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Does the game rule "Mortal: the Innocent" not work? I've tried a few times to start a game with it and it seems like every single landowner is still a vampire.

I've been turning it on with World of Ignorance, Elders learn new tricks, Eyes of the Abyss, and Darken with Age also set.
I've also tried with other combinations such as turning on World of Darkness, and random rulers/faiths.

Am I setting something else wrong or does this game rule just not do anything?
 
Does the game rule "Mortal: the Innocent" not work? I've tried a few times to start a game with it and it seems like every single landowner is still a vampire.

I've been turning it on with World of Ignorance, Elders learn new tricks, Eyes of the Abyss, and Darken with Age also set.
I've also tried with other combinations such as turning on World of Darkness, and random rulers/faiths.

Am I setting something else wrong or does this game rule just not do anything?
Its not available yet. Its experimental in the development build. Our apologies for accidently including that Game Rule option in the current Steam Workshop build.

Eventually, it will look something like this:

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Metamorphosis Update for Princes of Darkness
Metamorphosis Update for Princes of Darkness

What's in it? A lot! Get ready to sink your fangs into this!

First, the mod has been made compatible with CK3 1.2.1 Argent, the Ruler Designer update. The mod allows you to engage customize a vampire character, so you can quickly pick your clan and disciplines as traits, and pick your road as a faith. Using the ruler designer to create a character will create a dynasty that is independent of the established Clan dynasty cadet houses. In play, you can still choose the create character decision if you want to be part of an existing Clan House, or form a cadet house under the Clan Dynasty.

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You can also customize your look. A lot of new choices are available under the "monstrous" category if you want a particularly horrifying look to your Nosferatu or if your Tzimisce character has gotten creative with the Vicissitude discipline. We are looking forward to seeing what monsters you create.

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There are more than 1700 canon vampire characters in the mod from World of Darkness lore, so the choices can be overwhelming. To help you choose, the 1230 Bookmark has had additional characters added as recommended choices: one from each clan and a few of the more prominent bloodlines. A fan favorite, Helena, has her rank was raised to Duchess so her eternal lover and ghoul Prias could be landed in a county in her realm.

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Once in play, one thing you may notice is changes to the map for Eastern Europe for the 1230 bookmark. We poured over the lore and reworked the map using details from "Transylvania by Night", the “Transylvania Chronicles” and other Dark Age Vampire tabletop RPG books. We checked real world locations on google maps and checked the differences of town names between the 11th century Germanic of the Siebenburgen, the Hungarian names and the Romanian names.

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The Obertus monasteries have moved to Silesia to match the only published Dark Ages Vampire map of their location: West of Krakow, Northeast of Vienna, east of Nuremberg and Southeast of Magdeburg. As in the lore, it acts as a buffer state between the Ventrue of the Fiefs of the Black Cross and the slavic Tzimisce. Jolanta holdings in Silesia have been transferred to Obertus, because in the lore, the Niepołomice Forest she inhabits is east of Krakow. Her holding has been moved there.

Next, the Council of Ashes has been established in a greater Duchy of Transylvania. It was useful to have Nova Arpad to have a Kingdom level title, so that Radu Bistri could be her duke vassal and he could have the Szantovich (and Basarab) Zadruga families as count vassals. Nova Arpad's domain is Mediasch, which is near CK3 holding of Feher. Nova Arpad weakly leads a multi-clan council of Ventrue, Tzimisce, Gangrel and Nosferatu. A prototype of the Camarilla. It most likely will fall apart. The Council of Ashes heraldry is a tribute to Haligaunt's Concord of Ashes design. Haligaunt's "Concord of Ashes" is a great fanon campaign we encourage lovers of the World of Darkness to read, though we do not attempt to have the mod closely follow their creation. The Concord of Ashes puts more into Transylvania than we could possibly represent on the current map.

As it is in the lore, Radu Bistri is in Bistri (Beszterce). Mitru's holding is Napoca / Cluj-Napoca / Klausenburg / Kolozsvár which is part of Torda county in CK3. Alba Iulia / Balgrad / Karlsburg was west of Mediasch so Dragomir Basarab has been landed in Zarand, and as a vassal of Nova.

