A feeding accident represents a character losing control, and letting their Beast take over while feeding on a mortal at some point in the period between game sessions.
For characters with a Humanity rating higher than 4, the player may decide if they seriously injured a mortal, or if they killed them. In the event a player opts for their character have killed a mortal, they need to advise the refs, so that an appropriate humanity check can be made for them. (As the assumption is that the player wishes to engage with that element of the humanity rules, and explore how their character feels about committing a murder.)
For characters with a Humanity rating 4 or below, they will have killed the mortal in question. For more information about exactly how your character’s Humanity rating affects their chances of a Feeding Accident, please see the Humanity and The Beast section.
Feeding accidents are crimes, that will be investigated by the police, and/or other interested parties. They represent breaches of the First Tradition. Feeding Accidents may be covered up in the downtime period that the accident took place, or the one following. After that, while the characters will be assumed to be able to deflect mortal suspicion from themselves, it will be too late for them to be kept from official record.
Feeding Accidents and Favours
Covering up an accident for another vampire is considered a minor favour. Doing it three times is considered a major favour. By custom, one does not have to ask for help covering up the accident in order to become indebted – but right to the favour must be publicly claimed at the court meeting following the cover-up, from the specific individual whose accident is being cleaned up – so in order to claim the favour, another Vampire must both clean up the accident and know (or correctly guess) which of their Kindred it was that caused the accident in the first place.
In the event that more than one character has attempted to cover up the crime at the same time, then the custom is that if the party who had the accident has sincerely attempted to cover up their own error, they owe no debt to anyone who worked unasked. Otherwise, the right passes the first person of those who participated in the cover up to claim it at court.
Failure to own up to one’s accidents when directly named as the source of them, or acknowledge the debts incurred thereby is considered a very serious faux pas, and the custom is that if another Vampire is caught having engaged in this practice, all recorded debts that they are owed by other Kindred are automatically cancelled.