Weird Among Us Cosplay Lets You Be All 10 Players At Once An Instagram user is making "low-cost" Among Us cosplays using his own body parts to represent the crew members of the beloved multiplayer game. An Instagram user has found a bizarre way to cosplay multiple Among Us characters at the same time. The social deduction game has taken the internet by storm despite being largely ignored when it released in 2018. The game has reached such incredible amounts of popularity that the developer cancelled a sequel to focus up on developing the current game. Among Us, like the similarly explosive Fall Guys before it, owes much of its success to its adorable, minimally designed characters. The astronauts in Among Us are small, beanlike creatures, decked out like Skittles in bright primary colors. Like in Fall Guys, players can purchase cosmetic accessories for their astronaut, including hats, and even little pets that can follow them around. While players are mostly interested in Amo...
Bloodlines 2 Three Things We Learned in Walk Among Us
The new audiobook contains three novellas, which provide insight into Vampire: The Masquerade's world and may indicate what's to come in Bloodlines 2.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the audiobook Walk Among Us and its novellas A Sheep Among Wolves, Fine Print, and The Land of Milk and Honey.
HarperCollins and the World of Darkness have released Walk Among Us, an audiobook with three canon novellas set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. Taking place in the present day, the novellas take us through the Anarch radicalization of a depressed Ohio college freshman (A Sheep Among Wolves by Genevieve Gornichec), the first nights in Iceland of a tech-head fratboy Ventrue fledgling (Fine Print by Cassandra Khaw) and the Portland-based romance of a pastoral-obsessed Toreador invested in humane, renewable and sustainable cattle raising (The Land of Milk and Honey by Caitlin Starling).
These three audio novellas are a great introduction to Vampire: The Masquerade, but they also introduced some intriguing threads that will likely reappear in the highly anticipated video game Bloodlines 2. Let's take a look at what we learned.
The Camarilla/Anarch Conflict is Escalating
One of the recurring themes of Walk Among Us was the animosity between the Camarilla, the most conservative, structured and hierarchical vampiric faction, and the Anarch, the group of independent, semi-democratic vampires that abhor the twisted politics and manipulations of the Camarilla. The first novella, A Sheep Among Wolves, takes a hard look at how the Anarchs recruit new members, as well as their values and methods of attack. One of the novella's most violent scenes follows protagonist Clea as she sets fire to a Camarilla mansion, an act of shocking aggression that veteran players know will get an equally spectacular payback.
This animosity is also present in the seemingly idyllic background of The Land of Milk and Honey, set in Portland, a city in firm Camarilla grasp. One of the characters is a lost and confused Duskborn, embraced by an Anarch that was just passing by while scoping out the territory. In contrast with A Sheep Among Wolves, where readers are forced to confront whether the end truly justifies the means for the Anarchs, here the Anarch Duskborn provides the only clear moral compass of the story, seeing right through the Camarilla's ruthlessness and Leigh the Pastoral Toreador's extraordinary denial.
This thematic thread also connects with the latest Bloodlines 2 trailer, where Damsel, one of the fieriest L.A. Anarchs from the first Bloodlines, was revealed to be in Camarilla-controlled Seattle for a mysterious reason.
Vampires Are More Social Than Ever
While Vampire: The Masquerade has always featured Kindred mingling with Kine, in general, they did not encourage constant contact with their food. Walk Among Us breaks this taboo in the three novellas. The vampires of A Sheep Among Wolves create a college campus support group, encouraging anyone to attend regular meetings and providing freshly baked doughnuts and cocoa to their unsuspecting herd. In Fine Print, an overconfident Ventrue fledgling makes fast friends with humans in Reykjavik (humans that he cannot even eat), eventually ghouling them to have someone to talk to. Duke's also one of the rare fledglings who keeps his ties with his human frat brothers. Finally, in The Land of Milk and Honey, Leigh the Toreador has created thriving arts and farming commune that she struggles to keep in perfect balance and perfect health, to better serve the exacting taste of the local Camarilla through regular "voluntary but highly encouraged" blood drives.
There are several clues that Bloodlines 2 will mirror the human herding techniques of A Sheep Among Wolves and The Land of Milk and Honey. The Newcomer Faction in the game is composed mostly of Tremere scholars and researchers who are entrenched in Seattle's University District. Paradox also released a Collector's Edition figurine of Elif Parmak, the Tremere representative, standing in front of a group sign called SEEKERS, an acronym promising camaraderie and support for anyone that joined.
Vampires are Developing New Technology and Magic
Duke, the Ventrue tech-bro of Fine Print, was specifically embraced because of his software abilities, which vacuumed and parsed even the smallest details of any person on the planet. Fine Print is more concerned with Duke's terrible first nights than with his business acumen, but the Ventrue clan is known for their member's restrictive diet: they can only drink from humans that have a specific and random characteristic, and each member has a unique taste. A tool like this would be incredibly useful, and it had even been hinted at during the Bloodlines 2 Tender ARG marketing campaign.
However, while the Ventrue hoard personal data, the Thinblood and the Tremere are also experimenting with the effects of Blood Resonance. This focuses the emotions found in the blood of victims into vampiric powers. For Thinbloods, this is the only way to acquire temporary Disciplines, and through the years, they have perfected Thinblood Alchemy. For the Tremere, who are Blood Sorcerers, this is more a question of amassing knowledge and increasing their power. This is the main point of conflict between Leigh, the eco-friendly Toreador of A Land of Milk and Honey, and the local Tremere Jolene, who would like to get greater access to Leigh's herd to experiment on humans in a systematic manner. And yes, Tremere blood experiments are the main feature of the Bloodlines 2 Tremere Introduction video.
Walk Among Us is an audiobook published by HarperCollins in collaboration with World of Darkness. It contains the novellas A Sheep Among Wolves, written by Genevieve Gornichec and narrated by Erika Ishii; Fine Print, written by Cassandra Khaw and narrated by Neil Kaplan; and The Land of Milk and Honey, written by Caitlin Starling and narrated by Xe Sands.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will be released in 2020 on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.
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