Angel of Mercy, Angel of Death

[Rick Gentle]

(Alright - I haven't technically gotten permission to post this, but the last I heard from _username is that it sounded like an interesting idea, and didn't say I couldn't do it, so... If it's too hardcore content, I trust a moderator will lock/delete it.)

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I was thinking on my drive home a few nights ago. I was thinking that we could start a collaborative serial in which we examine the horrible, drastic choices that Cainites - and people - in the World of Darkness have to make as a result of their existence. The themes of selfishness, greed, grasping for power, and paranoia pervade the World of Darkness, and afflict vampires in particular ways. It's a big responsibility, but not all vampires choose to wield their power safely or wisely. If your character is a vampire, if they had this power, and if they were in these situations, how would they be able to deal with their conscience for the rest of cold, dark eternity?

WARNING: The following content contains EXTREMELY, PAINFULLY graphic concepts, and should not be read if the reader is concerned about harm to children or other borderline-"you're-going-to-Hell" material. Oh, yeah, and lots of bad language.

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Your sire called half an hour ago. Again. The fusty old Lick is worried about 'your protection'. So the city's at war. What evidence is there, anywhere? It's not like vampires are on the streets, shooting each other full of holes and tearing out throats on a nightly basis. But he's going to cut you off unless you get your ass to his haven before midnight. Check in with the old man, explain to him that you're a big kid now, and then stay as far away from his dead ass as you can.
The road from your haven to his is a long and lonely one, frequently passing through parkland and wilderness preservation zones. There hasn't been anything but trees for two miles. You're bored as all hell, and start inching over the speed limit to get to your sire's haven that much quicker, so you can leave that much sooner. Your eye is caught by the white phospherescent glare of headlights in the review mirror. Some other bastard is in a bigger hurry than you are; the lights grow steadily bigger and you have to squint in order to keep your nightvision relatively intact.
The other vehicle, a big black SUV, comes zooming up behind you, and you clench your hands more tightly around the steering wheel, ready to swerve out of the bastard's way if it looks like he's going to rear-end you. He almost does, and you anticipate the crunching of glass as the SUV suddenly cuts to the left, into the opposite traffic line, almost clipping your car in the process.
As it passes you, you keep a steady glare on it, hoping to get a glimpse of the retard who just made your night that much more of a hassle, but the windows are tinted black and you can't see anything. The car may as well not have a driver. In spite of this, you get a strong impression that someone’s looking back at you through the glass, obscured behind total darkness. You’re tempted to throw them the deuce just to be on the safe side.
Then the SUV is past you, red taillights washing over the cab of your car, briefly making it seem as if the moon just got a punk dye job. You take a small bit of satisfaction knowing that someone is going to be in more trouble than you are, and just to prove how good a citizen you are, you slow down to a safer speed. Now you’re only about five miles over the maximum allowed speed limit, at night, so at least the cops couldn’t pull you in for “reckless driving”. That’s what the bastard in front of you should be tried for!
“The fuck!” You press down hard on the left pedal as the SUV suddenly cuts its speed, flooding the night again with the carmine glow of its brake lights. What the hell is this son of a bitch doing? It roared past you at breakneck velocity, and now it’s driving like some drunk old biddy afraid of getting pulled over for speeding. So help them if you had your pistol with you, but you left it back at your haven to make a point to your sire.
You’re gonna pass the bastard. “Do unto others”, right? He was being a bitch, so obviously you can be one to him, now. You jink left, trying to peep ahead of the bulk of the SUV to look for oncoming traffic. Nothing. You speed up. One mile per hour. Three miles. Five miles. You almost want to really clip the SUV, but take the prudent course of action and decide you don’t want to worry about the insurance.
You pull up alongside the SUV, but it’s too high off the ground for you to get a look inside the driver’s-side window at this angle, and it would probably be blacked out just like all the others. You quit being a rubbernecker and focus your attention back on the road ahead as another pair of headlights clear the horizon. You’d better get out of this lane pretty damn quick.
The first you get a hint that something is more wrong than some puffed-up punk in a bigger vehicle is acting like his bitch of a self is when the SUV turns off its headlights as soon as it spots the other car headed your way. The second hint is when it crashes into the side of your car. Your right-hand mirror is gone, now a trail of scattered glass for a couple yards on the highway behind you. The two contesting vehicles screech and rail as they grind against one another, because you’re fighting back against this homicidal attempt, throwing the steering wheel to the right. Your dashboard is now lit by the other car headed straight into you. The SUV isn’t budging. It’s the bigger vehicle, and its front tire is ahead of yours, giving it leverage in forcing your car left. You can clearly make out the glint of headlights on your knuckles as you and the other car race towards one another.
The SUV is clearly trying to force you into an accident – a full fucking headlong collision! Sure, you might survive. You might even regain consciousness before the cops arrive. You’re full of blood – fed before you left – so you could heal the inch-deep cuts inflicted by the shattered windshield. (Wouldn’t THAT take some explaining...) But fuck yourself if you’re going to let the SUV get away with trying to mess with you. Maybe this IS war, after all. And it just became a personal one.
So you’re gonna pull a little trick on the SUV. It wants to go left so badly? Okay. You’re gonna let it.
The oncoming car is starting to honk. Impact is seconds away, and as your headlights come up on the vehicle, you see it’s a minivan. Not the most maneuverable of automobiles, which is probably why it hasn’t risked cutting off to the gravel-lined shoulder. A second before you would otherwise have broken your respective noses on each other’s hoods, you yank the steering wheel the other way. Your tires squeal as they drop off the asphalt, but not nearly as loudly as the sudden rending, agonized cacaphony of the SUV running headfirst into the minivan.
Then it’s quiet again.
Your tires grumble softly as you gently slow down, taking care not to stop too suddenly on the gravel and swerve out of control. You come to a halt a quarter-mile away, and put on your parking brake, cutting the ignition. You get out of your car and jog back down the road. You can hardly make out the piled-up wrecks in front of you – both pairs of headlights are smashed, but nothing has caught fire. As you get close, you can see that the passenger-side door of the SUV is wide open, but there’s nobody else to be seen. You drop into a walk, really wishing you had brought your pistol after all.
You pass the minivan cautiously on the passenger side, not wanting to get too close to whatever may be waiting to leap out of the SUV’s open door. You come to a halt at the minivan’s door, and place your hand on the open windowsill as you duck your head inside to see if the driver is still alive.
She isn’t.
Her blonde hair blown back and dripping with blood as black as the night outside. Holy shit, but the scent hits your nose hard. You clear your sinuses with a breath of fresh air from outside the van and stick your head back in. The driver has been crushed by her steering column. It’s so far gone into her chest cavity. Pulverized ribs. Burst heart. Lungs must be like a deflated beach ball of a hideous grey-red like ruined brain matter.
So why do you hear breathing? It’s a raspy little squeak, and you didn’t notice it instantly because it’s sounding only every few seconds. It’s a hiccup with a sore throat and a recent tonsilectomy. It’s a premature death rattle. You look into the back seat.
Peering down between the two front seats, you see a little kiddy-seat securely fashioned to the middle of the first row of passenger benches. It’s empty. You look down.
Oh, fuck.
The body of a tiny baby is lying face-down on the bottom of the minivan. It’s not moving, but it’s still making that awful rasping sound, and your fingertips go cold as you realize that it’s the baby’s breathing. It’s still alive.

