- Animalism
- Auspex
- Celerity
- Chimerstry
- Dementation
- Dominate
- Fortitude
- Mortis
- Obfuscate
- Obtenebration
- Potence
- Presence
- Protean
- Quietus
- Serpentis
- Thaumaturgy
- Vicissitude
Needing humans to prey upon, vampires are often urban creatures, bur the Dark Medieval world is overwhelming rural. The lonely farms and trackless wilds between cities are dangerous places. Ignoring supernatural dangers, mortals and Cainites who leave the protection of cities may find themselves threatened by wild animals, from the wolf pack to the enraged elk. Vampires who are too squeamish or desparate to feed from humans must often approach wild animals for their blood, as well. The wilderness is a place of tension and danger for vampires.
Humans also need animals. They ride them, work them, eat them or keep them as companions. Animals make up an inextricable part of mortal society. Animals infiltrate every part of human life, and for the most part, humans ignore the swarming animal life in their midst. This is just as true in cities as it is in the countryside: Fowl, pets and even small livestock wander around even the richest of medieval houses.
Ordinarily, a Cainite needs a moderate rating in Animal Ken just to keep mundane animals from panicking when the beasts catch the scent of such a supreme and unholy predator. With Animalism, however, vampires can use animals as food, as spies and occasionally as weapons. Such activitiy does go against the animals' natural instincts, but the unholy power of the Cainite is more than sufficient to trample the creatures' basic desires. After all, as more than one Gangrel has pointed out, being saddled and ridden goes against a horse's natural instincts, and yet they acquiesce to such treatment quite readily after learning their place in the universe.
Animalism, like all Cainite Disciplines, contains a reflection of God's curse on Caine. Vampires who use Animalism extensively recede from humanity and from Cainite society - a fact that may help explain why the Nosferatu and Gangrel are such outcasts. Animals' activities and reactions are simple and predictable, and they easy to shove about with Animalism. This is much less true for humans and vampires, and Animalism users risk the loss of their social skills.
Animalism is a clam Discipline for the Gangrel, Nosferatu, Ravnos and Tzimisce. Their twisted visages and outre habits push these vampires farthr away from the embrace of immortal culture and out into the company of beasts. Nosferatu, many of whom are devoutly religious (whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim), believe that Animalism is one of the last remnants of God's blessing over man. They frequently refer back to biblical stories to help explain their manifestations of the Discipline. The Gangrel, most of whom do not even believe that they descend from Caine, see this Discipline as a reflection of their role as supreme hunters who are favored by their gods. The Tzimisce, in a somewhat similar light, see themselves as absolute masters of their faraway mountain domains and believe that it is only right that they dominate the creatures of their lands as easily as they do the peasants who toil under them. Many Ravnos treat the animals that they turn to their service as faithful companions or servants, at least as valued as any human ghoul. In these nights, Animalism is a useful Discipline for nearly any Cainite, but many of the High Clans eschew it in favor of those abilities that more directly affect the human psyche. Animalism is favored by those on the Road of the Beast in particular. Regardless of clan, those who live as peasants, knights or travelers find much value in Animalism.
Traits for various animals appear in the Bestiary.
• Feral Speech
This power allows the Cainite to hark back to the days before the fall of Babel, when all speech was one. Although he cannot use this ability to communicate with humans or Cainites who do not speak his language, he can communicate with animals, be they wild or domesticated. The vampire needs only to look into the creature's eyes for a moment, and he briefly gains facility with that animal's native speech. The two communicate in the animal's tongue - a vampire speaking to a horse must whinny, one talking to a wolf might bark or howl and so on. (The animal replies in mind, of course.) According to rumor, the Nosferatu can communicate with animals without making a sound, but they must concentrate solely on the creature in question, and they cannot lose eye contact for even a moment.
The use of Feral Speech does not predispose an animal to react in a friendly fashion toward the vampire. Keep in mind that animals that have not been made ghouls tend to react poorly to supernatural predators of the night. The character can bully small creatures such as squirrels or rabbits easily, but raptors and swift, independently minded animals do their best to escape from such a situation. Larger creatures require some negotiations to get any useful information.
This ability does not grant the animal in question any unusual information. The Storyteller should consult the Bestiary to determine a rough level of intelligence for the animal, and use that and the creature's known behaviors as a base for roleplay. Remember that few animals can count and none can read, and humans mostly all look alike to them. The character may be able to convince animals to do him favors if he is sufficiently impressive to them. If usch is the case, the beasts do their best to perform such favors.
System: No expenditure or die roll is necessary to activate this power, but the character must spend one turn getting the animal's attention and looking into its eyes in order to key his own Beast to the creature's language. Roll Manipulation + Animal Ken to get favors or useful information out of an animal. The difficulty is 6, unless modified up or down for circumstances. Each success gleans one favor or one useful piece of information; five successes gets the character roughly anything he needs within reason. The style by which the character gets what he wants depends in part on his road and Nature, but primarily on the roleplaying between the player and animal.
•• Noah's Call
This ability - named by those Cainites who believe that Noah called on all the wild creatures to come to his ark before the flood - allows a character to call out a summons for a particular kind of creature. In order to use Noah's Call on a particular kind of animal, the vampire must already have used Feral Speech on an animal of that species in the past. The Cainite then uses his sublimated memories of that "language" to cry out audibly and summon as much of the local population of that animal as he can. Not all of those creatures definitely come to the character's assistance, but those that do aid the character as best they can. The character can call a somewhat broad group of animals - all those of a single species, by modern parlance - or he can be more precise. He could to try summon all dogs in an area, or all female red-tailed hawks between the ages of one and three years inclusive. Obviously, the former summons brings more creatures and the latter might not bring any at all.
System: Roll Charisma + Survival (difficulty 6) to use this ability. Consult the table to see how many creatures succumb to the character's power. Note that if, for instance, only one animal meets the character's criteria within range of hearing, then one or two successes will not summon it. The power works out to the limit of hearing - which can vary from beast to beast. A wolf might be able to hear a summons howl as far as four miles away, while a groundhog had better be within a half-mile. When in doubt, the Storyteller should roll Perception + Awareness for a simple member of the species. Every success extends the range by half a mile.
| Successes | Response |
| Botch | A random fraction of the creatures respond, but are hostile to the character |
| Failure | No response; you may try again |
| 1 success | One animal responds |
| 2 successes | One-quarter of the animals within range respond |
| 3 successes | Half of the animals within range respond |
| 4 successes | Three-quarters of the animals within range respond |
| 5 successes | All animals within range respond |
••• Cowing the Beast
The wildest rage of human or animal pales besides the unholy, God-cursed Beast of the Children of Caine. A Cainite with Cowing the Beast can use that fact to his advantage. He has little difficulty causing the heart of a man or animal to grow faint at the very sight of him. With a modicum of effort, he can cause an opponent to run shrieking into the distance or collapse into a gibbering heap.
If the target suffers from fear-driven derangements, she is likely to succumb to them, as the sight of a vampire using Cowing the Beast drives the Discipline's target into paroxysms of terror. Nosferatu and some Gangrel pass the secret of using this ability to soothe an opponent's Beast, rather than dominate it. Those who do not so refer to the ability as Song of Serenity. (To learn this Song of Serenity effect, the character must simply find a teacher and spend a few nights learning it. It is an effect inherent to Cowing the Beast that many Cainites simply do not realize they can unlock. There's no additional experience cost.)
As with many aspects of a Cainite's existence, the use of Cowing the Beast involves a harrowing loss of control to the vampire's own Beast, if only for an instant. The character cuts loose for a moment, letting his Beast terrify his target's inner nature. Those Cainites who are not on the Road of the Beast are likely to be rather unsettled by this display themselves, as their rational natures must momentarily give way to a rush of power and hatred.
System: When the character uses Cowing the Beast, the player should roll Manipulation + Intimidation (or Manipulation + Empathy, if using the Song of Serenity variant), at a difficulty of 7. This action is exclusive. The character cannot engage in combat, run, or create works of art while activating the Discipline. The character must earn a number of successes equal to the target's Willpower. If doing so takes mroe than one turn, then the Discipline becomes an extended test, and it succeeds as soon as the character collects that many successes. Failure means that the character loses all collected successes. A botch means that the target's Beast is forever beyond the character's control.
A successfully cowed mortal or animal is so intimidated that she cannot engage in any form of struggle and may even refuse to move unless the Cainite orders her to do so. The victim will not even defend herself unless her player makes a Willpower roll. The player of a cowed character cannot spend or regain Willpower. She should roll Willpower (difficulty 6) every night until she accumulates as many successes as the vampire's Willpower. The effect then lifts. The Song of Serenity has the same game system effects, but it makes its victim utterly listless.
Cainites' Beasts cannot be cowed with this ability, but the Storyteller may permit characters to use the Song of Serenity variant to pull a vampire out of a frenzy. Should the character earn three or more successes, the frenzied target may attempt to pull herself out of the frenzy, using the same difficulty stimulus that pushed her into it.
•••• Ride the Wild Wind
Cainites who know Ride the Wild Wind are able to dislodge their own souls from their bodies and seat them in the bodies of wild animals. Since animals have no souls, by any reasonable definition (including the Christian one of the time), the Cainite commits no sin by resting his own in the creature's body for a short time. While possessing an animal in this fashion, the vampire controls the beast's every move and reaction.
The character must stare for a moment into the animal's eyes before possessing it. His body then drops into a torpid stupor as his soul drifts out of his body and into the animal's. The character may remain in the host animal for as long as he likes, but his body still loses blood at its normal rate while he does so. Those using Ride the Wild Mind are prone to adapt some of their host animal's behaviors when they emerge from the possession. Many Tzimisce sculpt dogs or wolves into hideous war-ghouls and then possess them with Ride the Wild Mind, giving themselves command of a frightening monster during a battle while leaving their bodies safe at home. Some superstitious Gangrel and Ravnos believe that a piece of their soul remains in the animal when they leave it, so they make a point of consuming the animal's blood when the ride is done.
Cainite who miss their living days exult in the freedom and power of Ride the Wild Mind, as it brings a strong sensation of life along with it. Those who no longer miss their living days - particularly those not on the Road of Humanity, or who have low scores on that road - find the power's use to be disconcerting. Once again, the vampire can feel "his" heart beating, he suffers from mundane hunger, and sweats and produces filth all on hi sown. These sensations are long absent even in the ancilla.
System: Roll Charisma + Animal Ken (difficulty 8) while the character looks into the animal's eyes for a turn. The character cannot possess worms or other creatures without eyes, as they have no easy passage for the soul. The animal must also be a living creature of flesh and blood to be possessed. The Cainite cannot ride a demon (even a familiar in animal form) or a ghost. One success allows the character to just barely take over the animal's body; multiple successes give him greater access to his Disciplines, per the following table:
| Successes | Result |
| Botch | Roll to resist Rotschreck as the character's Beast is overwhelmed by the animal's nature |
| Failure | Cannot possess; try again next turn |
| 1 success | Possess the animal, but cannot use any Discpiplines |
| 2 successes | Can use Auspex^ |
| 3 successes | Can also use Presence^ |
| 4 successes | Can also use Dominate, Dementation |
| 5 successes | Can also use Thaumaturgy and Mortis (paths only), Chimerstry |
Results marked with a ^ also require the character to spend Willpower to take any action that the Storyteller deems out of line with the animal's base instincts. While using Ride the Wild Mind, character may walk around as the animal in the sunlight without suffering any ill effects, although he must make a Road roll to remain conscious, just as he would in his own body.
When the character leaves the animal's body to return to his own, the player must roll Wits + Empathy (difficulty 8) and score as many successes as days the character spent within the creature (minimum of one). If the character fails this roll, the character spends the same number of days in a purely animalistic mindset, obeying the urges and instincts of the creature whose body he just left. Should he botch, the vampire frenzies and then drops into the animalistic mindset just described.
Whether the player succeeds or fails at that roll, the vampire is stuck thinking in the creature's ways for some time. The character must spend seven Willpower points or seven days (or some combination of the two) to get over the effects of having used this power. Until that time has passed, the character reflexively reacts as his old host did. A vampire who spent time in the body of a wolf may growl at unexpected visitors, kowtow excessively to princes and others of acknowledged higher status and so on. Many Gangrel use this side effect of Ride the Wild Mind to their advantage, possessing a wolverine for extra ferocity or a squirrel to get themselves in the habit of storing goodies away for wintertime.
Should the animal die while being ridden in this fashion, the character's psyche returns to his body. When it does, it may be slightly traumatized, an effect that has no game mechanics but which the player is encouraged to roleplay out.
••••• Drawing out the Beast
Cainites with this ability are so familiar with the vagaries of animals' instinctive reactions that they can even read the reactions of their own Beasts. What's more, as the vampire's Beast becomes more aroused, he gains the ability to send it out into another being, rather than allowing his own spirit to be overwhelmed by the blood rage.
The target of the Cainite's Beast is immediately overwhelmed by a frenzy, and during that frenzy, he acts precisely as the Discipline's user does when in frenzy, right down to the occasional murderous turn of phrase. Those who know the vampire might recognize their friend's Beast in another, but such a thing is quite rare.
The Gangrel who use this power to enable their ghouls and childer to act as terrible proxies in time of battle, while the Ravnos use it to torment individuals who present themselves as beacons of righteousness. The Tzimisce use Drawing out the Beast's to wreak dreadful havoc on an opposiing voivode's holdings before bringing their full force to bear, while the Nosferatu prefer to use the ability to humiliate other vampires whom they feel need to be taken down a peg.
System: The character must be in a frenzy or near one - that is to say, exposed to a possible source of frenzy and engaged in a test of Self-Control or Instinct to resist or ride it. To use the ability, announce a target to whom your character has a line of sight and then roll Manipulation + Animal Ken (difficulty 8). At least two successes are required on this roll to achieve the desired effect.
| Success | Result |
| Botch | Enter a tremendously dangerous frenzy, from which even Willpower expenditure cannot rescue you. |
| Failure | Enter a terrible frenzy, that lasts twice as long and requires twice as many successes to shrug off as normal. |
| 1 success | Accidentally release your Beast upon a friend. |
| 2 successes | Transfer your Beast successfully, but you are stunned, and lose your next turn to inaction while you recover. |
| 3+ successes | Transfer your Beast successfully. |
If the target leaves the character's immediate vicinity before the frenzy ends (or vice versa) the character risks losing his Beast permanently, as it remains with the victim. The vampire's Beast often likes "living" inside other beings, and it is loath to return to the vampire it knows so well after having a taste of freedom. Should the character lose his Beast, even temporarily, he becomes lethargic, sleeping late in the evenings and needing to spend Willpower to perform even such tasks as feeding.
To recover his Beast, the character must first find its carrier - who is probably not having an easy time of things, especially if he is mortal - and then coax his Beast back to his body. To do so, the character must act in ways that would lure a ravenous, frenzy-yielding vampiric monster toward him. The Storyteller should make sure to play this scene up for all it's worth. In the tragic event that the Beast carrier dies, the vampire's player an Instinct roll against a difficulty of 9. Even one success returns the Beast to its owner, but a failure means that the vampire has lost his Beast forever. The shock of the Beast's death cry immediately sends the vampire into torpor.
•••••• Quell the Herd
This power works similarly to Cowing the Beast, save that the Cainite using it subdues the passion and individuality of a whole group of mortals or animals simultaneously with the power of his own Beast. It does not work against Cainites, though it does affect ghouls. As many as 20 targets may be affected by this ability at once, as long as all involved can see the character.
System: Roll Strength + Intimidation (difficulty 7). This is an extended test: You must accumulate as many successes as your target has temporary Willpower. You cow any target whose Willpower you exceed with successes - as soon as you have rolled 5 successes, all targets with a Willpower of 5 or less are subdued. Failing your roll means that you have to begin accumulating successes again from 0, but your victims do not become free. A botch not only sets your victims free of the quelling, but sends them into a frenzy, howling for your blood.
Those cowed with Quell the Herd behave and free themselves in the same manner as those affected by Cowing tbe Beast.
As the supreme hunters of the night, Cainites have senses that are unmatched by any mortal - many Cainites can smell an uninjured human's blood from yards away. Members of several clans - the Toreador, Cappadocians, Malkavians, Tzimisce and Tremere - have refined those senses to the point that their own senses outstrip Cainites' abilities to the same degree that Cainites' outstrip mortals'.
