Poll: Would you uphold the Masquerade?

[omega 616]

I'm finding this premise hard to understand, I mean I get the whole thing with secret society of vamps and I get they want to keep that a secret but whats with "now they are one, but extra special for some reason? And they have to not tell anyone, lots of random civilians get killed and half the "good guys" are murderous monsters?"

What do you mean by "now they are one, but extra special"? Special in what way?

What good guys? You mean like people who are perceived as good people? Like cops, fire fighters and paramedics doing a kind of Dexter, appearing as nice as pie but is actually raking up a kill count.

On the bit I understand, I'd fucking keep it a secret! I am thinking this is taking place in a kind of "Daybreakers" world where the vamps are the social elite ... so I am assuming they can track who leaked vamps exist and I don't want to be hunted by vamps.

 

[Objectable]

Yes. But how?
Simply put: Work in a prison.
Specifically, work in a Federal prison. Kill people who aren't getting out anytime soon. Guys who have stuff like life sentences, or are in solitary confinement. Nobody misses them, and it would simply be blamed on the prisoners.

 

[CommanderL]

Expose everything.
I just feel a ruse becomes harder to reveal and explain why it was kept secret the longer it goes on.
It would probably be chaos at first, but people would eventually get over it.

Spoiler: rant

Kinda like the plot of Stargate, I never knew why the Tauri didn't reveal the Stargate program once they owned their own fleet of fucking starships.
Seriously, they had like 3 ships when the Ori invaded. But no, let's fight a literal inter-galactic war in secret. WTF.

there was an episode of stargate where they caused a huge war by walking through the gate becuase the revaltion of aliens tore that world a part


keep the masquerade I have watched enough tv to know know some secrets are better kept hidden

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm finding this premise hard to understand, I mean I get the whole thing with secret society of vamps and I get they want to keep that a secret but whats with "now they are one, but extra special for some reason? And they have to not tell anyone, lots of random civilians get killed and half the "good guys" are murderous monsters?"

What do you mean by "now they are one, but extra special"? Special in what way?

Well, it seems to me, in most of these kind of stories, the main character either suddenly gets, or is revealed to have magical powers like the other monsters/whatever, only there is something about them that makes them stand out from everyone else.

For example, Harry Potter finds out he's a wizard...and the wizard that Voldemort couldn't kill and the chosen one and everything.

Bella Swan finds out about vampires, and that she has magic non-mind readable powers, and gets some more when she becomes a vampire.

Sookie Stackhouse finds out she has special magic fairy stuff or something.

The character in VTM:B is implied to be unusual for reasons that are left unclear.

etc

What good guys? You mean like people who are perceived as good people? Like cops, fire fighters and paramedics doing a kind of Dexter, appearing as nice as pie but is actually raking up a kill count.

Well, in most of these kinds of stories, the supernatural "heroes" generally are, objectively terrible people, but get a free pass for some reason.

In True Blood/The Southern Vampire Mysteries, for example, more or less all the vampires are murderers and torturers, Bill rapes Sookie twice, and so on.

But this is ok, because they are sexy vampires. It's wrong to hate vampires just because they are inhuman monsters preying on humanity the world would be better off without, cause that's racist or something.

 

[thejackyl]

I would tell people I know I could trust that I'm a vampire/werewolf/whatever, but exposing a whole subset of people, no. I would probably tell them they exist, and leave it at that.

Besides that, people would probably just think I'm more batshit insane than they already do.

 

[Risingblade]

Only if I wanted to watch the world burn

 

[Diablo2000]

Depends, I don't know anything abou the Masquarade setting other than I played on Bloodlines. If that is anything to go by I would stand by the Anarcs, they seem to be the better drinking partners. Also I like the idea of being a underground kinda of thing...

Oh, and not forgetting I would probably go mad with power once I turn, not that it matters for the question but I would be quite the dick.

 

[StormShaun]

I would be a vampire that would prefer to keep it secret.
Letting out that secret would cause too much trouble for both yourself and whoever/whatever you are telling it too ... well unless they are a said magical creature too ... then it would be pretty much I'm a vampire and your a , lets just not talk about it.

From playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, if you fuck it up ... people get sent on your ass to kill you. So it would be better to keep it a secret ... of course when you become a much more powerful vampire, I'm sure no one would really care what you did since they don't want to mess with you.

*Sigh*
That was a good game ... other then the minor glitches and annoying later half of the game. Plus it needed a better ending for my guy. (Plus he did not get that great of a outfit selection) D:

Basically when you just turn: Keep quiet.
When you become REALLY powerful: Meh, fuck everyone, I'll do what I want ... I don't care.

 

[Thaluikhain]

*Sigh*
That was a good game ... other then the minor glitches and annoying later half of the game. Plus it needed a better ending for my guy. (Plus he did not get that great of a outfit selection) D:

All sorts of mods and add-ons you can get.

I use the companion mod, allows you to have 2 friendly NPCs follow you around, you can turn certain people into vampires as well.

 

[kickyourass]

That would depend on two factors, the first being how 'good' the secret folk were, like were they just the type who just sorta exist and would really like to continue their existence and that's it. Or would they be like the vampires from True Blood, who claim to be all round decent people but damn near every single one we see has brutally murdered at least one innocent person?

If it were the latter I'd pull back the curtain as fast as the laws of physics would allow me.

