Collectivists
Collectivists are joiners. They like groups, feel comfortable in groups, believe in the power of groups, and, even when transformed into nocturnal predators with solitary instincts, they still find themselves drawn to groups. In the true spirit of the fasces, Collectivists find they can get a hell of a lot more done when they work together, when they’re ordered and organized and scheduled and explained. Going off on your own is fine for personal interests and hobbies and screwing around for kicks, but if you want something meaningful accomplished, you need to get help. It’s only fair, of course, that you also give help.
More than that, the Collectivists pride themselves on being realists. Very rarely in a mortal life can a high-minded ideal be actualized, and in the Requiem it’s damn near impossible. They thus regard Individualism as a particularly wily kind of cowardice: solos, by pledging themselves fixedly to the purest form of their beliefs, by settling for nothing less than 100 percent, wind up with zero when they could have gotten 30%, or 50% or 95%. But rather than roll up their sleeves and get dirty and compromise, they’d rather stay unstained — and impotent.
There are Individualists who accomplish their goals, of course, but these are almost always individuals with rather mean and tiny ambitions. If Collectivists are exasperated by those who do nothing because they can’t accomplish everything, Collectivists are positively contemptuous of those who are content to marshal the substantial advantages a Kindred activist possesses — Disciplines, the blood and patient decades or centuries — to accomplish something even a mortal could do. It’s like being elected President of the United States and then putting your feet up on the desk after having one small military base reopened in your home state. Sure, it’s an accomplishment, but it’s a negligible one.
To Collectivists, the core of their Requiems is large-scale political accomplishment. It’s all back to mission and position, only the Collectivists write them large to stir the passions of the Movement.
This unifying vision is what gains permanent converts to the Collectivist position. Once inside, the newly-minted joiner often finds that, instead of accomplishing the big goals, he’s rewarded with authority and discretion to pursue little goals, often personal ones, while acting in the name of the covenant as a whole. It may not be what he signed up for, but most make do. In the fullness of time, as their Requiems ripen them into cynics, many actually prefer it.
More than other Carthian factions, Collectivists tend to make miles of promises and deliver only inches of progress. The inevitable weakness to collectivizing individuals is a dilution of purpose. Committee- think sets in, quibbling wears away the objectionable sharp edges of a proposal, but often blunts its point as well. The Collectivists pride themselves on convincing one group that half a domain is better than none, while persuading the other group to give up half their domain to keep the half they’ve got. That’s progress of a sort, but it never gets anyone more than half a domain.
Still, that very ability to parley until the situation is palatable to all tastes is what sweeps Kindred into a pro-tem Collectivist alliance. Moderates and even isolationists go along because the project is tolerable, and it’ll get them some brownie points with the covenant and because a few staggering steps in the right direction (or what they can convince themselves might be the right direction) is better than paralysis. Often they go along just because everyone else is.
Being group oriented, organized and desirous of operative power for its own sake, Collectivists are often a faction in authority. It’s almost a matter of default: the types of Kindred who seek out positions of authority are those who believe authority (and its unattractive attendant, organization) is useful. Only people who think bureaucracy is going to yield them something, be it personal perks or the accomplishment of a higher ambition, are going to become bureaucrats.
True-blue Collectivists seemingly make up a minority of the covenant of the covenant, but almost every real Collectivist has a position of some authority, or at least an official title, rank, duty or responsibility. They’re not always liked or even respected, but they are always connected.
Interestingly, the most powerful Collectivists often lead groups that are structurally and functionally identical to those helmed by powerful Individualists. A charismatic or domineering Kindred with an appealing agenda can assemble an entourage of obedient aides or lackeys who work inside the system instead of apart from it. The only difference is, a Collectivist leader is raging with the machine instead of against it.
More than that, the Collectivists pride themselves on being realists. Very rarely in a mortal life can a high-minded ideal be actualized, and in the Requiem it’s damn near impossible. They thus regard Individualism as a particularly wily kind of cowardice: solos, by pledging themselves fixedly to the purest form of their beliefs, by settling for nothing less than 100 percent, wind up with zero when they could have gotten 30%, or 50% or 95%. But rather than roll up their sleeves and get dirty and compromise, they’d rather stay unstained — and impotent.
There are Individualists who accomplish their goals, of course, but these are almost always individuals with rather mean and tiny ambitions. If Collectivists are exasperated by those who do nothing because they can’t accomplish everything, Collectivists are positively contemptuous of those who are content to marshal the substantial advantages a Kindred activist possesses — Disciplines, the blood and patient decades or centuries — to accomplish something even a mortal could do. It’s like being elected President of the United States and then putting your feet up on the desk after having one small military base reopened in your home state. Sure, it’s an accomplishment, but it’s a negligible one.
To Collectivists, the core of their Requiems is large-scale political accomplishment. It’s all back to mission and position, only the Collectivists write them large to stir the passions of the Movement.
