DARIUS COLE

Vampire: The Masquerade — 20th Anniversary Edition

Chicago Chronicles: Forged in Steel (Solo Play)

"There's wheels. As long as every wheel turns in the right direction,
 everybody made money."
                                        — Tommy Dye, Chicago West Side

CHARACTER SHEET

Name: Darius Jeremiah Cole Player: Solo Chronicle: Chicago Chronicles — Forged in Steel

Nature: Architect Demeanor: Conformist Concept: Street Broker

Clan: Ventrue Generation: 12th Sire: Eric Sharpe (11th Generation Ventrue, Gary west side)

ATTRIBUTES

Physical Social Mental
Power Strength 2 Charisma 3 Perception 3
Finesse Dexterity 2 Manipulation 4 Intelligence 3
Resistance Stamina 2 Appearance 3 Wits 3

Priority: Social (7) / Mental (5) / Physical (3)

Design Notes: Manipulation 4 is the engine. This is a character who reads a room, identifies what everyone wants, and positions himself as the only one who can provide it. Appearance 3 reflects a mortal life where looking right — dress, posture, speech — was survival. Wits 3 keeps him alive in the moment; Intelligence 3 plans the long game.

ABILITIES

Talents (Primary — 13)

Talent Dots Rationale
Alertness 1 Streets taught him to watch doorways and mirrors
Empathy 3 “You get 100 points; you can only go down to 70 before we have to kill each other.” He reads people the way a bookie reads odds
Intimidation 2 Quiet menace. Never raises his voice. Doesn’t have to
Leadership 2 Ran a crew since 18. People follow him because he makes them money
Streetwise 3 The underground economy is his native language — who’s selling, who’s buying, who’s talking
Subterfuge 2 “Don’t ask questions. Keep your mouth shut.” — Ike Taylor

Skills (Secondary — 9)

Skill Dots Rationale
Drive 1 Gary to Chicago, 30 miles of I-90
Etiquette 2 Eric Sharpe spent two years teaching him which fork to use and when to bow. He hates it. He’s good at it
Firearms 1 Carried since 16. Never fired at a person. The gun is a prop, not a tool
Larceny 2 Fencing stolen goods was his first real income — knows locks, alarms, and who buys what
Stealth 1 Learned young: when the shooting starts, you vanish
Survival 2 Gary, Indiana. The city itself is a survival challenge

Knowledges (Tertiary — 5)

Knowledge Dots Rationale
Finance 1 Understands cash flow, laundering, and how money moves through the underground
Investigation 1 Asking the right questions to the right people
Politics 2 “If I can’t teach kids right from wrong, what are they going to do?” — Ian, on Chicago. Darius understands systems of power — who benefits, who pays
Awareness 1 (Freebie) The preternatural itch. Something his sire called “the blood waking up”

DISCIPLINES

Discipline Rating Powers
Dominate 3 Command (1): One-word irresistible order. Mesmerize (2): Implant false thoughts or compulsions. The Forgetful Mind (3): Rewrite or erase memories entirely
Presence 1 Awe (1): Become magnetically compelling to everyone nearby

Dominate 3 is the cornerstone. The Forgetful Mind is the single most powerful tool for a 48 Laws character — rewrite what people remember, erase witnesses, implant loyalties. Combined with Presence 1 (Awe), Darius can command a room’s attention and then make them forget he did it.

Why no Fortitude: A calculated risk. This character doesn’t plan to get hit. Solo play means choosing fights carefully. Dominate prevents most fights from starting. If something goes wrong, he has mortals, plans, and exits. Fortitude can be learned later with experience points.

BACKGROUNDS

Background Dots Detail
Contacts 2 A network of street-level informants across Gary — lookouts, corner boys, bartenders, a secretary at City Hall who owes him. Nobody important. Everybody useful
Herd 1 Three regulars from the underground economy who think Darius is their patron. A fence, a numbers runner, a working girl. They come when he calls. They don’t know why they feel so good afterward
Mentor 1 Eric Sharpe, sire. Distant, calculating, disappointed that his childe hasn’t “risen above his origins” yet. Answers questions. Occasionally useful. Always has his own agenda
Resources 1 $1,200/month from fencing operations and a small cut of street-level action. Enough for a clean apartment in a bad neighborhood. A beeper. A ‘84 Cutlass Supreme
Influence 1 (Freebie) Marginal pull in Gary’s west side — can get a parking ticket fixed, a patrol car rerouted, a building inspector delayed. Not power. A preview of power
Allies 1 (Freebie) Marcus Webb, mortal. Darius’s former second-in-command from the fencing operation. Still thinks Darius just “works nights now.” Loyal, capable, and increasingly suspicious about why his boss never ages and never eats