We properly located Hunedoara castle. It is the archetypal "Castle Dracula", also called "Corvin Castle." As it is in the lore, Danika Ruthven controls Hunedoara castle, also called Vajdahunyad. She is a vassal to Ioan Brancoveanu--"The Hammer of the Tremere." Further inside the Voiovodate, holdings have been reorganized. Vladimir Rustovitch is now King of Wallachia. Byelobog the White God was elevated to Duke so that he can have the Khavi as vassals.

We also moved the primary chantry of the Tremere--Ceoris. With use of GoogleMaps to compare tabletop RPG map locations, with CK3 holdings and real world geographic locations: Ceoris was moved one county east to be near Mt. Negoui. The snake of the Tremere holdings was modified to match both the creation of the Council of Ashes and the reorganization of the Tzimisce.

Eastern Europe development process:
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A number of mechanics available to all vampires have been added. The resonance system has been changed to bring it more inline with table top rules. A vampire's hunger, depending on their blood potency, can be satisfied by the quantity of the blood they drink. Resonance, however, is more concerned with not only the emotion of the victim (as influenced by their personality traits) but also the quality of their blood. Most mortals have "negligible" resonance, and thus reward a pittance of resonance XP for consuming their blood. Good congenital, higher education traits, lifestyle traits and good health improve the quality of the blood to higher tiers of "fleeting", "intense" and "acute". Poor health and blood loss will negatively impact the quality of resonance. In the previous version of the mod, resonance was based on the quantity of blood consumed, so there was only an incentive not to completely drain a mortal if you faith had such an act cost piety or a compassionate trait would cause stress. Now, it make sense to regularly feed from mortals with high quality resonance. To facilitate that, we have created a system of herding to more easily drink from and manage your herd of blood dolls. If your vampire has the Presence discipline perk of "Lingering Kiss", you gain an option to easily add a hunted victim to your herd. The herd scheme is available to all vampires, regardless of their disciplines. Depending how much control you have over the lives of your mortal courtiers, you can effectively breed a better herd. It is a more efficient method of gaining resonance experience to sip from a herd of mortals with acute resonance than it is to kill and drain every mortal who crosses your path--but do as you wish, dark lord. Great persons also make particularly tasty morsels beyond their very good traits. There is now a real choice to make between embracing a new childe, herding and ghouling.

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We've hinted at it a lot in this development diary so far, player character vampires may now create ghouls. For those who do not know Vampire: the Masquerade lore, a ghoul is a servitor character like Renfield in almost any adaptation of Dracula. Blood Bonded to their domitors, these loyal courtiers are like weaker versions of their vampire masters. Player characters will have both a hook on their ghouls as well as an opinion bonus from regularly supplying them with vampire vitae. Ghouls can make useful but disposable councillors or champions. As they are not full vampires, they do not (usually) clutter issues of succession within your house or dynasty. You can train them in your own disciplines (at the cost of your own resonance). With the discipline of vicissitude, you can transmogrify your ghoul thralls into objects of conventional beauty or monstrous warriors.

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When a mommy and daddy ghoul lust each other very much, they may even produce a baby born with vampire blood in their damned veins creating what the Tzimisce call a "Zadruga" but has been mistranslated as "revenant." Revenants that breed with revenants are more likely to "breed true", but like with any CK3 breeding game, there are the risks of inbreeding. Revenants are more powerful than ghouls, but often weaker than elder vampires. Unlike vampires, they do not hunt mortals for their blood. Nor can they engage in diablerie, and their blood potency never increases. However, unlike vampires, they can satisfy their own blood hunger by their own blood. They can learn the vampiric disciplines but depending on their experience of the blood since birth and the teaching of their families rather than the high speed acquisition of resonance that vampires have from hunting mortals. Revenants may risk herding vampires to give them a supply of resonance.

All the canon Revenant families from the lore of the World of Darkness are in the mod. We also added a few more families so that every clan has at least one obscure revenant family they hold as vassals. Each canon family has its own Dynasty or House and gets an additional modifier for that relationship. As you can expect, each revenant family has its own Coat of Arms and a county holding that either matches the lore is lore-inspired in its placement. The proper landing of Zadruga families of the Tzimisce is what drove our re-work of Eastern Europe to be more in keeping with the lore.