Many vampires with high levels of Auspex cease to perceive events in the same way that mortals do. What a farmer's wife might think of as a foul stench, a Cainite's nose breaks down into its component scents, identifying the source of the odor, its distance and its age. Such vampires stop making value judgements about strong odors, harsh sounds or strange sights, instead taking such vistas in and considering their components individually. Vampires of such refined sensibilities are apt to lose themselves as they take in the physical world; bright lights can sometimes stun them as they consider the darkness, or harsh sounds as they examine a faint cry.
Gatherings of Cainites whose members include those skilled with Auspex soon learn that secrecy is extremely difficult to maintain; a whispered conversation is audible across a courtyard to a vampire with high levels of Auspex. In fact, some elders take advantage of this trait and carry on public conversations from opposites sides of cathedrals while barely speaking loudly enough to be heard by mortals sitting next to them. Characters who wish to keep secrets in a group of such Cainites must resort to passing notes back and forth or finding a private chamber in which to speak.
Auspex is said to be part of God's curse on Caine because it encourages vampires to obsess on minutiae. Rather than witnessing God's plan for creation - or another Cainite's plan for the future - the high Auspex vampire occupies his time dwelling on insignificant details. However, rare is the Cainite who cannot take advantage of Auspex in some fashion.
• Heightened Senses
The most basic ability of auspex doubles the range and sensitivity of a vampire's senses. The character can see and hear twice as far, and can see better in faint light than other vampires do. Similarly, she can pick up scents as well as a hunting dog and follow them if she learns to do so. Her senses of taste and touch do not increase in rage, of course, but they do become vastly more sensitive. A character with Heightened Senses might detect the vintage in a victim's blood or recognize a long-absent mortal acquaintance in pitch darkness.
When concentrating on faint sensations, the character is particularly vulnerable to strong ones. A bright flash of light in the dark or a thunderclap in a silent cave might blind or deafen the character for as long as an hour.
System: It takes a free action to use this ability, but no roll or other cost is required. The difficulty of rolls associated with using the character's sense (such a Perception + Alertness) decrease by a number equal to the character's Auspex rating when the power is engaged.
The Storyteller should remember the potential hazards listed previously and fit such blindness or deafness to the situation at hand, perhaps allowing a Stamina + Alertness roll to overcome its effects. The content and frequency of insight and premonitions are left to the Storyteller's discretion. She may roll the character's Auspex rating to its own dice pool (with a difficulty ranging from 6 to 9) to see if a vision comes at an appropriate moment, if she wishes. Intelligence + Occult rolls may also be necessary to interpret the visions gained with the power. Such visions should be quite rare: The vocies are no mere servants, to come when bidden.
•• Soulsight
Cainites with Soulsight claim that every being with a soul projects a halo a short distance from his body. They know this primarily because Soulsight lets them see this halo, which shimmers and undulates with each person's mood and changes color as various emotions wash over them.
Harsh emotions tend toward the red end of the spectrum, while calm and cool ones are bluer; strong emotions bright, while weak ones are dim. As it is rare (outside of frenzy) for anyone to feel just one emotion at a time, most halos are mosaics of color, with veins and spatters of secondary emotion that tinge the primary feeling. A vampire's halo is pale, much as the Cainite's skin is, while a health mortal's halo fairly pulses with life. It is relatively easy for a vampire with Soulsight to distinguish between the two.
Soulsight does not work well as a lie-detector. Most accomplished liars (particularly cainites) are perfectly calm and comfortable while lying, and they frequently learn to distract themselves with pleasant thoughts while spinning the most outrageous lies. Conversely, someone may be being totally truthful and still be nervous. Additionally, spying on halos is not a subtle thing. The character must ogle her target to get a good view of his halo.
System: Roll Perception + Empathy (difficulty 8). The Storyteller will make this roll for you, so that you don't know just how much information you may have gained or whether you have failed or botched. You must get one successes to even get basic information, per the following chart:
| Successes | Information |
| Botch | Misleading halo |
| Failure | No aura |
| 1 success | Can read the shade (pale or bright) |
| 2 successes | As above, and can distinguish base color |
| 3 successes | As above, and can recognize patterns |
| 4 successes | As above, and can notice subtle shifts |
| 5 successes | As above, and can identify mixtures of color and pattern |
if the target has around a quarter cover or concealment (which includes moving around in a crowded room), increase the number of successes needed by one (so one success gives no information, and four gives patterns). If the target has more than around half cover, increase the number of successes needed by two. You cannot read the halo of someone with mroe than three-quarters concealment.
You cannot reroll to improve your character's perception of another character's halo until at least an hour has passed. Doing so is treated as an automatic botch. Also, it is very easy to sneak around you while you are ogling a halo, and observant foes are sure to realize that and gain three dice to all Stealth totals against you while you use Soulsight against another.
For certain characters, Soulsight might manifest by making other beings appear as though they were carved of stained glass; others' might perceive distinctive scents. In all these cases, however, your character will still understand the basic meaning of the halos he sees.
••• The Spirit's Touch
A mortal creature leaves a subtle scent on everything it touches. Ask any king's keeper of hounds. Dogs, among others, can easily track this scent. in the same fashion, mortals and vampires leave a trail of their own essence upon anything they touch. Vampires with Spirit's Touch can see this immaterial residue. Although Spirit's Touch users generally cannot track people with the ability - a person must keep an item long enough to leave an impression, or care about it strongly - they can easily determine who the last owner of an object was, who created a work of art and the like.
Beyond this simple identification, a character with Spirit's Touch can catch glimpses of the object's creation, use and meaning to its owner. These impressions vary widely, but a brief glimpse is rarely sufficient to learn anything useful about the item. The character must have time to sit and study it.
Members of the clans to whom it comes naturally treasure the Spirit's Touch. The Cappadocians can recreate the end of a life from examining a corpse and its treasured possessions, which may aid in their divinatory abilities. The Toreador use Spirit's Touch to refine their own techniques with musical instruments or other artistic tools, or to help gain insight into the creative process of a long-dead master. The Tremere are better able to idenfity the properties of magical potions and enchanted items than any mortal wizard. Some Tzimisce use Spirit's Touch to ensure that a letter passed from another voivode was created by the one whose seal marks it. And many Malkavians are known to rob mortals' homes of treasured items, then use those objects to gain a disturbed sort of insight into the minds of those whom they wish to torment into madness.
System: Roll Perception + Empathy with a difficulty based on the strength of the psychic impression. An item that one handled only briefly, one that was unimportant to its last owner or one that is otherwise meaningless has a target of 9. The stake that Tremere may have used to immobilize Saulot while diablerizing him would have a target of 4. Other difficulty numbers range between those. When in doubt, the Storyteller may wish to assign a flat 7. The number of successes rolled determines the amount of information available:
| Successes | Information |
| Botch | The character is overwhelmed by psychic impressions for the next 30 minutes and unable to act |
| Failure | No information of value |
| 1 success | Very basic information: the last owner's gender or hair color, for instance |
| 2 successes | A second piece of basic information |
| 3 successes | More useful information about the last owner, such as age and state of mind the last time he used the item |
| 4 successes | The person's name |
| 5+ successes | A wealth of information: nearly anything you want to know about the person's relationship with that object is available. |
•••• Steal Secrets
The character can open a doorway between his mind and the target's, allowing her to read the target's surface thoughts as though they were spoken aloud. She may also speak her own thoughts to the target inaudibly, but the target cannot turn the tables on the character and listen in on her surface thoughts. A character with this ability can also use it to plunder the mind of her target, stealing information she desires and learning the target's secret wants and fears.
In group meetings among the many clans with access to this ability there are often two or more lines of conversation going on, quite divergently: one audible, and one more sub-rosa, passed from mind to mind. Steal Secrets is another power that makes the Toreador such potent conveyors of social standing: You might be sure that the court chamberlain isn't talking about you, but it's impossible to know what he's thinking about you.
System: Roll Intelligence + Subterfuge, with a difficulty equal to the subject's current Willpower. Each success allows you to ferret out one thought or fact from the target's surface thoughts. To penetrate another layer of thought (surface thoughts and basic attitudes to hidden thoughts to simple memories to deeply buried thoughts) costs an additional success. Learning a single simple memory from a peasant costs three successes rather than just one. Additionally, the mind of a Cainite is naturally closed to contact, unlike a mortal's. To crack through this defense you must spend a Willpower point in addition to succeeding in the roll.
Surface thoughts are fleeting and often quite chaotic, and the Storyteller is encouraged to describe a target's thoughts in terms of impressions and unexpected images instead of simply blurting out the target's plans and ideas. Such thought interpretations are best left in the player's hands, though generous Storytellers may allow a Perception + Empathy roll to filter out the worst of the "noise" coming from a target's mind.
Your character may project her thoughts without a die roll beyond that described already. These thoughts, however, are obviously intrusions into the target's mind, so they cannot be disguised as his own feelings or ideas. However, your character may attempt to disguise her mental "voice" with a roll of Manipulation + Subterfuge (difficulty 9) so the target doesn't recognize her as the "speaker."
••••• Anima Walk
In dreams, Cainites and mortals alike walk the earth. They may travel from place to place at unearthly speeds and witness impossible deeds. The vampire who has learned Anima Walk learns to dislodge her spirit from her physical body at will and wander the earth as an invisible, disembodied spirit. This spirit, or anma, is connected to the vampire's physical body by a silver cord that is invisible to those on the mortal plane. The anima can move at great speeds and even fly. It can pass through solid objects as though they did not exist or drift through the very earth. The anima cannot travel farther from the character than the moon; it cannot even reach that luminous orb.
When the character activates this power, her physical body drops into a state reminiscent of torpor, though it returns to full awareness when she returns to the body. However, when the character leaves her body behind she must have a destination in mind. Changing her destination means that her silver cord may become tangled in the spirit realm, and she may lose her way back to her body. Should this happen, the anima would become lost in the spirit world, subject to a variety of terrifying and unearthly sights and encounters - most of the ghosts and spriits of the natural world seem to be quite hostile to Cainites.
Many Toreador with Anima Walk use it to eavesdrop on talented artists during their working hours without disturbing the creator. Some Cappadocians - particularly the upstart Giovanni family - use it to engage shades of the dead in conversation. Most other clans use it to spy on one another or to ensure that their minions are acting according to instructions. Cainites who know of this power's existence tend to assume that the most powerful Methuselahs and clan founders use it from torpor, keeping tabs on whole bloodlines for their inevitable night of return.
System: Spend a point of Willpower and roll Perception + Occult. The difficulty is a bsse of 7, modified by the distance and complexity of the voyage you plan to take. A quick step out to the corner tavern might require only a 4, while a trip east into Taugast could require a 10. Three successes are needed in order to have a safe and largely uneventful walk outside your body. Just achieving one or two successes lets you leave your body and go on the voyage you intend, but it will take longer than expected and involve hazards to your spiritual body. A failure indicates that you must spend another point of Willpower and roll again, while a botch snaps your silver cord and casts your spirit-body far from your physical one: into a distant land, a dreamlike spirit realm or the dark lands of the dead. If your silver cord is broken for any reason, your body immediately drops into torpor. Should you change or add your destination while on an anima voyage, you must roll Perception + Occult again at a new target number designated by the Storyteller, with the same consequences for varying degrees of success.
You are invisible and immaterial while projecting into the spirit relam, unless you should encounter another spirit or Cainite who is also using Anima Walk. Other characters with particular sensitivity to ghosts and psychic activity (including those with lower levels of Auspex) may notice you with a Perception + Occult roll. The difficulty here is 8, and the target must roll more successes than you did when activating the power. Even those who do notice you won't be able to idenfity you; you are merely an immaterial shade hovering in the general area. You do not carry clothing or objects on your anima walk. You appear to be an idealized version of yourself, clad only in spirit-stuff. Legendary or magical objects might come along with you as you project your soul. The Storyteller has the final word on this.
To other Cainites using Anima Walk, you are entirely physical, and you can interact with them as you would interact with someone you encountered on the physical plane. However, should combat begin (either with another vampire, or with spirits) you have no Physical Attributes. Instead, you should use your Wits as your Dexterity, your Manipulation as your Strength and your Intelligence as your Stamina. Additionally, you cannot attack your target directly. Instead, you must attempt to cut his silver cord. Successful attacks drain temporary dots of Willpower from an opponent instead of costing her health levels. Neither combatant risks wound penalties in this fashion, but when you are out of Willpower, your silver cord has been cut, and you are sure to become lost in the spirit realm. Finding your body might take days, or even longer if you are in unfamiliar territory. Without your silver cord to guide you unerringly home, you may find yourself in greater danger.
You can use other Disciplines while using Anima Walk, but they affect only the astral plane on which you travel. So you could dominate another vampire who is using this power, but not the lowliest of mortals you observe on the physical plane.
•••••• Farsight
A Cainite with Farsight can extend her senses over nearly any distance, and see and hear activity on the other side of the world without leaving her body, if she is familiar with the target of her scrying. This puts her at no risk. Unlike Anima Walk, the character's soul does not leave her body. However, she must have traveled (either phsyically or spiritually) to the place she wishes to scry or have met the person upon whom she wishes to spy.
A vampire may use a tool of some kind as a focus for her concentration while using Farsight. She might use a favored mirror or a detailed map to guide her spiritual travels. However, this is not necessary for all Cainites.
System: Roll Perception + Empathy (difficulty 6, or 8 if you have only visted the target using Anima Walk). No matter how far away the target is, you can spy on it if you succeed on this roll. You can use your other Auspex abilities normally on the targte if you achieve two or more successes on this roll. The use of other Auspex powers requires the appropriate rolls and expenditure of points, of course. Other Disciplines are not available through the medium of Farsight. Only the preternaturally sensitive - those with Auspex 6 or higher - will even have a chance to recognize that they are being spied on in this fashion, on a roll of Perception + Occult (difficulty 9).
If you choose for your character to use a physical focus to aid her concentration, the Storyteller may reduce the difficulty for using Farsight or related Auspex powers by one if he so wishes.
Celerity is one of three core physical Disciplines that are common to most Cainites. Even those clans whose members don't actively favor Celerity (that is, those who are not the Brujah, Toreador and Assamites) find the power just too useful to do without. Celerity enables a vampire to accelerate his reaction time up to speeds that the mortal eye can barely follow, letting him move more quickly or fell half a dozen foes in a few heartbeats. Some Toreador use Celerity to enhance their ability to perform physical arts such as dance; Assamites Brujah and most other clans use it to swiftly end fights, either by fleeing or by brutally dropping foes before they can react.
Most Cainites assume that Caine or the Antediluvians developed this ability to enable them to hunt more effectively, which is a paradox of sorts, since using it for any length of time costs the user as much blood as she might gain from a successful hunt. Other vampires claim that Celerity is part of Caine's curse on his undead children, as the great speeds it bequeaths a vampire are fleeting, and leave the Discipline's user exhausted, hungry and impatient with the ordinary, slow pace of nightly life. Perhaps the world's speed might catch up with a Celerity-using vampire's desires in the distant future, but for now, he must suffer through a quiet world of horse-drawn carts and trudging through the dark from city to city.
System: (The Shadow Crusades uses a House Rule for Celerity expenditures.) Vampires with Celerity can use the Discipline to take multiple actions in a turn without the normal penalties to their dice pools. These actions can include movement, enabling the Celerity user to sprint at unheard-of speeds.
Each point of Celerity allows up to one extra action, and the vampire may use his entire dice pool for each additional action he takes. The character must spend one blood point per extra action taken per turn, and she may spend blood points beyond her normal generation maximum. For instance, an 11th generation Brujah with Celerity 3 may spend 3 blood points to gain three extra full-dice-pool actions. The blood points must be spent at the beginning of the turn, and they cannot be mixed with any other blood expenditure. Additionally, the actions provided by Celerity cannot be further divided into multiple actions - the character may use her basic action for multiple action as much as she likes, but each action granted by Celerity is "indivisible." Also, Celerity-granted actions must involve physical action. The Discipline does not allow a vampire to translate a text or perform a Thaumaturgy ritual more rapidly.
Celerity has no separate powers below the sixth dot; each point simply grants an extra free action. Rumors abound of alternative abilities for elder Cainites who possess levels above 5, but these are only rumors.
Extra actions granted by Celerity do not take place until after each character has taken one ordinary action, so that everyone gets to act once before anyone acts twice. Everyone who is able to act twice does so before anyone takes a third action, and so on. The only exception to this rule is using Celerity actions to provide for emergency defense: A character may use a Celerity action to dodge or block even if he's already taken an action, for instance.
These extra actions may be taken to provide extra movement, allowing the character to move across a battlefield, room or sunlit field very quickly. Each action can provide a full turn's movement.