VIRTUES

Virtue Rating Note
Conscience 3 He’s not a monster. Not yet. The street code still applies — don’t punch down, protect kids, keep your word. But the Jyhad will test this
Self-Control 4 “I didn’t know I had that target on my back.” The discipline to hold still when everything screams to move. Never frenzy in public. Never show the Beast. This is what Sharpe valued most
Courage 4 Gary, 1991. Courage isn’t optional

Humanity: 7 Willpower: 8 (4 base from Courage + 4 freebie points)

Feeding Restriction (Ventrue): Can only feed from mortals involved in criminal enterprise — dealers, thieves, hustlers, sex workers, fences, runners. The blood of the “straight” world tastes like ash. He can only stomach the blood of people like him.

FREEBIE POINTS (15)

Purchase Cost Running Total
Dominate 2 → 3 7 7
Willpower 4 → 8 4 11
Background: Influence 1 1 12
Background: Allies 1 1 13
Ability: Awareness 1 2 15

PRELUDE: THE MAKING OF DARIUS COLE

I. THE MORTAL LIFE (1963–1988)

Where were you born? What was your childhood like?

Born August 14, 1963, in Midtown, Gary, Indiana. Third of five children. His father, Jerome Cole, worked the number three blast furnace at US Steel’s Gary Works — the same mill that employed 30,000 people at its peak. His mother, Clarice, worked double shifts as a custodian at Methodist Hospital.

The house on Tyler Street had three bedrooms for seven people. In winter, the radiators clanked and sometimes didn’t work. In summer, the steel mill glow turned the sky orange at night. Darius shared a room with his brothers DeAndre and Little Jerome. He could see the mill from his bedroom window — a cathedral of fire and smoke that defined every life in Midtown.

He was a quiet kid. Observant. His teachers wrote “doesn’t participate” on report cards, but that wasn’t quite right. He was watching. Mapping the social hierarchies of the playground, the lunchroom, the block. Who had power. Who wanted it. Who pretended they didn’t.

“You pay $1,500 and might die.” — Ian, on Chicago’s cost of living. In Gary, you paid less and the odds were worse.

What happened to your family?

The layoffs started in 1979 when Darius was sixteen. His father lost his job at the mill along with 12,000 others. Jerome Cole went from a man who provided to a man who sat in the kitchen drinking Schlitz at 11 AM. The marriage didn’t survive it. Clarice took the three youngest to her sister’s in Indianapolis. Jerome stayed. DeAndre enlisted in the Army. Little Jerome started running with the Vice Lords.

Darius stayed too. By then he had a corner. Not drugs — he’d seen what crack did to his block and wanted no part of selling it. Stolen goods. Electronics, car parts, anything that fell off a truck or out of a window. He was sixteen and already understood the first principle of the underground economy: everything has a price, and the man who knows the price of everything is the man everyone needs.

Little Jerome was shot and killed on Broadway in 1982. He was nineteen. The funeral was the last time Darius saw his mother. She looked at him like she knew he was next.

What kind of person were you? What drove you?

The kind of person who never raised his voice because he didn’t need to. The kind of person who listened to everyone and told nobody anything. Tommy Dye described the street code: “Don’t ask questions, keep your head down, drink lots of water and everybody’s going to prosper.” Darius lived it before he ever heard it articulated.

What drove him wasn’t greed or anger. It was architecture. He wanted to build something — a network, a system, a machine where every piece worked because every piece benefited. The fencing operation he built between 1981 and 1988 was a small masterpiece of logistics: six regular suppliers (burglars, shoplifters, a UPS driver), four buyers (a pawn shop on Broadway, a flea market vendor in Hammond, a barber who moved electronics out of his back room, and a mysterious wholesaler in Chicago Heights who never gave his real name), and Marcus Webb running the day-to-day.

