Corrupting Influence

Corrupting Influence

Influence can be more than just a Background. It is the way in which vampires exert power over the mortal world through deception, intimidation, blackmail, and the powers of the Blood. Accumulating and maintaining power requires enmeshing oneself into a specific part of the mortal world. A vampire, in short, becomes what she wants to control, rising through the ranks or becoming a power behind the throne of a mortal institution. 

Corrupting Influence is a set of sixteen Loresheets which replaces Influence as a Background. In this way Influence over the Kine becomes a set of useful abilities, customized to a specific subculture or set of institutions. Each ties in with the larger Backgrounds system, as well as with the optional rules for Social Combat in the 5th edition system. These Loresheets are inspired by the Mind's Eye Theatre categories. They are adapted here with the wisdom of decades of LARP experience with this kind of massive subdivision of the Influence Background.

Influence Loresheets include the following spheres of power:

• Bureaucracy - The machinery of government, a subtle path to unlimited power.
• Business - The retail and service industries are a vast spectrum of potential tools.
• Church - Places and institutions of Faith draw the damned like moths to a flame.
• Finance - Stocks, bonds, and underhanded corporate schemes to defraud the public. $$$
• Health - Healers of the sick make up a bigger and bigger part of our world each night.
• High Society - Hobnob, get high, and get catty with the beautiful people.
• Industry - Bust or organize unions as you seize the means of production.
• Legal - You may be above mortal law, but the Kine are still beholden to the "justice system".
• Media - Ever get the feeling the media is controlled by monsters? It's true.
• Occult - Secret societies engage in the darkest of deeds, but their knowledge is precious.
• Police - Vampires always enjoy bending those who patrol the night to their will.
• Political - The heights of obvious power, most are the pawns of vampiric masters.
• Street - Those who engage in less-than-legal activities often do so at night.
• Transportation - Moving across the city or blocking others from doing so.
• Underworld - Vampires love to organize crime, or at least control those who do.
• University - Institutions of knowledge are a means to secure and alter what is known.