Okay.
Well. That's a thing which just happened.
The Mysterious Voice is probably right when it says that the standard evac protocols are compromised. Ms Clock is - just like Jamelia - efficient to the level that it can even seem slightly lazy, and that kind of "use the vampires to beat them out via standard evac, take them, then kill the vampires and put the newly reprogrammed interns back in place" plan is incredibly elegant, efficient, and Jamelian. She will know all the standard protocols, so to win we can't do what's expected of us.
(Jamelia Bot has probably told the interns about the dangers of doing what's expected when you're caught in an RD trap, and she's probably been training them because she's suffering depression from the loss of Enlightenment and how she feels so stupid and useless. As they say, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach".
)
However, I severely doubt that holding the facility will go anywhere near as well as is hoped. I'm going to assume it's nighttime here, because nice things don't happen to us and vampires
are not fools. Or, rather, the ways that they're foolish are not issues of basic competency. If I was a vampire prince acting to remove a serious threat to the Camarilla (and thus look
really good in the eyes of the elders who run it, and especially if I'm LaCroix who has to work to solidify respect from the elders), quite apart from the high tech and valuable ghouls, I wouldn't half-arse it.
So. Mortal pawns and ghouls up front, to trip the defences and tell me what I'm dealing with. Leave the assault planning up to blood-bonded mortals - this is the kind of thing they know how to deal with. For an assault like this, I might even employ the kind of foolishness vampires are
actually prone to and essentially do a Camarilla Shovelhead Op where I mass embrace SWAT people who were probably going to die anyway, with the expectation that most of them die and thus I don't get shouted at by the rest of the Camarilla.
(The fact that this produces a bunch of Vampire SWAT PCs for stereotypical fightain characters for Masquerade games is just an additional bonus)
But then comes the other side. Which is to say, Blade time. Which is to say, vampire ninjas in black catsuits with Obfuscate and Celerity (warning, vampire ninjas may in fact not be sexy and may in fact be Nosferatu). In nWoD I'd use Mekhet for this, but presumably there's a similar skillset in oWoD. Basically, I'm saying there's a pretty good chance that invisible vampire ninjas may have already infiltrated the facility and at least by some readings, Obfuscate can force you to ignore alarm warnings raised by the invisible ninjas. If we had the senior command staff here, I'd just tell Henriette to turn on the sunlights and giggle, but that's not an option here.
Moreover, if we assume the Bloodlines game is at least quasi-canon, there's a fairly influential Tremere chantry in LA, so that means they'll have essentially blood-fuelled linear sorcerer RD vampires on side. Since I'm not very familiar with Tremere, I'm going to assume that means they have linear sorcerers on side, which means they do probably have some kind of stealth warding and other things which our primary casters could probably punch through, but which our interns probably can't.
So, basically, there's a good chance the facility is already compromised thanks to invisible ninjas. And that there are probably Vampire SWAT, newly dead, preparing to VIGOR SMASH their way in.
URGH. So, basically, there's a good chance all the options are traps. The Standard Evac Protocols one is the trappiest-trap, and that makes me suspect that whoever the Mysterious Voice is, they're not Ms Clock. Which
doesn't mean that they're not Threat Null, of course. But while Threat Null is self-sabotaging, I don't think they're
so self-sabotaging as to tell the targets of their own op that the way which reliably would have caught them is a trap. So either this is Earthside Technocracy, Traditionalist interference (possibly for a 'try to save them from their brainwashing' ploy), or possibly even something like a Singulatarian INFORMATION HAS TO BE FREE thing where they're compelled to tell people things.
Welp. So, let's look at them in terms of narrative fun. "Ms Clock Just Wins" isn't fun at all because it means everything goes just as planned for her. And it's also OOC, because as a fork of Jazmin Blade it should be IC that nothing ever seems to go just as planned for her. Anyway, the fun of Illiyeenish minds is watching them try to juggle fifty knives and pretend this is all part of their plan and they meant to do this all along. The "Suddenly Vampire Ninjas"... well, we already had that in Alice's interlude. I mean, not with vampire ninjas, but getting out maneuvered and torn apart so quickly isn't something new.
So I guess I'm going to vote for Mysterious Voice, because who the Voice is might well be interesting and because trying to evade vampire ninjas in our own construct trying to get out and going up against the Sleeper SWAT is Internly Fun. It'll be good for their XP, although possibly bad for their health.
[X] (0.5x) Follow the instructions of the shady voice and attempt to break out to the designated evac point.