Darius took 15% of every transaction. Not for the money — for the position. Everyone owed him. Everyone needed him. Nobody could replace him, because nobody else knew all the connections.

Law 11: Keep People Dependent on You.

He didn’t know that name for it yet. He just knew it worked.

Did you have any mortal friends or enemies?

Marcus Webb — his right hand. A year younger, twice as loud, and loyal in the way that a man is loyal when he genuinely believes you saved his life. Marcus had been headed for a GD corner and a short life expectancy. Darius offered him something better: work that paid, structure that made sense, and a boss who didn’t hit you for asking questions.

Father David Okonkwo — pastor of St. Augustine’s on Fifth Avenue. A Nigerian immigrant who saw something in Darius and wouldn’t let go. Invited him to Sunday dinners. Gave him books. Talked about leadership, responsibility, community. Darius attended because the food was good and Father David was the only adult who treated him like a person with a future. The conversations stuck more than he’d ever admit.

Terrence “T-Bone” Banks — a Vice Lord lieutenant who controlled three blocks that overlapped with Darius’s fencing territory. Not quite an enemy. More of an ongoing negotiation. T-Bone respected the operation but resented that Darius wouldn’t pay tribute. The tension was escalating through 1987 and into 1988. It would have eventually turned violent if the Embrace hadn’t intervened.

Were you religious? Political?

Not religious, but not atheist either. He believed in something — call it the pattern. The way systems worked. The way power flowed. Father David tried to frame it in Christian terms, and some of it resonated — the idea of stewardship, of building something that served a community. But Darius didn’t pray. He planned.

Politically, he understood one thing absolutely: “If you walk one block west, you’re in the hood; two blocks into Oak Park and it’s beautiful.” The system wasn’t broken. It was working exactly as designed. Wealth flowed one direction. Violence flowed the other. Gary wasn’t dying of natural causes — it was being murdered by policy, by disinvestment, by a system that needed places like Gary to fail so places like Merrillville could succeed.

He didn’t have the vocabulary for it. He had the instinct. It would take the Embrace — and Eric Sharpe’s cold political education — to give him the framework.

What were your ambitions as a mortal?

To build the operation to the point where he didn’t have to touch the product. To become the man everyone needed and nobody noticed. To get a house in Miller Beach — the nice part of Gary, near the dunes — with a garage and a yard. To prove to his mother that staying in Gary wasn’t a death sentence.

Small ambitions. Human ambitions. They died with him.

II. THE EMBRACE (1988–1990)

How did you meet your sire?

Eric Sharpe had been watching Darius for eighteen months.

Sharpe operated on Gary’s west side with the quiet precision of a man who had been doing this for a very long time. He claimed Camarilla territory in a city that was functionally Anarch, which meant he survived on competence and connections rather than force. A Ventrue in a Brujah city. A Camarilla loyalist in Anarch territory. A contradiction that worked because Sharpe understood something the Anarchs didn’t: legitimacy isn’t about popularity. It’s about being necessary.

Sharpe needed a mortal agent. Someone who could move through Gary’s street economy without attracting attention. Someone with an existing network. Someone who understood power but hadn’t yet acquired enough of it to be dangerous.

He found Darius through the wholesaler in Chicago Heights — who was, of course, one of Sharpe’s ghouls.

The first meeting was in a back booth at the Golden Gate restaurant on Broadway. Sharpe wore a gray suit that cost more than Darius’s car. He ordered coffee and didn’t drink it. He asked Darius three questions: What do you want? What would you do to get it? And what won’t you do?

Darius answered honestly: he wanted to build something, he’d do almost anything, and he wouldn’t sell drugs or hurt children.

Sharpe smiled — the only time Darius ever saw him smile — and said: “Good answers. Wrong question. You should have asked what I want.”

What was the Embrace like?

Sharpe ghouled Darius in the fall of 1988. Two years as a ghoul — fetching, watching, learning. The vitae changed him physically (stronger, faster, the cuts on his hands from fence wire healed overnight) and psychologically (Sharpe’s blood sang in him like a tuning fork, pulling him toward obedience). He learned to resist the pull. Sharpe noticed, and was pleased.

Law 22: Transform Weakness Into Power. When weaker, surrender. Turn it into a tool.