The Ravnos clan is the only one with a facility for Chimerstry, and it is from them that all tales of its origins come. Most believe that it originated with the clan's founder, a wanderer who delighted in capriciously torturing mortals by twisting their perceptions of reality. Some stories say that the Ravnos clan founder learned this ability from drinking the blood of the Fair Folk — a tradition a few European Ravnos maintain to this day. Others suggest that in torpor, he reached his mind out to touch a corner of Hell, and he brought back the Devil's flair for blending truth and fiction.
Chimerstry allows its user to create realistic illusions with which to flatter or torment others. Chimerstry is an elusive Discipline. It works best when its victims do not know that its possessors are using it. Therefore, those who are proficient with Chimerstry rarely confess to it. Those Cainites, however, who are familiar with the lore of other clans know that it is likely to he found in the blood the Ravnos, which gives the high-blooded one more reason to mistrust Ravnos and deny them entry into their cities. It's undoubtedly responsible for their sobriquet of "Charlatans."
Chimerstry is one of the most versatile Disciplines available to the Children of Caine. With appropriate levels of it, and additional staging where necessary, nearly anyone can he made to believe almost anything, and it isn't necessary to resort to blunt-instrument Disciplines like Dementation or Dominate to make it so. The Discipline is useful for anything from feeding to ousting the prince of a desirable city.
Chimerstry has its downside. Most ot the Discipline's abilities require the expenditure of Willpower, represenr-ing the traction of the character's self that must go into creating the illusion. At the moment of creation, the illusion is very real to the Chimersrry user; for just an instant, her power fools her, too. In addition, a botch on any Chimerstry power causes the character to be haunted by the illusion she creates, as described under each power. The fabric separating perception from reality is a tenuous one, and the character toys with it at her own risk.
Chimerstry does not allow its user to create an illusion that she cannot sense in some fashion. She cannot create a purely auditory illusion somewhere she can't hear it, or the image of a crown it she is blinded. However, if she can sense the illusion in any fashion, she can create the other sensory components of it. That is to say, if she has Dweomer (Chimerstry 2), she can create an illusory bowl of stew and it will taste right, even if it were across the room from her. She could create that crown if it were to rest on her head, so that she could feel it.
A victim of Chimerstry illusions cannot generally dismiss them, even it the victim is doubtful of their reality. Just because you don't believe that the window in front ot you is actually bricked shut doesn't mean you can suddenly see through it. However, Chimerstry illusions cannot support weight or impede movement past a quick sensation of resistance. So, assuming that the bricks on a window were created wirh Dweomer, you would feel their surface if you reached out to touch them, but you would pass through if you tried to push them over. If they were created wirh Ignis Fatuus, your hand would sail right through. Therefore, Ravnos entertainers can dazzle a crowd with shining lights and dancing spirits even if the crowd suspects that the lights are the work of illusion, and it is very difficult to be absolutely sure that an illusion really is illusory.
There are a few exceptions to these guidelines. Characters who experience damage from sources created with Horrid Reality or Mass Horror and then become convinced of its illusory nature can be relieved of the pain they have suffered. In addition, vampires with Auspex and others with forms of supernatural perception have chances to both detect and learn to "filter out" the illusion, hence seeing through illusory darkness or hearing past an illusory scream. Detecting an illusion in this manner is automatic if the watcher's Auspex level is higher than the caster's Chimerstry level. If it is equal to or less than the Chimerstry level, she must convince herself of the illusory nature of the apparition through mundane means (such as plunging her hand into illusory fire). To filter out an illusion once the vampire knows it is false, the player rolls Perception + Alertness against a difficulty equal to 6 + caster's Chimerstry - observer's Auspex. A single success filters it out of all her senses.
Chimerstry is said to reflect God's curse on Caine by deluding the Ravnos into believing that they are capable of truly creative acts in the likeness of God, when in truth all they do is to pervert and twist God's creation.
Chimerstry is a useful Discipline for con artists, thieves and spies of any clan.
• Ignis Fatuus
This ability lets the user create simple, motionless illusions that affect only one sense. The illusion stays stationary with respect to the earth: The image of a ship does not bob in the waves, and the image ot a tunic does not move with its "wearer." An illusion can be purely tactile — a gust of wind, or a simple illusionary contact — but such a thing cannot truly harm anyone or exert any real force.
System: Spend one point of Willpower. No roll is necessary, although you must use an action for your character to concentrate long enough to summon the trickery. The illusion remains for as long as you like, as long as you can sense it and wish for it to persist. Terminating an illusion thus is a free acrion, and it does not even have to be your action should you wish to do so during combat.
As with all Chimersrry powers, your character must be able to sense the illusion be herself - so she too will experience the foul stench or rancid taste she summons up. In such a case, she can choose to have a single other person within her line of sight per dot of Chimerstry also experience the sensation, or permeate an area of a radius 20 yards per level of Chimerstry with it. Single targets who move more than a few feet or out of an affected area are free of such illusions. This limit functions for smells, tastes, illusory gusts of wind, diffuse glows or a shroud of darkness. More isolated visible illusions (a single point of light, a standing guard) can appear anywhere within sight. Sounds can emanate from anywhere within earshot.
Despite the fact that the character experiences the illusion, she knows that it is illusory and suffers no ill effects. She is not blinded by darkness she imposes on another, for example.
•• Dweomer
Dweomer improves the character's mastery of illusion. She can now create motionless phantoms that are real to multiple senses — even all five, if the character prefers. The phantoms are, of course, only illusions. A character might feel the sharp blade of an illusory sword on his thumb as he tests it, but the weapon will pass right through him rather than so much as crease his skin. Illusions created with Dweomer cannot move under their own power, but they can react naturally to their surroundings if rhe character wishes. An illusory crown might move with its wearer or fall to the ground if released. Alternatively, the Dweomer can remain completely motionless, as with Ignis Fatuus.
System: Spend one Willpower and one blood point to create the Dweomer. You must decide whether the image will remain motionless or tied to a particular person, animal or thing. Whichever you choose, it will remain that way as long as it persists. The illusion's duration and ranges of effect are as per Ignis Fatuus.
••• Apparition
Characters with Apparition can give a static illusion created with either Dweomer or Ignis Fatuus the semblance of movement. Such an illusion moves as the character directs. The movement can be as simple as a banner flapping in the (illusory) breeze or as complex as a galloping horse and rider. If the characrer is unfamiliar with the type of movement in question, witnesses to the illusion are more likely to pierce it, but if he's seen it before, it should he perfectly natural and not arouse any suspicions.
System: Create an illusion using either Dweomer or Ignis Fatuus, and spend Willpower as necessary to do so. At the same time, spend an additional blood point to animate the illusion as you wish. As long as you concentrate on the illusion, it can do whatever you like, within reason. An illusion that does things that are physically impossible, however, gives viewers a chance to recognize rhe apparition for what it is. A Perception roll, using Empathy, Animal Ken or Alertness as appropriate for the situation, gives the victim a chance to see through the illusion in that case. The Storyteller should determine the difficulty based on the situation at hand, but he should probably require around as many successes as you have dots in Manipulation.
Once you stop concentrating on the illusion, it can continue in simple, repetitive motions — roughly speaking, anything that can be described in a simple sentence, such as a guard walking back and forth along a parapet.
You can allow it to continue moving as you ordered, or let it fade as described under Ignis Fatuus.
•••• Permanency
Like Apparition, Permanency stacks with other, simpler Chimerstry powers. It eternally extends the duration of illusions created by those abilities, allowing them to persist even when the character who created them is no longer nearby. It will remain for all time - even past rhe character's Final Death, unless the character chooses to dismiss it as described previously. If he uses this ability on an illusion given movement by Apparition, the character must guide the illusion through its normal pattern of movement once before he can make it permanent. Despite the illusion's permanency, however, it is no more real than an illusion created by any of the abilities listed already. It still can neither harm a character nor bear weight.
System: After creating the illusion, spend an additional turn and one blood point to make it permanent. Note that Permanency does not work on any Discipline other than Chimerstry, nor does ir work on other sources of illusion that you might wield, be they hedge magic, Thaumaturgy or a shackled fairy.
••••• Horrid Reality
When a vampire masters Chimerstry, he can sharpen it, focusing the Discipline's altered reality so that it affects only one victim but is terribly real to that victim. A sword created with Horrid Reality seems to harm as easily as a real one, because the sword is real to the power's victim. The Horrid Reality ends when you stop concentrating on it or can no longer sense it yourself.
System: Spend two Willpower points to create your illusion; you must name your target when you create the illusion. The illusion cannot carry any weight or otherwise take action that would require it to exist to anyone other than the victim, but it can attack the target and do semi-real damage. To cause your illusion to attack the target, roll Manipulation + Subterfuge (difficulty is the victim's Perception + Self-Control or Instinct). Every success inflicts one unsoakable level of bashing damage on the target. You may choose to do less than the damage you rolled.
The character heals all his damage instantaneously if he can he convinced that the damage he took was illusory, but convincing him may take some doing. If you wish to do him a favor, a simple display of showy Chimerstry tricks should suffice. Otherwise, friends who wish ro convince him that the attack was illusory must roll Charisma + Empathy, with a difficulty of your Manipulation + Subterfuge, and score at least two successes. The target must be convinced of the attack's illusory nature within 24 hours of its taking place, or it becomes too well ground into his memory, and he will have to heal the damage using blood (if a Cainite) or over time (if mortal). Depending on the nature of the Horrid Reality, it may have other effects beyond the simple damage it inflicts. A vampire who truly believes that she is engulfed in flames suffers Rotschreck, for example.
•••••• Mass Horror
Mass Horror works as Horrid Reality, except that it can affect small groups of people, rather than a single person. Anyone in the immediate vicinity can sense the illusion, but it is unreal to them, as an image created with Apparition would be. However, the the true targets of Mass Horror experience a disturbing warp of reality, just as targets of Horrid Reality do.
System: Spend two Willpower points and select a number of primary rargers equal to your permanent Willpower. Those targets are treated as the victims of a shared Horrid Reality. Other witnesses in the area experience a milder version of the same illusion, as it they were each seeing an Apparition. The Mass Horror ends when you choose to end it or you can no longer concentrate on it.
Dementation revolves around inflicting madness and its side effects on other souls. Cainites who know Malkavians personally — and even those who have only heard stories — fear Dementation more than any other Discipline. Dominate might erase your memories, Vicissitude might reshape your form, but Dementation can destroy your soul. And although Dementation is presented here as having a fairly unified core of abilities, each Malkavian's use of Dementation is filtered through the madness that taints his soul. The application of Haunt the Soul will be quite different from a Malkavian who believes that he is the Devil incarnate than from one who suffers crippling phobias from crowds.
It is impossible to learn Dementation without possessing at least one derangement, regardless of bloodline. Should a characrer attempt to do so, finding a Malkavian who is willing to turn a blind eye to his relative banality, he finds himself slowly going mad, blossoming one or more of his own derangements before he is able to learn even the simplest power of the Discipline. The ability is powered by madness, and intertwines with it; sanity is salt in the soil in which one plants Dementation.
Dementation is an obvious part of Caine's curse on the Malkavian clan founder. Some legends claim that the Eldest Malkavian was a schemer and planner during the Antediluvians' revolt against Caine's first childer, and Caine cursed him with incoherence and madness to prevent this from ever happening again.
Dementation is commonly used by mystics, jesters and the deeply disturbed.
• Incubus Passion
This ability inflames emotions that already exist in its target. This can be done for good or ill, but even a positive emotion that is tripled in intensity becomes an uncontrollable, frightening thing. The Malkavian using Incubus Passion seizes on the strongest and most obvious emotion, and he intensifies it to the level of madness. The target casts aside other feelings he might be experiencing in favor of this one. A talented user of Dementation can use this ability to make frenzy all but unavoidable in a Cainite. Under no circumstances can it he used to calm a situation down or bring people to a more relaxed state.
When used on mortals, this power mimics one of the emotional effects of the Curse of Caine: Affection becomes obsession, desire becomes avarice, irritation becomes hatred, and so on.
System: Roll Charisma + Empathy against a difficulty of the target's Road score (for Cainites) or Willpower (for mortals). Every success extends the duration of the inflamed passion, per the following chart. Failure on this roll has no effect. A botch takes the emotion that would have been kindled in the target and forces it onto you, at the tripled intensity that this power creates. That effect lasts for a scene.
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One turn |
| 2 successes | One hour |
| 3 successes | One night |
| 4 successes | One week |
| 5 successes | One month |
You may choose to use this ability to affect a Cainite's frenzy, instead. Every success you roll adds one to the number of successes that the target must accrue to avoid the frenzy.
•• Haunt the Soul
This power lets its user bombard a target with maddening visions for hours or even months, assailing her sanity and degrading the boundary between reality and imagination. The character cannot predict or control the images beyond a certain point: He can decide on a desired effect, but the images are spawned entirely from the victim's mind and are invisible to the vampire using the power.
The images themselves are fleeting. They are only visible on the edges of the target's vision, or they superimpose themselves over the current scene, but they exist for only a moment. Victims report that these images tend to follow a general theme: They might revolve around the target killing her family, messages from angels and saints or fire consuming everything it touches. The images may last long enough to drive the target mad, or she may find strength in herself or her faith in God to outlast an incipient breakdown.
System: Roll Manipulation + Empathy. The difficulty is the target's Perception + Self-Control or Instinct. The number of successes necessary determines the period over which the visions appear. A failure on this roll does not infect the target with the images, and you cannot try again for one full night. A botch might infect you with those images (plucked from the target's unconscious, not your own) or shut down your Dementation abilities for a full night. Success yields the following duration:
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One night |
| 2 successes | Three nights |
| 3 successes | One week |
| 4 successes | One month |
| 5 successes | Three months |
| 6+ successes | One year |
Throughout the determined time period, the target risks losing his mind. While this degeneration is something best played out or left to the Storyteller's devices, it will surely cost Willpower to keep hold of one's sanity. Those characters who do not act in accordance with their Natures, so as to better regain spent Willpower, are likely to go mad.
••• Eyes of Chaos
Madness, randomness and chaos writhe around every Malkavian. Though even the least enlightened Cainites of that clan can pierce the fog of normalcy that wraps most people, the Eyes of Chaos open whole new vistas as the character truly gains insight from the madness of others and from seemingly random events in the world around him. The Eyes of Chaos see through the mask that mortals and Cainites place between their true natures and the surrounding world, and they enable their user to sense madness in another.
Vampires using the Eyes of Chaos receive portents of the future with some regularity, yet they cannot always deduce the portents' meaning in time to use the information to their advantage. Their mad visions also clue them in to others' driving goals and obsessions, though again, the visions are often obscured by their medium and may convey the necessary truths too late to be of any good.
System: Roll Perception + Occult. The difficulty varies and is set by the Storyteller based on the available information, your familiarity with the situation and the taint of madness in the immediate area. To learn the Nature or derangements of a companion requires an 8; similar traits for a stranger might require a 10. The greater the madness inherent in the thing you're analyzing is, the lower the target number is. Deranged ranting written in a strange tongue is easier to assess than the clinical scribing of a monk. Analysis of a piece of art or craft — anything from a manuscript to a woven blanket — can reveal the creator's Nature or derangements much as analyzing the person can (though one extra success is required). With five or more successes, your character can find prophetic truths in such a work that the creator did not consciously put there. And truly chaotic, random events or images are seductively easy to analyze through the Eyes of Chaos. The vampire might well be able to see into the future after an evening spent staring into a fire or watching clouds scud by. This sort of divination, of course, is left entirely to the Storyteller, who may have her own plans for your character's future.
Information that one gains with Eyes of Chaos is inherently untrustworthy, as it is an analysis of madness as filtered through the eyes of an insane vampire. Storytellers should be sure to convey a character's impressions subjectively, preferably filtering them through the character's primary derangements.
•••• Silence the Sane Mind
Ancillae of nearly every clan fear the Malkavians, and with good reason. This ability, for instance, allows a Malkavian to suppress another's conscious, sane mind for as long as a month. One common application is to confuse the target by suppressing the higher mind's ability to make sense of the world. Doing so makes the target little more than a pliable automaton. The victim can do simple tasks, but she is prone to follow simple orders from anyone who states them forcefully enough. When the victim returns to her senses, she does not remember what she did under its influence. A sort of gray fog descends over her memory, obscuring nearly everything about that period.
While confused, the victim cannot remember many details about herself or her life. She wanders confusedly and has no sense of time passing — only the Rotschreck caused hy the rising sun forces her to safety, and that often fails to protect her. The victim of Silence the Sane Mind rarely remembers the identity of her assailant, making it very difficult for a survivor of this ability to exact vengeance single-handedly. A confused character seems very much like a village idiot: He can answer direct questions, but he has little initiative and is unlikely to act without being ordered or shoved around.
