Kindred Elders
“Nonsense,” I exclaimed, laughing. “How can any man, be he count or peasant, live for three hundred years? I suppose you mean that his family has held the castle for that length of time?” — Frederick Cowles, The Vampire of Kaldenstein
The immortality of the vampire is an oddly conditional sort of thing. The undead convince others to join them — when they don’t just give the Embrace regardless of consent — with the promise of immortality. The sire often omits the unpleasant truth of that immortality; yes, you’re going to exist forever, but you may spend centuries sleeping, and then you’ll have to deal with the way the world has changed when you wake up.
This chapter deals with precisely that issue — how do vampires deal with a world unknown to them when they come to themselves after decades or centuries of Torpor? How do they hold on to their memories and their sense of self? And how can you play the part of a monster trapped in the future, a relic eternally separated from the only existence he truly knows?
And then disaster: she falls foul of a monster more dangerous and ruthless than herself, and he beats her into Torpor. Or, by some freak accident, she becomes trapped somewhere confined and dark, where she can only starve, and, having gone mad with hunger, having fed upon herself all she can, loses consciousness. Or maybe one night she simply feels terribly, terribly weary, and falls asleep.
She sleeps for decades or centuries. She dreams. And one night she wakes up. Everything is different. Carts are made of shiny painted metal, and roar, and move at a terrible speed without any animal to pull them. People watch moving pictures on glowing glass boxes, and talk into or intently manipulate tiny devices, staring into small windows which display all manner of pictures and symbols.
The city is so loud now. The buildings loom down from above and go up forever. The night sky is a different color. The air smells acrid, foul. The perfume worn by women has an artificial flavor to it. Dogs and cats look somehow different, bred into distinctive and strange shapes (but they still bark, and hiss and run away — that part doesn’t change). Women dress like the men, and the men wear odd Materials and colors, with little concession to our vampire’s sense of decency. A metal carriage roars past, and strange music blares from nowhere; it offends her every aesthetic sensibility. All of her human slaves are dead. She finds the local of the Elysium she remembers, but it is gone. In its place is a vast, hideous building, and behind its glass doors are dozens of gaudy boutiques — she recognizes a shop when she sees one, at least — and flocks of slack-jawed, hostile children in immodest clothes, who stare in open contempt at this woman in her archaic, dusty outfit.
She commands some luckless passer-by to stop. She takes him to one side, and bids him tell her the location of a half-dozen landmarks she knows. He has never heard of most of them. One that he recognizes was knocked down when he was a small child. She leaves his exsanguinated corpse behind and seeks out the Kindred of the region. In the end, they find her. This has not been her territory for a very long time, and when the current owners of this hunting ground find her she does not understand why she is not welcome here.
She thinks she is going mad. She cannot recognize this world — but worst of all, she has a vague, terrible feeling that she is not sure about the world she came from, either. She remembers faces and names, but she recalls the same individuals being both friends and enemies. She remembers watching someone be destroyed in three different ways. She dreamed for so long, longer than she was alive, longer than she was awake and walking; and now she does not know what was real and what was a dream.
It doesn’t end well.
But this is what a vampire has to face when she wakes up from Torpor. She is alienated from the familiar trappings of her existence; someone moved the furniture in her world when she wasn’t looking, and nothing seems recognizable anymore. If she hasn’t lost every relationship he had when she was last up and walking, she likely has no more than one or two, and those relationships have changed. They were awake, and their games moved on as alliances developed, came into being, and shattered, new players were dealt into the game, and old players fell out of play forever. The rules are defined and interpreted by different judges now. And more than losing her world, her slaves, her old ties with her Allies, she has lost herself. She cannot understand this new time, and she barely remembers her old one.
How can she adjust?
He ended up getting kicked out of The Ordo Dracul. He had espoused a heresy that a covenant full of selfinvented heretics couldn’t tolerate. The last anyone saw of him, he was impaled on a long stake and left to meet the sunrise.
But the fact is, he may have had a point. A centuries-old undead monster who wakes from Torpor find herself intellectually decayed. She flails around, looking for ways to stop losing her mind, to be able to distinguish experience from dream. Static, she finds herself unable to adapt. The future confuses and disorients her.
She lashes out.
It’s difficult for a human being to really imagine what this phenomenon is like for a vampire. Consider kidnapping a member of one of those tiny tribes who still live in the Amazon rainforest, flying him to New York in a 747, dressing him up in a suit and making him do an office job, without giving him any explanation of how to cope apart from a basic course in English. It’s like that. Here’s an English vampire from the Jacobean era, buried under a stone cairn on a little island on the Roanoke. A coterie of vampires from Philadelphia finds him and wakes him up. When he fell into Torpor, the British, Spanish and French were jockeying for the right to plant colonies, the British had just lost their first one, and the Indians were of an unknown quantity. The coterie takes him to Philly and help him to fit in. How does he manage?
One thing the vampire doesn’t do is curl up into a ball and start whimpering. Vampires are predators and parasites; they have the urge to control, to master the living. And when put to flight, the undead become vicious and mad. An old and powerful vampire on a confused rampage is a terrible thing to get in the way of. Even when he calms down a bit, it takes a lot for an old vampire to adjust, since vampires simply aren’t cut out for adapting — a vampire does not adapt to the world, he adapts the world to himself. Small wonder that so many of them find other ways to deal with their disorientation.