The Embrace itself came on a Thursday night in October 1990. No ceremony. No warning. Sharpe took him to the old US Steel administration building — a gutted concrete tomb on the lakefront. They stood in what had been the executive boardroom. Through the broken windows, Darius could see the mill’s skeleton against Lake Michigan.

“This city was destroyed on purpose,” Sharpe said. “By someone like me. For reasons you’re about to understand.”

He drained Darius to the edge of death. Then fed him. The transition was not gentle. Three nights of screaming in a locked room in the basement while the last of his mortal life burned out of him. When it was over, Sharpe opened the door and said: “Welcome to the Camarilla. You’re the lowest thing in it.”

Who else was with you?

No one. Sharpe operated alone in Gary — no other childer, no vampiric allies in the city. This was deliberate. A Ventrue with a coterie draws attention. A Ventrue alone is invisible. Darius later understood this was his first lesson in the Jyhad: the appearance of weakness is a form of armor.

Where did you go? What happened to your mortal life?

He told Marcus he’d gotten a job working nights for a “real estate company” — technically true, in the sense that Sharpe controlled several commercial properties in Gary’s west side. Marcus believed it because Darius made sure the fencing operation kept running, with Marcus now handling the day-to-day autonomously.

Father David noticed the change. “You look different,” he said one Sunday. “Like you’re not sleeping.” Darius stopped coming to Sunday dinners. It was the first thing the Embrace cost him that he actually mourned.

He stayed in Gary. Sharpe set him up in a basement apartment on Adams Street — blackout curtains, steel door, a phone line. His territory was four blocks of west side, mostly residential, with a mortal population that was dwindling every month. His feeding ground was the same streets he’d worked as a mortal, which meant his victims — his herd, Sharpe corrected — were people he’d known for years.

The first time he fed on a human being who recognized him, he threw up the blood afterward. The second time was easier. The tenth time was nothing.

Humanity: 7. For now.

What was your first night like?

Hunger. The first night out of the basement was hunger like weather — a pressure system moving through his body, bending him toward the closest heartbeat. Sharpe walked him through the west side, teaching him to hunt.

“You’ll discover your restriction quickly,” Sharpe said. “Every Ventrue has one. Our blood is… particular.”

Darius tried to feed from an old woman walking home from the bus stop. The blood hit his tongue like gasoline. He gagged, recoiled, nearly fell. She screamed and ran. Sharpe Dominated her calm, erased the memory, and guided Darius to a different target — a kid on the corner slinging dime bags.

That blood was perfect. Warm, alive, singing with adrenaline and ambition and fear. The blood of a hustler. The blood of someone working the angles.

“Criminals,” Sharpe said, with something between amusement and contempt. “How appropriate.”

III. ENTERING KINDRED SOCIETY (1990–1991)

How did you learn of Kindred society?

Sharpe was a methodical teacher. Two months of nightly lectures covering:

  • The Traditions — the six laws that govern Kindred existence. The First Tradition (the Masquerade) above all.
  • The Camarilla — the sect that claims to rule all vampires. The Ivory Tower. Prince, Primogen, Sheriff, Harpy, Keeper of Elysium. The structure of power.
  • The Sabbat — the enemy. Monsters who rejected humanity and embraced the Beast. Somewhere east of Gary, getting closer.
  • The Jyhad — the ancient game of manipulation played by elders and Methuselahs. “Everything you see is someone else’s move.”
  • Chicago — Prince Lodin’s domain. Sixteen Ventrue. The center of Camarilla power in the Midwest. Where you go if you want to matter.
  • Gary — “A punishment. Our Prince destroyed this city to hurt a Toreador who got above himself. Every abandoned house you see is a political statement.”

Darius absorbed it all. The Jyhad wasn’t new to him. It was just the street game at a larger scale, with higher stakes and longer timelines. The same principles applied: know who has power, know what they want, make yourself useful, and never let anyone see your whole hand.

Who introduced you to Kindred society?

Sharpe presented Darius to Prince Modius at the first opportunity — a gathering in January 1991 at Modius’s decaying mansion. The protocol was formal to the point of absurdity: Sharpe announced his childe, Darius knelt, Modius acknowledged his existence, and the matter was settled in ninety seconds.

Darius took in every detail. Modius — a Toreador prince in a crumbling palace, surrounded by art he no longer looked at, ruling a city with fewer people in it every year. The mansion smelled of dust and old blood and desperation. Modius spoke like a man performing a play for an audience that had left.

