Ten Tips for the Second Inquisition

Vampire 5th Edition

https://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2020/05/ten-tips-for-second-inquisition-in.html

"Why all the secrecy? Why not just go public, let people protect themselves?"

"Listen. Every week there's a panic about some puny little bug. Now how do you think it would
be if this got out? Hm? You'll have paranoia, you'll have vigilantes, you'll have people running
back to religion in droves. The next thing you know, you'll have the Archbishop up for Prime
Minister. I don't fancy living in Iran, do you?"

-Mike and Vaughn, Ultraviolet

The Second Inquisition is a development for the Fifth Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. It is
an alliance of hunter groups that has arisen in the past decade and inflicted hundreds, if not
thousands, of casualties on the vampire race. They have also pulled off seemingly impossible
victories like the destruction of the Tremere Council of Seven, destroying all the Kindred of
London, and playing an instrumental role in the collapse of the Giovanni leadership.

The organization has also caused massive upheavals in the Kindred world. The Camarilla has
started using Cold War spy techniques and almost Game of Thrones communication techniques
("Send the ravens!") to avoid being tracked by the seemingly omnipresent foe that can hack
phones as well as monitor every call. Their government ties and access to War on Terror
authority as well as military-grade weaponry means that many undead believe that they could
destroy the vampire race.

But how dangerous are they and what way should they be used? Here's some suggestions from
me on this.

1. The Masquerade still exists and isn't going away

One misconception is that the Second Inquisition has blown the Masquerade completely and the
world's governments are now hunting vampires globally. This is not the case at all. The Second
Inquisition is a group of individuals, secret societies, and cabals within public organizations
loosely allied together to kill as many vampires as possible. They are all collectively of the mind
that the Masquerade is better for everyone, though, because of the societal upheaval that
revealing vampires exist could cause. Their motivations may vary but the majority of them
believe firmly that this is a terrible idea and will actively cover up the existence of the undead
like the monsters they hunt. The Second Inquisition DOES have more than enough evidence to
expose vampires if they wanted to, though, and that makes outright destroying them harder than
it might seem.
2. The Second Inquisition is not new

There is no actual Second Inquisition any more than there is a Project: Twilight. The Second
Inquisition is a nickname for the sudden upswing in successful vampire hunts conducted by
mostly pre-existing organizations that have been menacing Kindred for centuries as is. The
Society of Leopold isn't the Second Inquisition, it is the first Inquisition. It has just reunited itself
with the Vatican under the WOD version of Pope Francis and received funding from sponsors in
the European Union as well as United States. It's joined by the Knights of Saint George, FBI
Special Affairs Division (SAD), Arcanum, Bob Schnoblin's Goblins, and a dozen other groups.
Once they started sharing information and working together, the number of vampires they began
to kill skyrocketed. Even so, they're about as united as the Nine Traditions, which is to say not at
all.

3. The Second Inquisition benefits from vampire in-fighting

The cleansing of London turns out to have been orchestrated by the 4th generation methuselah
Mithras as a way to purge his political enemies. Both the destruction of the Vienna chantry and
Mausoleum are all but stated to have been done with the help of "inside men" with the latter
being arranged by the Hecata. The entire reason the SI exists is because the Camarilla attempted
to use the US government's security apparatus against the Sabbat and Anarchs before blaming
the latter in a classic projection defense. Many vampires, when confronted with the SI, will
attempt to use it against their enemies rather than form a united front. As Pam from True Blood
answered a hunter psychologist's, question, "How much loyalty do you feel toward your race?"
"None." This doesn't mean the Second Inquisition isn't dangerous by itself, it just means that the
Kindred's many defeats are being their own worst enemy.

4. The Second Inquisition is knowledgeable

Previously, Kindred had the advantage that most hunters had about as much knowledge about
vampires as any student of pop culture. The Imbued in Hunter: The Reckoning were encouraged
to be written as ignorant as possible in order to maintain dramatic tension. The Second
Inquisition are not remotely ignorant. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, one should consider its
members to own a copy of Vampire: The Masquerade's main book. Clans, ghouls, sects,
bloodlines, Disciplines, and so on. The thing is, for the most part, the Second Inquisition doesn't
care about these things. They are interested only in how to destroy the undead and answering
existential questions that the Kindred themselves have no answer for (like, "how do the dead
move?"). They don't necessarily understand what they know but they've captured many vampires
who have squealed like pigs all their secrets. This helps SI leaders do unconventional things like
framing vampires for murder, plotting to set them against one another, and other non-traditional
hunter plots.