It doesn’t take much. First, the old vampire needs somewhere to stay. That isn’t so hard, as it’s perfectly reasonable that with the right use of powers he can easily find a suitable place. An old Mekhet walks into someone’s house and simply exists around the inhabitants, without ever letting them see her. She sneaks drops of her blood into their coffee and food, until they’re all hopelessly bound to her (this works for younger Mekhet as well, of course... only with less consistent success). If she’s proficient enough with Auspex, she can communicate with her new willing slaves through telepathy and ask them to run errands. If the vampire is very frugal, she can feed from the inhabitants of the house while they sleep. A group of adults sharing a house is best for this sort of thing, if only because such individuals are usually youthful adults who see lots of people, giving more chances for feeding.
This living situation gives the vampire the added bonus of observing the interactions and relationships of living humans in the present. Getting in is not a problem (unless the vampire has a hang up about entering without being invited). The difficulty here is making this arrangement work for any length of time. It’s far too easy to kill someone.
A Gangrel, on the other hand, might spend most of his time in the form of a wolf or a bat, and hidden under the earth. Maybe he takes control of the rats that infest the sewers and uses them to clear and guard an underground area. A Nosferatu might do either of these as well, but is more likely to use his powers to scare people and younger vampires away from his haunt. Ventrue and Daeva are the least likely vampires to withdraw, but even so, it is a simple matter for one of these clans to find a place to hide and simply tell the humans who live there to help.
Whatever happens, if the vampire wants to stay secluded, he needs agents of some kind. If the local Prince knows about him, he can send a ghoul or neonate agent as a proxy to the court. On the other hand, he might never want to leave his haunt and thus uses the agents to bring him prey — for example, the Gangrel utilizes a sewer-dwelling tramp he has made into a ghoul and bound under a Vinculum, ordering his slave to bring him hapless people from the alleyways and shop doorways above the sewerside haunt they now both inhabit.
Getting an agent is the difficult part. The most obvious thing to do is drag some hapless victim off the street, kidnap her, give her the Embrace and tie her to a Vinculum, or make her into a ghoul. But the vampire has to find someone of the appropriate social Status to effect the vampire’s wishes. The problem with this is that the vampire in question may not have a hugely accurate idea of his new slave’s influence and station. People in the present day recognize social cues which are fully as complex, subtle and unique as any of the mores of Louis XIV’s court.
Take the Ventrue who stalks the group of young executives on the streets in the middle of an epic bar-crawl. Which one is the dominant force, the one who’s going to be executive VP in three years? Which one is the bottom feeder? Which one is seriously disturbed and potentially a violent liability? It’s difficult enough for living people to figure such things out, but for a vampire who has spent more time either as a predator or unconscious and dreaming than he ever spent being a living person among other living people, it can be all but impossible. In the end, it’s the luck of the draw which one he gets.
Dealing with the new leaders of the undead may be a picnic after trying to deal with modern-day humans, but it’s still tricky. Different princes hold to different rules, different styles of leadership.
The current Prince might be fine with a reclusive elder popping up in his domain, who never leaves her lair and who communicates through Ghouls and neonates who are almost as clueless as she is... but he probably won’t be. Even taking into account the fact that Torpor weakens and thins the blood, an old vampire is still a threat. Vampire elders are at best a little paranoid: is the Prince going to believe that the ancient monster who has just popped up in his domain is doing nothing and not coming out because she can’t cope with the modern world?
For one thing, no elder, even one suffering from a bad case of future-shock, is going to admit that she can’t cope. The Prince demands that the elder come out and show fealty. The elder sends her proxy and says, fine, I’m in line. The Prince sends back and says, no, you have to come yourself. The closeted elder politely invites the Prince to visit. If either side backs down, it’s a sign of weakness. At best, the individuals in question thrash out a somewhat icy deal, particularly if the recently woken vampire is unusually powerful or has a fearsome reputation. It’s more likely that the Prince takes steps to marginalize the already-alienated vampire, or, if he’s either particularly tyrannical or particularly weak, sends vampires to assassinate her. The elder may be housebound, but nonetheless retaliates. Chances are, though, that it won’t end well for anyone, least of all an elder who just wanted to be left alone.
True, his blood is no longer as potent as it once was, but even so, the elder may still have the broad arsenal of powers he had before he fell into his coma, even if he can’t use them quite as effectively. On the other hand, he might not have that many powers at all, and may be extremely vulnerable. But is any wise neonate prepared to take the risk that this is the case? The elder gathers objects that remind him of his fictional past, most of which don’t even come from France, let alone France in the 18th century, and tells himself that they are from his living days. He claims to have been present at historical events. He announces he is the long-disappeared Prince of the city (and maybe even takes the old Prince’s name).
Do not laugh at him; do not point out the Flaws in his history. His only way of coping is to believe his own persona, but whoever he believes himself to be, he is old and powerful, and in his madness he will not hesitate to destroy a neonate who doubts the truth of his ”memories,” because they are all he has.
He’s dangerous in another way, too: he might be believed. He imparts what he really thinks is vitally important information — and it’s all complete rubbish, dangerous nonsense that puts the new vampires that use it in terrible risk.
He is no idiot. He secretly knows he is deluding himself even while he is trying to find out who he truly was…before his enemies do.