Juggler wasn’t there, but his presence was everywhere — in the armed ghouls near the doors, in the nervous way Modius’s court glanced toward the windows, in the Brujah neonates who lingered at the edges with the coiled energy of people waiting for a signal.

Two factions. One dying city. And me in the middle.

Law 20: Do Not Commit to Anyone.

Were you presented to the court? What was your reaction?

Modius looked at Darius the way a man looks at a delivery he didn’t order. “Another Ventrue in my city,” he murmured to Sharpe. “You collect them like stamps.”

“I collect investments,” Sharpe replied.

Darius said nothing. Bowed at the right moments. Made eye contact with no one above his station. Left when dismissed. On the drive back to the west side, Sharpe said: “What did you see?”

“A man who’s afraid of his own house.”

Sharpe nodded. “Remember that. Fear is the most exploitable resource in the Jyhad.”

Law 33: Discover Each Person’s Weakness.

How did you meet the other Kindred of the city?

Slowly. Carefully. Sharpe’s instructions were specific: be present, be useful, be forgettable.

Over the first months of 1991, Darius mapped Gary’s Kindred population through observation and cautious interaction:

  • Juggler’s Anarchs — Evelyn Stephens (Brujah), Gengis and his Mongols, a rotating cast of neonates. They gathered in an abandoned bowling alley on Fifth Avenue. Darius made contact by solving a problem — a mortal police detective who was asking questions about a disappearance near Anarch territory. Darius knew the detective’s habits (a regular at a west side card game) and arranged for the investigation to redirect. The Anarchs noticed. They didn’t thank him. They remembered.

  • Modius’s Court — Allicia (Toreador), Sharpe, and a handful of others clinging to the Prince’s fading legitimacy. Darius attended court functions when required, stood in the back, and listened. He learned that Allicia watched him from across rooms with an intensity that felt less like attraction and more like reconnaissance.

  • The Independents — A Malkavian named Ruth who lived in the ruins of the Palace Theater and spoke in riddles that were sometimes prophecy. A Nosferatu called Sump who controlled the sewer infrastructure under downtown Gary and traded information for favors. These were the ones Darius cultivated most carefully, because they belonged to no faction and owed nothing to anyone.

Law 14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy.

IV. THE PRELUDE QUESTIONS

Who are you?

Darius Cole is a 27-year-old Black man from Gary, Indiana, who has been dead for approximately fourteen months. In mortal terms, he was a mid-level fence and street broker — successful enough to eat well, not successful enough to attract federal attention. In Kindred terms, he is a 12th-generation Ventrue neonate, one of only two Ventrue in a city dominated by Brujah Anarchs and a Toreador Prince who hates his clan on principle.

He is, by every measure that matters in the Jyhad, nobody.

This is his greatest advantage.

What do you want?

The honest answer — the one he’ll never say aloud — is everything. Not wealth (though that’s useful). Not immortality (though that’s what he has). He wants control. The ability to walk into any room and know that every person in it is where he put them. He wants to build a power structure so seamless that no one even realizes it exists until it’s too late to dismantle.

The answer he gives anyone who asks: “I just want to survive, sir.”

Law 21: Seem Dumber Than Your Mark.

What do you fear?

The Beast. Not as metaphor. He has felt it — in the basement during the Embrace, in the alley behind the Herd girl’s apartment when the hunger got too sharp, in the moment when Modius’s Brujah bodyguard shouldered him at court and something inside Darius uncoiled and wanted to tear the man’s throat out with its teeth.

The Beast is the end of the plan. If he loses control — if he frenzies in public, kills the wrong person, shatters the Masquerade — everything he builds collapses. Self-Control 4 isn’t paranoia. It’s load-bearing architecture.

Being forgotten. He watched Gary forget his father. Watched the city forget the 30,000 men who built its steel. In the Jyhad, neonates who fail to matter are erased — not killed, just forgotten, which is worse. He will not be forgotten.

Allicia. He doesn’t know why yet. Just that when she looks at him, something in his blood responds that shouldn’t. He suspects she’s acting on Modius’s orders. He’s afraid she isn’t.

