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Who said anything about him being 19th ?

I think grout was embraced in the 50's.

Dragatus wrote:

SaulottheGentle wrote:

The game was so well made and pretty much became a slaughterfest from the Warrens forwards. Then I noted on how brilliantly done the Malkavians were done, using Therette's story and speculation of Grout and PC Malks, and by which I mean they aren't fishmalks. And I said that with all the extreme detail of the cosmopolitan aspects of the World of Darkness being acted out before the Warrens, that all the imagery in Grout's mansion cannot simply be coincidence. I also said something about an Obfuscated Grout acting as Caine.

And I love how you described my entire entry. XD

So basically you're saying that if the game had been properly finished we would've been able to more clearly see that Grout is the friend?

Maybe, maybe not. Again, Troika was on a short time frame for release, so they had to hurry it up.

However, this IS the World of Darkness. Nothing is as it appears to be and everything's dark, disturbed and twisted. Maybe Troika did intend for Caine to pop up, maybe Grout really was meant to be minor, or everything is backwards and inverted. And I can't help but feel as if because of the WoD logic, that's why the developers said "scratch out what you don't like".

Claudia wrote:

Who said anything about him being 19th ?

I think grout was embraced in the 50's.

Listen to the tapes.
Dactopyntalism at least is 19th century... I am not even sure if late 19th. The other theories he mentions, their names I had regretfully forgotten, were suppressed by 1920s at the latest. So he had to practice before Freud and psychoanalysis, as is evident from his tapes. He addresses those who dabble in psychoanalysis as those who were after his time. And Freud started this therapeutic method in 1890. So Grout was (or is, if Philo is right) quite a bit older than the 50's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis

He never says that those ideas are of his living days...
I know freudian psychanalists, but they never met the guy !

Claudia wrote:

He never says that those ideas are of his living days...
I know freudian psychanalists, but they never met the guy !

He mentions working in an insane asylum. And as he describes it, it had to be pre WW1.
Again, by the tapes he stopped taking part in scientific discourse about 50 years earlier. But to publish works he didn't have to be alive... Something along the lines of an old professor who doesn't go to conferences would have been perfect Masquerade.
But he had to "die" finally. 90 something y.o. professor? Well, OK. 110 something? And still publishing!? Weird... 130!? Bells ringing at Society of Leopold.
I know some old scientists who do exactly that. OK, not in their 100s, but you don't need to be alive to publish. Believe me, I know. 

For the timing, I'd agree with Feral. The first tapes recorded sometime between the world wars. And I think in the 1920s rather than the 30s. He even "directly" addresses Freud, so I believe these tapes must fall into Freuds living years.
That makes for his "appearant death" (the embrace?) in the 1870s.
While the tapes are found in chronological order, there is no hint about the timeframe of the recordings, except that the last ones must be made very recently.
I always took it for granted that he was embraced at work in an asylum sometime in the second half of the 19th century, and stayed unawares of other kindred until the struggle between cam, anarchs, and kuey jin started.

- 

Well, I suppose I ought to put everything in spoilers then... I'm not sure how much of it counts, so I'll just spoiler all of it.

Spoiler:

I agree with Malk and Feral. From what it seems, Grout was, at least, comtemporary to Freud, if not one (human) generation older, as he speaks of how the "old guard" is losing ground to Freuds theories, including himself as a member of the "old guard". And just to be clear,  in his first tape, he comments how his supposed  death was 50 years ago, however I believe this first tape was decades away from the last one. But I linked the tapes above, so make your own opinions.

And Ettinarius' comment can tighten the theory even more

I'll have to redo this whole thing because I though he really was younger than that....
What's worse is that I translated like last month the tapes to French for the French version of th UP.

Sorry I've missed most of this discussion due to being out of touch for the last few days (heart attacks are so inconvenient, even when they're not major enough to have open-heart surgery).

I think Grout is dead.  Troika's death animations, and their concept of Kindred death, doesn't really jive with WOD lore.  Basically, the longer you've been Kindred, the faster your body reverts to the state it would have been in, had you been dead for that amount of time.  If you were Embraced three weeks ago, then meet your final death, you quickly decay until you look like a three-week-old corpse.  Someone who was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud (as Grout indeed mentions in his monologues) would probably look like the body on the bed; i.e. a skeleton surrounded by dust.  Vamps older than a few centuries would be no more than dust and ash within minutes.