A vampire who last felt comfortable in the time of Victoria simply can’t bring herself to dress in something that she considers indecent, even while bathing in the blood of an innocent she dragged off the street, tortured and killed. A monster who once stalked the streets of Providence in the days of the Puritans finds he cannot abide the immorality he sees about him on the streets of his modern city; he murders and feeds with abandon, but still preaches the same grim creed that sustained him while he lived. The medieval knight can just about get his head around wearing jeans and a T-shirt (although that’s all he wears, even when it’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside), and has no qualms about the most terrible atrocities, but he still invokes the Evil Eye when the telephone rings, and still, despite himself, suspects that the TV has demons inside it.
Princes try their best to hunt down creatures like this whenever they cross that final line between being just strange and becoming full-blown threats to the Masquerade. Different princes draw this line in different places, but most of them have a line. The line also changes its position depending on how powerful and dangerous the old vampire might be, of course, and on how strong or weak the Prince is.
The whole thing doesn’t seem to obey any rhyme or reason. It seems to vary not just from vampire to vampire, but from Torpor to Torpor. Here’s a vampire who slept from 1563 through to 1701. That first time, she lost her identity practically whole cloth, and it took her nearly five decades to become as comfortable in her surroundings as her counterparts. She slept again from 1890 to 2005; this time she hasn’t just picked up exactly where she left off, but she already has the hang of e-mail and text messaging. She barely remembers the dreams this time around.
Maybe it’s because, this last time, she conquered the dreams that plagued her while she slept (see p. 30 for more on how to do this). Or perhaps she learned something, or paid attention to some supernatural prohibition that she ignored before. Did a fellow vampire give her help before she lay down her head? Or were there allied Kindred ready for her, ready to impart information on how to rebuild herself in the present? How does she do it?
One Prince dictates that she must personally see a torpid vampire before anything else is done, and that the decision as to whether the elder should be awoken is hers alone. Another only requires knowing that a torpid vampire has been found, and makes it clear that the consequences of awakening a vampire in Torpor are on the head of the one doing the waking. A weak and paranoid Prince demands that any torpid vampires get destroyed immediately out of hand (but then, everyone ignores him anyway).
Along with the rules about how one decides whether or not a torpid vampire should be woken up come the rules about how the Kindred should go about awakening her. Does it need to happen somewhere silent and solitary or in the presence of the Prince, the Seneschal and the Primogen? Do the devoted of The Lancea Sanctum need to be present in force, singing hymns, or must the Acolytes make some sort of sacrifice before the drops of blood are allowed to fall on to the sleeping vampire’s lips?
Some of these things are matters of clan or covenant tradition. Some of them have a kind of sense to them. The Kindred dimly recognized long ago that how a vampire remembers the experience of Torpor has in part something to do with the way she wakes up. A human who has a Nightmare is more likely to remember it if he awakens suddenly. It’s like that, only multiplied thousands of times.
And the effects of the waking process really depend on the elder. For example, if the Acolytes perform an arcane rite involving knives, self-mutilation, naked dancing and rhythmic shrieking to ease the elder’s return into the world, he might, if he’s one of The Crone’s devotees himself, find it stirring and comforting. On the other hand, he might be just as likely to find it nightmarish, redolent of the werewolves who beat him into Torpor in the first place. He may have preferred Sanctified hymns — but on the other hand, those same hymns might bring reminiscences of fire and “purification.” A vampire awakens in a silent, darkened room — but he was driven into Torpor after having experienced the dungeon of a Lancea Sanctum Inquisitor, and spends his first few minutes back in the world shrieking and thrashing around.
Members of The Ordo Dracul have found from recording as many accounts of Torpor as they can that the effects of The Fog of Eternity may be alleviated or worsened by the manner of one’s waking, but that it depends on the vampire, and cannot be conclusively proven.
A number of Carthians see it as a political issue; drawing on some — human — Marxist theories that health and ideological approach are inextricably linked (as in, a healthy ideological position makes for a healthy mind), they propose that perfect ideological purity brings to the vampire the moral strength to resist the erosion of memory. Does their theory work? The Carthians Haven’t been around long enough for the theory to really meet with its proof. Besides, finding two Carthians who wholly agree on what constitutes true purity of ideology is not easy. If no one really knows what makes for the perfect expression of revolutionary doctrine, and the doctrines themselves Haven’t been around long enough to be proved, who can really trust them?
The position of several sects and sub-groups among the Sanctified isn’t all that different: true faith brings moral strength, and moral strength brings the power to resist the dreams and retain the memories. The advantage they have over the Carthians is, of course, that they’ve had the time to prove that it works — except that they Haven’t managed to prove it. Part of the reason is that, like the Carthians, even the most fanatical members of the most particular Sanctified splinter groups don’t agree on the minutiae of doctrine.
The prevailing view, among those members of The Invictus who care, is that it’s all in the blood. Vampires from the better, more ancient bloodlines have a better chance of coming out with their minds intact... because that’s the way the blood works.
A number of views persist among the Acolytes. One theory says that it’s a spiritual issue, that a vampire in Torpor separates from his ghost, and that it travels through the landscape of dreams. Another theory has it that the vampires who come out of Torpor with a full complement of memories are those whom The Crone has chosen to perform her will in the world. Which is all very well, but impossible to prove either way.
In fact, all of these theories have an “out.” If a Carthian or member of the Sanctified goes mad after sleeping, he clearly didn’t have that pure and perfect ideological position. If an Invictus vampire doesn’t keep his memory, his blood wasn’t pure enough. If an Acolyte falls prey to toxic future-shock, he was not favored by The Crone; his ghost lost its way and lost in its fight against the monsters of dreams.