V. AMBITIONS

Short-Term Ambition 1: Survive the Embassy to Chicago

Modius will soon send envoys to Chicago to present themselves to Prince Lodin. Darius intends to be among them — and to return alive, with information about Chicago’s power structure that he can trade upward. Survival is the minimum. Intelligence-gathering is the mission.

48 Laws in play: Law 22 (Surrender Tactic — accept the suicide mission, extract value from it), Law 14 (Pose as Friend, Work as Spy).

Short-Term Ambition 2: Become Indispensable to Both Factions in Gary

Neither Modius nor Juggler’s Anarchs can afford to lose the one person who can broker between them. Darius will position himself as the essential intermediary — the only Kindred in Gary who speaks to both sides without being owned by either. This requires solving problems for both factions without ever formally joining one.

48 Laws in play: Law 11 (Keep People Dependent on You), Law 20 (Do Not Commit to Anyone).

Long-Term Ambition: Control Chicago

Not “become Prince.” The title is a target painted on your back. Modius has the title and it’s killing him. Lodin had the title and someone will take it from him. The goal is to become the person without whom Chicago cannot function — the information broker, the kingmaker, the invisible hand that decides who sits on the throne and who gets staked in a cellar.

The Prince is the face. Darius intends to be the spine.

48 Laws in play: Law 3 (Conceal Your Intentions), Law 42 (Strike the Shepherd), Law 48 (Assume Formlessness).

Timeline: Decades. Possibly centuries. Darius is twenty-seven years old and functionally immortal. He can afford to be patient. The elders who rule Chicago now were patient once too. He intends to be more patient than all of them.

THE 48 LAWS: A STRATEGIC PLAYBOOK

The following maps Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power to specific in-game strategies across the Forged in Steel chronicle. Each law is tagged to a phase of the character arc.

PHASE 1: GARY — THE POWERLESS YEARS

Law Principle In-Game Application
Law 22 Transform weakness into power Accept every demeaning errand. Run messages for Modius. Fetch blood for Sharpe. Each act of submission is intelligence-gathering. The neonates who refuse menial tasks die. The ones who accept them learn everything
Law 21 Seem dumber than your mark Let Modius think you’re Sharpe’s errand boy. Let Juggler think you’re a potential recruit with no ambition. Let Allicia think you’re charmed. A neonate who appears ambitious gets destroyed. A neonate who appears harmless gets overlooked
Law 14 Pose as friend, work as spy Every conversation is an intelligence operation. Map every relationship, debt, grudge, and secret in Gary. When Allicia offers blood-sharing, accept carefully — the information is worth the risk of partial bond. When Juggler’s Anarchs drink and brag, listen
Law 11 Keep people dependent on you Become the go-between. When Modius needs a message delivered to Juggler’s people without losing face, Darius carries it. When the Anarchs need a problem solved in Camarilla territory, Darius handles it. Neither side can replace him because nobody else is willing to walk the line
Law 33 Discover each person’s weakness Modius: Obsessed with reclaiming Chicago, pathologically needs Annabelle Triabell’s approval. Juggler: Lost his idealism, blood-bound to forces he doesn’t understand. Allicia: Desperate for freedom from Modius. Sharpe: Ambitious beyond Gary but too cautious to move. Catalog everything. Use nothing — yet

PHASE 2: THE BRIDGE — MOVING BETWEEN CITIES

Law Principle In-Game Application
Law 20 Do not commit to anyone The central trap of Forged in Steel: choose Modius, Juggler, or Chicago. The winning move is to serve all three while belonging to none. “I’m just carrying a message, sir. I don’t have an opinion.” Play the Anarchs against the Camarilla. Play Gary against Chicago. Stay in the center where leverage is maximum
Law 23 Concentrate your forces Don’t try to control all of Gary. Pick one domain — the information trade between the two cities — and make it yours. In a city of scarcity, absolute control of even one resource (the I-90 corridor, the smuggling routes, the mortal political contacts) is worth more than tenuous influence over many things
Law 12 Use selective honesty to disarm Occasionally do something genuinely helpful with no strings. Warn a neonate about a hunter. Share feeding territory during a lean month. In a world of universal paranoia, acts of unexplained generosity are deeply destabilizing — and deeply memorable
Law 15 Crush your enemy totally When you strike, finish it. The entire Gary chronicle is a case study in what happens when enemies are left alive: Modius and Juggler spent decades in a war neither would end, and it destroyed the city. When the time comes to remove a rival, there is no torpor, no mercy, no “lesson taught.” Final Death or nothing
Law 29 Plan all the way to the end Don’t just plan the coup. Plan who replaces the Prince. Plan which Primogen survive. Plan how the Anarchs are handled the night after. Plan your relationship with the Inner Circle. Modius seized Gary without a plan for holding it. That mistake echoes for a century