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As you will have noticed from the Ruler Designer appearances, our talented 3D artists have added a number of blendshapes options to faces. You will see some Tzimisce characters utilizing some of these shapes, some more subtly than others. Some of those shapes can be applied to ghoul thralls through transmogrification. Our artists did not stop there, Tzimisce can also use vicissitude to transform their forms, whether that is extending the arms and growing claws for feral weapons, awakening the terrifying Zulo shape, and the most powerful of Tzimisce Koldun can assume the forms of Dragons.

Other clans benefit from new models as well. Salubri have their iconic third eyes and Gangrel can also grow the claws of their feral weapons. Gangrel may take on further animalistic features as the result of frenzies.

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We have been expanding our narrative events. Now, the anarchs will revolt and bring about the death of Antediluvians. Inquisition will be formed and harass those vampires who most flagrantly violate the Masquerade. Eventually, a Convention of Thorns event will form the Camarilla to try and put a stop to this madness--while the Sabbat will form to counter the Camarilla. We will expand further on these events in the future, but this should give you a taste of where we are going with big narrative events.

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An Observer Game to after the Convention of Thorns
1436 AD:
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1483 AD, during the height of the Anarch Revolt:
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1503 AD:
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Camarilla, you were supposed to unite the kindred, not divide them!
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The placement of the Cainite Heresy on the Road of Sin with the conviction of Self-Control rather than instinct never set quite well with us. The Cainite Heresy has been reworked as the leading faith in a new Blood Gnosticism religion that includes the Cathars of Via Pura as well as various cults inspired by the myth of Calomena--Caine's sister.

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While the Vicissitude discipline got a lot of love with this update, a late addition to this update was the inclusion of some powers for necromancers with the Oblivion discipline (your clan or bloodline might call it something else!). Player characters can now scheme to ritually murder a character, transform the murder victim into wraith and bind that wraith to their service. Then the wraith can be sent to another court to possess, haunt or spy upon others. It's a good way to soften up an enemy court for your schemes or warfare. In the future, we will look to make Thaumaturgy and Blood Sorcery better.

Several translation projects are underway for the mod, with Chinese, French and Russian having made the most progress. If you would like to help with a translation project, we maintain several different language channels on our discord. The Chinese translation team is particularly large.

You may notice some noteworthy characters with gold coin traits. These are creations of our patrons who support us through Patreon donations. They do not just encourage us financially, but are a core part of our development process. Patrons have access to the hottest code of our development build. Collectively, they engage in hundreds of hours of testing of the mod before new features make it to the steam release. Many of them are huge fans of the World of Darkness with encyclopedia knowledge of the lore and experience playing grand strategy games like Crusader Kings II. A few of them even go all the way back to the first World of Darkness MUSHes. They not only test but offer lots of ideas and advice about how to best implement the World of Darkness in Crusader Kings III, and the mod would be far poorer without their participation and suggestions. The patron model is working for us very well, and we encourage other mod teams to seriously consider it. Our patrons help us make big decisions like when the mod updates are of sufficient quality for a public release and what changes to make to improve the balance and feel of play.

In addition to the custom characters in the mod, we are creating a new bookmark in 1375 AD after the Black Death which has the Patrons as dominant force. The period after the Black Death is vague in World of Darkness lore beyond the chaos of the Anarch Revolts and the rise of the Inquisition. Patrons write up their own character histories that are included in our investigations schemes and can shape the world through custom empires, kingdoms, faiths, dynasties and houses. This way our patrons and developers can tell a new story in the World of Darkness collectively that doesn't trample the very strict lore interpretation we are using for the 1230 bookmark. Its not quite ready for sharing on Steam as there is still a lot of unclaimed territory: but players and borders of Europe are starting to be defined. We also hope that it will be great fun in multiplayer.

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What's planned next?

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If you are playing this update, you'll notice the start of Inquisition uprisings. Our next major expansion we hope to finish sometime this winter will be Dark Ages Inquisitor. Inquisitors were a logical choice as they are antagonists to all the other supernaturals in the World of Darkness. They also do not need extensive 3D portrait model work like Werewolves in Crinos form. We can make use of existing assets like religious clothing. We already have a playable bookmark for the inquisition that starts a few days after the 1230 AD bookmark. Before we release it though, we want to expand the lifestyle trees to include True Faith so that Inquisitor characters have a chance and special powers to use against vampires.

