Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is a narrative RPG developed by Big Bad Wolf and published by Nacon. Set in the World of Darkness, in the City of Boston, Swansong dives into the dangerous world of Kindred society as a disaster threatens their very existence. Playing as Emem, Galeb, and Leysha, players must work to survive in the aftermath of a massacre of kindred and their mortal servants by an initially unknown threat, uncovering secrets and strengthening their own positions in the process.

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Emem’s Clan and Disciplines

Emem is a Toreador, the clan of the Rose. Known for being expressive, glamourous, and emotional, Toreador are artists, innovators, and seducers whose gatherings often include parties, art shows, and dinners. As a Rose, Emem has access to three vampiric disciplines: Auspex, Presence, and Celerity.

Auspex

The Vampiric Discipline of supernatural senses, Auspex allows Emem to heighten her senses and pierce the illusions of the Obfuscate Discipline, making her better at investigating and uncovering people’s secrets.

Heightened Senses: Activates Auspex Vision, revealing interactions related to enhancing the five senses. Performing these interactions costs varying amounts of blood depending on the difficulty of the interaction and Emem’s Auspex rating. This skill is unlocked by default at the start of the game. Psychometry: Interactions related to the memories of an item are revealed by Auspex Vision, allowing Emem to read the recent past of objects. The hunger cost is based on her Auspex rating and the difficulty of the interaction. Premonition: Premonition interactions are now revealed by Auspex vision, allowing Emem to see potential future events. The hunger cost is determined by her Auspex rating and the interaction difficulty. Scry The Soul: This allows Emem to read people’s auras, providing information about their nature and/or resonance. This costs no resonance and is very useful for locating resonance for power discounts and uncovering hidden supernatural characters in the world. Scry The Mind: This allows Emem to see if her opponent is planning to focus their skill for a skill check at the cost of one hunger, making it easier to plan around skill-focusing opponents.

Emem benefits greatly from gathering extra information and reading other characters in order to better manipulate them, so grabbing Auspex skills can be very useful.

Presence

The Vampiric Discipline of supernatural allure and emotional manipulation is a staple of the Toreador, allowing them to attract and sway the opinions of others through charm or fear.

Awe: Gives access to Presence as a Dialog option. This skill is unlocked automatically at the start of the game. Velvet Glove: Grants +1 Presence. Silver Tongue: This dialog power prevents the opponent from focusing a skill but generates two hunger. Scapular Demand: Reduces the risk of an opponent focusing by 30%, making it easier to avoid getting caught off guard by skill-focusing foes. Hypnotyposis: Silver Tongue costs one less point of hunger, making it even easier to avoid skill-focusing foes.

As a Toreador, Emem gets plenty of opportunities to manipulate people in dialog, and Presence is an excellent way of enhancing her ability to do so.

Celerity

The Vampiric Discipline of supernatural quickness and reflexes allows Emem to blink between celerity points in exploration and slow down time to perform actions that would be impossible at normal speed.

Blink: Allows Emem to use Celerity vision, revealing points she can teleport to by using Blink. Using Blink generates three hunger the first time each point is used, but retreading routes used before does not generate any additional hunger. This skill is unlocked automatically at the start of the game and is essential to Emem’s exploration gameplay. Fleetness: Allows Emem to slot down the environment when using Celerity vision in certain situations, which also grants Emem access to Celerity interactions. The cost of these interactions is determined by Emem’s Celerity rating and the difficulty of the interaction. Speed: Blink generates one less point of hunger. Out of Time: Celerity options become available in dialog, with costs determined by Emem’s Celerity rating and the difficulty of the interaction. Zephyr: Blink costs one less point of Hunger.

Emem has to make very frequent use of Celerity in her exploration segments, so upgrading it to minimize the hunger costs is extremely useful and an excellent use of experience.

Attributes and Skills

Emem is a socialite and an expert on getting what she wants through convincing and manipulating others. As such, she benefits greatly from improving her Social attribute and its associated skills: Rhetoric and Persuasion.

Rhetoric is Emem’s ability to identify and react to social conventions and is critical for allowing her to effortlessly navigate social situations and identify when people are acting strangely in such situations. Meanwhile, Persuasion makes her better at convincing others to agree with her via logical arguments or by appealing to their emotions. When paired with Presence, this makes her tremendously effective in dialog.

Other skills beneficial to Emem’s conversational aptitude include psychology, for analyzing people’s motivations and connections to others, and intimidation for when more polite methods fail.

Emem also has to do plenty of investigating and exploration during gameplay, so grabbing some levels of education and investigation can also be useful to her, allowing her to make use of her knowledge of human and vampire society in dialog, and to make deductions and inferences based on information in the game’s world.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong is available for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

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