Befuddlement is not the only possible effect of this power: Cruel Malkavians may use it to enrage their targets, driving them into a frenzy; or cripple them with fear, bringing about not the terrified flight of Rotschreck but rather a sobbing collapse into catatonia. In such cases, the character still has a general absence of mind, as seen for the confusion aspect of the ability.
System: Make eye contact and engage in simple conversation with the victim. Activating this power takes one full turn and a Manipulation + Intimidation roll (resisted by the target's Perception + Selt-Control/Instinct). A botch on this roll causes the Malkavian to enter the desired state for his target for a duration determined by the Storyteller. A failure renders the target immune to the character's Dementation powers for the rest of the scene. Success causes the target to enter rhe confused state for a duration listed as follows:
| Successess | Duration |
| 1 success | One turn |
| 2 successes | One hour |
| 3 successes | One night |
| 4 successes | One week |
| 5 successes | One month |
A victim afflicted with fury immediately enters a state akin to frenzy — though many of those Cainites who have been so targeted say that their Beasts are not truly unleashed in the way that a true frenzy does. The fury this power creates lasts just for one full day, unlike the confusion option. A victim driven to catatonia collapses and is not able to take any useful action for a full day.
••••• Howling Lunacy
This ability turns its victims temporarily insane. Not merely quirky or eccentric — thoroughly, gibbering, barking mad. The user of the power chooses what sorts of madness afflict the target, but he has relatively little control over the insanity's duration. The end of that duration represents the end of the active phase of lunacy, wherein the target is entirely out of control of his actions and has lost his mind. However, from that point onward, the target may suffer flashbacks of this time when he is under great stress or during nights of the full moon, when the touch of the heavens is at its greatest.
System: The character must gain his target's undivided attention for a full turn. The player then rolls Manipulation + Intimidation against a difficulty of the victim's Willpower. On a botch, the vampire's own derangements fade for a few minutes, just long enough for him to realize precisely how badly deranged he really is — the shock and horror of this drags his madness back to the forefront. A failure means that he cannot use Dementation on this target for the remainder of the scene. Success means that he can inflict five derangements of his choice on the target for a length of time determined by the chart that follows. These derangements should make sense as a group even if only through dream-logic. While the player may choose a general effect, the precise game-mechanics derangements are up to the Storyteller to decide.
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One turn |
| 2 successes | One night |
| 3 successes | One week |
| 4 successes | One month |
| 5 successes | One year |
•••••• Kiss of the Moon
The effects of this ability are not as dramatic as Howling Lunacy, but unlike that power, Kiss of the Moon is permanent. The vampire chooses a pair of related disorders and, after a few moments' conversation with the target, she passes them on to that poor soul. These afflictions haunt the victim for the rest of his existence. Rumors persist that the user of this power can withdraw the insanity it brings at will, but few Malkavians are willing to stop the flow of enlightenment that such madness brings, and almost no Cainites outside of Malkav's get are talented enough with Deinentation to attempt such a thing.
System: Make a resisted roll with your character's Manipulation + Empathy (difficulty 6); the target resists with her current Willpower (difficulty 6). It you achieve at least two net successes, you may select two derangements (or describe two, if you have particular ideas that the Storyteller approves) and apply them to the target. The target cannot eliminate these derangements, but he may fight them as he would any other derangement. The Storyreller may allow you to withdraw derangements that you create with Kiss of the Moon, but he will undoubtedly require an excellent reason for doing so. Even then, the Curse of Malkav may be irreversible. Note that derangements created with Kiss of the Moon do suffice to allow the target to learn Dementation.
Scions, vampires who follow the Road of Kings, teach that Cainites were made to lead, that their orders demand obedience by unholy right. There is no better manifestation of this belief than the Discipline of Dominate. With this gift, a vampire may impose her will on another, compelling her to obey commands or even rewriting her memory. Where Malkav's gift of Dementation turns its victims minds inside out, the high-blooded ability of Dominate forces the weak of will to submit to the strong.
Dominate is not always an easy power to use, however, since it requires both eye contact and speech for most of its applications. Clear gesturing (holding up a hand for "Stop!") can work for the simplest commands, but anything more complex requires verbal communication. Unless the victim has already become a will-less thrall, eye contact is an absolute requirement and the most limiting, since it means commands can be imposed on only one person at a time. Beyond these limitations, most targets can be made to submit to the will of a Cainite skilled in Dominate. The major exception is subject of more powerful blood. Any vampire of lower generarion than the user is totally immune to her uses of Dominate. Therefore, Scion thinkers say, this power cannot be used to upset the right hierarchy of blood among the Damned.
There are a few other limits to the uses of Dominate, but they occur much more rarely. Stories claim that some mortals blessed by God are immune to the breaking of their wills — their fear of the Lord is greater than any other subjugation. It is also easier to force a victim to act in a way close to her true self than to make her reject her nature. In game terms, efforts to Dominate a character into doing something in line with her Nature (make a Barbarian strike someone, make a Defender stand guard) enjoy a -1 difficulty bonus. Efforts to Dominate someone into doing something utterly against her Nature (making a Caretaker commit murder) suffer a +1 difficulty penalty.
Finally, it is always possible for the Cainite to taint the subject's will himself. Dominate is best used with precision, and careless applications can unnecessarily arouse the defenses of the immortal (or Damned) soul. Whenever a player botches a Dominate roll, that subject becomes immune to her character's Dominate efforts for the rest of the story (and shakes off any of her existing effects).
The Lasombra and Ventrue are the ancient masters of this Discipline, but they do teach it to others on the Road of Kings. Most accept the story that the power reflects the curse of God in that it erodes the basis of friendship or true intimacy. Such is the price of leadership, however, and they pay it gladly. The Tremere, sorcerous upstarts in the Cainite world, also have an affinity for Dominate, said to he a corruption of the mind magics they once wielded in their breathing days.
• Observance of the Spoken Word
The most basic ability of the Discipline of Dominate is to give a one-word command which must be obeyed. The Cainite must make eye contact with his victim and speak in a language that the victim can comprehend. To ensure instant compliance, the command must be clear and unambiguous: flee, dismount, enter, silence. If the command is unclear, the subject might act slowly, ineptly or not at all. Commands that require the subject to act over a sustained period of time hold force until the subject removes herself from the commanding Cainite's influence, or until the end of the scene. Therefore, a subject commanded to flee will do so until she is well out of the dominating vampire's sight, while a subject commanded to be silent will not speak for rhe remainder of the scene, unless a countermanding order is given.
The single-word command need not stand alone. A Cainite who wishes to camouflage his orders in polite conversation may do so, as long as he makes eye contact as he utters the command word.
System: The player makes a Manipulation + Intimidation roll with a difficulty equal to the target's Willpower. Additional successes improve the subject's response time.
•• Murmur of the False Will
Murmur of the False Will is more than simply an extension of the Observance of the Spoken Word, though it may be used as such. In this case, clearly worded instructions are given to the target, who must immediately obey, Orders may also be given to be carried out at another specified time — "at moonset" or "next spring" — or in response to a specific event — "when next you attend the voivode" or "when you next hear the phrase, 'Sleep well, my lady.'" The clarity of the orders affects the subject's alacrity and skill in carrying them out. Eye contact must be maintained continuously between the dominator and his subject when the orders are given; this is not an ability that can be used politely. The instructions will be carried out at any length, but a wise Cainite knows that extended and detailed commands are more likely to confuse the subject or introduce unforeseen elements into the path of events.
A much more subtle use of this ability simply imposes an idea or concept on the victim's mind — "You are a brave warrior" or "Your lord's wife is a very handsome woman." The subject includes this idea in his or her routine activities, acting on it as opportunity presents and according to his or her Nature. Again, eye contact must be maintained throughout the implanting of the idea, but one may do so more subtly than by giving a string of precise instructions.
The commanding Cainite may impose only one set of instructions or insinuated idea on a subject at any given time. Imposing a new command or concept aborts the previous instructions, no matter how incomplete, or negates the imposed idea. In many cases, replacing one concept with another or with a command is the only way to be rid of it — once subject to this power, most victims are never completely free-willed again. Another Cainite who wishes to command the same subject may do so, but only a Cainite of a generation equal to or lower than that of the first dominator can impose conflicting commands or ideas.
Commands given using this power may not force the subject to directly harm herself. Neither commands nor implanted ideas can force the subject to act contrary to her Nature.
System: The player makes a Manipulation + Leadership roll with a difficulty equal to the target's Willpower. The number of successes determines how well the suggestion is implanted. At fewer than three successes, the subject does not do anything she finds too strange (riding a horse naked through the streets of town, for instance), but she performs instructions or parts of instructions that seem reasonable. With four successes, the subject carries out orders completely unless doing so greatly endangers her. (Engaging in fisticuffs with unarmed opponents can be expected, for example, but punching an armored knight cannot.) At five successes, the subject obeys nearly any command.
To countermand or contradict another's orders, the character must be of equal or lower generation than the original dominator, and the player must roll more successes on a Manipulation + Intimidation roll than the first dominator tallied with Manipulation + Leadership. The commands or ideas cannot simply be removed. Commands must be replaced with new commands, or the old idea must be replaced with a new one.
••• Reveler's Memory
This terrifying ability allows the (Cainite to remove or re-create the subject's memories. Minor erasures and alterations can be made to remove all remembrance of a chance meeting or of a singular encounter such as feeding. More invasive work is required to remove all traces of a planned meeting, and more subtle work is necessary to alter the details of just one encounter if the subject is familiar with the manipulating Cainite. At the greatest extreme, the vampire may erase and reconstruct his victim's memories from the very beginning, crafting a person with the virtues and peccadilloes he requires.
| Successes | Effectiveness |
| 1 success | Memory loss lasts a day. |
| 2 successes | May remove, but not alter memory. |
| 3 successes | May make slight alterations to memory. |
| 4 successes | May alter or remove entire scene from subject's memory. |
| 5 successes | Whole periods of subject's life may be reconstructed. |
Fortunately for the victim, memory is a wonderfully elastic thing. Even the most skilled manipulator of minds may not be able to remove all traces of an offending memory. Those with less skill must be content with temporarily misplacing the subject's memories or making minor alterations to them. A feeding might be altered in the subject's memories to a wild animal attack, and the man encountered on a dark street may be remembered to have snowy white hair rather than dirty brown.
Memories lost to this power may flood back to the victim when she is cued, such as by a familiar face or an odor from childhood. They may also drift, piecemeal, to the surface of her dreams. A Cainite with the ability to alter memory is capable of recognizing tampering in the minds of others, and he may also he capable ot restoring the lost memories. Unfortunately, the vampire cannot tell when his own memories have been altered, nor can he restore his own lost memories.
System: Roll Wits + Subterfuge with a difficulty of the target's Willpower, then consult the following table to determine how deeply the target's memory can he affected.
To attempt to recover removed memories or detect created memories, the character must possess nominate at a level equal to or grearer than the vampire who tampered with the target's memory. Unlike with Murmur of the False Will, the vampire can be of higher generation than the original dominator and still undo her work as long as his level of Dominate is high enough. The player must gain more successes on a Wits + Subterfuge roll with a difficulty equal to the Willpower of the tampering vampire.
The Storyteller's discretion must be used to determine if and when removed or altered memories return on their own. As a general guideline, the subtler the changes are, the more likely the alteration or deletion is to remain, while incautious and dramatic changes will almost always come undone, even if it takes hundreds of years.
•••• Lure of Subtle Whispers
A vampire skilled in Dominate comes to consider his retainers and other dominated subjects as among his most prized possessions. Over time, this ability allows the Cainite to break in and mold a subject's will like a leather glove, using constant manipulation and insidious temptations to sap her spirit. After weeks or months of torture, the result is a subject who is unable to further resist the vampire's Dominate, obeying him even to the exclusion of other supernatural influences. The Cainite must pay a price for this unquestioning servitude, though. His servants are passionless and unimaginative, showing no initiative on their own behalf - or their master's. Capable only of following orders, they are like the walking dead.
System: The player rolls Charisma + Leadership with a difficulty of the target's Willpower. Completely conditioning a subject requires an extended action, and the player may attempt only one roll per night. The Storyteller determines in secret the number of successes required to break the subject's will (typically between five to 10 times the subject's Self-Control). The player can never be certain he has achieved success based simply on die rolls; the Cainite must judge his degree of control from interactions with his victim. A botch during this process eliminates all accumulated successes and generally causes the would-be subject to act out against the vampire according to her nature — responses ranging from a desperate attack to a quiet report to church authorities are possible.
Once the subject's will is broken, she becomes so thoroughly Dominated that the Cainite does not have to make eye contact or be physically present to enforce her will. (The Auspex power Sreal Secrets can be used to telepathically give orders to subjects, and even a mundane item like a letter affixed with the Cainite's seal very likely invokes the conditioned response.) Additionally, the difficulty for other Cainites or supernatural beings to dominate the conditioned servant increases by two, to a maximum of 10.
Orders must perhaps be even clearer and more carefully worded than before, since the subject lacks the initiative to puzzle out confusing commands. When the vampire gives an order by any method, the player must make the appropriate command roll. Both success and failure give a positive result; only a botch indicates an anomalous failure to impose the vampire's will. During this break in control, the subject may make a Self Control roll with a difficulty of the controlling Cainite's Willpower. Success allows the victim enough freedom to remove herself from the vampire's power by suicide if the means are available.
The effects of this level of Dominate on the subject's psyche are relatively easy to notice. Any Cainite (or knowledgeable mortal for that matter) has a chance to notice the telltale signs during a brief meeting, such as an audience with the viscount or transaction with a merchant. The player rolls Wits + Empathy with a difficulty of 7. During extended interaction, such as shipboard or living under the same roof, anyone familiar with the effects of Dominate cannot fail to notice the subject's condition, although it will not he obvious who is responsible.
••••• Vessel
This power allows the Cainite to sever the soul of his subject from her body and mind. By displacing the victim's soul with his own corrupt spirit, the vampire takes complete control and may use the vessel's body as if it were his own. The Cainite must make eye contact with his intended victim even if she is conditioned through the Lure of Subtle Whispers, but such an unfortunate soul has even less chance to resist than a free-willed mortal. Once the psychic struggle commences, the victim cannot simply look away, Only two outcomes are possible, complete domination or utter (if brief) freedom.
While this power is in use, the vessel is only dimly aware of the actions that her body takes, and her memories afterward have the quality of nightmares. The Cainite's body lies as if in torpor, insensate and defenseless. Vampires cannot possess each other using this power. Only a complete blood oath can begin to compare with the level of control the dominating Cainite gains.
System: The target vessel must be prepared by completely stripping away her will to resist. The player spends a Willpower point, then rolls (Charisma + Intimidation, while the target resists with Willpower (difficulty 7 for both). For each net success, the vampire strips away a point of temporary Willpower from his victim. Ties or successful resistance by the victim only prolongs the struggle. The victim will be free only it her attacker botches his control attempt (a botch renders her immune to Dominate attempts of any kind from the attacking vampire for the remainder of the story).
Once the vessel is bereft of temporary Willpower, the vampire may move his mind into her. The player rolls Manipulation + Intimidation with a difficulty of 7 to determine how much of his Supernatural might he can infuse into the mortal shell. In a manner similar to the Animalism power Ride the Wild Mind, multiple successes allow the Cainite to use some mental Disciplines, noted on the following chart (blood required by these these Disciplines is spent from the Cainite's own body, not the vessel's).
The vampire may travel as far from his body as his vessel can manage. If he leaves the vessel, either hy choice or by force, his spirit returns to his physical form instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them. The Cainite may also venture out during the day in his mortal vessel, but he must struggle ro remain awake just as he would in his own body. The vampire will leave the vessel if he fails to remain awake or is supernaturally exorcised.
| Successes | Result |
| 1 success | Cannot use Disciplines (the vampire's non-Physical Attributes, Abilities and Virtues carry over, however) |
| 2 successes | Can use Auspex |
| 3 successes | Can also use Dominate, Presence |
| 4 successes | Can also use Chimerstry, Dementation |
| 5 successes | Can also use Mortis, Thaumaturgy |
The Cainite keenly experiences both the vessel's pleasure and pain. The link between his body and spirit is strong enough that the vampire actually suffers any damage applied to the vessel's body (although the vampire can resist this damage with a soak roll). The only thing that can sever the link between the Cainite and his rightful body is the sudden death of the vessel, before the Cainite has a chance to remove his spirit from the newly deceased vessel. It this should happen, the character falls immediately into torpor. Many Cainites suspect that the sudden ferocity of the deceased soul's passage to either Heaven or Hell rips the Cainite's spirit loose from its corrupt moorings, leaving it adrift on the astral plane to find its way back to its body.