Unless, of course, your storyteller decides it works like the Bloodlines death animations, because it looks cool in the game.  LOL  Yes I mean you Claudia.

Grout as the 'friend' who emails you cryptic and helpful tips?  I don't think so.  Those tips betray a knowledge of Smiling Jack's plan to off LaCroix ("Don't open it"), so I don't think Grout or Strauss are likely candidates.  It's either Jack or his friend the cabbie.

Cabbie as Caine?  One of the White Wolf Wiki sites mentions a Malkavian that sometimes hangs around with Jack, who claims (believes?) he is Caine.  Not sure where they get this, but I think it's more likely than the real Caine coming to Los Angeles to help rid the city of one fairly insignificant Prince.  My belief is that the cabbie is not Caine.

I take the whole 'Gehenna' metaplot with a very heavy grain of salt (i.e. a few kilos; more sodium than I'm supposed to have now after my recent heart problems).  For one thing, it always left a bitter taste in my mouth that WW just decided to end the whole VtM WOD to make people buy VtR.  For another thing, the Bloodlines timeline for L.A. doesn't match the White Wolf canon concerning the Kue-jin invasion of the West Coast, OR the Gehenna storyline; so Bloodlines has to be an alternate history.  So to me, nothing in the Gehenna novel or game supplements really match the story in Bloodlines.  (Or in my personal history of the WOD.  But that's a storyteller's prerogative...)

Duncan.Oliver wrote:

Someone who was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud (as Grout indeed mentions in his monologues) would probably look like the body on the bed; i.e. a skeleton surrounded by dust.  Vamps older than a few centuries would be no more than dust and ash within minutes.

Assuming Grout was older than Sigmund (as he places himself as part of the "old guard" that gave birth to the metodology preceeding Freud's), he would have to be born somewhere between 1800-1850. That would make his years as a Kindred to range from 140-180 years, by 2004. I'm not an expert in body decay, but I presume 140 years is enough for an unprotected body to decay completly into ash, or, at least, not decay into the perfectly clean bones that we see in Grout's room.

Don't open it.. could be Rosa too.

Claudia wrote:

Don't open it.. could be Rosa too.

And anyone with high end Auspex. Grout included.

@Duncan:

I am really sorry to hear about your heart problem. Rest a lot and don't overexert yourself. I hope you will get better soon.

Feral wrote:

Claudia wrote:

Don't open it.. could be Rosa too.

And anyone with high end Auspex. Grout included.

@Duncan:

I am really sorry to hear about your heart problem. Rest a lot and don't overexert yourself. I hope you will get better soon.

Thank you. Funny part is, they didn't warn me of overexertion. They were more than happy when I would walk around. The main warnings were about the medications I was on: don't eat these foods because they have too much vitamin K, etc., and I have to get my blood tested frequently to make sure dosages are correct.

Claudia wrote:

Don't open it.. could be Rosa too.

I doubt it was Rosa. Her visions are more on the graphical side. Real VISIONS you might say. And she doesn't strike me as the type to use such abstract things as chess to describe them.

- 

"Troika's death animations, and their concept of Kindred death, doesn't really jive with WOD lore."

Well... that's true. Even when the PC dies they go up in a wisp of smoke... as early as the tutorial, when they're presumably just a couple hours "old". Corpses a few hours old don't usually do that.

The fact that it has knowledge of the sarcophagus doesn't immediately mean Jack is directly involved, in my mind... like Claudia mentioned, Rosa also tells you not to open "it", and I doubt Jack told his plan to her. I don't believe Rosa was sending any emails, but it does go to show that Jack wasn't the only one who knew. And a Malkavian is easily the best non-Jack candidate, because of their insight, and their more ready knowledge of vampire society which thin-bloods don't typically have.

In what way does Bloodlines not mesh with the Gehenna storyline, or would that be vice-versa?

