BEING CHARMING IN VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES

PART TWO Staying out of fights still isn't working out for Cyprian Maggard, and it's only going to get worse.

- By Ian Evenden

When we last saw our reluctant hero and fledgling vampire Cyprian Maggard, he had a problem. Not only was he getting sent on odd jobs by a variety of low-lifes around the Santa Monica region, but he kept getting into fights. As a vampire of Clan Toreador, this just won't do. Cyprian is supposed to talk his way out of situations using charm, persuasion and seduction. Instead, he's punching people in the face.

So it's with this in mind that he returns to the streets. He has a quest to hand in at the Asylum nightclub, where he's met a lovely young lady, and has been doing some jobs as a bounty hunter too. It's one of these that sends our freshly minted suckhead into one of the more interesting situations he's encountered.

The bail bondsman is looking for a man called Carson, one of his regular bounty hunters, who's vanished. Luckily, he has the key to Carson's apartment, which isn’t a weird thing for an employer to have, so Cyprian heads over to check it out. Clues in the apartment - such as a key laying in plain sight on top of the TV — lead Cyprian to a tattoo parlour, which is deserted. As it’s nighttime, this shouldn't be a surprise, and it allows Cyprian to nose around. In the basement he answers a ringing phone, and somehow manages to agree to become a model for a medical prosthetics firm.

This is all very exciting, even more so as Cyprian did it without needing to use any of his special vampire powers. Modelling gigs, as PC Gamer readers no doubt already know, are not easy to come by. So he skips off without hesitation to see what it’s all about.

AN ARM AND A LEG

And what it’s all about turns out to be the extremely strange Mr Gimble, who Cyprian is invited to call Stan. He’s cut off his own arm as part of his obsession with prosthetic limbs, and now he wants to take pictures of perfectly healthy specimens?