Post-Questcon 2026 LARP event for the 1068 AD DA: Vampire Game.

By late August in the Year of Our Lord 1068, a tale was making its way around the tables of Dering Manor. It was not one of the usual stories of Saxon ghosts, Norman blades, or drunken Gangrel lost somewhere beyond the walls. This one came from the Brujah City Guards of London themselves, men and Kindred who had been watching the gates, the docks, and the roads while others went looking for answers.

The guards said it began with disappearances.

For months, Ghouls and Kindred had been sent from London to oversee the rebuilding of estates, guard shipments, watch warehouses, escort goods, and keep an eye upon the roads crossing the lands of Albion. Some never returned.

At first, one missing Ghoul was blamed upon thieves. Another upon wolves. One Kindred failing to return before dawn could be called carelessness.

Then the names began to pile up.

By the time the matter reached the prince, eight known and recorded Kindred had vanished. More than twenty Ghouls were missing with them. The names were entered into London's records, and none among the Brujah Guard considered the matter chance any longer.

Prince Savoy therefore permitted a mixed company of Kindred from several Clans to investigate and prepare reports for his court.

That was when the scrolls became important.

Two ancient scrolls had been sent from Oxford toward London. They were old even by the reckoning of Kindred, their surfaces faded and nearly blank from age. Neither reached its intended destination.

One eventually appeared strangely. A Ventrue involved in the investigation came into possession of it, but where age had taken the old writing, someone had placed new words upon the ancient surface. The message was no accident. It was a clue.

The second scroll remained lost.

Instead, another object appeared—a painting of a Kindred Herald accompanied by the image of a bull. Upon the back of that painting was writing much like that found upon the first scroll. The words were translated, and the information passed among those conducting the investigation, though the other missing piece connected to the old scroll was never recovered.

"And that," one of the Brujah Guards was heard to say at Dering Manor, "is when people stopped laughing about old parchment."

Not long afterward came smoke over the Thames.

A small fire broke out within a building along the northeastern docks. The flames themselves were not remarkable. London had seen worse fires before breakfast.

What lay inside was another matter.

When the ruins were examined, bones were found among the debris. Many bones.

Strange markings had been made within the building as well—signs the guards could not explain and markings that did not appear to belong to any ordinary merchant, sailor, or warehouse guild.

The neighboring building was searched soon afterward.

There the investigators found a mortal woman who kept accounts for Marcus, the elder Ventrue. Whatever had happened beside her place of work, she was still alive. She was quickly taken from the area and moved somewhere safer before those behind the disappearances—or the fire—could return.

The investigation next carried the company somewhere few expected.

To the private residence of Prince Savoy himself.

There they discovered a Bacchanalia underway.

Those who tell the story in Dering Manor usually grow very interested at this point, hoping for scandal, blood, naked Romans, or some embarrassing secret concerning the Prince of London.

The Brujah Guard offers none.

What is known is that the investigating Kindred entered Savoy's private gathering.

They did not remain long.

And when they departed, every one of them looked distinctly vexed.

"What they saw," the Guards say, "they may tell when they wish."

For now, they have not.

Their trail then led beneath London and into the ancient Temple of Mithras.

What happened below remains uncertain.

The Brujah stationed nearby heard little and saw less. There was no alarm raised, no call for reinforcements, and no procession of bodies carried from below.

Yet when several members of the investigating company finally emerged, they were soaked through with water.

No one offered an explanation.

The Brujah Guards decided that asking questions of wet Kindred coming out of an ancient Mithraic temple beneath London was unlikely to improve anyone's evening.

They instead gave the company the newest information gathered under orders from Captain Sverre Wulfnothsen. The captain had commanded the Brujah Guard to make inquiries concerning certain women connected to the investigation, and what had been learned was passed directly to the returning company.

The pieces were beginning to come together.

Missing Kindred.

Missing Ghouls.

Ancient scrolls.

New writing upon old parchment.

A Herald and a bull.

Bones beneath a burned warehouse.

Strange markings.

A mortal bookkeeper working for an elder Ventrue.

A Bacchanalia at the home of the prince.

Something hidden beneath the Temple of Mithras.

And somewhere behind all of it, roads leading away from London.

But the tale did not end beneath the city.

It ended here.

At Dering Manor.

The mixed company returned to the Kindred tavern carrying what they had learned, what they had seen, and perhaps several things they had decided not yet to speak aloud.

Marcus was waiting.

Some say the elder Ventrue already knew more than he admitted. Others say the discovery at the docks finally convinced him that whatever was happening threatened more than his ledgers and servants. A few whisper that the missing Kindred and Ghouls were never the true purpose at all—that they were merely pieces being moved upon a board far older than Norman England.

The Brujah Guard makes no such claim.

Their account ends simply.

The investigators met Marcus within Dering Manor.

Reports were given.

Questions were asked.

And somewhere between the cups being filled and the doors being closed, the investigation changed from a search for missing servants and travelers into something far more troubling.

So, if you hear someone at Dering Manor speak of the Eight Who Vanished, the burned building beside the Thames, the Bull upon the painting, or the Kindred who walked dripping wet from the Temple of Mithras, remember this:

These are not yet old tavern legends.

They happened only days ago.

And according to the Brujah City Guards of London, the matter is not finished.