[VentrueIan]

it would probably depend on my characters age and random whim at the time. The older he gets the less likely, because the more his idealism has been chipped away, the more he starts seeing that baby as a potential hunter, murdere or rapist. and the more he would be inclined to kill the baby quickly. A women, man, priest, parents burning before their childes eyes, none of these warrant such action. In all those cases i would walk, just straight walk like it never happened.

[Rick Gentle]

Rick Gentle would probably call the paramedics. Not only are they much more qualified to handle situations of crippling injury and getting the baby to a hospital before it's too late, he doesn't want the responsibility of the child's life in his hands. What kind of life could it enjoy with its back broken? What if the Sabbat come back while he's stuck in the minivan trying to pull the baby out? Then not only has he not helped the baby, he's now a prisoner (luckily) of the Sabbat. However, he's not yet so deadened that he'll just walk away from something that pathetic; as a Gangrel, his first instinct may be to help the weak and helpless members of his own species... for now.

[_username]

Rick sent this to me for pre-approval, but (like he said) I didn't thoroughly evaluate it, since I was almost walking out the door to go to work when I got the PM.  Anyways, this is the Interactive Story Board so post what you want!  As long as it isn't illegal (based on US law, since our server is in the US) or outright stupid/trolltastic (based on my definition), nobody is going to restrict your posts due to controversial content.

Anyways, the original question is kind of difficult to answer, since most of us experienced roleplayers have a plethora of characters, each with a different moral compass, prorities and personal values.  Without going into a lot of detail about who our character is and why they would respond in any particular way, there's no way to answer it in any meaningful way.

[Rick Gentle]

Well, feel free to post as many justifications for however many characters you want, but you still only get one vote!   

[Malavis]

Call 911 and dump the problem off on the paramedics. It's a mortal child and should be taken care of by other mortals.

I rolled a D10 for clan, jotted up a concept and ran the character through this moral dilemma. I landed on a Tremere who once had a son and I decided he was a touch on the bitter side about it. Until he saw the child, he simply shrugged about the family in the minivan. Wrong place, wrong time. When he spotted the baby, however, his mood changed drastically and he decided to do something. If his son, wherever he is, was in trouble somewhere, he hoped that some random person would do the same for him.

Of course, he would call it in while making a run for it from angry Tzimisce (Safer to assume all Sabbat belong to the Tzimisce, that way the fiends can't surprise you), and falsify all of his own personal information.

[Rick Gentle]

I was hoping we'd get more than six votes...

Well, at least the majority seem to be fairly compassionate people. I honestly expected people to hump up on Option #1, wary that their character would suffer a Humanity loss... Or maybe this is an attempt to regain some Humanity?

[Malavis]

In the case of my character it was him clinging to the one last moral obligation he felt that he had: To protect children and the innocence of at all costs. Adult mortals he sees as icky, icky things with juicy centers. Like cadbury creme eggs soaked in tabasco sauce.

[Rick Gentle]

Yaaay! We did get more than six votes! ... we got seven! But, hey, that's more than six!

[Friktion]

Haha, I chose option 1 but for all the wrong reasons. 

Decided to use one of my favorite characters.  A baby might be worth quite a bit to the right bidder.

I could see him trying to pawn the baby off to some Tremere.  "C'mon your rituals require virgin blood right, how hard is that to come by now-a-days? The D&D clubs must be running on empty!  I've got bonofide baby blood, straight from the source.  Buy the whole baby and get a set of black candles too!"

Humanity plummets.

[_username]

What is this "hoo-manatee" you speak of?