Path of the Vampire forum

On: Secrecy

I've resisted keeping a journal for a long time because the idea of leaving behind physical evidence of my innermost thoughts, moreso than what I am, is a repugnant notion. Having a catalog of my thoughts and my fears, and my insecurities is tantamount to handing out flyers with the information on it, and tossing them at people as they walk by. Nothing ever really stays secret forever. Not if there's a record of it. That's the plot of how many television programs? Two people do something in secret, but good drama only exists when that secret is in danger of being made public, or when it's found out. And if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that if God or some other higher power exists, we're just entertainment for them. The whole of existence is one great long show. I think vampires being real just cheapens our genre.

So then the question arises: "What is the motivation?" Well for some, I imagine the appeal is for memory and introspection. A person may feel the need to write down and later read the high and low points in their lives. Maybe someone hurt the writer, and they want to remember the exact thing he or she said, to keep the anger alive. I spend a lot of time in meditation, and don't hold grudges. As a vampire, my neural pathways are unlikely to begin deteriorating, so I tend to keep my memories in a lockbox in my mind. Where they belong. Where they are most sacred. I've also never found writing to be therapeutic. If anything, it seems to me to be either the poor man, or the introvert's replacement for seeing a trained professional. When I take issue with something, I have people I talk to for that. Worst case scenario, it's a little blood on the lapel to make sure private remains private.

I thought to myself, after having exhausted other possibilities, maybe I wanted to write down my thoughts for future 'generations'. I have ample experience in numerous areas. Even when the Dragomir went neutral. Even when I went quiet, I always watched. And then I thought to myself. "You know, you're really not a great sire, Az." Which isn't false humility. Of my still living childer, Shiva and I never got along, Tiaz was my best friend in life, who I haven't seen in years. Asher hated me, and I think I hated him too. Scratch, I haven't heard from in years, and Andrew...Andrew is sweet. I should catch up with him. Of course by 'alive', I mean I'm able to still sense them to an extent. I hope they're there, but my heart wouldn't be particularly burdened if they weren't. I care about them, but I only ever wanted to be their friend. I never needed to be their father. So it seems a little pompous for me to suddenly want to be a teacher; the idea actually fills me with a little dread.

The idea of spending days or hours teaching someone how to feed or things like that is just ludicrous. My own sire never taught me any of that, and I learned on my own. I think that might be part of the issue right there, though. I'm a Dragomir. Regardless of anything else, my soul isn't warm blooded and at my core, I'm a snake. I expect my 'young' to fend for themselves. The bond of friendship is more important to me than how successful they are as vampires.

And then I thought. "You know, Az, even if you were a decent sire, there's no evidence anyone would want to read your babbling." And that's true enough. I'm not as old as the ancients, so whatever experience I have pales in comparison. I'm not particularly left or right of any one issue, so extremism is a turn off to me. Sadly, it's extremism that is interesting to read. I can't promise wisdom or entertainment, or knowledge. The only thing I have is my perspective. So maybe that's my gift. I can't teach the basics like hunting or how to seal a wound, or any of that, but I have my mind and I have my magic. I can share those, and hope for the best.

Maybe I'll take on an apprentice rather than sire again.

Cleaner that way, I think.

But I digress. The first topic of my considerations is vampiric secrecy, dubbed 'the masquerade'. I've never personally liked the term. A little too close to the tabletop I enjoyed when I was in high school and college. Not that I blame Harper Rock's community for that; it's a nifty term that summarizes the meaning effectively. And at least nobody is running around calling each other kindred, or (god forbid), taking on names like 'Lestat'.

Anyway, I decided to write on the topic because of CrowNet. Originally I wanted to compile all my thoughts and post them there, but then I thought to myself "You know. Nothing good ever comes from CrowNet." Which is true enough. I don't think any conversation there has ever not resulted in a fight, or drama, or trolling. Which is to say, I thought about posting and immediately ripped my fingers away from the keyboard as if they'd been cracked by a nun's ruler. But the seeds for thought were there, and not easily displaced, so instead, they are all going here.