Were a vampire to remember too much, he’d go mad. So, during his inevitable bouts of Torpor, his memories fade, allowing him to think and learn new ways when he revives.
This theory is all well and good, but if it’s really not a curse, how come the reaction of the vampire to his state is, nine times out of ten, confusion? Why is it that Torpor dreams are so weird and unpleasant?
On the other hand, our Ordo Dracul researcher does at least make one important point: many vampires awaken from Torpor and immediately assimilate the trappings of their new culture, learning new languages, new skills (like how to drive, for example, or how to use a mobile phone) and the new rules of society. In a matter of a few nights, the vampire, while not quite a native, is perfectly able to hold his own in the future.
Why does it work this way for so many of the undead and yet not for others? Some vampires awaken from Torpor alone; others in the presence of several other vampires. Some vampires have the benefit of rituals and defined ceremonies. Others don’t. The torpid share no one factor that would help them to acclimatize themselves to the present day. But the remaking of an old monster depends very much on where that information comes from.
Except... what happens when these powerful, evil old monsters wake up from their centuries-long sleep and they’re not wholly sure who their friends are, or even who they are? An ambitious vampire might be able to make a few marks on a blank slate and create something new. All it takes is someone to get there first (or, if you got there second, to wipe out the people who got there first), make sure things like Requiem diaries and other bric-a-brac are well out of the way, and supply the recently awakened elder with a quick indoctrination into your take on Kindred politics.
It’s risky, but then, dealing with vampires is risky anyway, no matter whose side they’re on. And the sheer vulnerability of a vampire in the first stages of recovering from Torpor means that with the right blend of subtlety and cunning, with the right hidden-truths, half-truths and outright lies, he could be yours.
Or, from the other point of view: our vampire may not consider himself vulnerable. He has slept for two centuries. He is able to deal death without thought or twinge of conscience. And now he wakes up, and he doesn’t even know who his friends are. Can he admit this? No, he’d be showing weakness. He has to pretend he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t realize that they know he’s lost his self in the Fog, and that the lies that they’re feeding him aren’t the truths of his past. It doesn’t matter how old, powerful and vile he is. And so, he swallows whole whatever his new “friends” are feeding him, because he really doesn’t know what’s true or not, and he can’t bear the loss of face that comes from admitting he’s lost. Meanwhile, if the younger vampires manipulate him in just the right way, he’s the greatest ally they might have.
Optional Rule: Regaining the Self
The elder is the Prince of the city in which the characters dwell. Unless you’re running a high powered chronicle in which the characters interact with the upper strata of Kindred society on a regular basis, or the Prince is an exceptionally active force in his subjects’ night-to-night existence, this puts a potentially problematic elder character firmly in the background, to be dealt with or not as the plot requires. The same goes for elder characters who occupy official roles in the court. Unless the characters have reason to interact with the individuals holding those offices, the elder character can be used as dramatic “background music,” ignorable or engageable as the situation requires. At the same time, don’t be afraid to use these characters as plot hooks or motivators simply by reputation. If an ancilla expresses reluctance to break one of the Prince’s rules, even if there’s virtually no chance he would ever find out, the characters should wonder why. Is the elder’s reach really so long?
Another possibility: The characters are the brood (or wards) of one particular elder vampire and are the executors of his estate and his night-to-night interests. Consider how active the elder is (Sleeper, Spider, or Wolf — see p. 54). Some elders are active forces in the unlives of their childer, and their demands require a significant amount of attention on a night-to-night basis. Some elders are a more passive force, in Torpor as a result of extreme age and Blood Potency, lost in the ennui of an immortal being, a scholar whose studies consume the majority of her attention. Some elders are very simply absent, but nonetheless exert significant influence from afar: the elder is a traveling diplomat or other mobile authority figure for court, clan, or covenant, and rarely interacts with the characters except through retainers delivering orders or missives. The elder might even be in Torpor, manipulating and advising the characters through dreams and other esoteric methods (see Doorways of the Eyes and Mind, p. 70).
Similarly, an elder who becomes involved in the characters’ unlives might be a nomad of malevolent or benevolent providence. The wandering cannibal known as the Unholy represents one extreme example of this possibility. An elder who stalks other vampires for sustenance is a boogeyman for the Kindred, and any chronicle involving such a character could be used to play up the ultimate horror of the vampiric condition with great effect. On the other hand, a wandering elder could also be a wise sage or Mentor figure to a coterie of young Kindred seeking answers about themselves and the Kindred in general — but where vampires are concerned, such advice is never free.
Elders are usually less apt to react badly to Predator’s Taint, but that’s because they’ve usually been around long enough to meet most of the vampires in a given region, or learn some tricks to help control it. When two elders meet, they establish dominance quickly, and often away from prying eyes. Some cities are less civilized than others, though.
Elder dominance displays are often terrifying for younger Kindred to witness. Younger vampires, with their younger Beasts, often settle their instinct-driven need to establish a hierarchy with a few growls and perhaps a lunge. Elder displays are somewhat more complex, ritualistic, and often violent, particularly when clans or covenants differ. Elders of the same clan or covenant are often already heavily laden with acknowledged places in the relative hierarchies of those groups. Among elders of differing clans and covenants, however, the Beast often rules first meetings. Bloodshed is not uncommon, especially among those elders who can no longer feed on human blood, brute-force expressions of personal strength establishing rough standards of conduct. This violence is often highly ritualized in its forms, ranging from duels using rules forgotten most mortal historians to quasi-religious forums that resemble intense philosophical debates on the surface, but carry the promise of violence should one’s orthodoxy prove inadequate.