After the Inquisition? Our plan is to allow our Patrons to vote on the next major supernatural creature to develop: Werewolves? Mages? Wraiths? Fae? Or keep our focus on vampires. We also plan to send out a survey first to patrons and then the community at large about your experiences with the mod and what you would like to see next.

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We are looking forward to seeing your creations in the ruler designer, hearing your after the action reports and watching your streams on Twitch and Youtube. Let us know about it on Discord or in the forums.
 
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When I drink from my herd, the experience gained is not always what the interaction claims it would be. Also there appears to be massive variance in these claims, both in the resonance and experience gained, for consecutive sips on the same character.

It is not easy to find mortal women of breeding age with good congenital traits to breed revenants with. Perhaps I will use the tooltip mod that reports fertility to see if they can keep making babies if only I make one into a ghoul young enough. Do ghoul women lose fertility with every pregnancy like vanilla mortals?

Is Prias supposed to be a revenant? I recall Helena turned him into a ghoul. He was not born to ghoul/revenant parents. Is he supposed to marry and bang his revenant daughter till she dies of childbirth? Are revenant women supposed to be susceptible to such mortal concerns?

Unlike the starting religions, Sabbat, Camarilla and Anarch do not have a religious building. Which actually works out because my building slot mod does not have room enough for them, and the next one up I have would have slots to spare for those more-cursed-by-God-than-Caine open rule, forced conscription and blood tax buildings for my dumb vassals to build.

Is it possible to join an existing clan without wiping custom supernatural traits (besides incorrect clan trait)? Could the option to found our own house in the clan permit choosing a sire (hopefully even the antediluvian), which is necessary for the dynasty tree to work right? Choosing an unliving sire restricts us from being the house head, and requires us to maneuver ourselves as the house head's player heir if we do not want an ugly procedurally generated cadet coat-of-arms, but want to exert our power over the entire clan (and presumably get that +2 domain once I de-throne cousin Mithras).

Once you get to late medieval age, skirmisher men-at-arms, horse archers in particular, will forever rule supreme. Skirmishers are the only men-at-arms type that get a flat building bonus and then get to multiply that with another. Horse archers also counter skirmishers, which is the strongest men-at-arms type for the aforementioned reasons. Great many custom men-at-arms are skirmishers to be countered too. And they should become strong and tough enough to tank other things that counter skirmishers, not that the AI is capable of trying to hard counter.

I can find decent chancellors, marshalls, spymasters and court chaplains just fine. But you are really tempting me to play with fire by making inquisitors the only not horrific failures at stewardship.

Unlike other lifestyle traits, whole of body did not complete the medicine tree for me at game start. My poor paranoid high lady could really have used that stress gain reduction and longer mental break interval.
 
r3xm0rt1s,

re: resonance. Known issue. We are currently recalculating resonance before the slurp. We will move the recalculation to after the slurp. Increasing blood loss modifier and bad health effects will decrease the quality of the resonance. If your herd has time to recover, their resonance should improve.

re: ghoul fertility. We have not changed fertility rules for ghouls. Women still lose fertility over time. It is not easy to breed revenants, but it can be done.

re: Prias. Prias is a unique case as he has been the ghoul of a 4th generation vampire for thousands of years. From 1820s to 1990s, Helena spent 170 years in torpor and Prias did not die of old age. In modern nights, Helena's touchstone is Trina Dimitriou--a descendant of Prias. This implies Prias has had children since becoming a ghoul. We thought that the best way to represent his level of power and his connection to a mortal family thousands of years after he was ghouled was for him to be a revenant. This also would allow there to be at least one Toreador revenant family. Also, we made a sick coat of arms for him. We could change localization a bit to reflect his special status, but the revenant game mechanics works for him for CK3 we think.

re: Sabbat, Camarilla and Anarch do not have a religious building. Agreed. We will add them and expand on the new sects. I'm thinking that the Sabbat should have communal havens, the Camarilla Elysiums and the Anarchs some sort of rack commons. Quite a lot needs to be done with the new sects. The Camarillla needs Justicars, Archons, Red Lists, new titles, etc... Sabbat need expansion of their faiths to include all the Roads of Enlightenment. Eventually there needs to be a bookmark with a mostly canon setup for the sects.