It doesn't fit with Gehenna since Gehenna happened in 2003 and the game takes place in 2004 xd

Also the Kuei-jin invasion of the West Coast that was chronicled in a few White Wolf game supplements is only mentioned briefly in Bloodlines, as if it wasn't as serious as the PnP game.  The main conflict in Bloodlines is between the Camarilla and Anarchs-- they are in a sort of Cold War for control of L.A..  This doesn't match the 'L.A. by Night' book, which still has the Anarchs in control.

Reading between the lines, here's the way I see it... In Bloodlines, Nines Rodriguez  tells you that most of the anarch leaders (possibly the ones mentioned in 'L.A. by Night') died in the Kuei-jin invasion, leaving him the most senior anarch in charge (except for Jack, who isn't into the whole 'leader' thing).  The Camarilla presence can be explained by assuming they came in on the anarch side at a critical moment in the invasion, i.e. the most opportune moment to drive back the Kuei-jin and gain a foothold in the former 'Anarch Free State' of California.  For the Anarchs, this was certainly a mixed blessing-- they traded open warfare with the Kuei-jin for the back-stabbing and trickiness of the Camarilla.  If they attack the Camarilla, the Kuei-jin will attack the victor.

Also, LaCroix is pretty young for a Prince, even in the US.  In Europe, he'd barely be considered an elder at 200 years old.  This can be explained as PR ploy by the Camarilla.  First you place someone in charge who you know will come into conflict with the anarchs, and cause some bad feelings.  Then, when that person inevitably fails, the Primogen (led no doubt by Regent Strauss) pick a replacement who is more diplomatic and effective, so then the anarchs will say, "Well, at least this guy is better than LaCroix!"  So they are less likely to attack the Camarilla--  One step closer to Camarilla control.

(This method is very old; it was even mentioned by Machiavelli.  And in the sci-fi novel 'Dune'.)

So, when your character defeats LaCroix in Bloodlines, even if you chose the Anarch or Independent endings, you're still probably doing the Camarilla a favor by allowing them to bring in someone better than LaCroix.  Nines is a good leader and a passionate speaker for the Anarch cause, but I don't think he's tricky enough to keep out the Camarilla indefinitely.

Hmmm, Claudia are you talking about the Gehenna novel, or the sourcebook?

I'm not sure which other supplements feature the Kuei-Jin, but didn't consider LA by Night contradictory per se since it was published in 1994... if the books were meant to be taken as "current" at the time they were released, we could assume about 5-6 years of breathing room before the Kuei-Jin show up (according to what different characters say). I personally found it amusing, because planting a gap of ten years with a major battle in the middle, while alluding to high vampire mortality, is a pretty convenient way to avoid contradicting any PnP campaigns a player might have participated in. Basically Troika's telling us all, "ur character died in the war lolz!"

Bloodlines doesn't mention any of the Anarch leaders listed in L.A. by Night, except for Smiling Jack, who is more of an Anarch free agent.  In the game sourcebooks Nights of Prophecy and San Francisco by Night (mostly the former), the battle for Los Angeles is considered all but lost in the Kuei-jin invasion (their 'Great Leap Outward'), mostly due to the defection of one of the Anarch leaders, Salvador Garcia, to the Kuei-jin.

Troika did indeed skip over a lot of history for Los Angeles, probably for the very reason you mentioned; to avoid contradicting any existing campaigns, or having to explain how the Camarilla came back to L.A..

Due to the number of differences between White Wolf canon concerning the Kuei-jin invasion, and the fact that Gehenna (the event) never happened in the Bloodlines universe, I tend to consider Bloodlines as an alternate history, even though it was claimed to be WOD canon when the game came out.  But that's okay with me... I never like the whole Gehenna metaplot anyway.  Who does White Wolf think they are, telling me that my game world is ending?  Thrown into chaos, perhaps; but that happens every few thousand years, and the WOD is still here.  (Carthage, Fall of the Second City, Fall of the First City, the Great Flood, etc.)

I meant the sourcebook. Not the novel
Anyway bloodlines was based on the 1998 setting (with Camarilla gangrel and still existing Tremere antitribu, both of which didn't happen after 1999). Alternate reality yepe.
I hate metaplots >_<

An obvious point is what I might make, but still.

Something of an odd method to sell the "new" game. DESTROY THE EXISTING ONE - IN STORY. While it somewhat does make sense, it also does exactly the obvious, like Duncan said. So what if you have a character whose been around for quite some time, been through things arguably worse than hell - doesn't matter. Still dies.