The Cainite can remain in his vessel if his own body is destroyed, but he cannot survive this way for long. At each sunrise, the player must make a Courage roll (difficulty 8) or be expelled from the morral body. If expelled, his spirit is permanently lost in the astral plane. If the vessel is Embraced, the vampire's spirit is immediately expelled and lost without recourse.
•••••• Fealty
Fealty allows the Cainite to ensure the loyalty of those who voluntarily swear oaths or allegiance to him. Whenever a mortal or Cainite makes a free oath to a vampire who then uses Fealty, the subject is compelled to fulfill the oath to the best of her ability. The subject cannot later change her mind or take back her words, and false intentions or subterfuge are swept aside by the power of the Fealty invocation. The subject may he unable to resist upholding the oath, but she may act against the vampire in any matter not covered by the oath.
Invoking this power is a dramatic display. The Cainite must make a statement of affirmation (such as, "I accept your oath," or, "May your word be as law to you,"), and power tangibly surges between the vampire and the oath-taker. None witnessing it can have any doubt that, somehow, the oath has been supernaturally enforced. (Savvy Cainites will invoke rhe power of God, while suspicious onlookers may infer darker powers at work.)
System: The player rolls (Charisma + Leadership wirh a difficulty ot the target's Willpower. The number of successes determines the duration of the Fealty oath, as follows:
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One week |
| 2 successes | One month |
| 3 successes | One year |
| 4 successes | 10 years |
| 5 successes | 100 years |
All vampires are more resistant to damage than mortals. Cappadocians and Tremere - the only clans who really study such things - believe that blood in the vessels of a human is what renders them so vulnerable to injury. The rapid loss of blood is very dangerous to them. By contrast, a Cainite has nearly absolute control over his blood, so he does not risk injury nearly as easily.
The vampire with Fortitude, however, gains immense resistance to damage, and even smoe measure of protection against those banes of a vampire's existence: Sunlight, fire, and supernatural attacks. This ability is most commonly seen among the Cappadocians, who see it as a reflection of their affinity with the corpse, the Ventrue, (re)born for the battlefield, and the Ravnos and Gangrel, who risk the sun's rays more often than most Cainites.
Fortitude is a reflection of God's curse on Cainites, for it breeds overconfidence and arrogance in its users. Legends speak of Methuselahs whose gifts of Fortitude vanished at the moment of their undoing, leaving them to the mercies of ravenous childer or the piercing sun.
System: This Discipline grants the user increased protection against all forms of physical damgage. Eat dot of Fortitude adds one to the user's dice pool to soak bashing and lethal damage. Unlike normal Cainites - who cannot soak sunlight or other aggravated damage at all - Fortitude users can roll Stamina + Fortitude to soak damage from sunlight and fire. They roll Fortitude alone to soak other forms of aggravated damage, such as that imposed by holy ground or the claws of Lupines.
Fortitude reinforces the vampire's body in all ways. It helps soak any damage that results in injury.
Mortis has it's own page.
Obfuscate allows its user to hide or otherwise conceal his identity. Often one can do so in plain sight, by tooling the minds of those around him into believing that he is not present. Apprentices in this art must remain motionless and cloaked in shadow to hide; masters can conceal a small crowd in the middle of a busy street. Those affected by this Discipline do technically still see the user, but they do not notice that they see him, and they cannot find him. Accordingly, dumb animals are only misdirected by Obfuscate. The power's user makes them uneasy even if he is entirely hidden from them.
Obfuscate is one of the oldest Disciplines known to Cainites. It is said that this ability allowed members of the third generation to hide from their sires until the time was right to strike at them. Various legends suggest that either Caine himself or Lilith taught rhe Discipline to the Nosferatu Antediluvian, to better hide his visage, but the Children of Haqim insist that it was their sire who refined his own hunting and stalking talents to this supernatural level.
Those vampires who use Auspex are sometimes unaffected by Obfuscate. Although the power tries to reach rhrough such a character's senses and fool her mind, the rarefied senses of the Auspex-user prod the target into realizing that the Obfuscate-user is not as he seems. Generally speaking, a characrer with more dots in Auspex than the user has in Obfuscate recognizes that there is something wrong. A Perception + Alertness roll (difficulty 7) pierces any illusion the character has summoned up. A Cainite with fewer dots in Auspex, however, is no risk to the obfuscated vampire. In the event that another character has as many dots in Auspex as the vampire has in Obfuscate, the players make a resisted test, both using a difficulty of 7. The obfuscated vampire's player rolls Manipulation + Subterfuge, and the Auspex-user's player rolls Perception + Subterfuge.
Obfuscate is particularly valuable to those who wish to go about their daily business without being noticed. While spies and thieves are sure to get a lot of use out of it, a vampiric monk who must enter and leave his monastery unnoticed or a courtier who wishes to listen in secret to conversations at court is sure to revel in the power this Discipline gives. Obfuscate is part of Caine's curse on the third generation, for it is said that Caine wanted to blot his grandchilder from the Earth. Obfuscate does the next best thing, from that perspective. Those who use Obfuscate regularly find themselves divorced from society around them, only observing and never participating in ordinary social interactions.
• Cloak of Shadows
With the aid of shadows and concealment, the Cainite using Cloak of Shadows can hide his presence from all those nearby. He deftly eases himself out ot the way of mundane senses, and thus remains unnoticed until he moves, makes a sound or does something else to call attention to himself. He must remain under cover during this time. However, should someone suspect his presence in a particular place, sustained investigation and examination reveals him.
System: No roll is required as long as the character acts as described. An observer wirh an Auspex rating greater than the vampire's Obfuscate rating is not fooled by Cloak of Shadows.
•• Unseen Presence
Unseen Presence allows the Cainite to move around and remain under a degree of concealment. Mortals and Cainites who are restricted to ordinary senses simply ignore the character's presence, unconsciously averting their gaze and paying more attention to the surrounding landscape than the character. Such victims even skirt around the character without realizing that they are doing so. They might notice that they had done so only after going back and looking at their own tracks. The character must he careful not to call attention to himself while using this power. A clumsy action of a loud noise alerts those nearby to the Cainite's presence, and any benefit provided by Unseen Presence is at least momentarily lost.
System: As with Cloak of Shadows, no roll is immediately necessary to activate this power as long as the character starts off in a concealed place. Using the power while moving stealthily and subtly requires no roll either, but circumstances may arise that require particular Stealth. In such a case, the player rolls Wirs + Stealth against a difficulty assigned by rhe Storyteller (typically 7). Success allows the character to remain concealed. Examples of such circumstances include walking through a noisy area (a squeaky wooden floor or leaf-covered forest floor) or speaking quietly to someone nearby without being noticed by others. Taking drastic or showy action immediately draws the attention of bystanders, who snap out of the minor trance this power puts them in. Their players make a Wits + Alertness roll (difficulty 7) to recall the character's actions while the trance lasted.
••• Mask of a Thousand Faces
While using this ability, the Cainite remains fully visible but changes his appearance to fit a particular image. The character may choose to invent an image of his own devising or alter himself to look like a particular individual. The vampire's appearance does not really change — this isn't the Tzimisce Discipline of Vicissitude — but rather, a temporary vision is superimposed over the character's face and body.
System: The player rolls Manipulation + Performance (ditticulty 7). See the following chart for the level of change the character can then make to her appearance. Bonuses to Appearance are listed, but these cannot raise the Attribute above the character's generation maximum. If the player rolls enough successes, the character can reduce her Appearance to O (taking on the aspect of a leper, for example).
The number of successes needed to masquerade as someone else depends on the differences between the vampire and the person she is emulating. Doing so also has its own set of risks, however. Regardless of the vampire's new appearance and voice, she is likely to confuse that person's acquaintances or give away her ruse it she cannot adequately pretend to be the other person. Plenty of Subterfuge and Performance rolls are sure to be ncccssary in this case.
| Successes | Limit |
| Botch | A hideous transformation into a Nosferatu-like monster or worse. |
| Failure | No change. |
| 1 success | Same height and weight, minor alterations to your image; maximum of +1 or -2 Appearance. |
| 2 successes | Substantially different looks; acquaintances certainly would not recognize the character; maximum of +2 or -3 Appearance. |
| 3 successes | Look like pretty much anything that's still roughly the character's size; maximum of +3 or -4 Appearance. |
| 4 successes | Can change entirely, concealing voice, mannerisms and so on; maximum +4 or -5 Appearance. |
| 5 successes | Can appear to be a different gender, vastly different height/weight and so on: Drastic changes are possible; maximum + 5 or -6 Appearance. |
•••• Vanish from the Mind's Eye
A character with this ability can disappear from plain sight, even while he is in clear view of dozens of witnesses. Such a disappearance — if done skillfully - causes chaos, confusion and general mayhem in its wake, a state that is entirely conducive to the character's making a swift getaway.
Once he is out of sight, the characrer can use Unseen Presence (or other Obfuscate powers) to remain hidden or move around while concealed. He may even choose to turn around and launch a semi-surprise attack on enemies who may have been observing or surrounding him.
System: The player rolls Charisma + Stealth, and the difficulty number is equal to the highest Wits + Alertness to be found in the surrounding crowd. With three or fewer successes, the character does not disappear so much as become a ghostly and indistinct image; those who are particularly perceptive are still able to trace her activity. With four or more successes, the character vanishes completely, and any target with a lower Willpower than the player's number of successes forgets that the character was ever present. Vanish From the Mind's Eye does not have a fixed duration. It lasts only until the vampire can get out of sight (usually one or two turns).
Those who wish to track a ghostly semi-image of a character should roll Perception + Alertness (difficulty of the obfuscated character's Dexteriry + Obfuscate). If the pursuer succeeds, he can interact with the obfuscated vampire normally. If he fails, he suffers a +2 difficulty to any further interaction with her, whether socially or in combat.
The player of any character, friend or foe, who witnesses the vanishing should roll Wits + Courage (difficulty 5, or 9 if the witness is a mortal). Failure on this roll means that the witness must spend two full turns in in a daze, attempting to comprehend the violation of God's law and logic that has just taken place.
••••• Cloak the Gathering
This power, one of the supreme expressions of the Discipline of Obfuscate, can be used to extend other Obfuscate powers over a group of friendly individuals. Should any member of the protected gathering violate one of the rules of the individual power used to conceal the group, that individual (and that individual alone) loses the protection of Cloak the Gathering and the other powers used to hide the group.
System: You may conceal one additional character for every dot of Stealth you possess. You can grant any single Obfuscate power that you know to the entire group simultaneously by spending the appropriate blood or Willpower and rolling the necessary dice. As mentioned previously, if any individual in the group falters and violates one power's rules, that individual loses the protection of Cloak The Gathering. Only if the Cainite who initiated Cloak the Gathering falters does the entire group lose the power's concealment.
•••••• Soul Mask
Princes and ashen priests guarding their courts and cathedrals typically post as guards at least some Cainites with Soulsight (Auspex 2). The ability to see the spiritual halos of those coming to see the potentate are hard to overestimate. Although Soulsight is not a lie detector, it does identity ghouls, vampires, diablerists and the disturbed with great ease. Masters of Obfuscate, however, can walk past such surveillance without concern. A Methuselah may appear to he a simple whelp, a mortal or even to have no halo whatsoever.
System: The vampire with Soul Mask can project a halo that is different from the one that represents her actual condition or she may project no halo whatsoever. The vampire must burn blood to change her halo, in different quantities to effect different changes. Changing the halo's color (hence masking the underlying emotion) costs a single blood point. Changing its shade (to appear mortal or as a ghoul) costs two. Changing other characteristics (to display or hide magic use or diablerie, to suppress the halo altogether) costs three. The effect lasts for an entire scene, but the false halo can he dropped (or modified again through blood expenditure) at any time. Changing haloes requires an action and a moment for concentration, but is otherwise quite secure. Only if an observer has as many dots in Auspex as the character has in Obfuscate can he pierce the mask. In such a case, the observer's player rolls Perception + Subterfuge, opposed by the masked vampire's player, who rolls Manipulation + Subterfuge. If the observing vampire has more levels in Auspex than the masked character has in Obfuscate, he see through the mask automatically.
Characters without any real experience at Soulsight can only suppress their haloes rather than change them. Soul Mask has no effect on other forms of deception, and it cannot be used by Assamites to mask their clan weaknesses.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," says the Book of Genesis. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." God created the heavens and the earth before anything else. But before the accursed Sun, before Eden and well before Caine, there was darkness. It is this darkness that the eldest Lasombra revere, and this ancient, unknowable darkness whose depths they plumb with the Discipline of Obtenebration. With it, the Magisters can coax filaments of the shadowy void out into the physical world. Here those filaments can take on solid form and obey the commands of those who summoned them.
The source and inhabitants of the ancient darkness are unknown. Many Lasombra claim that the darkness predates God himself and is the home to a more powerful entity kept at bay only by the power of the Sun. In that, they see themselves reflected. Many Lasombra strive to master this ancient being and its minions. Many of those who fail to fully master the shadow find themselves haunted by phantoms in the darkness. Orher Lasombra suggest that the darkness comes from a corner of Hell, cut off from the shining firmament of Heaven or from some pre-Christian pagan underworld. The most common name given to the darkness is Ahriman, the dark half of Zoro-astrian dualism — a faith that has had a long association with the Lasombra, most recently as one of the spiritual underpinnings of the Cainite Heresy.
Obtenebration frightens ordinary mortal crearures and animals. Most Cainite scholars believe that this is because Obtenebration is part of God's curse on Caine. By gaining power through calling forth the forces of Hell, or whatever the outer darkness represents, the character pulls himself further from the gaze of God and closer to eternal damnation. Characters with a mystical bent, philosophers and those who consider themselves to be damned souls favor Obtenebration.
• Shadow Play
This relatively simple ability gives the Lasombra conrrol over local ambient shadows. It does little to allow her to conjure primordial shadow from the Abyss, as later Obtenebration powers do, but the power still provides plenty of social advantage. The Lasombra can use Shadow Play to manipulate a social circumstance to her advantage, placing shadows in advantageous locations throughout a room, or giving herself a more stern and imposing visage. Alternatively, the Lasombra can use the local shadows to hide a bit more stealthily.
System: The player spends one blood point as the character exerts her will. For the remainder of the scene, the player can add one die to Intimidation and Stealth dice pools as the vampire moves shadows around to suit her needs. The vampire can also accomplish minor feats ot shadowplay, such as moving a person's shadow here and there, or leaving a looming shadow over another Cainite's hiding place in order to fool him into thinking he's about to be discovered. She can also manipulate ambient shadow in a way to help her see through it, reducing a darkness-related penalty by her Obtenebration rating (to a minimum ot zero, of course). No die roll is required for these abilities, but the player must still spend blood.
Mortals are often quite disturbed by use of this power, and their players must make Courage rolls (difficulty 7) when they see Shadow Play used. Failure means the mortal suffers a one-die penalty to Social dice pools for the remainder of the scene.
•• Nocturne
The Lasombra with this ability can create a cloud of unnatural darkness that is strong enough to completely obscure light and even muffle sound. Those who spend time inside the darkness are often terrified by the experience, as all senses are equally twisted and suppressed by the power. Victims lose their sense of direction and place, and they cannot defend themselves against attack from without.
Nocturne does not extinguish fire within its radius, but it does suppress the fire's light such that it cannot be seen even from an inch away. The Lasombra must concentrate on Nocturne throughout its manifestation, or it fades away almost at once. She can move the cloud as she concentrates, but doing so is not easy.
System: The player rolls Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 7). If he succeeds, the vampire creates a cloud of inky darkness some 10 feet in diameter (though its shape is unstable, and it undulates and writhes over time). Additional successes can double the cloud's radius, at the vampire's discretion. He can summon up the cloud up to 50 yards away and does not have to have line of sight to the cloud in order to do so (though creating a cloud he cannot see requires a hlood point to be spent and brings the power's ditticulty to 9).
All Perception dice pools drop by live within the cloud, unless the victim has a supernatural way to see through darkness — such as Witness of Darkness (Protean 1) or Heightened Senses (Auspex 1) — in which case dice pools drop by only two. Regardless of sensory abilities, all non-sensory actions are at +2 difficulty, and the cold dark leaches away at the life essence of those within it, reducing all Stamina-based dice pools by two.