5. The Second Inquisition is subtle and patient

Contrary to the assumption that many Kindred have, the majority of SI agents will not
immediately react to the discovery of a vampire's haven by sending in SWAT teams to gun them
down or dropping a hellfire missile down on an identified Elysium. First of all, the SI must
preserve its own secrecy and is not interested in a few stragglers. The SI may actually monitor
vampires for months or even years before striking as they are attempting to get a full sense of the
massive world they have found out about. Some SI agents may want to slaughter all of them
whenever and wherever they find them but these are the minority. They are also the ones most
likely to get a SI cell or base slaughtered in the aftermath.'

6. The Second Inquisition is rich, not omnipotent

The Second Inquisition has more resources than the original Inquisition and technology the vast
majority of elders do not understand. However, it is not actually a single group but a large
number of pre-existing groups with friends in the world's varying governments. Even then, they
cannot lend aid to one another easily. Let's face it, it's hard to explain why a FBI agent might be
sending a bunch of rocket launchers to a orthodox Catholic group in Italy even if they could
acquire them in the first place. Also, they've used a lot of their discretionary income to update
existing hunter groups but even its leaders' deep pockets can't spend indefinitely to fight a
menace that its governments don't even believe exist.

7. The Second Inquisition is mortal, not supernatural

The Second Inquisition can have support from other supernatural groups in your Chronicle.
Certainly, the Technocratic Union would probably have agents peppered through it. So would
other groups. The SAD had a Kinfolk, NWO Agent, and Pentex operative in its regional
directors. Indeed, the Camarilla almost certainly has agents in the Second Inquisition despite its
many precautions by members used to said beings. However, it should fundamentally be a grass
roots mortal response to Kindred arrogance. Despite this, there's no reason why "unusual"
devices and anti-vampire weapons can't be justified by individuals who wouldn't mind pruning
the population of the undead (even among the undead). It also does have access to Numina via
hedge mages, faithful mortals, psychics, and other low-level human agents.

8. The Second Inquisition isn't listening to your phone (probably)

The Second Inquisition isn't using PRISM to monitor the entire internet for any mention of
Camarilla, Anarchs, Brujah, or Beckett. Even if they could, they wouldn't be able to sort through
all of the data or justify it to other government branches. The Kindred don't understand their
enemy or its capabilities, so that's partially why the SI continues to bedevil them. They can hack
the computers and phones of those Kindred they identify but it's usually a much more personal as
well as slow-going process. The paranoia about one vampire potentially exposing many others is
not entirely unjustified, though. How screwed are you if they have a bug in Elysium? The
Succubus Club? Or more? Perhaps very or perhaps not at all as everyone uses an alias. It's all up
to the Storyteller. It's also possible that the guy monitoring those places will stick his findings in
a pile of papers that will never be read or be an agent of another power.

9. The Second Inquisition fights smarter, not harder

It is possible for the Second Inquisition to send a Navy SEAL team to your haven to gun you
down or call a drone strike down on your location. This is the dumbest most panicked response
that they can imagine. The Second Inquisition knows that not only are they hiding their activities
from vampires but they are hiding from the parts of the government that may not react well to
their activities. That doesn't mean that such panicked ill-conceived attacks don't happen, but they
will be the outlier unless the undead have backed the group into a corner or gotten the drop on
them. At the very least, expect attacks to happen during the day and escape routes to have been
blocked. They may also work to make it appear as if it was another vampire's minions or regular
law enforcement. They are the underdogs in this fight and can't afford to lose as many members
as taking down a typical coterie in hand-to-hand takes.

10. The Second Inquisition can and will be beaten

Ignoring the game is called Vampire: The Masquerade and not Hunter: The Sterilization, the
Second Inquisition is not actually an existential threat to all of vampiredom. It might be a threat
to one of the sects or many cities but it doesn't have the oomph to win overall. The moment they
chose not to destroy the Masquerade was the moment they lost the war. Humanity can defeat the
Cainite race, not any small group of it no matter how well equipped. The Camarilla has enough
resources to attack the agencies behind the SI, let alone its operatives in it. The Anarchs are
capable of repopulating as well as falling back into regular humanity. Even the Sabbat,
diminished as it is, is an army larger than the SI as well as a supernatural one. The trick is that
any individual vampire can be killed by them and most vampires are more terrified of that being
them than any overall threat to their race.