Cacophony Listener
(••• to •••••)
People talk, and so do monsters. The tradition and taboo surrounding the Masquerade may obscure communication between Kindred, but they don’t block it completely. A childe of the information age, your character hears everything. Where other people see outbreaks of Masquerade breaches or scatterings of pamphlets, your character sees what’s really going on. He has the ability to reconstruct current events in the Kindred world from the mess of tiny messages vampires send, deliberately or otherwise. He recognizes useful information, and knows where to get more.
Cacophony information sources are divided into the following levels of accessibility. Each level includes the lower ones.
••• Word on the Street: Your character can read the signals used by neighboring vampires. He might recognize the graffiti of the surrounding coteries, for example, or know their hand signals. Your character can access the knowledge of Kindred who keep domains near his, or who have access to the same herds.
•••• Talk About Town: Your character knows where underground magazines and pamphlets get dropped, as well as how to decode them. He can gain access to specific gossip and other messages being spread around the city, and subjects of general Kindred interest, such as debates on how the Embrace works, around the region.
••••• Friends Abroad: Your character is one of the rare Kindred with reliable, personal contacts outside his nearby domains. For older vampires, these are likely to be mailboxes or phone numbers. For younger generations, they might be Internet acquaintances or communities. Your character not only has access to the general “noise” coming out of the world’s Kindred population, but can ask specific questions of other information junkies. You should agree with the Storyteller in advance who your character’s sources are, as with the Contacts Merit.
Once per topic, you may make a Wits + Investigation or Socialize roll. For each success, your character learns one fact or finds one document about the subject in the Kindred community at the level he has access to. If the Storyteller feels that less information exists than the number of successes rolled, she should inform you, although your character may assume he simply hasn’t found anything yet.
Cacophony information sources are divided into the following levels of accessibility. Each level includes the lower ones.
••• Word on the Street: Your character can read the signals used by neighboring vampires. He might recognize the graffiti of the surrounding coteries, for example, or know their hand signals. Your character can access the knowledge of Kindred who keep domains near his, or who have access to the same herds.
•••• Talk About Town: Your character knows where underground magazines and pamphlets get dropped, as well as how to decode them. He can gain access to specific gossip and other messages being spread around the city, and subjects of general Kindred interest, such as debates on how the Embrace works, around the region.
••••• Friends Abroad: Your character is one of the rare Kindred with reliable, personal contacts outside his nearby domains. For older vampires, these are likely to be mailboxes or phone numbers. For younger generations, they might be Internet acquaintances or communities. Your character not only has access to the general “noise” coming out of the world’s Kindred population, but can ask specific questions of other information junkies. You should agree with the Storyteller in advance who your character’s sources are, as with the Contacts Merit.
Once per topic, you may make a Wits + Investigation or Socialize roll. For each success, your character learns one fact or finds one document about the subject in the Kindred community at the level he has access to. If the Storyteller feels that less information exists than the number of successes rolled, she should inform you, although your character may assume he simply hasn’t found anything yet.