Mortals and animals wrapped in Nocturne do not find the experience pleasant in the least. Their players must make Courage (or Willpower, for animals) rolls much as with Shadow Play, with similar consequences for failure.
••• Arms of Abriman
As the Lasombra masters his control over the inky, primordial blackness, he turns the darkness into a weapon. He can draw tentacles from shadowed reaches and use them to attack enemies nearby. In the traditional lore of the clan, the practitioner is literally calling out to the dark half to make itself manifest and grasp at its victims.
System: The players spends one blood point and rolls Manipulation + Melee (difficulty 7). Every success creates one tentacle, six feet long with Strength and Dexterity equal to the character's Ohtenebration trait. The player may spend additional blood points to increase the Strength or Dexterity of a single tentacle by one per blood point, or increase its length by six feet per blood point. Each tentacle has four health levels and does not face wound penalties. It soaks damage using the character's Stamina + Fortitude total, and it has even worse vulnerabilities to fire and sunlight than a Cainite would have. It cannot soak aggravated damage of any kind.
The tentacles can undertake mundane tasks such as lifting objects, and they can make simple bludgeoning attacks. They use Dexterity to attack and do Strength bashing damage. Alternatively, they may attempt to grapple a foe, again using Dexterity to hit and constricting for Strength + 1 levels ot bashing damage if they succeed. The tentacles do not all have to come from the same source as long as all sources are within about 20 yards of the vampire. Controlling them does not require exclusive concentration. The Magister can take ordinary acrions while controlling the Arms of Ahriman, at no penalty as long as her orders to the arms are straightforward. ("Attack" is fine; "Lift the key from the guard's belt" is not.) More complex actions require the vampire's attention.
•••• Nightshades
The Lasombra may create illusions crafted from shadow, perhaps summoning dark spirits or reflections of Ahriman. Although the images are only made of inky blackness, and therefore would not be realisric in the light of day, vampires rarely work in such environments anyway, so they can easily craft illusions that are quite believable under a night sky. The illusions are typically human-sized and shaped, but with sufficient will and skill, one might make a larger illusion or a whirling nightmare of shadows and chaos.
System: The player rolls Wits + Occult (difficulty 7). Each success lets the vampire create one human-sized illusion; multiple successes can be combined to make a single illusion that is much larger than human. Victims of these illusions must make Perception + Alertness rolls (difficulty 9) to deduce that they are not real.
The vampire can also use Nightshades to fill an area with a cloud of shadowy madness, a reflection of the dark half itself. The players of those in the area who don't have Obtenebration reduce their Initiative scores by three and take a two-die penalty to all dice pools. The vampire can fill an area up to 10 yards in diameter per success with Nightshades in this fashion.
••••• Tenebrous Avatar
The Cainite using this power can transform her body into an inhuman shadow. The form this living shadow takes depends more on the character's inner nature than on her mastery of Obtenebration. For some, the form may be undulating and serpentine, while it might be a formless cloud for others. Still orhers might take an ominous and imposing monolithic shape. While assuming the Tenebrous Avatar form, the Lasombra is virtually immune to harm, and she can pass through slight cracks and very small openings hy extruding her shadow essence to the necessary thickness.
The touch of the Tenebrous Avatar is disconcerting to mortals, and taking on the shape brings the sensation of being in the grasp of a cold and inhuman otherworldly being. Lasombra lore talks of this power as a step toward becoming Ahriman itself, a mixed blessing indeed. The character can also see through even the deepest blackness while in Tenebrous Avatar form.
System: The player spends three blood points while the character takes three turns to fully transform. This transformation time can be reduced by one turn for each additional blood spent, but it always takes at least one full turn. While she is a Tenebrous Avatar, the character is immune to physical damage, but she cannot physically attack others. The most she can get away with is to wrap a victim in inky blackness, which is frightening enough to most beings to require a Courage roll to avoid panic. The character can, however, summon Arms of Ahriman from her form and the surrounding shadows, but she must do so separately.
Your character is still vulnerable to fire and sunlight in this form, and she is even more vulnerable to them psychologically, as the darkness of which she is now made recoils insanely from its opposite force. Add one to the difficulty of Rotschreck rolls when exposed to fire or sunlight in Tenebrous Avatar form.
•••••• Walk the Abyss
Masters of Obtenebration can enter a patch of darkness that is large enough to admit them and step through an otherworldly space to emerge in another shadow roughly within eyesight of the first. The abyss between shadows is a twisted and unholy place, described by some as Ahriman itself, as its resting place or as a circle of Hell. Regardless, it exists such that any two shadows within 25 yards or so are just a step apart. This also means that the Cainite can lean into one shadow, using this power, and grab someone or something that is within arm's reach of a remote shadow to pull it to her location.
System: The player should pick an exit point and check with the Storyteller to ensure that both your entry and exit shadows are large enough to admit the character (they must he at least roughly human-sized). If the Storyteller allows it, the player rolls Intelligence + Stealth (difficulty 7) for the Lasombra to step through shadow successfully. It instead the vampire intends to grab something near the distant shadow, the player rolls Intelligence + Brawl (difficulty 7). One success is enough to grab the target, and two are necessary to pull it through the darkness. A failure on this roll indicates that the vampire cannot reach the target; a botch means that something either comes out of the shadow or pulls the character in.
The vampire can Walk the Abyss between shadows separated by a maximum of five yards times his Intelligence + Stealth total. The player must also make a Courage roll (as must any passengers). The difficulty is 5 for anyone with Obtenebration, and 7 otherwise. Failure indicates panicked collapse or Rotschreck upon coming through the shadow. A botch on this Courage roll by the player leads to her character panicking to such an extent as to become lost in the Abyss. The player must make another Intelligence + Stealth roll to reopen a gateway. The Storyteller is free ro determine just how far the character has traveled and how long she has been in the Abyss. Disappearances of several years are not unknown.
Every Cainite has the instinctual ability to increase her strength by burning blood, giving herself the capacity for feats that mortals can only dream of. The Discipline of Potence compounds the benefits of vampiric strength, tapping otherworldly reserves of power to allow for truly astounding displays of might.
A vampire with high levels of Potence can easily lift a horse or cow, break forged chains or crush a mortal's bones to powder with a few blows. Dark whispers also suggest that the unholy might granted by this Discipline gives its bearer an advantage in the struggle for a vampire's soul that comes at the end of diablerie.
There is no doubt that Potence is one of the most effective combat Disciplines. The clans that favor it (the Brujah, Nosferatu, and Lasombra) certainly make the most of its benefits int hat arena, but great strength also provides an advantage when performing hard labor or when physicallyt rapped. It is also useful for impressing mortals, and it is generally the first Discipline a ghoul learns. Potence is a reflection of God's curse on Caine and his ilk because it removes a Cainite's ability to be gentle. The entire world becomes fragile and easily broken in the hands of a particularly potent Cainite.
System: Potence grants one automatic success per point on all tests of Strength. This includes feats of strength and lifting tests as well as damage rolls in melee and brawling combat. The player still rolls the character's full strength dice pool for these tests, then adds her Potence rating in successes after the dice have been tallied. Potence successes do count in diablerie.
A character using Presence becomes supernaturally attractive and charismatic. She can draw others to her side with a smile and sway the emotions of large crowds with just a few words. She can incite all varieties of emotion in her victims.
The Toreador, Ventrue, Brujah and Followers of Set favor Presence, and each of them have different uses for it. Many Toreador use Presence to better evoke a particular set of emotions in those who witness their artwork or performances. The Ventrue evoke a majestic air and cow their subjects easily with this ability. The Brujah often evoke the righteous spirit of their listeners, swaying them to whatever cause the Zealot espouses, be it the cause of a deposed king or a new crusade. Setites prefer to use Presence in more intimate surroundings, coaxing their victims this way and that and driving the victims to give way to their baser urges. However, this Discipline is a common one in Cainite circles. Knights can use it to drive their footmen inro a killing rage before battle, peasants can garb themselves in the haughty attitude of the wealthy without suspicion, and sea captains can easily cow a rowdy crew far from shore.
Unlike Dominate, Presence does not turn its victims into mindless automatons. Victims of Presence might feel differently toward the power's user, but they retain the ability to think and act on their own. This aspect ot Presence can be very useful — a pawn might come up with a useful solution to a problem that the character might not have seen. It can also be problematic, though. Pawns are remarkable for their ability to surprise their beloved with expressions of affection at the worst possible time. Targets of Presence do not leap to obey spoken commands, as they do with Dominate. They need to he persuaded that a particular course of action is the best one for them. Doing so is rarely difficult, but it is not automatic by any means.
• Awe
Awe is an active use of the subtle charisma that flows from all characters with Presence. The vampire concentrates for a second and swells in the mind's eye of all those around her. There is no visual or physical symptom, but suddenly the vampire becomes the most fascinating thing in the vicinity. Depending on her overall mien, she may appear stunningly beautiful, simply fascinating or chillingly impressive. She is, quite literally, awesome.
Such an impressive character can sway a crowd with ease. Those of weak will bend over backward to please her, while those of stronger resolve still acknowledge her worth. Even dubious arguments and strange demands become workable since the very act of emanating from the character's dazzling lips gives them a legitimacy with which mere logic cannot compete. This effect is not absolute — no matter how awesome the vampire is, she'll never convince man or beast to leap into open flames — but with subtle application, it is very potent indeed.
System: The player rolls Charisma + Expression (difficulty 7). The number of successes determines how many people are affected, as noted on the following chart. If there are more people present than the character can influence, Awe affects those with lower Willpower scores first. The power stays in effect for the remainder of the scene or until the character chooses to drop it.
| Successes | Effectiveness |
| 1 success | One person |
| 2 successes | Two people |
| 3 successes | Six people |
| 4 successes | 20 people |
| 5 successes | Everyone in the vampire's immediate vicinity (an entire auditorium, a mob) |
Those affected by Awe can use Willpower points to overcome the effect, but they must continue spending Willpower every turn for as long as they remain in the same area as the vampire. As soon as an individual spends a number of Willpower points equal to the successes rolled, he shakes off the effect completely and remains unaffected for the rest of the scene.
•• Dread Gaze
While all Cainites can frighten others by physically revealing their true vampiric natures — baring claws and fangs, glaring with malevolence, hissing loudly with malice — this power focuses these elements to insanely terrifying levels. Dread Gaze engenders unbearable terror in its victims, stupefying them into madness, immobility or reckless flight. Even the most stalwart individual tails back from the vampire's horrific visage.
System: The player rolls Charisma + Intimidation (difficulty of the victim's Wits + Courage). Success indicates that the victim is cowed, while failure means the target is startled but not terrified by the sight. Three or more successes mean he runs away in abject fear. Victims who have nowhere to run claw at the walls, hoping to dig a way out rather than face the vampire. Moreover, each success subtracts one from the target's action dice pools next turn.
The character may attempt Dread Gaze once per turn, though she may also perform it as an extended action, adding her successes in order to subjugate the target completely. Once the target loses enough dice that he cannot perform any action, he's so shaken and tenified that he curls upon the ground and weeps. Failure during the extended action means the attempt falters. The character loses all of her collected successes and can start over next turn, while the victim may act normally again.
A botch at any time indicates that the target is not at all impressed — perhaps even finding the vampire's antics comical — and remains immune to any further uses of Presence by the character for the rest of the story.
••• Entrancement
This power reshapes the subject's emotions, instilling a sense of willing and just devotion toward the vampire. Therefore, the victim is inclined to heed the vampire's every desire, but does not become the addled drone of a victim of Dominate. Entrancement affects the heart, not the will. This power does make the servant somewhat less predictable, however. Independent thinkers (no matter how loyal) have a tendency to think for themselves. Vampiric lore is replete with entranced mortals doing foolish things to please their masters and ladies. It is also replete with stories of the entranced who become hateful once the effect wears off, which is one reason why such thralls are usually either kept close and bound by the blood oath or eliminated once they have served their purpose.
The vampire chooses the emotional flavor of the entrancement. Some may wish for their retainers to serve out of love, others out of the respect of vassal for lord, while others prefer the fear of slave for master.
System: Regardless of the emotional flavor, the player rolls Manipulation + Empathy (difticulty of the target's permanent Willpower), and the number of successes determines how long the subject is entranced (as per the following chart). The Storyteller will make the roll, since the character is never certain of the strength of her hold on the victim. The vampire may try to keep the subject under her thrall, but he can do so only after the initial effect wears off. Attempting this power while Entrancement is already in operation has no effect.
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One hour |
| 2 successes | One day |
| 3 successes | One week |
| 4 successes | One month |
| 5 successes | One year |
•••• Summon
This impressive power enables the vampire to call to herself any person whom she has ever met. This call can go to anyone, mortal or supernatural, across any distance within the physical world. The subject of the summons comes as fast as he is able, possibly without even knowing why. He knows intuitively how to find his summoner — even if the vampire moves to a new location, the subject redirects his own course as soon as he can. After all, he's coming to the vampire herself, not to some predetermined site.
Although this power allows the vampire to call someone across a staggering distance, it is most useful when one uses it locally. Summoning a knight to Britain from Outremer may be an impressive feat, but the knight must still obtain passage and undertake a journey of several months. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that the summoning dissipates at dawn. Unless the subject is trained to continue toward the vampire after the first call (which most ghouls and thralls are), the Cainite must summon each night until the target arrives. The subject also does not neglect his own well being. While he won't shirk physical violence to reach rhe vampire's side, he won't subject himself to suicidal situations.
System: The player rolls Charisma + Subterfuge. The base difficulty is 5, but the difficulty increases to 7 if the subject is virtually a stranger. If the character used Presence successfully on the target in the past, this difficulty drops to 4. It the attempt was unsuccessful, however, the difficulty is 8.
The number of successes indicates the subject's speed and attitude in responding:
| Successes | Result |
| 1 success | Subject approaches slowly and hesitantly. |
| 2 successes | Subject approaches reluctantly and is easily thwarted by obstacles. |
| 3 successes | Subject approaches with reasonable speed. |
| 4 successes | Suhject comes with haste, overcoming any obstacles in his way. |
| 5 successes | Subject rushes to the vampire, doing anything to get to her. |
••••• Majesty
With a thought, the vampire who has mastered the Discipline of Presence can make one, overwhelming fact clear: She was made to rule. A vampire using Majesty stands out even in a room full of vampiric princes and mortal kings. Centuries of power and lineage manifest in her mien. The beautiful becomes a new Dido, a seductive queen of a dark kingdom; the homely becomes a terrifying monster-king; the stoic becomes the harsh despot of a perfectly cold republic.
Those around a Cainite using Majesty can barely conceive of questioning her rule or demands. To do just that is a feat of great will. To actually raise arms against her is a feat of legend — or folly itself. Even those who manage somehow to suppress the urge to fall into lockstep are faced with the throngs of loyal subjects who are anxious to prove their worth by eliminating one who would dare show defiance.
Unlike most other uses of Presence, Majesty is a weapon best used sparingly. The feeling of abject submission it creates is likely to remain a sticking point with those who have experienced it. While toadies simply cower forever more and do their best to avoid any further humiliation, more willful subjects (including most Cainites) feel their resentment grow. And even the lowliest of the Damned, have a long time to plot vengeance.
System: No roll is required on the part of the vampire's player, but she must spend a Willpower point. A subject must make a Courage roll (difficulty of the character's Charisma + Intimidation) if he wishes to be rude or simply contrary to the vampire. Success allows the individual to act normally for the moment, although he feels the weight of the vampire's displeasure crushing down on him. A subject who fails the roll ahorts his intended action and even goes to absurd lengths to humble himself before the vampire, no matter who else is watching. The effects of Majesty last for one scene.
•••••• Passion
True masters of the Discipline of Presence can toy with the emotions of an entire crowd with but a glance. Passion allows a vampire to create violent, overwhelming sensations in another, subsuming her victim's rational mind under waves of emotion. The most stoic monk can become a sex-starved beast or a raging killer. The most hateful barbarian can be filled with true love. With something as simple as a few whispered words or a glance, the vampire changes the balance of humors in her target, creating the desired effect. The victim might not be aware of the arcane nature of his sudden emotional change, but he will likely realize that the vampire is the source — if only because his feelings seem focused on her.
System: The vampire can use Passion to create any powerful emotion, as long as it involves a loss of control: fear, lust, envy, love, hatred and anger are all viable candidates. When the vampire uses the power, the player must decide whether she is making herself the subject of the emotion or not. If so, it is the vampire herself whom the victim will love, hate, fear or desire. If not, the emotion is unfocused and much less controlled: Rage, paranoia or lust simply overwhelms the victim. The vampire cannot make a third party the subject of Passion.