Somewhat rarer, but no less dangerous, are the Discipline duels in which two (and sometimes more) elders engage each other in a contest in which they prove their mastery over the powers of the blood. A Dominate duel, for instance, might consist of two vampires trying force each other to drink from a cup containing the blood of a more-powerful Kindred. In an Obfuscate duel, both participants remain unseen until the moment is right to strike — the duel is actually to first blood, but as the Discipline extends beyond simple invisibility, it involves much more mystical finesse than a swordfight.
All of these forms vary widely from place to place, covenant to covenant, and clan to clan. The manner in which elders in Chicago establish hierarchy would not be acceptable practice in New Orleans, or the way the elders of The Circle of the Crone decide who takes precedence would not satisfy the needs of the Carthians or The Invictus. This is one more reason that neonate and ancilla practices tend to be simpler — they just don’t have the experience or knowledge base to know what kind of challenge would be appropriate. Once elders have established their pecking order, however, challenges to that order are comparatively rare. Younger vampires are more likely to seek frequent upwards or lateral advancement than their elders, who have, in general, already achieved great power and influence within their own spheres. Those elders who do challenge the established hierarchy are either ambitious, and therefore dangerous, or are acting from some strong conviction concerning the incompetence or inability of those ranked above them. Elders also do not normally waste their time and effort on challenges that do not stand to yield definite returns on their investments — they’d prefer to manipulate younger vampires into doing it.
Some elders, less high-maintenance in their personal needs, take a more modern approach to the management of their finances, employing accountants and allowing computers to parcel out funds as necessary while they engage in more worthwhile personal endeavors of spiritual or intellectual development. Of course, they face the same problems as mortals who let computers pay their bills for them — a hacker can take advantage of the situation, and a bank error or computer glitch can tangle things up for months.
Several methods of managing the elder thirst exist, though none is perfect or without its dangers. By far the most common is for the elder to enter a palliative period of Torpor. During the sleep of ages, the blood of the elder thins and grows less potent: he loses an order of personal power but he also loses the desire to consume his own kind.
On the other hand, the elder also has the option of remaining awake and growing in power. There exists no Kindred taboo against consuming the blood of another vampire for the purposes of sustenance, only against destroying another vampire and devouring her soul. Some elders simply choose not the take the risks of Torpor, preferring to gather and maintain a group of other vampires, generally vampires hundreds of years their junior, to serve as their herds. Often these vampires are members of an elder’s own extended lineage, grandchilder and great-grandchilder, or else the offspring of members of an elder’s own clan or covenant who “volunteer” them for the honor of service in order to curry favor with a demonstrably powerful and ancient elder vampire. In truth, so long as that elder is careful in his feeding practices, he can avoid the danger of this course of action: devouring the soul of another vampire in the grip of hunger frenzy. One method of managing such a strategy is to have a large Herd of vampires, who can be rotated regularly into and out of service. The Kiss is not, after all, an unpleasant thing to experience or no one would ever submit to it; the same is true for a vampire feeding upon another vampire and such relationships contain more than a few undercurrents similar to a codependent sexual/emotional relationship. (Note, of course, that it is possible, though unlikely, for an elder to develop a Vinculum to a younger vampire — see p. 162 of Vampire: The Requiem.)
This chapter deals with precisely that issue — how do vampires deal with a world unknown to them when they come to themselves after decades or centuries of Torpor? How do they hold on to their memories and their sense of self? And how can you play the part of a monster trapped in the future, a relic eternally separated from the only existence he truly knows?
Waking Up to the Future
Imagine a monster. Once human, she slips through the cracks and exploits the gaps of human society, both high and low. She has human agents who will kill and die for a taste of her precious blood. She knows her world backto- front, and if she does not have the same freedom of movement she did when she was alive, if she does not have the variable interests she once had, what of it? The power she now commands more than makes up for what she sees as only the slightest narrowing of her horizons.And then disaster: she falls foul of a monster more dangerous and ruthless than herself, and he beats her into Torpor. Or, by some freak accident, she becomes trapped somewhere confined and dark, where she can only starve, and, having gone mad with hunger, having fed upon herself all she can, loses consciousness. Or maybe one night she simply feels terribly, terribly weary, and falls asleep.
She sleeps for decades or centuries. She dreams. And one night she wakes up. Everything is different. Carts are made of shiny painted metal, and roar, and move at a terrible speed without any animal to pull them. People watch moving pictures on glowing glass boxes, and talk into or intently manipulate tiny devices, staring into small windows which display all manner of pictures and symbols.
The city is so loud now. The buildings loom down from above and go up forever. The night sky is a different color. The air smells acrid, foul. The perfume worn by women has an artificial flavor to it. Dogs and cats look somehow different, bred into distinctive and strange shapes (but they still bark, and hiss and run away — that part doesn’t change). Women dress like the men, and the men wear odd Materials and colors, with little concession to our vampire’s sense of decency. A metal carriage roars past, and strange music blares from nowhere; it offends her every aesthetic sensibility. All of her human slaves are dead. She finds the local of the Elysium she remembers, but it is gone. In its place is a vast, hideous building, and behind its glass doors are dozens of gaudy boutiques — she recognizes a shop when she sees one, at least — and flocks of slack-jawed, hostile children in immodest clothes, who stare in open contempt at this woman in her archaic, dusty outfit.