re: character generation. If you chose the custom character decision in game, it will wipe your World of Darkness related traits, you can then pick your clan. Then you have the option to affiliate with an existing house, form a new cadet house under the clan dynasty or form a dynasty independent of the clan dynasty. I agree that the procedurally generated quartered cadet coat-of-arms are often ugly. Princess Stabbity's "Basic Nessassities - Happy Heraldry" mod might give you the answer to the ugly coat of arms issue.z

We know our balance for Men at Arms is currently terrible. We have not yet changed it since launch day. I personally, thematically hate the all siege engine armies--a consequence of how powerful we have made champions. We definitely need someone with experience with men at arms and battles to help us rebalance men at arms units.

We wil look into whats up with Whole of Body. We originally intended the "auto fill lifestyle tree if you have the completion trait" to apply primarily for advanced discipline traits for the eldest of vampires.
 
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The Daughters of Cacophony appear not to inherit powers on being sired? Also them and the Lamias should get exceptions so when AI they won't embrace men?
Current version looks brilliant!
 
The Daughters of Cacophony appear not to inherit powers on being sired? Also them and the Lamias should get exceptions so when AI they won't embrace men?
Current version looks brilliant!

Men can be embraced into both the Lamia and Daughters of Cacophony:

White Wolf Wiki said:
Lamia: "While men were Embraced, women were seen as closer to Lilith and had a much greater influence over the bloodline."
Daughters of Cacophony: "Currently composed mostly of women"

We will look into the powers issues for Daughters' childer.
 
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Men can be embraced into both the Lamia and Daughters of Cacophony:



We will look into the powers issues for Daughters' childer.

Thanks, I was under impression they were exclusive.
 
Are ghouls/revenant intended to be playable or only to be played with as vampires?
You can play them. I think only revenants are available in the custom character menu, and not ghouls. More stuff planned in the future. We tested revenants as players. There may still be issues here and there. There are many revenants who are landed at 1230 you can jump right into.
 
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First of all you are a genius and this is one of the best mods ever, my question is can we create our own vampire ruler with the new custom ruler designer or that's isn't yet implemented? When I do it all is ok but I don't get my children in the child tab after embracing and can't lower my generation after diablerie
 
First of all you are a genius and this is one of the best mods ever, my question is can we create our own vampire ruler with the new custom ruler designer or that's isn't yet implemented? When I do it all is ok but I don't get my children in the child tab after embracing and can't lower my generation after diablerie
Thank you for your praise. The mod is compatible with Ruler Designer, and you can create your own vampire ruler with it. Please read the most recent post development diary.

There is an issue if your character is aged younger than their childer, because Crusader Kings III engine does not allow a parent to be younger than a child.

I will check that diablerie for characters with the generation trait properly decrease in generation. Your generation may have moved from a trait to a secret. ( I looked into the diablerie code and was correct, your generation trait will become the next lower generation secret).

You can still use the decision to "Create Custom Character" which will wipe your supernatural traits and let you pick your clan, house, disciplines, faith, predator type, etc... again.
 
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First of all you are a genius and this is one of the best mods ever, my question is can we create our own vampire ruler with the new custom ruler designer or that's isn't yet implemented? When I do it all is ok but I don't get my children in the child tab after embracing and can't lower my generation after diablerie
What clan did you pick? on earlier versions this happened with some minor clans (like kaisyd and maeghar) but I believe that's been fixed if not that could be the fix?
 
There is an issue if your character is aged younger than their childer, because Crusader Kings III engine does not allow a parent to be younger than a child.

I suspect this is more likely to come up now with the ruler designer and younger player characters, so it may be worth including a warning in the Embrace tooltip?

Also, is there any way to set the chronological age of a character as apart from their visual age in the ruler designer? Or are all ruler designer characters pretty much set to be youngins?
 
I suspect this is more likely to come up now with the ruler designer and younger player characters, so it may be worth including a warning in the Embrace tooltip?

Also, is there any way to set the chronological age of a character as apart from their visual age in the ruler designer? Or are all ruler designer characters pretty much set to be youngins?
You can make your designed ruler up to 120 years old. Pick up the excellent Immortality (Updated and Revised) mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2252368989, which is specifically compatible with Princes of Darkness, to set your immortal/visible age after game start to your liking.
 
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