To use the power, the vampire must initiate some form of communication with the subject, lx' it a glance, a subtle touch or a charming whisper. The player then rolls Manipulation + Expression (difficulty equal to the target's Willpower). Success indicates that the victim is overcome by the desired emotion for a scene. A botch renders the target immune to the vampire's Presence powers for the rest of the night and may have other effects at the Storyteller's discretion, such as making the target hate the vampire for the indefinite future.
The specific effects of Passion depend on the emotion created, but they are mostly up to the Storyteller and player to portray through roleplaying. Some of the most common uses function as follows:
| Successes | Targets Affected |
| One | Two people |
| Two | Four people |
| Three | Eight people |
| Four | 20 people |
| Five (or more) | Everyone in the vampire's immediate vicinity. |
- Love: The subject falls madly in love with the vampire. He reacts to her as if he were under the blood oath except that he feels affection and romantic love rather than feudal loyalties. Each success on the initial Passion roll also reduces all of the victim's dice pool by one die for Social rolls made against the vampire.
- Fear: The subject becomes terrified of the vampire or overcome by a generalized panic. The victim is immediately subject to Rotschteck (difficulty 5 to resist) and each success on the Passion roll adds to that difficulty. Mortals do not enter Rotschreck, but their players must roll Courage against a similar difficulty.
- Greed: The subject becomes completely focused on acquiring valuables, status and wealth — as fast as possible. The victim's player must make a Self-Control or Instinct roll (difficulty 5 + successes on Passion roll) to resist taking any action that will lead to immediate material gratification such as stealing an available jewel or agreeing to murder a baron.
- Rage: The subject's heart fills with rage, and she lashes out at anything nearby. Vampire victims immediately become subject to frenzy (with similar difficulties for fear). Players of mortal victims must roll Self-Control.
The vampire can also choose to target Passion at a single-subject or at a crowd. If she is targeting a crowd, the vampire must be able to communicate clearly to everyone within it, and the number of people who are affected depends on how many successes the player gets on her Manipulation + Expression roll, which has a flat difficulty of 7 for a crowd. The vampire cannot choose specific people in the crowd to affect. The emotions waft over the crowd and grip people starting from those closest to her.
While other Cainites huddled in caves and villages with mortal populations, the Gangrel stomped about for thousands of years conquering the world as they knew it. They adopted mortal tribes and migrated with the herd and harvest, following their human prey from grassland to grassland. Gangrel nomads benefited from their own Discipline of Protean, a secret of the Blood that meant that they did not have to keep within halt-a-night's run from the shelter of a hut or cave. For millennia, the Gangrel kept this Discipline secret and private so that members of no other clan could learn it. Gangrel legends say that the other clans believed them to be gods of the steppe, immune to the sun's scorching rays.
In these nights, the secret ot Protean is no longer entirely the property of the Gangrel. Other clans have unearthed the Discipline's secrets and passed them from sire to childe, but no bloodline has the flair for it that the Gangrel do. Protean allows a Cainite to change his body's form to aid in his nightly hunting, and in escaping his enemies (both physical and spiritual). The ability is a reflection of God's curse on vampires because it peels away the layer of protection and civility provided by a vampire's human shape. It displays the Beast in the vampire using it and keeps him from denying it or hiding from it.
As a character's shape changes, the use of certain Disciplines may become impossible. A Cainite in mist form in cannot use Dominate, as it depends on eye contact, for instance. While general guidelines are provided, the final decisions in these matters rest with the Storyteller.
• Witness of Darkness
The vampire with this ability can see normally in ordinary darkness — even a cloudy, moonless night is as bright as overcast day to the character. However, the Discipline does cause the character's eyes to glow a visible red, which unnerves most mortals who see it.
System: Activating the Discipline is a tree action, but ir rakes a full turn to take effect. While Witness of Darkness is in effect, the characrer suffers no dice pool penalties based on ordinary darkness. It is impossible to disguise one's inhuman nature while using this ability. However, while the Discipline is active, the player adds one die to Intimidation dice pools against mortals who are not acquainted with the supernatural.
•• Talons of the Beast
A Cainite with Talons of the Beast can extrude wicked claws a few inches long from each fingertip. Despite the power's name, the claws are far more dangerous than those of a mere wolf or bear. They can tear through chain armor and still dig deep into flesh. Wounds inflicted upon mortals by the Talons of the Beast never quite heal; Cainites find that vitae alone is insufficient to heal them. Some vampires exhibit other minor changes when activating this power. Eyes might turn a chalky white, blood might seep from the palms, or the character might be unable to keep his fangs retracted.
System: Activating the Discipline is a free action, but it takes a full turn to take effect, and the player must spend one blood point. Wounds inflicted by the Talons of the Beast do Strength + 1 dice of aggravated damage.
••• Interred in the Earth
Many Gangrel claim to be descended from an ancient warrior-goddess called Ennoia, and some even purport to be pagan subterranean gods themselves. This ability is one of the reasons they can do such a thing. The vampire using it takes advantage of the Cainite affinity for the grave by sliding his body into the earth itself, as though stepping into a tomb for the day.
The Gangrel cannot move around once he is entombed in the earth; in fact, she cannot even be dug up. She is immaterial and merged with the soil around her. An attempt to dig her up will eventually fail, as the roughly man-sized blob of earth the vampire inhabits cannot be moved or pierced without powerful magic. However, the ground above her resting place is disturbed and overturned, as though a mortal were considering planting a garden there, so those who are knowledgeable in such things can uncover the place of entombment.
The vampire must have direct contact with the ground itself in order to use this power. A wooden or stone floor blocks her melding into the dirt. She also cannot use this power while standing on a large piece of rock. She can inter herself in earth, not stone. The power provides perfect protection against the sun's rays and the heat of ordinary fire above. The character can be considered to be six feet under the earth for such purposes. The Animal may choose to remain conscious while interred, though when the sun rises this becomes more difficult, as always.
The very existence of this power sets paranoid Cainites to thinking. If powerful vampires remain in torpor for centuries, and many ot the eldest Cainites are assumed to be able to inter themselves, then there could be hundreds of elders buried in the earth, and they could emerge from torpor nearly anywhere at any time. Surely the emergence of a multitude of such creatures would be a harbinger of Gehenna. The ancient masters of the Roman nights are said to have known a ritual to lock such slumbering ancients in their earthly prisons. This secret apparently involved salting the earth with a special mixture of alchemical powders. It was used to greatest effect after the destruction of Carthage, when Brujah and other elders were locked under the soil of North Africa.
System: The player spends one blood point, and the character concentrates for a full turn, taking no other action. Once activated, rhe characrer is essentially immune to all attacks. The character can use Auspex and other purely mental abilities while interred, hut he may not activate any Discipline with a physical effect.
•••• Form of the Beast
A vampire with this ability can turn himself into a wolf or bat through the magic in his blood. Rumor has u that some Gangrel can transform themselves into quite different wild forms, but most Cainites are limited to these two forms. While wearing a different shape, the character retains his own mind and will, but his physical characteristics change, and he cannot invoke all of his Disciplines. His senses increase in acuity when he is a wolf, however, and he can fly around at 25 miles per hour when he is a bat.
System: The player spends one blood point for the character to transfonn over three turns (during which he can take no other actions). At the Storyreller's discretion, the player may spend three blood points (instead of just one) to have the character transform in a single turn. The vampire's Physical Attributes, Manipulation, Appearance and Perception change to match those of either a wolf or a bat. The characrer also gains any attacks or special abilities (such as flight). The character can activate only those disciplines whose manifestations do not depend on him having human features. (Most Thaumaturgy and Mortis powers are out, for instance.) Transforming back into the vampire's natural form costs nothing, but it takes three turns. Traits for the animals appear in the bestiary.
••••• Body of Spirit
Most vampires who can use this power or have seen it in use believe that the character who invokes it, turning himself into mist, is abandoning his humanoid form for one composed entirely of spiritstuff. This impression is consistent whether the Cainite is Christian or pagan. The mist body the character wears is seen as the truest expression of his innermost nature. However, this mist is physical rather than some kind of ghostly spirit form. The character's perceptions expand throughout the mist, and every gust of wind sends ripples through her being. Her vision is focused in the center of the mist (that is where her eyes seem to be, to her), but with brief concentration, she can see or hear from any part of her mist form.
The character becomes a small cloud of mist, perhaps four feet in diameter. She can move about at the equivalent of her walking pace. She can fit anywhere that a misty cloud might go, and she can pass through most cloth, up a chimney or through a crack under a door. As a cloud of mist, the character is less vulnerable to the depredations of the sun, though it can still burn her. Even the strongest winds cannot disperse her form. They can and do push her around, however, if she cannot find a barrier behind which to hide.
System: The player spends one blood point, and the character takes three turns to transform his body into mist. As with Form of the Beast, the player may spend three blood points to have the vampire transform in a single turn. To resist the buffeting effects of strong wind, the player rolls Potence (not the character's natural Strength), with a difficulty ranging from 6 (mild breeze) to 10 (gale-force winds). Each turn, she may have to roll again to have the character move against the direction in which the wind pushes her. On a calm night, the mist may move about at the character's regular walking or jogging speed.
Sunlight and fire do burn the vampire in mist form, but they cause one less level of damage and it's much easier to find shelter in mist form. The character's perceptions are normal except as described, and sufficiently stimulating experiences can lead her into frenzy and Rotschreck. The character is immune to normal physical attacks (expect for fire and sunlight), and she cannot affect anything physical in the world about her while she is in mist form. She can use Disciplines that do not require a physical component, however.
•••••• Blissful Slumber
Elder Gangrel with great blood potency can sleep in mist form, rather than entombed in the earth. This form provides advantages, in that the character simply cannot be disturbed by physical attacks while sleeping, save by strong winds. However, while in this form, she cannot snap herself into consciousness until sundown.
System: The player spends five blood points, and the vampire takes three turns to transform into the advanced mist form of Blissful Slumber. (Extra blood cannot be spent to speed up this process.) While wearing this form, nothing physical can harm him. He is immune to the ravages of the sun and fire, as well as ordinary weapons or the teeth and claws of other vampires. Wind still moves him around, and it may awaken him at the Storyteller's discretion. When he awakens, after the next sundown, he immediately transforms into his normal form unless he spends an additional blood point (above the standard point to wake). In the latter case, he transforms into the lesser mist of The Body of Spirit. He cannot remain conscious in the nigh-invincible mist form of Blissful Slumber.
Quietus is the province of the Banu Haqim, the vampires whom European Cainites call Assamites or Saracens, and they guard its secrets jealously. Within the clan, it is the warrior caste that is mostly closely associated with Quietus, and its current applications revolve largely around the use of blood poisoning to kill. The vizier and sorcerer castes have equal claim to the Discipline in the clan's legendry, however, and they make use of it in subtly different ways to aid their tasks of mystic exploration and subtle governance.
The scholars of Alamut recount that Haqim himself developed Quietus after a long period of self-exploration. By examining his own blood, he unlatched the secrets of affecting others' vitae. He used these secrets to impose Caine's law on the Second City and to punish those who contravened it. When the revolt of the third general ion began and Haqim's siblings expelled him from their usurper kingdom, his mastery of the Blood allowed him to escape and found a tripartite clan of his own. Ever since then, his children have seen themselves as separate from Caine's other get, purer and stronger judges of the righteous use of blood. Quietus is the premier expression of that belief.
Ironically, the very strength of the bloof-poisoning arts can also be a vulnerability. The details are secrets of the elders, but it seems that — just as a master Charlatan must momentarily fool himself in order to deceive others with Chimerstry and madness is a prerequisite for the use of Dementation — the use of Quietus creates a subtle taint in the blood of those who use it. This taint manifests itself as the caste weaknesses of the various lines of Banu Haqim and in an overall susceptibility to blood curses on the clan. Assamite individuals are no more vulnerable, the sorcerers say, but blood curses rend to infect clanmates at a prodigious rate. The most glaring example of this, of course, is the curse set upon the Assamite warrior caste by the dark bloodline known as the Baali.
• Silence of Fiery Blood
Warriors and lovers both know the sensory effects of fiery blood. In the midst or battle or passion, all extraneous sounds fall away and one is only focused on the enemy or the partner. For Assamites, this state is second nature. Warriors use it in battle, viziers and sorcerers in study. With the blood-power of Quietus, however, they can make it manifest in the very world around them. All things around them fade into silence — for the Assamite and everyone else. Although sounds from beyond the immediate area can and do filter through, nothing in the immediate vicinity can emit even a peep. Be it a victim's screams, a loud crash, a lover's moan. It all fades into nothingness. In most cases, this nimbus moves with the vampire, but it is possible to infuse a specific location with the Silence ot Fiery Blood.
System: No roll is necessary, but the power costs one blood point and one standard action to activate in its common version. In this case, the power creates a zone of utter and absolute silence around the character. This zone has a radius of 20 feet in large spaces or it simply fills the room, hallway or enclosure the character is in (unless it is larger than 40 by 40 feet or so). No sound occurs inside this zone, though sounds originating outside the area of effect may be heard by anyone in it. The zone remains in effect, following the vampire wherever she goes, for an hour or until she wills it to stop.
The vizier caste is especially fond of a second application that is sometimes called the Curse of Silence. In it, the player spends two blood points and the character spends five turns in concentration in a room or enclosure. Thereafter, a silence as described previously fills the room and remains in effect until the vampire wills it to end. The vampire may leave the room, and the silence remains in it, lasting through day and night. A single vampire can create no more than one zone of silence, however, so if she ever wishes to use the basic application (or curse another room), the zone in the first room fades automatically.
•• Scorpion's Blood
By changing the properties of her blood, the vampire may create powerful venom that strips her prey of his resilience. This power has acquired a terrible reputation among the Christian vampires who have faced Assamite warriors (and their blood-coated blades) in Iberia and the Levant. The poison can also he delivered by a deadly spit or by coating a seemingly innocuous object (a favorite-tactic of vizier assassins).
System: To convert a hit of the character's blood to poison, the player spends the number of blood points she wishes to convert (up to a maximum of her Stamina) and rolls Willpower (difficulty 6). If this roll is successful, the poison is ready. It remains potent until the next dawn or until it is used. When the poison contacts a victim's skin, that character's player rolls Stamina (+ Fortitude, if any) and the character immediately loses a number of levels of Stamina equal to the number of blood points of poison minus successes on the Stamina roll. This loss lasts for a duration based on the successes on the original Willpower roll:
| Successes | Duration |
| 1 success | One turn |
| 2 successes | One hour |
| 3 successes | One day |
| 4 successes | One month |
| 5 successes | Permanently (but the player may buy Stamina back up with experience) |
It a mortal's Stamina falls to zero through use of Scorpion's Touch, she becomes terminally ill and loses immunity to diseases, her body succumbing to sickness within the year unless she somehow manages to increase her Stamina again. If a Cainite's Stamina falls to zero, the vampire enters torpor and remains that way until one of her Stamina points rerurns. If a Cainite is permanently reduced to zero Stamina, she may recover from torpor only through mystical means. Assamites are immune to their own poison, but not the blood-venom of other Assamites.
Afflicting a target with the poison requires getting it on his skin. This can be done through various surreptitious means (such as smearing an object or pooling it in the mouth for a "kiss of death") or in combat. In combat, it may be smeared on hands or on a blade, or spat directly at the target. Smearing it on hands or a weapon requires an action to prepare and then a successful Brawl or Melee roll (the poison cannot be coated in thrown or missile weapons, which shed it in flight). Spitting the poison requires the player to make a Stamina + Athletics roll (difficulty 6). No more than two blood points' worth of poison may be expectorated, and a Cainite may spit a distance of 10 feet for each point of Strength or Potence the character possesses.
••• Dagon's Call
With but a touch, the skilled Quietus user can turn her victim's own blood against him. By concentrating, the vampire bursts her target's blood vessels and fills his lungs with vitae that proceeds to strangle him from within. The blood actually constricts the target's body from the inside as it floods through his system, so it works even on unbreathing Cainites. Until the target collapses in agony or death throes, this power has no visible effect, and many Assamite viziers prefer it because it leaves no trace of their presence.
System: The vampire must touch her target prior to using Dagon's Call. Within an hour thereafter, she may issue the call, though she need not be in the presence or even in the line of sight of her target.
Invoking the power costs one Willpower point. The player then makes a resisted Stamina roll against the target's Stamina; the difficulty of each roll is equal to the opponent's Willpower. The number of successes the attacking player achieves is the number of levels of lethal damage the victim suffers. These levels cannot be soaked. For an additional point of Willpower spent in the next turn, the player may continue using Dagon's Call by engaging in another contested Stamina roll. As long as the player continues to spend Willpower, the character may continue rending her opponent from within.
