The SECRET background is the most important background, and it is required of all characters. The SECRET background is information which only Architects and you will ever see. This background should be a concise summary in which the history of your character is broken down into key events.
As a guideline the following questions, as applicable, should be answered within the body of the SECRET background:
- What was your mortal childhood like? Your full birth name?
- What sort of person were you before the Embrace?
- How did you first discover vampires, and what effect did this have on you?
- What role, if any, did your sire play in your early nights?
- What role does your sire play now? What sort of relationship do you have?
- Why is your character in Los Angeles?
- What is your character's attitude towards other vampires?
- What is your character's attitude towards humans?
- What is your character's attitude towards vampirism in general?
- What are your character's long term goals?
- How does your character hunt? How does it survive night to night?
- How has your character acquired what it has? (E.g. Resources, Herd, Influence, etc.)
The use of bullet points and text formatting (use of line-breaks and tabs) is highly recommended for your SECRET background as its sole function is to help staff understand your character at a glance.
Players wishing to write a 4-page narrative about their character's history are encouraged to do so. However, they should store that information in a separate attribute or series of attributes and put a reference to those attributes in the SECRET background.
The code to do this is:
| &BG1 me=Here is my first page of my character history. &BG2 me=Here is my second page. And so on. |
Secret Background example:
- Born Bernadette Muirinn O'Cahain to a wealthy, notable family in Ireland who surrounded her with books, art and a nanny who watched over her when she wasn't caring for her three younger siblings.
- When she was human, she was quite independent, and loathing of two of her three younger siblings which she rarely tolerated to be in the presence of. Her sense of adventure was contained to translating stories and historical manuscripts about far-away places and long-ago time periods. She did not take to many flights of fancy, remaining quite the refined lady of the house when her parents were not about.
- She was in disbelief that such an unholy creature existed. Then, as her Sire spoke with her, she felt more pity and astonishment, especially under the influence of Presence. Lord Baxter Booth told her on a winter's night after visiting a Baroness who cordially accepted a gift that Bernadette spent two days endlessly working on. Please see BG1 for the ghouling.
- Bernadette tends to find humans tasty treats, easily seduced and rarely challenging - just the way she likes them. They exist to serve her needs; to feed from, to fetch her manuscripts and open doors to stores as well as to personal collections. Please see BG2 for her claiming Bentridge Manor.
- etc.