PHASE 3: CHICAGO — THE ASCENSION

Law Principle In-Game Application
Law 42 Strike the shepherd, scatter the sheep Every faction has a keystone. Remove the keystone and the faction fragments. When Juggler vanished, the Anarchs devolved to Evelyn, who lacks his charisma. When a Prince falls, the Primogen scramble. Identify the keystone. Remove it surgically. Let the faction destroy itself
Law 3 Conceal your intentions Never let anyone know the endgame. Let others construct their own explanations for your behavior. The Methuselahs — Helena, Menele — operate this way and survive for millennia. If no one knows what you want, no one can block you
Law 45 Preach change, never reform too much When you take Chicago, keep Elysium. Keep the Masquerade structures. Keep the Primogen council (with your people on it). Radical reformers get staked by coalitions of the frightened. Change must be invisible until it’s irreversible
Law 34 Act like a king From the beginning — even as a nobody at Modius’s crumbling ball — carry yourself with quiet certainty. Not arrogance (that triggers retaliation). Inevitability. In Kindred society, perception shapes reality. If you act like you belong at the top, others eventually question why you’re not there yet
Law 48 Assume formlessness Do not become “the Anarch sympathizer” or “Modius’s servant” or “Chicago’s agent.” Be all and none. When political winds shift — Lodin falls, Maxwell rises, the Sabbat attacks — the rigid are destroyed and the formless survive. This is the ultimate law for Kindred survival across centuries

CHARACTER VOICE

Darius speaks in the register of the SWU interviews — specifically the calm, measured cadence of someone who has learned that words are currency and you don’t spend what you can’t afford.

Speech patterns drawn from source material:

  • Tommy Dye’s operational clarity: “There’s wheels. As long as every wheel turns in the right direction, everybody made money.” Darius speaks about systems, not feelings. He describes power in mechanical terms — networks, flows, leverage.

  • Ike Taylor’s historical consciousness: “I’m just Ike. I’ve been Ike a long time.” Darius doesn’t need to announce himself. Identity is demonstrated, not declared.

  • Sharp’s philosophical intensity: “I’m passionate, not combative.” When Darius speaks with conviction, people mistake it for aggression. He’s learned to modulate — keep the passion, lower the volume.

Sample dialogue:

At Modius’s court, when asked his opinion on the Anarch situation:

“I don’t have opinions on things above my station, Your Grace. I have observations. If you’d find those useful, I’m here.”

When a Brujah Anarch tries to recruit him:

“I hear you. I respect what you’re building. But I’ve got a sire who has expectations, and I’m not in a position to disappoint him. Not yet. You understand.”

When Sharpe asks what he learned at court:

“Modius is planning something with the steel mill. He doesn’t have the resources. Allicia watched me for forty minutes. Juggler’s people had three new faces I didn’t recognize — one of them smelled like Lake Michigan. And someone’s been feeding in my territory without permission.”

When confronted with a direct threat:

“I want you to think about what happens after you hurt me. Not to me — I’m nobody. To the twelve people who are depending on me to do things for them tomorrow night. You want to explain to all of them why their business isn’t getting handled? Because that’s not a problem I’m creating. That’s a problem you’re creating.”

SWU CHARACTER SYNTHESIS

Darius Cole is built from the composite wisdom of the Soft White Underbelly interviews. He is not any one person — he is the pattern that emerges when you listen to all of them:

SWU Source What Darius Takes From Them
Tommy Dye The operational mind. Understanding power as a system of obligations, taxes, and enforcement. The progression from street kid to connected player. The knowledge that violence is logistics, not passion
Ike Taylor The historical consciousness. Understanding that Gary’s collapse isn’t natural — it’s policy. The ability to see systemic racism as a political tool rather than an abstract injustice. The quiet dignity of someone who’s seen everything and doesn’t need to prove it
Sharp The philosophical framework. Passion misread as aggression. The refusal to perform for anyone’s approval. “The game found me. I didn’t find the game.”
Nicole The paranoia that isn’t paranoia. The knowledge that when you’re invisible, you see everything. The survival instinct of someone the world stepped over every day
Ian The macro view. “If you walk one block west, you’re in the hood.” The understanding that wealth and poverty are manufactured, not natural. The anger that looks like analysis
Coyote The code. Don’t punch down. Protect kids. Help the vulnerable. Distrust authority. And when someone crosses the line, make them regret it permanently

