Cattiveria
Cattiveria is an Italian word meaning, quite simply, “wickedness.” Its development took generations of blood and sacrifice, such that it lives up to its name in both practice and spirit. Cattiveria, also called necromancy in some circles, is nothing less than the practice of manipulating the tainted essence of death toward such ends as raising seeping cadavers and enslaving specters and ghosts.
When Lodovico became a vampire, he found himself robbed of the sorcery that had allowed him to command corpses and spirits when he was alive. Infuriated by what seemed to be a calculated punishment, the fledgling Kindred threw himself once again into studying the texts and stories he had inherited from his mother, striving in a haze of madness to discover what manner of block had been imposed on his talents. He traveled to Florence, hearing of a gathering there of others of his kind, and there he encountered The Lancea Sanctum, at one of whose midnight masses Lodovico was at last stricken with the revelation he had sought.
Lodovico’s epiphany related to the nature of the very force that traps a vampire in his undying state. Much as a vampire is able to impart power to a ghoul through his Blood, so, too, can that animating force be shared with a corpse, granting it a jerky, unwholesome animation. Its kinship with a substance spiritualists in a later age would call ‘Ectoplasm’ likewise makes it particularly useful for drawing ghostly manifestations into the world.
In practice, Cattiveria is almost more of a scholarly pursuit than an occult discipline, its practitioners more like engineers than occultists, even though its workings universally demand the trappings of black magic — if only to cement in the Necromancer’s mind the grim reality of what he has set out to do. Almost no application of this discipline can be enacted on the fly, instead typically requiring candles to be lit and blood to be shed in addition to whatever bizarre trappings please the Necromancer’s sense of drama.
When Lodovico became a vampire, he found himself robbed of the sorcery that had allowed him to command corpses and spirits when he was alive. Infuriated by what seemed to be a calculated punishment, the fledgling Kindred threw himself once again into studying the texts and stories he had inherited from his mother, striving in a haze of madness to discover what manner of block had been imposed on his talents. He traveled to Florence, hearing of a gathering there of others of his kind, and there he encountered The Lancea Sanctum, at one of whose midnight masses Lodovico was at last stricken with the revelation he had sought.
Lodovico’s epiphany related to the nature of the very force that traps a vampire in his undying state. Much as a vampire is able to impart power to a ghoul through his Blood, so, too, can that animating force be shared with a corpse, granting it a jerky, unwholesome animation. Its kinship with a substance spiritualists in a later age would call ‘Ectoplasm’ likewise makes it particularly useful for drawing ghostly manifestations into the world.
In practice, Cattiveria is almost more of a scholarly pursuit than an occult discipline, its practitioners more like engineers than occultists, even though its workings universally demand the trappings of black magic — if only to cement in the Necromancer’s mind the grim reality of what he has set out to do. Almost no application of this discipline can be enacted on the fly, instead typically requiring candles to be lit and blood to be shed in addition to whatever bizarre trappings please the Necromancer’s sense of drama.
Related Ethnicities