Ghost in the System

Back to Level 5.

With society becoming more dependent upon information and computer files, archaic elders needed something to maintain their places in society. In earlier nights, a Kindred could easily fake his death or move on to a different part of the country, but tonight identities are kept on ubiquitous file through the electronic data and paper trails. this ritual bypasses the normal channels for these identities, causing old computer and hardcopy files to disappear and new files to spring up. Like a ghost, the thaumaturge disappears and comes back in a new form. This ritual is technomantic in nature (see Guide to the Camarilla, pages 104-106), and many vampires thoroughly disapprove of it, preferring to remain anonymous than change to conform with the rules of the modern nights. Invoking this ritual requires the caster to melt a pile of sand into glass and suspend an ant within the cooling silicon.
System: This ritual takes an entire week to perform, with breaks from the chanting and ceremony only in the form of sleep each day. A botch on the activation results in a complete corruption of all files dealing with the Cainite, to the point that a major government agency takes active interest in the anomalous activities. A failure results in problems for a few months before everything is arranged correctly - "We're sorry, sir, but the files says that you are dead; we'll take care of this mistake right away." It effectively creates a series of false records that allow the vampire to observe modern citizenship, including driver's license numbers for licenses that do not exist, false birth certificates, Social Security numbers, etc.