The Marks: Vamp Graffiti

How do vampires communicate with each other when they’re all hidden in the dark, dwelling in secret lairs, lying to each other and off the grid?   They do it with the marks, sometimes called “the vampire cant.” Similar to modern gang tags, subvertisements and graffiti, these public works of art or vandalism contain jargon, coded symbols, or archaic terms that signal meaning to fellow Kindred– and hopefully, only to them. The marks evolve from graffiti going back to Pompeii and from gang tags invented this decade. By design, they blend with old posters, guerrilla art, urban spray sign, and street construction rhumb lines.
A paper rat pasted to the wall of the train tunnel, the ornate curlicue red V sprayed on the bank’s alley wall, the yellow hieroglyph chalked in the abandoned church doorway. The words “red teeth” tagged on the stairwell, the Warhol Marilyn airbrushed over the transom. The tattoo on a blood doll, the seemingly random words on newspapers pasted over a boarded-up storefront. These marks tell Kindred whose turf they’re on, what clan claims the block, whom the Council has declared anathema.

MARKS AND MECHANICS

Sometimes the tension or dramatic outcome of a scene hinges on whether a character spots something, recognizes what they automatically notice, or can truly puzzle out the meaning of the object in front of them. Vampire characters can use regular Skills on the marks. Mortals need some sort of occult or other special knowledge to read the marks – although the Second  Inquisition may have assembled a collection of the most obvious ones. Storytellers may impose Difficulty bumps or die penalties for quality of paint, rough or cracked surfaces, lack of time, exposure to the elements, etc.

SPOTTING, RECOGNIZING AND DECIPHERING MARKS

 Characters who know specific marks notice them in the urban tapestry, catching sight of them in the gloom, on the crumbling concrete, in caked-on layers of graffiti. 
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Streetwise (for street tags) or Investigation (for repeated patterns) or Insight (for double meanings Difficulty depends on the obscurity of the mark and whether the tagger wants it found by outsiders.

Communiating With Marks

These marks just send messages, from “this is my turf” to “Inquisitors working undercover here.” The tagger doesn’t intend to hide their meaning, but to signal fellow Kindred. To create a coded mark, use Intelligence plus the lower of your Craft and the Skill associated with the message. 
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Craft (Painting or Poster Art or Graffiti), although tagging a particularly hard-to-reach spot might use Dexterity; disguising the mark as normal graffiti tags might use Wits + Streetwise. On a critical win, word of the mark rapidly reaches the intended audience even if they haven’t passed by the spot.

Persuading With Marks

This is how subvertisements undermine the company line, how pop culture cracks the façade of the powers that be, how viral memes infect the body politic. Naturally, the majority of graffiti, Kindred or other, doesn’t result in real change. Only those works that strike a nerve and get carried through the culture of the Damned like a bug become profound and unforgettable enough to be considered real power plays.
Dice Pool: Roll to encode the mark with Manipulation +whichever Social Skill best fits the intended message: Intimidation (to frighten or weaken), Leadership (to rally allies), Persuasion (to convert onlookers), or Subterfuge (to send a false message). The Social Skill cannot contribute more dice to the pool than the tagger’s Craft plus the relevant Specialty. The Storyteller can have the tagger roll this pool as a contest against a specific target to influence them or as a Social test against a Difficulty set by the audience attitude.
The more successes, the longer the work’s meaning stays with the viewer, the further word spreads of its quality, the greater the number of eyes that see it. In general, the work stays au courant for a number of nights equal to the successes on the roll. On a critical win, the tag genuinely changes something, if only outraging its target into foolishly premature action.