness their
power for the “good of mankind.” When
you’ve finished your great work, you will
publish your findings to the world and
bathe in your success at the expense of a shattered Masquerade.
Image: Even though you’re in your late 30s, you look older than your years. You prefer formal presentation to casual, which grants you a certain impression of authority. In the lab, you can be found in a pristine lab coat with a pair of plastic safety glasses hung around your neck. Out of the lab, you often wear a smart pinstriped business suit, the better to navigate boardrooms
when requesting grant money. Fairly well built, you
are known for your personal fitness regimen and can often be seen jogging in the morning around
Roleplaying Hints: You can’t believe your luck. You were in the right place at the right time, and
now you have the chance to make the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the world: a cure for cancer, and maybe even the ability to forestall death indefinitely. These things may well be monsters, but their bodies have so much to tell you. It’s not like you’re killing “people” anyway. The real people are the ones who are going to ensure you go down in history.
The Jaded Journalist (HH2 p. 174)
Ever since your high school days, you wanted to be a reporter, hoping that one day you would break a stunning exposé that would make you famous. As such, you set out for a career in journalism with only a little talent but a lot of enthusiasm. You got your foot in the door with a job at a slick but poorly respected tabloid with a strong online presence, hoping to quickly rise in the industry. That was 10 years ago. Since then, you’ve been working on what is referred to as the Oddity Column — unusual stories that fill space on the back pages. You keep dreaming that one day you’ll stumble across the story that will finally make you famous.
Over the years, some stories have shared a common motif. Bodies pulled from the river, completely drained of blood. Bars full of people torn apart as if by an animal. Lone individuals hunting “vampires” to kill them or capture them for experimentation.… However, it was just before Christmas when you finally saw all the proof you needed. You were heading home when you were attacked. You saw the fangs, the claws, and the inhuman look in the thing’s eyes. You did what most would do if confronted by a pack of ravening monsters: You ran for your life.
You collected all the evidence you could find of what you saw that night — CCTV images, witness reports, police radio responses, anything you could get your hands on. You believed a Pulitzer Prize was assured when you submitted your exposé. However, the story was buried, the evidence destroyed, and you were ordered to drop the entire story. You knew it was a cover-up. At first, you couldn’t understand it. Burying the story went against everything for which journalism stood. Then you saw the big picture. Only the vampires themselves could benefit from the truth being suppressed. You realized that they controlled the media, allowing them to remain hidden.
The only way to get the truth to the people was for you to go solo, so that’s exactly what you did. You quit and went freelance. Publishing articles via smaller, fringe publications and at your own slowly growing blog, you’re now spreading the word, albeit among a niche market audience. However, your name is out there, and more and more readers recognize you as a rising authority in the field of the supernatural. It’s a position about which you’re conflicted. On one hand, the fame, while slight, is exactly what you wanted. On the other hand,
it could end up making you a martyr if the creatures of the night eventually want to silence you for coming too close to blowing the whole thing open.
You’ve been asthmatic since you were a child, and given that the only weapon you’ve ever wielded is a pen, you can’t fight them directly. At night, you gather what intelligence you can as covertly as possible and compile dossiers on the monsters you find. When you’ve gathered enough information, you look for individuals to whom you can pass it on— normally out of the blue, through a variety of personal methods that sometimes border on blackmail — in the hope that they are spurred into action by what they read and take the fight to the creatures of the night.
Some people who’ve acted on the information you provided have
turned up dead. Others have gone missing entirely. Some
have been successful, burning down havens, clearing the city one block at a time. It’s a heavy burden on your soul, but with every success, you know you are ensuring the safety of
people, still-living people, like yourself. You don’t know long
your efforts can remain hidden. You just hope it’s long
Image: Slightly below average height and slightly overweight, you often dress in a
raincoat and brown felt hat, with your
inhaler close at hand. You look like you
pose no physical threat to anyone in a
fight, though you’re relatively dexterous, evinced by your habit of rolling pens and pencils round your fingers as you jot lines down upon your ever-present notepad. Your pockets often bulge with miscellaneous equipment and paraphernalia, ranging from chewing gum to smartphones, and from business cards to notebooks and tablet computers already full of your scribbled observations.
Roleplaying Hints: You know you’re hunting a dangerous prey, but the best journalists don’t get anywhere without taking risks. You like to revel in
your fame and your reputation as an “expert” on the
supernatural with which your efforts have rewarded
you. At heart though, you’re terrified the creatures
of darkness could come for you at any moment, every night, so you’re manic, vacillating between being happy and overconfident one minute to being a desperate coward a heartbeat later if a situation turns sour for you. You like to think of yourself as a shrewd, calculating mastermind who will win against the darkness from afar and never have to see the front line of the conflict directly. However, in a real fight, you know you’d fold like
a cheap suit, as you’re craven in the face of pain.