I said on CrowNet, that there are two options currently available, given the substantial power 'masquerade' enforcers have wielded over the years, and the lack of over-arching results, either secrecy is inherently unsustainable, or secrecy enforcement through violence is unsustainable.

I'll admit, when I first posted those words, I was just being superior. I get tired of seeing every single thread turn out the same way, and every argument become the 'masquerade' argument, ad nauseum. It's the go to thing for seemingly everyone, and I feel like, at this point, it's just a comfortable fight. Something goes wrong. "Masquerade! **** you guys for not keeping it, you fucktards! Rah rah rah!" "No, **** you guys for killing everyone! Rah rah rah!" I mean it's just endless and almost comical by this point. I am waiting for the day someone will satirize it, because it's just the same redundant arguments being spewed back and forth over and over again. Nobody's opinions change. Nobody really even cares! And that's the craziest part. It's like people are reading a script by now, when frankly, the 'masquerade' was never anything other than an illusion (more on that later).

After some thought, I have to agree with myself (I know, terribly self important aren't I?). I don't think it can be argued in any universe that the masquerade enforcers haven't had almost total control. First there were the hellhounds, then the Council's enforcement team, then Tytonidae. I saw the formation of each and I've seen how their methods play out. I think there's a sort of temporary fix to the whole 'killing vampires to get them off the bounty list' thing. I don't necessarily think it works long term, and here's why: We don't live in the 90's or before. These days, we have technology that immortalizes everything. Something hits the internet, and no matter how good a hacker you are, it just takes one person saving a video clip to repost it everywhere. Killing someone won't get rid of that evidence. Violence itself is the easy way out.

Yes, it temporarily gets rid of the problem, but then that person comes back, and much like with the criminal justice system, their incentive isn't to be good, or to repent their sins. Their incentive is to be better at cheating the system. Or stealing. Or killing. In this case, violating secrecy. That is, of course, assuming they were intentionally exposing their nature to begin with. If not? Well now you've given someone who had a chance at being reasonably normal incentive to hold onto a grudge. So what if vampires get wiped out? Their only experience with the vampiric community is that, if they do something they may not understand is wrong, they get attacked. It's all really very toxic, and doesn't contribute to a healthy community in the slightest.

That, and fighting, no matter how secret it is, can always be recorded. How long until someone decides to film everything and send it public? Or how long until a truly dedicated anti-masqerade vampire decides to try and out the whole community on live televison? How could they be stopped? Put a bullet in them and ash them on television and what is that going to do? And once the information's out there. Well. It's out there. You may try to discredit it, but it's easier to hold information back than get rid of it. And that doesn't even take into account vampires with connections to humans. What happens when the chief of police gets turned, and killed? Or when a wealthy businessman is turned? Not everyone has an anonymous past. Eventually, enforcers are going to not only fail to uphold the masquerade, they're going to actively work against secrecy on the whole. It's irresponsible, and I'm shocked it hasn't blown up in their face yet.

Because they can put someone in the Shadow Realm for a little while, but it only takes one instant in an eternity to **** everyone over from a secrecy standpoint.

Not that enforcing secrecy has been entirely bad. I remember when the bounty list was populated with dozens of names. These days, almost nobody is on it. Of course, I'm sure some of the people the enforcers killed are permanently gone, and the ones who returned, are smart enough to fly under the radar. That seems, to me, to be the entire point. And I would actually advocate for it, if it were effective. You see, the fundamental problem with secrecy is that it's an illusion. The government has known about the paranormal almost since day one. Maybe not vampires, but I wouldn't be shocked if they do. So this entire time, people have been screeching 'MASQUERADE!' back and forth at each other, and on the outset, it hasn't really existed. I can't be the only person to realize that, so to me, people who enforce secrecy are just trying to hold onto the semblance of power and order in a world that is ultimately chaotic.

