BEING CHARMING IN VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES PART 4

He's good with his fists, but is our fledgling's charisma up to snuff?

- Ian Evenden

Cyprian Maggard may be the luckiest fledgling vampire ever to be embraced, and that's without a luck stat even appearing on his character sheet. Not only has he made it to an unprecedented fourth diary entry, but he's disobeyed an order from a vampire prince, killed a lot of people he said he wouldn't (and which is not going to look good if night ever ends and the day shift arrives at the museum he butchered his way through) and lost the (presumably) priceless artefact he was tasked with retrieving.

Instead of taking it out on him, however, the vampire prince is angry at someone else. Phew. Not only this, but he continues to trust the red-trousered fop to act as his agent, dispatching him to Hollywood to continue the search for the Ankaran Sarcophagus, which he believes to have fallen into the hands of the Nosferatu, a clan of disfigured sewer dwellers who trade in information.

Hollywood, it turns out, is an oddly rundown place quite unlike the glitzy image projected through the movie industry. It's run by an Anarch baron named Isaac, and he demands I meet with him as soon as I set foot on his streets. Cyprian is polite and respectful, and gets away without being eaten alive, and with a quest to pick up a videotape from a courier. Sounds easy.