She commands some luckless passer-by to stop. She takes him to one side, and bids him tell her the location of a half-dozen landmarks she knows. He has never heard of most of them. One that he recognizes was knocked down when he was a small child. She leaves his exsanguinated corpse behind and seeks out the Kindred of the region. In the end, they find her. This has not been her territory for a very long time, and when the current owners of this hunting ground find her she does not understand why she is not welcome here.
She thinks she is going mad. She cannot recognize this world — but worst of all, she has a vague, terrible feeling that she is not sure about the world she came from, either. She remembers faces and names, but she recalls the same individuals being both friends and enemies. She remembers watching someone be destroyed in three different ways. She dreamed for so long, longer than she was alive, longer than she was awake and walking; and now she does not know what was real and what was a dream.
It doesn’t end well.
But this is what a vampire has to face when she wakes up from Torpor. She is alienated from the familiar trappings of her existence; someone moved the furniture in her world when she wasn’t looking, and nothing seems recognizable anymore. If she hasn’t lost every relationship he had when she was last up and walking, she likely has no more than one or two, and those relationships have changed. They were awake, and their games moved on as alliances developed, came into being, and shattered, new players were dealt into the game, and old players fell out of play forever. The rules are defined and interpreted by different judges now. And more than losing her world, her slaves, her old ties with her Allies, she has lost herself. She cannot understand this new time, and she barely remembers her old one.
How can she adjust?
Senility
Some time ago, a vampire of The Ordo Dracul put forward the theory that Kindred are not the people they were when they were alive. He said that the human soul had departed, and that what remained in the vampire’s body with the Beast, animated and imbued with that endless hunger, was only an echo of the human soul. The mind, with only an echo to power it, calcifies, he said. It can no longer innovate emotionally. Its ideas are never more than well within the limits of what was intellectually possible before the Embrace. Because the mind has no vital spark apart from the Beast, it has no reason to retain its memories, and little ability to distinguish the strange, recursive, chillingly credible dreams of Torpor from its actual experiences. All experience was illusion, without the spark of a soul to imbue the real world with its solidity and form. His conclusion was that The Ordo Dracul’s obsessive researches into bettering the vampiric condition were pointless: the mind would atrophy, and one night, all that would be left would be a Beast and a body.He ended up getting kicked out of The Ordo Dracul. He had espoused a heresy that a covenant full of selfinvented heretics couldn’t tolerate. The last anyone saw of him, he was impaled on a long stake and left to meet the sunrise.
But the fact is, he may have had a point. A centuries-old undead monster who wakes from Torpor find herself intellectually decayed. She flails around, looking for ways to stop losing her mind, to be able to distinguish experience from dream. Static, she finds herself unable to adapt. The future confuses and disorients her.
She lashes out.
Future Imperfect
Living humans sometime suffer from what Alvin Toffler called future-shock, a state of stress and disorientation brought about by the rapid transformation of society caused by the relentless pace of technological advancement.It’s difficult for a human being to really imagine what this phenomenon is like for a vampire. Consider kidnapping a member of one of those tiny tribes who still live in the Amazon rainforest, flying him to New York in a 747, dressing him up in a suit and making him do an office job, without giving him any explanation of how to cope apart from a basic course in English. It’s like that. Here’s an English vampire from the Jacobean era, buried under a stone cairn on a little island on the Roanoke. A coterie of vampires from Philadelphia finds him and wakes him up. When he fell into Torpor, the British, Spanish and French were jockeying for the right to plant colonies, the British had just lost their first one, and the Indians were of an unknown quantity. The coterie takes him to Philly and help him to fit in. How does he manage?
One thing the vampire doesn’t do is curl up into a ball and start whimpering. Vampires are predators and parasites; they have the urge to control, to master the living. And when put to flight, the undead become vicious and mad. An old and powerful vampire on a confused rampage is a terrible thing to get in the way of. Even when he calms down a bit, it takes a lot for an old vampire to adjust, since vampires simply aren’t cut out for adapting — a vampire does not adapt to the world, he adapts the world to himself. Small wonder that so many of them find other ways to deal with their disorientation.
Withdrawal
Old vampires with atrophied Humanity find it hard enough to interact with humans in any respect other than eating them. A vampire who has just awoken from a long Torpor may find that her best bet is to endure society long enough to set up some sort of network, and then to withdraw somewhat. The vampire puts his head in the coffin-dirt and normally tries not to think about the world more than he absolutely has to.It doesn’t take much. First, the old vampire needs somewhere to stay. That isn’t so hard, as it’s perfectly reasonable that with the right use of powers he can easily find a suitable place. An old Mekhet walks into someone’s house and simply exists around the inhabitants, without ever letting them see her. She sneaks drops of her blood into their coffee and food, until they’re all hopelessly bound to her (this works for younger Mekhet as well, of course... only with less consistent success). If she’s proficient enough with Auspex, she can communicate with her new willing slaves through telepathy and ask them to run errands. If the vampire is very frugal, she can feed from the inhabitants of the house while they sleep. A group of adults sharing a house is best for this sort of thing, if only because such individuals are usually youthful adults who see lots of people, giving more chances for feeding.
This living situation gives the vampire the added bonus of observing the interactions and relationships of living humans in the present. Getting in is not a problem (unless the vampire has a hang up about entering without being invited). The difficulty here is making this arrangement work for any length of time. It’s far too easy to kill someone.