The second factor is how vital being kept secret was to their survival and this ties into the first question a bit, if they were the decent sort I'd probably keep the up charade as long as I possibly could since I just wouldn't feel right revealing that sort of thing unless I had a good grasp on the consequences. If they weren't good guys, again I'd tell as many people as I could, even faster if more people knowing correlated with them being wiped out.

 

[Sarge034]

In general I would keep it quite. You hum, er... I mean US humans have a hard enough time accepting each other. An enemy that all humanity could rally together to destroy, no thank you. I would tell people to be sure, but only those I trusted implicitly. I think I do, er could do more good for humanity policing the murders from behind the scenes.

 

[EternallyBored]

Eh, it's going to depend on a lot of different factors. A masquerade pretty much can't work without some level of magic, super tech, or reality bending bullshit to stop people from eventually finding out anyway. With 7-8 billion humans on the planet, unless this society is completely separate from humanity, as well as self-sufficient, then they would have needed some kind of mechanism to not be discovered already.

This kind of already puts them on shaky moral ground. Vampires like the Twilight and VTM style usually do it through copious amounts of murder, blackmail, mind control, and some stupid bullshit ability that lets the VTM vamps automatically screw up cameras without thinking about it. The Harry Potter wizards do it through, lots and lots of mind control and memory editing.

In either, case it would be hard for me to be able to morally justify keeping the masquerade while still attempting to achieve any moral high ground. It is kind of hilarious that so many people are bringing up humanity's penchant for judging groups different from us, and then talking about secret society's like Harry Potter and VTM, where humanity would have a very reasonable and extremely justified reason for being pissed at and scared of the society being hidden. In vampires case, yeah humanity kind of has a right to be pissed at a secret society that casually treats humans like cattle and slaughters them on a whim, accepting gay people as equal citizens is a little different from accepting Count dipshit who was complicit in hiding his mass murdering fuckwit friends from society at large. The Harry Potter style wizards aren't much better, even the good wizards like to casually brain fuck anyone who gets close to them and treat non-magical people more like pets than actual thinking people with rights, the evil ones just kill and torture non-magical humans for giggles and shits. On top of all that, both of these societies are basically parasites on human society at large, taking resources from governments and people and generally contributing nothing in return. In those cases, I would probably try and blow the masquerade wide open, if it was feasible; I probably wouldn't bother if there was some bullshit reality warping that was preventing any humans from finding out, because then it would be pretty pointless.

In a case where the secret society actually was just living totally separate from humans, not being parasites on larger society, and just wanted to live on their own due to fear or some other somewhat benign reason. Then yeah, I could probably keep the secret then, it would make me uncomfortable, and I would probably feel like I was betraying humanity, but if these supernatural creatures, wizards, or aliens, or whatever can actually convince me that the masquerade is a necessary precaution, then I could maybe be persuaded to do my best to keep it up. It's really going to depend on the circumstances.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

I'd uphold it, of course. Telling people this kind of thing could be quite disastrous and it's not my place to make such a decision for the whole society.

You can always tell a few select minions, of course, but humans as a whole are too irrational to sensibly deal with this. Just look at how many people still believe in the invisible man in the sky...

 

[bluegate]

Who doesn't love some chaos once in a while? I'd most likely announce it someway big on a whim, because heck, why not.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

If it's VTM style there's a few ways I see revealing it going down:
1-I tell people, nobody believes me, I get put in a crazy house and then the other vampires kill me.
2-I tell people, everyone believes me, then they all kill me because I'm a vampire.
3-I tell people, everyone believes me, causing me to have initiated a human/vampire war in which I'll die no matter what because I'm either a monster or a traitor.

So no, I don't think I would.

you forgot 4. Join the Sabbat and say fuck-all to the Masquerade and humanity in general... lot of cattle they are anyway, nothing but bloodbags with legs.

 

[Heronblade]

Depends on the context.

For instance, lets say that we're talking about a community of vampires that are simply trying to "live" their "lives", and, at least for the most part, attempt to avoid causing unnecessary harm. (I.E. draining a non lethal amount of blood from random people without spreading the disease) Exposing this community would cause a lot more harm than good, not least due to the possibility of triggering a more... ruthless vampiric mindset. In such a case, I would be more inclined to quietly make sure that any vampires who differ from the relatively peaceful mindset get fingered by the police as freaky serial killers and then watch as those enforcing the Masquerade take care of the problem.

I would only seek to expose the Masquerade under two possible scenarios:

One, if I genuinely felt that the world would be better off going to war with this group rather than allowing the status quo to continue. (Frankly, this would take something truly horrendous. More than just a few murders)

Two, if I had very strong reason to believe that it could be done without inspiring mass panic among the humans, and that the communities could coexist. (Quite unlikely, especially in the case of vampires. Some other mythological creatures would have a better shot, but that whole undead bloodsucker thing is tough to spin well in the media, even if I get the vamps to wear glitter.)

 

[Gunjester]

I'd keep it under wraps, knowing what the government (and society in general) is like, they'd probably jump to the conclusion that we're all dangerous and try to wipe us out or put us under strict controls. Not worth the risk personally.

If they're the types of vampires that have to kill living human beings on a regular basis to stay alive, then I'd tell and risk them killing me with them. No way in hell I'd protect a race of murderers just to save my own skin...

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'd keep it safe. Society is the real monster, here, and I don't plan on attracting it's ire by being something it has an irrational fear of no matter how nice I manage to be.