THE STORY 

The information below reveals some of the secrets of the story of Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss. It has been altered slightly to fit both the background and rules system of White Wolf's VAMPIRE The Masquerade. 

Black Kiss opens with the delivery of a reel of film to Father Frank Murtaugh in Los Angeles. It was sent by his brother, a Cardinal in Vatican City, who had taken it from the collection of pornography held there. This film is sought by Dagmar Laine, a curvaceous blonde hooker, as a favour for her friend and lover, the ex-50s B movie starlet, Beverly Grove. Being close, Dagmar will do anything to get hold of the film for Beverly, including murder! The problem for both girls is that as Dagmar's latest attempt to destroy the film comes to fruition, is that the reel is grabbed by a nun… 

Enter Cass Pollack, smalltime crook, jazz saxophonist and ex-heroin addict, who is coming into a real world of trouble. He has a wife who wants a divorce - this he knows about, but also two mob soldiers on his tail that he does not know about. When the two, Ricky Fabrikant and Cladys Devon, fail to turn Pollack up at his home, they bump of their quarry's wife and daughter instead. Now Cass has the police after him as well as the mob, and the only alibi he has can be confirmed by Beverly, whom Cass just happened to give a lift home the night before. 

In return for providing him with an alibi, Beverly and Dagmar - who look incredibly similar, want Cass to retrieve the film for them. Following up a lead on the now dead Father Murtaugh, he checks out an occult bookshop, 'The Oath of Incannabulata', and a funeral home 'Tanas' (Satan spelt sideways). From the bookshop he grabs a copy of a book about the 'Order of Bonniface' and at the funeral home he discovers a Hollywood celebrity indulging in some every unsavoury practices. 

Amongst the late Father Murtaugh's effects is an invitation to the Order's next meeting and Cass decides to go. He discovers it to be composed of some every well known and some lesser known Hollywood notables. The Order has been around since the beginning of Hollywood's boom in the twenties and it's members are Catholic Satanists and licentious swingers. 

The Order also worships and venerates its founder, the twenties film star, Charles 'Bubba' Kenton, who Beverly Grove just happened to be married to. When he forced her to give up their daughter, Sophie, in 1919, she vowed revenge. After Bubba was embraced as a Vampire in the twenties, he drew a group of worshippers around him - an 'Osiris' cult and took many of them as his ghouls. Yet he did embrace his wife and this gave Beverly her chance for revenge. She switched alarm clocks and Bubba woke up to direct sunlight and fried… The Order vowed their own revenge. 

The Order wants the film because it shows Beverly and Bubba performing together and proves that she was alive over seventy years ago. With it they can blackmail her into becoming part of their cult and prolonging their lives as ghouls or even by embracing them. 

Yet one member of the Order has another agenda. Sister Magda, who works at the bookshop by day, acts as the Order's liaison between with Dagmar and Beverly and is the nun who took the film from Father Murtaugh just before his death. Magda's aim is to get Beverly to embrace only her, after all, the Vampire is her grandmother! 

Complications arise for Cass because Ricky really hates his guts for causing the break-up of his marriage, and Ricky also just happens to be Dagmar's favourite squeeze. Dagmar, meanwhile, will do anything to protect Beverly, because what she really wants is to spend eternity with her beloved, not as her ghoul, but as her childe.