Thoughts on the cabbie... *SPOILERS!*

[Devilfish666]

This whole post is one big *SPOILER* Don't say I didn't warn you.

So.

I'm sorry if most of you are sick of this topic by now, but I think I've read through all the threads concerning the cabbie and the ending and I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so I thought I'd pitch a couple of ideas on the identity of the mysterious cabbie.

I just played through the game again, first time in about a year, and I remembered reading this on the White Wolf Wiki concerning the Lasombra:

The Lasombra are also noted for a strong fascination with Chess; the game serves as a metaphor for Vampiric existence (or at least, as the Lasombra see it), and consequently any Lasmobra who plans to get anywhere in the clan is proficient in the game.

Remind anyone else of those peculiar emails from a 'friend'? It got me thinking.

The cabbie wears shades (at night, I might add) and the Lasombra are very light sensitive. Here's another little blurb about them:

The Lasombra are a clan driven by ambition, and consequently they accept diablerie as a necessary facet of their existence

Isn't diablerie at the heart of all the conclift in the game? Isn't it Jack (admitted friend of the cabbie) who first puts thoughts of diablerie into your fledgling head?

Now I don't know what a diablerised vamp would like like, but a body without blood and a soul would in my opinion look a great deal like the corpse of Messerach we see in the ending sequence.

The diablerist (...) is branded by black streaks in their aura that may persist for several years

Cabbie sure had that black swirly misty thing going on. If not in his aura, maybe due to the trademark Lasombra discipline: Obtenebration.

Maybe it was true after all? Maybe there really was an antedeluvian, or at least a very old vamp in the sarcophagus. Maybe that's why Beckett changed his mind about opening at after he studies it. Maybe there was a deal involving diablerie: the cabbie gets a drink and Jack gets to blow up prince. Sounds like a good reason for them to work together. Remember, Jack isn't a true anarch, he's a free-living vampire. He'd have no qualms working with a Sabbat if it served his purposes.

There's more, by the way:

the Lasombra and Ventrue despise each other. (...) The Lasombra went to the Sabbat, the Ventrue to the Camarilla. That stated, as the ruling clans of their respective sects, they are naturally prone to come to loggerheads.

Now I know a lot of people prefer to keep the PC game and the P&P game seperated when looking for explanations in this vein, but the developers didn't. After all they added Pisha to the game and put a little blurb about the Nagaraja (Pisha's bloodline) in the loading screen texts as a hint. To me that means they had no qualms about making the player look for explanations outside the PC game.

And the 'caine' sound files for the cabbie? Why not? Lasombra are "predatory, backstabbing, power-hungry and unapologetically arrogant about their position". A diablerising Lasombra is very likely to develop delusions of grandeur. Remember, when the Ventrue went to the state, the Lasombra went to the Church. Catholic myth is deeply ingrained into their culture and history.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, if anyone still cares about all of this.

Again, sorry if this has been done to death or all said before.

[DarkMasta]

You have raised a good point, but the cabb guy is Caine.
Listen to what the Malkavian Thin Blood at Santa Monica Beach tells you

But those things that you said of the Lasombra clan and the cab guy makes sense, in my thought i think that Jack got Caine out of the sarcoufghas and placed the boomb.