laclongquan: Huh? People will laugh at us because some kids sprayed graffiti on our wall? Nobody gives a fuck about that, dude. Shovelheads gonna shovelhead and all that.
Yeah so maybe we should have done something about the Sabbath huh Esquilax?
I stand by that decision - and as I mentioned before, we knew that they were going to come after us in retribution for Angelos sooner or later. They aren't bold enough at this stage to attack us at our home, so they're trying to draw Anthony out. Basically, I see this going one of two ways:
1) We capture a shovelhead and whatever info they give is useless. If they're halfway competent, whoever Embraced these guys isn't going to be peeking their heads out and giving these guys any info that can be traced back to them with much certainty. If they're just a bunch of dickheads that decided it would be a good idea to attack a Baron deep in Cammie territory, then they don't have any info that's worth knowing.
2) It turns out to be an ambush and these shovelheads are more dangerous than they appear. Perhaps unlikely, but possible. The potential for something really bad happening (i.e. getting captured, Cripps dying and us being left without a bodyguard) is obvious.
If they eventually get bolder and attack is in our own home, that's what we have our secret entrance for. Hopefully by then we'll have a few nasty surprises set up for our would-be assassins by then too
(we have to start thinking about fortifying Witanhurst/setting up a mithraeum soon). And if the Sabbat organize a force that is powerful enough to attack us in our own homes, then
those Kindred will definitely be able to give us something useful. As I've stated before, our plan with the Sabbat should be for them to reveal themselves to us, not the other way around. All we've got here are a bunch of expendable footsoldiers.
Anyways, I think that the people voting for A are getting greedy here and they think that they can get a big score with a minimal amount of effort. Yeah, sure, sometimes that's possible, but I highly doubt that this is the case here. Just as importantly, attacking random shovelheads is not the way that a Prince is to conduct himself. Vogler impressed me in his interaction with the Archon, but seriously - we have to tell him to knock this shit off.
I'm all for character development and getting Anthony to be a more manly bro, but I just don't see this situation having much in the way of practical benefit. If character development is your reasoning for voting A, as
oscar did, then that's cool and it makes sense, but I don't think we're going to get anything more than that out of it. Maybe a little bit of respect from Cripps who probably wouldn't have expected us to get our hands dirty.
tl;dr If you vote for A, vote for character development reasons, not for a potential info gold mine. I doubt we're getting shit from these shovelheads.
As for the second choice, I'm down for getting to the bottom of this Mandrake business. Yes, it could be a red herring, but it's a possible red herring that could be used to embarrass and discredit us in front of the Archon. If this is Turcov's ploy, then he knows that he can make us look foolish by using Mandrake against us. If we can't show that it's a hoax, we're in deep shit.
Alternatively, if it's a journalist who is too snoopy for his own good - well, we've just found ourselves a very useful new ghoul who is a great potential information network. If it's just an average Joe, then it's likely Hunters have also read his column for any possible leads on local vampires. If we can subvert Mandrake, it will be a cunning way of using our enemy's own information sources against them.
Lastly, there is also the possibility that Mandrake is a Hunter or in the employ of Hunters himself. The fact that the article was authorized by the editor seems to indicate that Mandrake at least has some sort of pull that would be inconsistent with him being an "average Joe". If that's the case, then we've found an excellent lead to the Hunters that we would have been looking for in D regardless.
That being said, A is definitely riskier than D. With D, we know for sure that we're making progress on determining the Hunter threat. With A, we don't quite know whether we're wasting our time on a red herring, or if it'll turn out to be extremely useful.
C) Return to the estate. The shovelheads won’t be able to hang around much longer before dawn.
A) Contact the editor of the paper that ran the Mandrake story.