A Gangrel, on the other hand, might spend most of his time in the form of a wolf or a bat, and hidden under the earth. Maybe he takes control of the rats that infest the sewers and uses them to clear and guard an underground area. A Nosferatu might do either of these as well, but is more likely to use his powers to scare people and younger vampires away from his haunt. Ventrue and Daeva are the least likely vampires to withdraw, but even so, it is a simple matter for one of these clans to find a place to hide and simply tell the humans who live there to help.
Whatever happens, if the vampire wants to stay secluded, he needs agents of some kind. If the local Prince knows about him, he can send a ghoul or neonate agent as a proxy to the court. On the other hand, he might never want to leave his haunt and thus uses the agents to bring him prey — for example, the Gangrel utilizes a sewer-dwelling tramp he has made into a ghoul and bound under a Vinculum, ordering his slave to bring him hapless people from the alleyways and shop doorways above the sewerside haunt they now both inhabit.
Getting an agent is the difficult part. The most obvious thing to do is drag some hapless victim off the street, kidnap her, give her the Embrace and tie her to a Vinculum, or make her into a ghoul. But the vampire has to find someone of the appropriate social Status to effect the vampire’s wishes. The problem with this is that the vampire in question may not have a hugely accurate idea of his new slave’s influence and station. People in the present day recognize social cues which are fully as complex, subtle and unique as any of the mores of Louis XIV’s court.
Take the Ventrue who stalks the group of young executives on the streets in the middle of an epic bar-crawl. Which one is the dominant force, the one who’s going to be executive VP in three years? Which one is the bottom feeder? Which one is seriously disturbed and potentially a violent liability? It’s difficult enough for living people to figure such things out, but for a vampire who has spent more time either as a predator or unconscious and dreaming than he ever spent being a living person among other living people, it can be all but impossible. In the end, it’s the luck of the draw which one he gets.
Dealing with the new leaders of the undead may be a picnic after trying to deal with modern-day humans, but it’s still tricky. Different princes hold to different rules, different styles of leadership.
The current Prince might be fine with a reclusive elder popping up in his domain, who never leaves her lair and who communicates through Ghouls and neonates who are almost as clueless as she is... but he probably won’t be. Even taking into account the fact that Torpor weakens and thins the blood, an old vampire is still a threat. Vampire elders are at best a little paranoid: is the Prince going to believe that the ancient monster who has just popped up in his domain is doing nothing and not coming out because she can’t cope with the modern world?
For one thing, no elder, even one suffering from a bad case of future-shock, is going to admit that she can’t cope. The Prince demands that the elder come out and show fealty. The elder sends her proxy and says, fine, I’m in line. The Prince sends back and says, no, you have to come yourself. The closeted elder politely invites the Prince to visit. If either side backs down, it’s a sign of weakness. At best, the individuals in question thrash out a somewhat icy deal, particularly if the recently woken vampire is unusually powerful or has a fearsome reputation. It’s more likely that the Prince takes steps to marginalize the already-alienated vampire, or, if he’s either particularly tyrannical or particularly weak, sends vampires to assassinate her. The elder may be housebound, but nonetheless retaliates. Chances are, though, that it won’t end well for anyone, least of all an elder who just wanted to be left alone.
- Hermits in the Game
In the context of most games, an ancient vampire who stays at home and exercises his influence through proxies is really not a tremendously interesting choice for a character. It’s not impossible, though, especially if your chronicle is based heavily on politics and discussion.
On the other hand, such vampires make superb sires and mentors for characters, and great antagonists. A reclusive vampire elder doesn’t need to be a shadowy mastermind. He might project the image that he is, and rumors of his Web of influence (so subtle that no one knows about it!) spread throughout the Kindred community, but in truth, The Hermit is isolated. He is dangerous because of his age and power, but only face to face. - Case Study: Elisabeta, the Plague Nun
Elisabeta claims to be the childe of the Plague Angel, progenitor of the Morbus bloodline, although no one believes her. She also professes to have an origin dating back to the time of the Camarilla’s fall. No one believes that, either. Both of those facts are true, but you would have to visit her to find out, and seeking out Elisabeta is difficult; she inhabits a deserted London Underground station which visitors can only reach through service tunnels… service tunnels which are currently claimed as the territory of a pack of werewolves. The werewolves leave her alone, for the most part, although they often resent and threaten any visitors she does have. Vampires without considerable skills in stealth may never reach the vast candle-filled chamber in which the Plague Nun keeps prayerful vigil. Her childe is Lucrezia, a recently created Morbus who hates the fact that she has to lead the Plague Nun’s diseased Ghouls in finding blood for her mistress. Lucrezia is not under a Vinculum — the Plague Nun is in her own way too naïve not to trust her — and is trying to think of a way to destroy Elisabeta once and for all. London’s most influential vampires share her desires.
