![]() ![]() For the normal mortals this is a mechanic that represents what the mortal is good at. The format for these is generally a short introduction, followed by a short-form stat block, and then a special power. There are even some new alchemy powers for Thin-blood characters who are working with the Second Inquisition. The NPCs are mostly mundane humans, but there’s also a wide selection of hunters with powers – several types of psychics, “cunning” folk, religious types with True Faith, “nullifiers” who can just turn off Disciplines, sorcerers, and ghouls. Blackmailers, undercover agents, interrogators, politicos, forensic accountants, investigators, hackers, and muscle. The bulk of it is page after page of generic hunter NPCs, usually based on the role or tactic of the hunter. Second Inquisition NPCs – By far the largest component of Second Inquisition, this collection of stat blocks, special powers, and “OPFOR” (opposing force) types takes up about a third of the page count. With the usual Vampire jargon on top of the new SI jargon and the less-than-great organization, Second Inquisition is not the smoothest RPG read I’ve ever experienced. And the body text providing the meat of the information on the organization of the SI (which might make it easier to grok the significance of all of this jargon) is near the end of the book. ![]() Before you dive into Second Inquisition, you should pay very close attention to the two-page “SI Lexicon” near the front of the book, because the body text often just throws this stuff around without any sort of explanation. You’ll note that there are a lot of acronyms and initialisms there ( pedantic editor’s note: an acronym is when you pronounce the letters like a word, while an initialism is when you pronounce the letters separately “NASA” is an acronym, “FBI” is an initialism). intelligence organizations), but has a military/financial wing in the Information Awareness Office (IAO) (the sort of folks who could strike at the aforementioned Prime Chantry), a federal domestic investigative force in the FBI Special Affairs Division (SAD), and the ability to direct/nudge local law enforcement. The United States effort, for example, is run by FIRSTLIGHT (an interagency operation in the U.S. Some of those organizations have subgroups. Other nations also participate, including Egypt, Sweden, France, Japan, Israel, and Poland. Leopold and the vampire-hunting branches of the governments of the United States (FIRSTLIGHT), the United Kingdom (the Joint Threat Response Group, or JTRG), Brazil (the Batalhão de Operações Especiais Secretas, or BOES), and Russia (GRU-N58). Those primary component organizations are informally known as the “Five Torches” – the Society of St. At that scale it’s more of an information-sharing group, not a hierarchical organization with a dedicated commander-in-chief – but all of the component organizations are. ![]() However, the actual contents of the book belie this answer, because – although they call themselves “the Coalition,” not the “Second Inquisition” – there is an international organization dedicated to wiping out vampires. The formal answer given by the book is that, no, there really isn’t a Second Inquisition, it’s more of an event than an organization. ![]() One question you might have, and it’s the first thing that the book asks, is whether there’s really such a thing as the Second Inquisition. There is, however, a lot more mechanically in Second Inquisition, and a lot more to work with for someone who wants to make the hunters the protagonists (and who doesn’t want to wait for the new edition of Hunter: The Reckoning), so it ends up being a more broadly useful book that the basic description might make it seem. Following on the heels of Sabbat: The Black Hand, Second Inquisition is a second antagonists book primarily aimed at helping Storytellers deploy the Second Inquisition in their chronicles. One of the setting developments with V5 was a ramping up of this element with the introduction of the so-called Second Inquisition – SchrekNet was compromised, the Tremere’s Prime Chantry in Vienna was destroyed, London fell, and the Camarilla responded to these events with draconian new secrecy and anti-technological measures. Hunters have always been present in Vampire: The Masquerade – lone hunters, small cadres, hidden government conspiracies, Catholic remnants and offshoots. ![]()
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