This unifying vision is what gains permanent converts to the Collectivist position. Once inside, the newly-minted joiner often finds that, instead of accomplishing the big goals, he’s rewarded with authority and discretion to pursue little goals, often personal ones, while acting in the name of the covenant as a whole. It may not be what he signed up for, but most make do. In the fullness of time, as their Requiems ripen them into cynics, many actually prefer it.
More than other Carthian factions, Collectivists tend to make miles of promises and deliver only inches of progress. The inevitable weakness to collectivizing individuals is a dilution of purpose. Committee- think sets in, quibbling wears away the objectionable sharp edges of a proposal, but often blunts its point as well. The Collectivists pride themselves on convincing one group that half a domain is better than none, while persuading the other group to give up half their domain to keep the half they’ve got. That’s progress of a sort, but it never gets anyone more than half a domain.
Still, that very ability to parley until the situation is palatable to all tastes is what sweeps Kindred into a pro-tem Collectivist alliance. Moderates and even isolationists go along because the project is tolerable, and it’ll get them some brownie points with the covenant and because a few staggering steps in the right direction (or what they can convince themselves might be the right direction) is better than paralysis. Often they go along just because everyone else is.
Being group oriented, organized and desirous of operative power for its own sake, Collectivists are often a faction in authority. It’s almost a matter of default: the types of Kindred who seek out positions of authority are those who believe authority (and its unattractive attendant, organization) is useful. Only people who think bureaucracy is going to yield them something, be it personal perks or the accomplishment of a higher ambition, are going to become bureaucrats.
True-blue Collectivists seemingly make up a minority of the covenant of the covenant, but almost every real Collectivist has a position of some authority, or at least an official title, rank, duty or responsibility. They’re not always liked or even respected, but they are always connected.
Interestingly, the most powerful Collectivists often lead groups that are structurally and functionally identical to those helmed by powerful Individualists. A charismatic or domineering Kindred with an appealing agenda can assemble an entourage of obedient aides or lackeys who work inside the system instead of apart from it. The only difference is, a Collectivist leader is raging with the machine instead of against it.
Type
Political, Activist
Ruling Organization
Parent Organization
Two Collectivists
Orrin Pointer worked at the penitentiary as a mortal and works even harder there now that he’s dead. He wasn’t a guard or a warden, just an office clerk who filed paperwork and transferred phone calls. He knows how the prison works, though, and how the guards and employees get out while the prisoners are kept in. Now that he’s dead, he’s very adept at getting Kindred in to feed. Moreover, he’s created a subculture within the prisoners who seek the rapture of the Kiss as a relief from the tedium and drudgery of theirsentences. Naturally, many are still eager for the experience once they’re back on the streets.His smooth hookup to a big source of free Vitae, along with connections to people who steal stuff or aren’t shy about stabbing someone, have made him popular and powerful within the Movement. Even better, he’s not a guy with strong political or philosophical opinions. People in power can easily gain Orrin’s support because they have perks to give him, and, lacking any strong beliefs, he’s easy to convince. Having been on the receiving end of their largesse for decades, he’s now worked his way to the Carthian halls of power, all without espousing any particular doctrine at all. The one belief he has developed is that The Carthian Movement is doing the right thing, and that strengthening the Movement is necessary. The Carthians who’ve been bending his ear for years and years usually start from that position and work outward. Having been in the echo chamber for so long, it’s now Orrin’s bedrock.
Kyla Tomlin, on the other hand, is a very bad Carthian. She has secretly pledged herself to The Lancea Sanctum, provides the Sanctified with information about the Movement and is eagerly awaiting the night that she can aid The Lancea Sanctum in breaking the Movement’s secular hold on its followers, that they might find the cleansing darkness of Longinus.
Okay, she’s not eagerly awaiting the night. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say she’s willing to accept that night. Although, just as often, it’s fair to say she’s dreading that night, which is why she doesn’t tell her Sanctified associates the most damning information, and why she works doubly hard at her mid-level bureaucrat’s position in the Movement and why she asks very little from her Carthian colleagues and always bends over backward to volunteer them her help. It is why, in short, she behaves like a very good Carthian.
Madwoman? Manchurian candidate? Vessel of a possessing spirit? None of the above. Kyla’s contradictions stem from one simple factor: she’s torn. She believes in The Lancea Sanctum as much as she can believe in anything, but the Movement is and has been the source of her safety, her food and her ability to get things done. Spiritually, she longs for the Sanctified’s beatitudes, even though she knows the Suspicion that inevitably falls on a traitor, even a traitor to a good cause. But selfishly she knows that the Movement works, and is working for her, and that her Requiem is far more comfortable as a Carthian in a Carthian domain than it would be As One of the Sanctified in a Sanctified domain.