Or: Stick Yourself Where The Sun Don’t Shine

One of the more, and quite surprisingly, overlooked aspects of Kindred survival in many LARPs are Havens.

In some branches of the military, they say “your weapon is your life.” In Kindred society, the same sentiment applies to one’s Haven: it’s the place where you can feed in peace, that keeps you safe from the sun, and safe from mortal (and possibly Kindred) intrusion.

As well, where and how you hide yourself during the day is extremely important to preserving the Masquerade.

From a game perspective, if you do not have an ST-approved write-up for your haven, and/or a stamped card of its specific features, you are considered to have only “a basement with a ghoul holding a chainsaw.”

In other words, without an approved write-up, all you have is a wholly unsecured and detectable place of rest.

This is not a good thing.

For those of you who are able to acquire a copy of the White Wolf V:tM supplement Havens Of The Damned, I highly recommend it as an excellent source of inspiration and trouble-shooting for the creation of a Kindred haven. Otherwise, here are a few things to consider when conjuring up your monster’s home-sweet-home.

- Location, Location, Location

For political reasons, feeding accessibility, and general security, “where does my character keep her haven?” is the first question you should ask yourself.

To paraphrase a quote from a previous DGA, “if you want to avoid trouble, your first answer should be ‘in my Clan’s Domain.’”

For an extra dash of realism in this regard, I recommend scanning real estate websites and looking up real properties/homes/facilities currently for sale in the general area of your Clan’s Domain within the Emerald Domain. A print-out of a photo and description of a real life location is a quick and easy way to set your character’s place in the “world,” and will as well save you a lot of time in coming up with the specifics of the neighborhood and layout.

But that aside, when narrowing down an area to haven in, consider your character’s needs and limitations:

- How/upon what does she feed?

A big factor in where you set-up your home is dependant upon your character’s feeding habits/preferences (see: DGA: Dinner Plans for thoughts on this subject).

If your character can only feed from/prefers the blood of dead bodies, for example, havening near or inside a medical facility would be a good choice. Or if your character prefers the thrill of the “urban hunt” they might place themselves closer to downtown, where the pickings are numerous and the “concrete jungle” is thick. Conversely, you may make sure to Haven far away from downtown, to make any “mistakes” harder to trace back to you. </tip>

- How much cash is on hand?

If your character only has Resources 1 when arriving in Seattle, getting that swanky 3rd floor Condo is going to be tough, barring some creative Boon management </tip>.

This does not mean you need a lot of money to have an effective Haven; quite the contrary. But your available money is a major factor in making improvements to your haven, or getting that usually necessary “back-up” haven (see Escape below).

Cardboard Box or Fort Knox?

Security is a major consideration when selecting a Haven. You have to be certain that if you’re laying your body down in this place for the day, you’re still going to be there to rise the next night.

- Sunlight

First and foremost, if your Haven isn’t safe from sunlight, it isn’t a Haven at all. Houses and apartments are not generally built with Vampires in mind (unless you’ve got the cash, influence, and the time), but they can be shored-up with some basic precautions.

Now, if you are setting yourself up in a windowless basement, the sewers, or the bottom level of a parking garage, sunlight nearly ceases to be a problem whatsoever. But there are downsides to everything (once again, see Escape below).

- Defense

Do visions of laser trip-beams, security cameras, infrared motion detectors and napalm-spewing sprinkler systems dance in your head?

Well, good luck. Such things are expensive to get, make for a suspicious shopping list and, in the napalm example, sometimes outright ridiculous.

Elaborate security measures will likely require a goodly amount of Resources, and the ability (either yours or others) to effectively install such devices (aka a good rating in the Security skill).

Another aspect to defense is, as they say, “a good offense.” If you situate yourself in a part of town, or in a specific location, that in itself deters a lot of overt intrusion (a sewage treatment plant, an abandoned industrial area, Factoria) then already you have a kind of “passive” defense ahead of any trapdoors you might install under your welcome mat.

- Escape

You have to assume that at some point in the future you’re going to need to make a fast getaway. Whether the Sabbat have come to town, Seattle gets that long overdue earthquake, or the local arsonist decides your house looks like it’s in need of a gasoline makeover, you’re never really secure unless you have a way out.

If you’re unliving in a house or apartment, the nearest window might be your best means of egress (hoping that the sun’s not up). If you’ve painted yourself into a corner in the basement vault of a condemned bank, you might want to think about some kind of escape tunnel.

Along with that, it’s always helpful to have more than one safe place to lay your head at dawn if your primary safehouse is compromised: setting-up a cheap apartment on the edge of town, completely sunproofing the trunk of your car, etc.

- The Paper Trail

Houses, apartments, office buildings; all are property as much as a car or a bag of doughnuts: money trades hands, documents are signed, etc. Technically, the same goes for things IC. But what you have to play with, and how you cover your tracks, can be just as important as keeping the sunlight out.

It should be said ahead of time, in regards to this section (and perhaps this DGA in general), that just as your having a detailed Haven write-up is your responsibility as a Player, anything you do not define in the write-up is left up to an ST to play with as they please, more or less, should it become an issue.

Such a thing as “ownership” might never come up during the course of play, but all it takes is for one adversary to do a little checking, via Influence or some investigation, on the ownership of a house or property.

If you have taken no approved/stamped action(s) to conceal ownership of a piece of property, then there is literally nothing to stop someone (mortal, kindred, or otherwise) from tracing things back directly to your character from such research.

You would be best served to attain ownership through a proxy; oftentimes this is through a ghoul, or some other legal entity. This provides one more buffer between the rest of the world and the truth of your character’s existence as an undead bloodsucking monster.

Remember: You’re a Vampire

You don’t need food, air, or central heating. If you don’t bring guests over, you don’t even need a whole set of furniture; your house may just be a front that provides a couple floors of “buffer zone” between the rest of the world and the hole in the basement you crawl into every night.

Conversely, who says you need a house at all? A sunlight-proofed RV, an isolated patch of forest to earth-meld into, a janitor’s closet at a local mall, a spot in Lake Washington deep enough to sink yourself in a body bag for the day…all you need is a space large enough to hold your body and to be protected from sunlight.

Keep in mind that being an unliving being creates many options as to where and how your character can Haven.

Last thoughts

The meat of the matter is, if you don’t have the details of the “where” and “what” of your Haven laid out, other than a condo downtown, you’re leaving a lot open for ST interpretation…which is fine…that gives us something to screw you over with.

At the same time, please don’t submit a full set of architectural blueprints and written explanations as to the drill-length of every bolt holding your mansion together. The point here is to make sure you know where you’re at, the STs know where you’re at, and any potential stalkers/friends/Amway Salesmen know what to expect when they ring your doorbell.

And the last, and probably most important, piece of advice I can give is the most basic:

The Blind Date Rule:
“Don’t tell anyone where you live that you don’t want showing up on your doorstep.”

As mentioned at the beginning, your Haven is your unlife. Regardless of how much concrete, razor wire, camouflage or pet monkey you may invest in your character’s home, it’s only as secure as the people who know about it.

Be careful about whom or what you trust your safety with in the World of Darkness.

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- Former AST Ross