APPENDIX: COMPLETE STATS AT A GLANCE

============================================================
  DARIUS JEREMIAH COLE — Ventrue — 12th Generation
  Nature: Architect          Demeanor: Conformist
  Concept: Street Broker     Sire: Eric Sharpe
============================================================

  ATTRIBUTES
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  PHYSICAL        SOCIAL           MENTAL
  Strength   ●●○○○  Charisma     ●●●○○  Perception   ●●●○○
  Dexterity  ●●○○○  Manipulation ●●●●○  Intelligence ●●●○○
  Stamina    ●●○○○  Appearance   ●●●○○  Wits         ●●●○○

  ABILITIES
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TALENTS           SKILLS           KNOWLEDGES
  Alertness    ●○○○○  Drive      ●○○○○  Awareness  ●○○○○
  Empathy      ●●●○○  Etiquette  ●●○○○  Finance    ●○○○○
  Intimidation ●●○○○  Firearms   ●○○○○  Investigation ●○○○○
  Leadership   ●●○○○  Larceny    ●●○○○  Politics   ●●○○○
  Streetwise   ●●●○○  Stealth    ●○○○○
  Subterfuge   ●●○○○  Survival   ●●○○○

  DISCIPLINES          BACKGROUNDS        VIRTUES
  ──────────────────   ────────────────   ──────────────
  Dominate   ●●●○○○   Allies     ●○○○○   Conscience ●●●○○
  Presence   ●○○○○○   Contacts   ●●○○○   Self-Ctrl  ●●●●○
                       Herd       ●○○○○   Courage    ●●●●○
                       Influence  ●○○○○
                       Mentor     ●○○○○   Humanity:  ●●●●●●●○○○
                       Resources  ●○○○○   Willpower: ●●●●●●●●○○

  FEEDING RESTRICTION: Criminals only (hustlers, dealers,
                       thieves, sex workers, fences)

  HEALTH            BLOOD POOL (12th Gen)
  ──────────────    ──────────────────────
  Bruised     [ ]   Max: 11
  Hurt   -1   [ ]   Per Turn: 1
  Injured -1  [ ]
  Wounded -2  [ ]   EXPERIENCE: 0
  Mauled  -2  [ ]
  Crippled -5 [ ]
  Incapacitated [ ]
============================================================

OPENING SCENE: NEW YEAR’S EVE, 1991

Modius’s mansion. Gary, Indiana.

The ballroom hasn’t been beautiful in thirty years, but someone has tried. Candles in tarnished candelabras. Flowers that are already wilting. A string quartet playing for an audience of the dead.

Darius stands near the back wall in a charcoal suit that Sharpe bought him — his first suit that fit properly. He holds a glass of champagne he can’t drink and watches the room the way he watched the playground at Pulaski Elementary: Who has power. Who wants it. Who’s pretending they don’t.

Modius is performing. The Prince of Gary sweeps through his court with the desperate energy of a man throwing a party nobody wanted to attend. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. His compliments land like threats.

Allicia stands near the piano, pale and still and watching. Their eyes meet. She doesn’t look away.

Juggler isn’t here. But three of his people are — leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, radiating contempt. They’re here because even Anarchs recognize the utility of court appearances. They’re watching the same things Darius is watching.

Eric Sharpe materializes at his side. “The Prince will make an announcement tonight. A plan to reopen the steel mill. It will fail. But it will set things in motion.”

“What things?”

“He’ll need envoys to Chicago. To beg Lodin for… resources. Permission. Whatever he convinces himself he needs.”

“And you want me to volunteer.”

Sharpe doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

Darius takes a sip of champagne, grimaces, and sets it on a passing tray. Across the room, Modius raises his glass. The court goes silent.

Here we go.

"The game found me. I didn't find the game."
                                        — Sharp