It's like when you grow up, and leave home, and realize that life isn't comprised of neat or tidy lines. Some people develop coping mechanisms to deal with it, and I think secrecy is the collective mechanism we've used to try and say that we have power over the world of the living. We have no power. Not really. Not in a macro sense. Not over humans. Not over eachother. Not over anything but our own actions and our own thoughts. Not that I blame our community. Going from living, breathing humans to blood sucking vampires is a hard transition. A lot of people don't make it. And the ancient vampires were able to rely on secrecy to survive, so it seems logical to assume we should be able to do the same. Except, I return to my earlier argument. We don't live in a pre-2000's world. Word of mouth isn't the only way of producing evidence these days.

So secrecy is an illusion, and that isn't really an opinion so much as an observable, testable fact. Even if the concept were not initially flawed, based on what we know about the government, the way the modern era works does not lend itself to keeping an entire species in the dark. Even then, there's no evidence that fighting and killing is a good way to go about fixing problems in the community. To me it seems like fighting fire with fire - a cliché yes, but a a fitting one.

Of course, all of that is entirely beside the point, even if it's topical. The axiom of my initial argument is that enforcers have been allowed to rule for years. I won't say it's gone unquestioned, but those questions were largely met with ridicule, silence, or bullets. I won't say it went uncontested, but fights quickly lost their appeal, and I think it goes without question that the enforcers go where they want, do what they want and say what they want. The bounty list has grown less populace. On the surface, based on the premise of having enforcers to begin with, we should have no issue with secrecy! And yet, it's equally inarguable that secrecy is slowly slipping out of our hands. I honestly see it only getting worse, especially with other issues on the horizon. The Lionelli, the Administrator, the Fae, the Rift, everything. There is so much going on, and secrecy is just a small part of it.

I'll admit that sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we didn't have to worry about it.

But getting back to the main point, if the enforcers have had the power to make the 'masquerade' work, why hasn't it? Which leads to my two potential conclusions. I've already related my thoughts on both of them, and after some contemplation, I think it's a little bit of both of them. The violence is a stopgap that should never have been treated as a real solution. The violence just breeds contempt and gives people a reason to hate the ones attacking them. And ultimately, they're just fighting for an illusion.

Which leads me to the final problem - the question posed to me. What should the discourse be? Secrecy has been the topic for so long, I'm not sure if the vampire community is ready to talk about something else. I'm not sure it's ready to have 'the talk' about vampires coming out on their own terms, and taking responsibilities for its own in a way it never has before. More likely than not, the suggestion would be turned down. Understandable. And then the topic would turn to 'other ways to uphold the masquerade'. I've seen all of that before. The enforcers will listen, but won't take any advice, and ultimately the 'other side' (read as; everyone else), will just try to push for more peaceful means of keeping the 'law'. And then even that will turn into a big argument, and bear no fruits.

So what then is the solution? I'm not, and nor do I feign to be a leader in the community. I'm a single voice, and I don't have the connections to have sway one way or the other. I can't lead a discussion because I don't have the clout, and I respect that.

But to me it's a pretty simple matter. The community needs to be empowered, not live in fear. I think the idea of minimizing our impact and minimizing our presence is an ideal one, but I think that should be taught, rather than pounded into the flesh. Even then, I don't think it's a fruitful endeavour in the long run. We're going to be so busy policing each other, we're going to miss the outbreak of dozens of fadebeasts attacking humans and totally ruining secrecy for us! I think the community should stop worrying so much about whether or not a fledgeling accidentally feeds and gets seen doing it. Yes, it's a problem, but there are so many OTHER problems that need exploring. So why can't, instead of the community going round and round in circles, we take a look at one of those issues? Why can't we find a common enemy or a common cause and try to do something about that? Why does the primary focus of our interaction have to be divisive?

