After commenting in
1) They aren’t Masons.
They’re more like Masons as written by someone who doesn’t know a thing about Masonry. Their founder is a woman (yikes!) and they don’t even fit the conspiracy theory version of the fraternity. At its heart, Masonry is about making good men better by casting off dogmatic thought, prejudices, and “breaking off all the vices and superfluities of life.” Even as an evil, twisted version of the fraternity, the Architects really don’t fit. If the author knew anything about Masonry, he could have written a very dark version of the fraternity, but instead, he just made stuff up. Bleh.
2) The Ventrue suck.
Sorry, but it’s true. The Ventrue have the worst Clan disadvantage, the worst Discipline set, and the weakest concept. They just suck. There’s no way getting around it.
3) Clipping the Wings off Gilded Cage.
The Discipline for the bloodline isn’t a Discipline at all, but a blood magic (which is strictly forbidden in the V:tR guidelines for creating your own bloodline). What’s worse, it’s been sliced, diced and fried–you can only use it as between-game actions. Yeuch.
Anyway, these are the reasons I haven’t felt compelled to write up an Architect of the Monolith. I read the books I needed for research (Valley Forge, Revolutionary War, etc.), have the idea firmly in mind… but he doesn’t fit the clan or bloodline at all. I have to make serious stretches to make him fit.
I guess I’ll just wait for the Carthian book to come out and just say my guy is a Mason… and get killed for the misunderstanding. 😀