Vampire Torpor

Vampire Torpor

A death-like sleep into which Kindred fall if they are injured severely or starved for too long. Kindred can also enter torpor willingly to escape the world for a time. When a wooden stake penetrates the Kindred heart, the vampire immediately enters torpor. Unlike normal torpor, he awakens immediately upon the stake’s removal, but not before.

Torpor Details
Over time, through great injury, as result of feeding restrictions, or because of starvation, Kindred fall to the sleep of ages: torpor. This cold, dead slumber equalizes the young and the old, thinning the blood with time and leaving elders to awaken fresh and new.
When one of the Kindred falls to torpor, she appears dead. Her skin tightens over her flesh and dries out. Her joints harden, and the top layer of her tissue turns to a faint, ashen dust. During her slumber, she experiences strange, nonsensical dreams that keep her mind active and exercised. Usually, this means she’s prepared to adapt to a new world. Sometimes, this goes awry; she wakes up a whole new person, or, rarely, with distorted memories of her past existence.
At the end of a vampire’s turn, after any reflexive healing, if her last (rightmost) Health box is filled with lethal damage, she falls to torpor. If she’s in daysleep, and has no blood with which to awaken, she instead drifts into the torpor. As well, a vampire can voluntarily fall into torpor, to shake off the feeding limitations imposed by her Blood Potency.
During the first day of torpor, the vampire subconsciously spends as much Vitae as it takes to heal any wounds she may have. If, after spending all her Vitae, she still suffers a wound in her last three Health boxes, consider her Humanity one dot lower for determining how long she slumbers. For every twenty-five years a vampire remains in torpor, she loses a dot of Blood Potency.
Use the following chart to determine how long a character must remain in torpor. Multiply the base duration (based on the vampire’s Humanity dots) by her Blood Potency. After that amount of time in torpor, she can awaken. This isn’t always exact; it could be up to a quarter of the time shorter or longer. As well, any vampire with two more dots of Blood Potency than she has can feed her a point of Vitae to awaken her (with the normal risks of blood bonds and addiction). This can happen at any time.
So a vampire may awaken from torpor and be starving as well as wounded!
PENDING TIME +/- 25%
Botch +25%
1s - 10%

Some rare bloodlines are rumored to know deep secrets about the truths of torpor. They claim to communicate with those in the throes of torpor. They swear they can divine otherworldly knowledge of the realms of the dead from torpor dreams. They suggest the Kindred soul wanders another plane with the specters of history, and comes back with hidden information. Of course, none of these claims have ever been confirmed. But some Kindred swear by the stories of these haruspices, and some rulers keep them as chief advisors.

A Stake to the Heart
When a wooden stake penetrates the Kindred heart, the vampire immediately enters torpor. Unlike normal torpor, he awakens immediately upon the stake’s removal, but not before. To target the heart, make an attack roll with a –3 die penalty after factoring Defense. If the attack causes five points of damage, it penetrates the heart.
PENDING
Stunts | Injury 0s+ | Critical 4s | Stake 2s
Torpor and Final Death
Kindred have little to fear from bashing wounds. A vampire remains conscious when her last box is full of bashing damage. She still suffers wound penalties. However, when her last box is marked with lethal wounds, she falls to torpor (see p. 105). When her last box is marked with aggravated damage, she suffers Final Death. Within a minute, her body reverts to its true age. For younger Kindred, this means decomposition, with a collapse of skeletal structure and soft tissues turning to liquids, ash, and minerals. For the oldest Kindred, this means a full disintegration into a pile of dust and ash, with only the tiniest fragments of bone remaining.
Torpor & Detachment
Entering torpor is a Breaking Point with a Detachment roll at +1 Difficulty.

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Fog of Eternity
The Fog of Eternity is a term applied to the mental confusion resulting in a vampire's mind that has gone through a long-term torpor.
Overview
As a Kindred sleeps in torpor, their dreams and memories collide with hallucinations and visions of past (and even future) events inside their head, making their actual memory of events in their life and unlife extremely unreliable. The longer the torpor, the less reliable those memories become. The Fog of Eternity has been described as "a decades-long waking dream" and "a protracted nightmare."