On: Fighting the Supernatural

The irony of another discussion piece resulting from CrowNet is not lost on me. Again, I find myself adding to my journal rather than a forum because I need a place to fully flesh out my ideas without reprisal. It's no shock that our community has not grown beyond the same basic arguments for and against secrecy, when it seems most attempts to develop concepts to either side appear to be retaliatory, by their very nature. For example, if someone is killed for the sake of the 'masquerade', or is being hunted, it makes sense that they would rise against the idea with whatever duct taped together logic suits the situation. And then, before those arguments can be developed with empirical evidence or deeper, logical lines of philosophical inquiry, people are quickly castigated. I refused however, to let my own mind dwindle like a dying flame. Socrates himself, was not wise because he thought himself right, but because he acknowledged he did not know things. By questioning the status quo, and commonly accepted beliefs, he was able to form a basis in reason for the beliefs people held. To me, it seems secrecy falls into the category of the unquestioned ideal. In the past, it was routinely believed the earth shook because of Vulcan's hammers. Before plate tectonics were discovered, this might have been an acceptable answer.

Secrecy is similar to that. People who enforce it, do so because they view it as this ultimate truth. If you want to protect vampires, you keep them secret. To me, much of this logic stems from two places. One, the game from which the name 'masquerade' is taken. Two, from the accounts of the elders. It seems odd to me, that people would base so much of their belief structures on slippery ground. The elders were largely decried after emerging from the Shadow Realm, and yet in this one area, they have gone largely unquestioned. Which is not to say their historical viewpoints are inaccurate, but more on that later. To me, by turning off a line of inquiry into secrecy, why it's upheld, who upholds it, and how it's upheld, the community has essentially turned it into religious law. Bill Nye is an avid defender of naturalist views on creation. One of the reasons he supports the idea is the mountain of evidence pointing towards an age for the world that doesn't number in the thousands, but billions. He holds that when people stop questioning the world around them, they stop growing, or progressing. There are some interesting debates where he illustrates his points vividly. If one assumes that 'God' created man to face trials and get into heaven or hell, then one does not question the deeper meanings of life. If one accepts that 'God' made all the stars and the heavens, and they exist solely by his reason, and his reason is beyond understanding, then one stops attempting to understand the expansion of the stars or gravity, or the cosmos.

What then happens to the applied sciences? If there are no questions that need answered, then science becomes obsolete. People stop looking for cures to cancer, because 'God's' will determines if someone dies or not. HIV becomes the plague of nations, an answer to the sin of men, rather than a treatable illness. The world loses its brightness of mind and intellect, and descends once more into the dark ages where all things are taken on faith and those with power determine what is true and what is false. To me, secrecy blindly accepted is the same. A hunter, is only a hunter if they are given reason to be so. Not because they know about vampires. Saying that humans are incapable of arriving at their own decisions is short-sighted and stupid. Which is ultimately the direction this discussion is going. Secrecy is given too much power, and yet it is woven into the community like thread in a tapestry. Without it as a crutch, I fear there would be chaos, and yet I wonder at the idea that something greater might come from that chaos. I choose today, instead of focusing on theory, looking at evidence. I want to look specifically at the leader of the Order of St. James.

First, I am immensely proud of Mortll. I have known her for a long time, but we have never been particularly close. I can't help but like the role she played. Of course, the thread I'm referencing on CrowNet eventually turned to the topic of government. I have some feelings on that, myself, but I will save those for another date. At first, when I began to question why the leader of the Order of St. James was on a rampage, I was shocked to have gotten the feedback I did. To me, it seemed a simple line of questioning, the likes of which any rational mind might have desired an answer to. The reaction I got was "That's just how it is. Hunters hunt, and we don't question it, we just kill them." To me, that seems to be a problem, and I'm deeply disturbed by the idea that something is inherently one way without any questions to the contrary. Hunters don't exist because they know about vampires. Hunters exist because vampires have given them a reason to exist, by harming them, or killing their family, or killing their friends, by taking from them. This makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is trying to stop a line of inquiry before it's really begun. That is the sort of thing one expects from a despot, or the fearful.

So I went out of my way to go in search of answers. Surprisingly easy, I learned from quite a few sources, that there have been recent changes in territorial ownership. Most of the changes made sense to me, as they were explained. Vampiric influence over Harper Rock has begun to grow into the underworld with the influence of humans becoming eclipsed in some areas. It seems one group in particular has been targetting previously Order owned areas. Well. One group, and another I have never heard of, but I assume they work in collaboration, considering how pointless owning the Hunting Grounds would be (Unless you have a weird bear fetish). Either way, it seems one group on the whole sought to take out the Order. Surface level, the logic seems sound. Wipe out the hunters, so they can't hunt. Take their resources away from them. But how might things have been different had more diplomatic measures been taken? Or. As should have been, if those seeking to kill off the Order had tied up all their loose ends? If it's one's objective to be big brother, one at least should be thorough, is my thought.