One of the reasons I made Gehenna's occurrence ambiguous in Pretty Requiem, Jackal pretty much summing it up as a "change of the rules", even if such a thing comes at the cost of the oWOD entirely. The main idea(or one of them, anyway) behind Eternal Presence is simple - Gehenna hasn't happened, and isn't likely to. It might hint otherwise, but who knows, could be nothing but bullshit. Of course, this is with connections to Bloodlines and Redemption included in both stories.

I've been playing through Wesp's new unofficial patch (he added in a Sabbat ending, must see), and I was going through Grout's Mansion, listening to each tape, and I have a peculiar new theory on them.

But I must first note that this theory applies another theory, "The Taxi Driver is Caine" theory.

What if Grout wasn't warning you about Lacroix? What if he was warning you about the Taxi Driver, Caine?

Grout states in the tapes that he doesn't mention the vampire's name "out of interest of self-preservation should these tapes fall into the wrong hands" and later states he doesn't name him out of fear. The only two other characters to speak in a feared manner towards a powerful vampire would be Skelter and Andrei. And they BOTH were talking about Caine/the Sarcophagus's inhabitant.

He also makes note that the voices told him of the vampire's blackest crimes, "both past and future". This is one of my main points because if you correlate this line with Lacroix, then take into account that his unlifespan drammatically (no pun) decreased the moment he let you live. In essence, this means he HAS no future.

Caine on the other hand has lived since the dawn of time, so he does have quite the shit list. To name a few, he's the first murderer, to his own brother no less, doesn't clean up his own messes, even more played out in the Gehenna book, where he doesn't care that all of his childer are dying. In the Lilith scenario, he's even described that "He's going to an alley in the middle of nowhere and he feels like he's dealing with bullshit". Taken even further where he walks through Abel's ghost declaring that he doesn't care about him and Abel vanishes.

In the tapes, Grout also says that "[his] house was created with security in mind, but at the time [he] was not privy to the full capabilities of vampirism." The last time he said anything about capabilities was in noting the "powers", specifically Protean and Obfuscate.
It also needs to be noted that Caine had recieved the disciplines available to Catiff upon creation: Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Potence, and Presence. Or in other words, the fully privy of the normal vampire spectrum.

He also states that the voices were telling him mercilessly to stay away from vampire society and that the vampire is bad news. This also occurs when the Malkavian PC is in the endgame cab and is completely flipping balls, saying "GET ME OUT OF HERE. WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO...."

This theory also explains why Grout is "in hiding". I've confirmed with Claudia that Dementation doesn't follow the Dominate rules on Generation, which Caine himself employed. This would mean that Grout could've Dementated him into becoming a "blind spot" in Caine's vision. My reason for Grout being in hiding is because Caine knows he would spoil everything like the disappointed movie goer blurting out the ending to the line of people, and thus tried to kill him so that the plan in LA didn't go awry.

However, he escaped, leaving behind a decoy body, he does have medical degrees to show his prowess in anatomy for shall we say, detailed enough that it could be mistaken for a real body. And the idea of the body being a decoy is perfect. If he really had stayed long enough for Ming-Xiao to enter, then dementate her and leave, then wouldn't have he been seen leaving (as some distortions through Obfuscate) as Nines-Xiao was?

No, he would have had to leave prior to that. This also explains why Xiao is confused in disguise, and also works to explain why Lacriox and Xiao's connections dissipated much earlier than they would've, if you've played mean to Lacriox, not that he doesn't deserve it (the prick), you would see how he reacts to failure.

There's a thing : the tapes mention someone that is also present when in court, with "the others"... and the cabbie, which is in truth a malkavioan as cited in the novels, is never in elysium at anytime : there's no way he crossed paths with grout, at least in my opinion.

Claudia wrote:

There's a thing : the tapes mention someone that is also present when in court, with "the others"...  and the cabbie, which is in truth a malkavioan as cited in the novels, is never in elysium at anytime : there's no way he crossed paths with grout, at least in my opinion.

I am afraid I must concur. Sorry Saulot. Nice theory, but Claudia undressed it in one sentence.