•••• Baal's Caress
A refinement of the blood poisoning of the Scorpion's Touch, Baal's Caress allows the vampire to transmute her blood into a virulent ichor that destroys any living or undead flesh it touches instead of simply causing weakness. One usually does so by coating a bladed weapon with the blood poison, and Cainite veterans of the Reconquista and Crusades report stories of the Assamite warriors licking their blades to lubricate them with this foul secretion as they ride into battle.
Baal's Caress may be used to augment any bladed weapon. Everything from poisoned knives and swords to tainted fingernails and claws has been reported.
System: No roll is necessary to transmute the blood to poison. The player simply decides how many points to transmute and coats any bladed weapon. The blood-poison is sticky and highly concentrated (something like a thick black sap), so it can be used to coat even an arrowhead. Claws and fingernails can also be coated.
For as long as the blade is coated, the weapon's damage becomes aggravated. Every successful strike (even if it inflicts no damage because of soak with Fortitude) expends one blood point from the total coated on the weapon. Therefore, it is in the interest of a warrior to coat a sword or knife with a goodly amount of blood, but more than one point spent on an arrow is wasted. If the attacker misses outright, no blood-poison is consumed.
••••• Blood Essence
Masters of Quietus have a control over the supernatural properties of vampiric vitae that is terrifying to behold. Blood Essence demonstrates some of the most frightening aspects of this control since it clearly illustrates that he who controls the blood has access to the unlife of the vampire. With the power an Assamite can distill the unholy life force of a vampire and extract it as a thick, blackish blood. This process is deadly to the victim and very similar to diablerie. Indeed, the distilled essence truly is what Cainites refer to as the "heart's-blood," the potent vitae that contains all of the vampire's power and self. Once extracted, this mere cupful of blackish liquid contains all the destroyed vampire's essence, and anyone who consumes it effectively diablerizes the victim.
Blood Essence is an important part of many rituals among the Children of Haqim. Warriors extract the heart's-blood of victims felled in battle and bring it hack to their elders or even to hidden Alamut itself. They then either consume the essence themselves or present it to an honored teacher. The growing blood addiction among Assamite warriors has unfortunately undermined this practice. Assamite sorcerers and viziers are said to have many uses for the heart's-blood, using it to peel back the layers of a victim's long existence year by year. The essence is also a key component in religious observances among followers of the Road of Blood.
System: The process of distilling the Blood Essence is very similar to diablerie itself. The vampire drains all his victim's blood through whatever means are available, and then must drain the heart's-blood. Instead of sucking it out through brute force, however, the vampire uses Quietus to distill the potent vitae. The vampire's player does not make the extended Strength roll of diablerie. Instead, he makes an extended Willpower roll (difficulty 9) that functions like the Strength roll, causing an unsoakable level of aggravated damage per success. Failure means the vampire must pause to distill the essence but can continue next turn. A botch means the effort fails (though the vampire may then proceed to attempt traditional diablerie). As in diablerie, the victim remains alert during the entire process and can fight back. Once all health levels are gone, the victim is destroyed and his essence is fully drained (usually into a chalice of some sort).
The distilled heart's-blood remains liquid and fresh for a number of nights equal to the Quietus master's Willpower. After that time, it becomes caked and dry, losing its potency. Anyone drinking the heart's-blood while it is still fresh gains all the benefits and potential pitfalls of having successfully diablerized the victim, such as lowered generation.
•••••• Ripples of the Heart
Masters of Quietus can not only change the physical properties of their own blood, but lace others' vitae with emotions and other sensations. With Ripples of the Heart, a vampire can leave an emotional trace in one from whom she has fed, which then resonates in any Cainite who feeds from it. Assamite elders are said to use this power to mark and protect their herds trom rivals, but it can also be used quite easily to send tainted mortals into an enemy's domain to be fed upon and hence weaken the area's defenses. Iberian elders still tell tales of stout Cainite warriors going mad just before their cities fell to the Almohads and the Assamites who rode with them.
System: The character drinks at least one blood point from the subject mortal then spends a minute in physical contact with the subject while concentrating on the emotion he wishes to leave in her blood. The player spends a point of Willpower and rolls (Charisma + Empathy (difficulty 7 under normal circumstances, 5 if the character is currently experiencing the intended emotion, 9 if he is currently experiencing a strong opposite emotion). The subject's blood carries the weight of the intended emotion for one lunar month per success on the roll. A mortal's blood can only carry one emotion at a time. Subsequent attempts to use Ripples of the Heart on the same individual have no effect until the previous application has worn off.
Any vampire who drinks from a vessel under the effects of Ripples of the Heart must succeed in a Self-Control or Instinct roll (difficulty of the mortal's Willpower) as soon she swallows the first blood point. It she fails this roll, the vitae-borne emotion immediately overtakes her. The strength of the emotion depends on how many blood points she drinks. One blood point results in a momentary mood swing, two cause a significant shift in demeanor, and three or more generates a complete change in emotional state. Depending on the circumstances and the precise emotion, the effects of this may be spectacular or catastrophic. A vampire overtaken by romantic passion might temporarily believe that she is in love with the mortal (or any other convenient bystander). One who drinks from a hate-infused vessel may rend her prey to shreds, and one who takes a draught of a mortal touched with fear may run away screaming. The vampire remains subject to the emotion for a number of hours equal to the mortal's Willpower, although she is still subject to other feelings after the initial rush of sensation.
The mortal who is under the effects of Ripples of the Heart is unaware of the power's effects on him, though he is slightly predisposed toward the emotion in question while the power is in effect. The vampire who used Ripples of the Heart on a mortal is immune to any of the effects he places on targets through the use of this power.
The Followers of Set do not consider themselves cursed by God, or even vampires in the sense that the other Children of Caine are. Serpentis, their Discipline, was granred to them by the god Set himself. The nature of the clan's relationship with Set prevents them from sharing their secrets with other vampires. Only on very rare occasions do they deign to teach its nuances to so-called Cainites, and such students are invariably initiates in the Setite cult.
Followers of Set laugh off the suggestion that Serpentis might represent a curse from God. The most they will admit to is that they represent the serpent of the Garden and are a curse on humanity, rather than being cursed themselves. More often, the Followers of Set say that Serpentis allows its users to assume a semblance of godhood. Perfection of Serpentis brings the Setites closer to the metaphorical serpent shape they identify with their founder god. Astute scholars note the many similarities between this ability and the Protean power of the Gangrel and wonder to themselves what the relationship between the two clans' founders might have been.
• The Eyes of the Serpent
Myths of the cobra and asp — as well as the Greek Medusa — ascribe hypnotic ability to them, and Set's first gift to his childer is a facsimile of that power. Should the character catch the gaze of a mortal or Cainite, he can beguile them with his gaze and render them immobile. He cannot give them commands or instructions — this is the province of Dominate — but they cannot move, nor speak above a whisper. The target remains immobilized until the character looks away — even so much as a glance breaks the trance.
System: Initially getting the target's attention requires the player to make a Manipulation + Etiquette roll (difficulty 4). If the target is already looking at the vampire, however, (they are engaged in conversation, for instance) no roll is necessary. The ability works automatically on mortals. To use it on a vampire of any generation, the player engages in a contest of Willpower (difficulty 7). Both parties roll, and if the Setite's player wins, the target is immobilized. If a potential victim knows not to look at the Serpent, no force in the world can make her do so, except for a distraction. A successful Manipulation + Etiquette roll (difficulty 10) can allow the vampire to catch the target's attention for long enough to entrance her, but a failure or botch on this roll gives his intentions away and ensures that the victim avoids his gaze for the rest of the scene.
•• Tongue of the Asp
Set's next gift enables his get to turn their tongues into weapons reminiscent of a snake's forked tongue. It extends in length by more than a foot, making it a viable weapon for close-in fighting, all the more so since it becomes sharp, wickedly barbed and tainted by the vampire's unholy blood. Wounds caused by the Tongue of the Asp do not heal mutually.
System: No roll or blood expenditure is required, and although the power takes a full turn to activate, the characrer may do other things while it does so. The tongue does Strength damage in close combat, but the wounds it causes are aggravated. The player rolls Dexterity + Brawl to strike with the tongue as normal. Should the vampire inflict one or more health levels on the target, she may feed from him on the next turn as though she had bitten him with her fangs. A strike from the Tongue of rhe Asp does not necessarily immobilize a foe, but the target is caught in the pleasure/pain of the Kiss as soon as the vampire begins to drink her blood.
••• Skin of the Adder
Every new power of the Discipline of Serpentis brings the vampire closer to the god-form of Set himself. The Skin of the Adder brings this blessing to the vampire's undead skin, using vitae to strengthen and thicken it. His form also becomes more snakelike, though it is still obviously humanoid.
System: No roll is required, but the change takes three turns and costs one blood point. If the player spends three blood points at once, he can reduce this time to one turn. While wearing the Skin of the Adder, the character is scaly, mottled and clearly monstrous. This power reduces soak difficulties for all damage to 5. In addition, the player can use Stamina to soak aggravated damage from claws and fangs (though not from fire or sunlight) even if the character does not have Fortitude. Additionally, the vampire is more limber and his joints become capable of dislocating without damage. He can fit through any opening large enough to admit his head, and he can dislocate his jaw to allow one more blood point to be consumed per turn of feeding.
•••• Form of the Cobra
Some Cainite myths describe Set's true form as that of a gigantic cobra, hundreds of feet long and as thick around as a great whale. This ability lets one of Set's childer echo his founder's nature by transforming himself into a huge cobra, eight feet long and nearly a foot thick, weighing as much as the character ordinarily does. The cobra is strong and swift, and it has a sense of smell better than any mortal's. Additionally, it's bite carries a poison that is fatal to humans and animals (but which has no effect on Cainites). The character loses the ability to speak while in this form, but he can communicate with others in the same form.
For the Followers of Set, the Form of the Cobra is a sacred state, one akin to apotheosis. Many of the most devout of the clan - those elevated on the secret Road of the Serpent — use this form in dark rituals to Set. Set teaches that law is a lie, a deception of the tyrant-god Osiris, and in the Form of the Cobra, his follower is free to experience the savage truth. In dealing with outsiders, Followers of Set reserve the Form of the Cobra for mortal combat only. Letting the profane see the sacred form of their god is not something to undertake lightly. Those Serpents less inculcated with traditional beliefs are somewhat less restricted in their use of the form, but not greatly.
System: The player spends one blood point, and the transformation takes three turns. As with Skin of the Adder, that time can be decreased to one turn if the player spends three blood points at once. The vampire's Attributes remain identical, but the player gains two dice to any dice pools involving scent and loses two dice from pools involving hearing. She also gains a similar two-die bonus to Dodge and climbing dice pools. As a creature roughly a foot in diameter, the vampire has an easier time moving around in tight spaces, and he can escape from many prisons that are meant to hold a mortal or vampire. Activating this transformation in a single turn gives her a free chance to escape from a grapple, as her form writhes and contorts unexpectedly. The vampire's bite does the same damage as it would in human form, but she does not have to grapple her target before biting. The venom does seven levels of aggravated damage to any mortal the vampire bites, but no special damage to Cainites.
Unless the vampire decides to reverse it earlier, the transformation lasts until dawn. It costs no blood to reverse, but it takes three turns to revert to human shape.
••••• Cheat the Scale of Anubis
Egyptian legend has it that the god Anubis weighs the hearts of the deceased on his great scale. If the heart is not in perfect balance with the feather placed on the other plate, it is considered to be weighed down by sin, and the soul of the deceased is fed to the Devourer and destroyed. Setite faith sees this story as a corruption the dark truth: Anubis acts as a gatekeeper for the tyrannical Osiris, who rules the afterlife. Those who have proven their soul's strength by being willing to reject the laws that make them slaves (hence those who have "sinned") are destroyed before they can enter the afterlife and overthrow the tyrant-god. If Set and his followers are ever to reverse this state of affairs, there must be a way for the strong to get around Anubis's scales. This power allows a master of Serpentis to do just that by removing his heart (as well as his other vital organs) from his body entirely and wrapping his flesh in a protective cocoon.
The power, more akin to a ritual, can only be performed in the dark of night — either after the moon has set, before it has risen or during the new moon — and only on oneself. It takes a few hours to complete. Once the Setite has removed his heart and other vital organs, he must place them in specially prepared clay urns (called Canopic jars). After that, servants can bury or hide them away. After the vampire has removed all his major organs, his vitae and undead flesh combine to wrap him in a dry, scaly shroud that is nearly impenetrable. Only a small opening over his mouth remains in the shroud. The characrer then falls into a sort of torpor. Only feeding him his removed internal organs can awaken the character. Once that is complete, it takes about one minute for the cocoon around the Setite to crumble to dust.
The enshrouded vampire is virtually impossible to harm — no known direct force, from infernal to high-noon sunlight, can do him damage while so wrapped. However, the extracted organs are vulnerable, most especially the heart. Exposing it to fire or sunlight causes the vampire's instant and terrible immolation, destroying him. Although terrible, this destruction is actually the final part of the ritual — in which the vampire's followers burn his organs before a statute of Set. By meeting the Final Death in this way, a Follower of Set reaches Anubis without a heart and is hence able to pass him by without ever undertaking the rest of the scales, entering the afterlite as a powerful agent of his god.
It is possible to undertake this ritual only part way, something usually done for one of two reasons. The first is to assume the fully enshrouded form for protection's sake, which some Setites do when they are traveling. Their ghouls carry them as cargo in a ship or caravan and then feed their master his organs when they arrive at their destination. The other option is to stop the ritual with the removal of the heart. The vampire is perfectly able to move about without his heart, but he becomes immune to standard staking or diablerie. However, if an enemy gets hold of the Canopic jar containing the extracted organ, the vampire is in serious trouble. Not only does it provide a powerful ritual connection to the vampire, but a simple flame or glint of sunlight can destroy the vampire outright, and driving a stake through the organ drives the Setite into torpor.
System: To undertake this rirual power, the vampire must have time to herself (assisted by acolytes, perhaps) and be acting on a moonless night. The power fails at any other time. The player makes an extended Dexterity + Medicine roll (difficulty 7) for the character to undertake the rirual. Each roll means an hour of activity, and the ritual ends in failure if the moon or sun rises before the player achieves the necessary successes (five to remove a heart, 12 to achieve the mummified form). A failure on a roll has no effect other than to extend the process another hour. A botch entails a catastrophic failure that ends the ritual and causes two levels of aggravated damage to the vampire. Any vampire who witnesses the process is subject to Rotschreck (difficulty 6).
The enshrouded body of such a Setite is completely immune to harm. No source of injury — save perhaps the might of a Methuselah or Antediluvian — can do it direct physical damage. The organs, however are extremely vulnerable, and even the slightest sunlight or flame destroys them outright. The jars are opaque, but easily broken open. Except for the heart, destroying an organ causes an unsoakable level of aggravated damage to the vampire. Destroying the heart destroys the vampire outright.
The removed organs are rich with vitae. Most contain one blood point's worth (which reduces the vampire's overall blood pool), and that blood remains fresh indefinitely in the withered organ-meat. A ghoul or vampire who consumes a Setite's removed organ takes one step toward the blood oath as normal. The heart contains two blood points and a vampire consuming it is attempting diablerie against the Setite. Once the two blood points are drained from the heart, the attacker passes straight to the heart's blood and her player must make a Strength roll as normal, save that the difficulty is 7. Staking the heart, stakes the Setite if he is still active.
•••••• Breathe of the Sandstorm
In classic Egyptian myth, Set is portrayed as a trickster god of the desert sands, master of sky and storm. An elder Setite with Breathe the Sandstorm can call a scorching sandstorm from his patron founder's source of power and expel it from his mouth. This whirling, screeching cloud of hot sand scars and pits everything in its path. The cloud is just a few feet across, bur that is more than enough to catch a Cainite unaware and riddle him with deep wounds.
System: The player spends one blood point for the vampire to exhale this roiling mist. The cloud is three feet in diameter, and it can affect a target up to six feet away. To hit, the player rolls Dexterity + Brawl (difficulty 6). The opponent cannot block or parry this artack, he must dodge hy diving out ot the cloud's volume. Successes remaining after the opponent's Dodge roll do levels of aggravated damage that the victim can soak only with Fortitude (meaning most mortals will never recover from their wounds). The cloud dissipates at the end ot one turn. The sandstorm can also be used on inanimate objects, destroying roughly an inch thickness of the substance per use.
Thaumaturgy has it's own page.