Instead, the matter was handled sloppily, or at least that's as much as I can guess based on what I know. So this big bad hunter goes off and starts attacking every vampire he can find. There are two inherent problems with this. One, it's ironic danger to secrecy, and two, how it highlights the problem with the 'attack first, ask questions later' mentality. Looking at the methods used. Anyone with their ear to the ground now knows about vampire factions. They may not know vampires exist, but they know about those groups, and as time progresses, those same groups will get more spotlight. If not in the human public, at least in the human underground. Does this mean secrecy is endangered? Not necessarily. But how long until a fight breaks out between a vampire faction and a human gang, and some of that information goes public? It just takes one good video of a vampire using powers to make more and more people aware of vampires. And then another video. And then another video. The evidence eventually stacks up and then what? Those who have sought to solve the problem, thus perpetuate it. That's the tip of the iceberg too. Now any supernatural group of humans is aware that vampires are out to kill humans. They know where the lines are drawn. They know where the enemy is. They know the enemy is us. Even if not all of us hold the same militaristic views.

And so the whole of the vampire population is left to clean up the mess made by one faction, because they lacked foresight. Suddenly, the comments I got on CrowNet make sense. Misdirection. Try to disguise the facts. Attempt to subvert the acquisition of knowledge. I'm not saying this secrecy enforcement group is bad. I'm just saying they did something wrong, and they should fess up, take the blame, and try to fix it, rather than resorting to the same broken methods. Because they largely go unquestioned. They set and enforce the rules, regardless of anyone else's thoughts, or feelings or what actually might be true. Aside from opening them up to a great deal of hypocrisy, the current vampire political atmosphere in Harper Rock lends itself to a very big problem. These people who set the rules are assumed to know what they are doing. I don't think anyone can question that they are efficient in at least one area. However. That doesn't mean they have any more clue about what's going on, than anyone else. They don't have the mystical answers to life (or death). They don't know for sure what is, or is not right. They blindly uphold this ideal which may not even have permanence, which may not be right. They uphold it with methods that are questionable at best and outright counter-productive at worst.

How long until the violence catches up to them? How long until one vampire, or a group of dedicated vampires or humans decides to do away with secrecy? What happens when someone films them in action? With this group taking a more prominent role on the underground – how long until they are caught out entirely by the human public? I see a road stretching out into the future, and it splits off into two directions. In one direction there is a sandstorm in the desert, and the way is obscured, hazy. But there is a beacon of light in the far distance, just barely visible like a mote of light. In the other direction there is a clear path, but it reads to a city of sludge and ruin, of cracked sidewalks, and toppling skyscrapers. I think of the traveler on this road as the whole of the vampiric community. With so much chaos, with so many fragmented factions and groups and loners, the choice as to which direction we go will be made for us, by those with power. The problem is: They don't know any better than the rest of us. They just have might on their side. Do we then let the ones holding the wheel make the choice for us? Or do we decide on our own? Can we? Is it too late for vampires, as a group, to rise up and decide to pick what direction we want to go?

Already, one of us in the lower caste has cleaned up the mess made by the people at the top of the heap. How many more messes will there be before we realize that the only way to see our way through the sandstorm is to work in unison? Not just vampires, but the whole of the supernatural community. Vampires. Paladins. Sorcerers. Blood thieves. The fight is not us against them and them and them. Those are illusions. The fight is a dream, a fancy we designed to try and exert some control over the vast emptiness of our world. We cannot ultimately control if the public gets proof of our existence. We cannot ultimately control how widespread that information will go. We can control how we present ourselves, and our community. Do we want to be seen as bellicose monsters without any ability to see reason? Or can we ascend beyond the petty squabbles and pointless power grabs to try and do something together?