Self-Delusion
Some ancient vampires, so addled by The Fog of Eternity and the effects of future-shock, go a bit wrong. The psychic trauma of adjusting to the modern world and the loss of their identity makes them adopt new personas. A vampire who loses a solid sense of who he is (which often coincides with him having lost his precious Requiem diary) often finds that he learns modern skills and languages remarkably quickly, at least for a short time. Within a few nights, he has pieced together a new persona from bits of information, mementos and whatever he can glean from his dreams. One elder imagines himself as having been in the court of Louis XIV, and although his history of the period is not remotely perfect, and his dusty, bloodspattered affectation of the dress of a French aristocrat slightly surreal to look at, no one is going to tell him otherwise, because notwithstanding the delusions, he is extremely dangerous.True, his blood is no longer as potent as it once was, but even so, the elder may still have the broad arsenal of powers he had before he fell into his coma, even if he can’t use them quite as effectively. On the other hand, he might not have that many powers at all, and may be extremely vulnerable. But is any wise neonate prepared to take the risk that this is the case? The elder gathers objects that remind him of his fictional past, most of which don’t even come from France, let alone France in the 18th century, and tells himself that they are from his living days. He claims to have been present at historical events. He announces he is the long-disappeared Prince of the city (and maybe even takes the old Prince’s name).
Do not laugh at him; do not point out the Flaws in his history. His only way of coping is to believe his own persona, but whoever he believes himself to be, he is old and powerful, and in his madness he will not hesitate to destroy a neonate who doubts the truth of his ”memories,” because they are all he has.
He’s dangerous in another way, too: he might be believed. He imparts what he really thinks is vitally important information — and it’s all complete rubbish, dangerous nonsense that puts the new vampires that use it in terrible risk.
He is no idiot. He secretly knows he is deluding himself even while he is trying to find out who he truly was…before his enemies do.
- Deluded Elders in the Game
A character who is so badly affected by The Fog of Eternity that he forgets who he is and has to invent a new persona creates several interesting opportunities for storytelling. An entire chronicle could be based on a coterie made of awakened elders who have created new identities, but who secretly wonder who they really are. As they learn the secrets of their own pasts (perhaps even presented through one-off stories set in past eras) they learn more about themselves than they perhaps wanted to, or find out things about their coterie-mates which, if they shared them, could damage every relationship they hold true. And all the while, they struggle with delusions, with the memories of dreams, and the doubts as to whether their current Allies are friends or enemies.
These deluded elders have near-infinite use as Storyteller characters. A coterie of vampires might find that the elder who advises and protects them is always ready with insider information, based on long-held memories. But his insights aren’t accurate. Is he betraying them or is he simply misled, and if he is misguided, can they disabuse him of his dangerous notions before he gets himself destroyed — without turning him against them? Do they even want to? - Case Study: Nitokris
Nitokris woke up from a sleep of centuries in 2005. She says she was Embraced in the time of the Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten (which would date her back to the 14th century BCE). She was one of the original Followers of Seth who manipulated the king’s downfall, she says. And when she was Embraced, she was mummified first and was conscious when they removed her lungs, intestine, liver, stomach, heart and brain and packed her head and chest with natron and spices. She claims that the god Typhon Seth speaks through her, and she has gathered a sizable group of vampires, Ghouls and brainwashed living humans who treat her as a prophet of Typhon Seth, Cradle of Chaos. And she claims that the reason she has no reflection or shadow is because her reflection walked away, long ago, and hounds her like a spirit of wrath.
In a vast townhouse she holds court, and human fanatics volunteer themselves for sacrifice, knowing that to be ritually disemboweled on the Altar of Typhon Seth will condemn them to eternal oblivion as Amemet devours their souls, but that their sacrifice furthers the cause of the Cradle of Chaos in the world. She sits on her throne, stroking black polished statuettes of Typhon Seth she claims she brought with her from Egypt three millennia ago.
In fact, Nitokris is less than half as old as she thinks she is (which still makes her terribly ancient) and although she does project a strange, sweet fragrance, she was certainly never mummified. When the wild-eyed Sethites who devote themselves to her volunteer themselves for eternal oblivion, they’re just disemboweled for the hell of it. The statuettes came from a flea market. They’re about ten years old and made of plaster of Paris. The part about the reflection is true, though.
And here’s the thing — Nitokris appears to be immensely powerful and wise and strange, a savant whose words seem to carry with them the dust of the Red and Black Lands. She cheerfully imparts information to seekers, for a price. And a lot of what she says is true. But an awful lot of what she shares is just so much mystical nonsense, albeit nonsense that a frightening number of people, Ghouls and vampires believe and act upon.
Given the secretive nature of her followers, too, who’s to know who converted to her worship? Nitokris is powerful, and with that she’s overpoweringly smug and supremely irrational. She doesn’t even know herself what the final point of her schemes is, and that just makes her plans so much worse, because she’s able to perpetrate the most terrible crimes at a moment’s notice with absolute conviction.
Refusal
Some vampires, who wake from Torpor and realize that their world has gone, can only embrace their anachronism. The vampire behaves as he remembers being (which, given the uncertain nature of The Fog of Eternity, is not necessarily the same as who he was). Some refuse to accept the present day, or simply can’t manage to dress and talk like someone from modern times. Most old vampires have this problem to some extent, but the vampires who really exemplify this phenomenon cross over from being simply a bit out of place to become blood-stained freaks of time.A vampire who last felt comfortable in the time of Victoria simply can’t bring herself to dress in something that she considers indecent, even while bathing in the blood of an innocent she dragged off the street, tortured and killed. A monster who once stalked the streets of Providence in the days of the Puritans finds he cannot abide the immorality he sees about him on the streets of his modern city; he murders and feeds with abandon, but still preaches the same grim creed that sustained him while he lived. The medieval knight can just about get his head around wearing jeans and a T-shirt (although that’s all he wears, even when it’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside), and has no qualms about the most terrible atrocities, but he still invokes the Evil Eye when the telephone rings, and still, despite himself, suspects that the TV has demons inside it.
Princes try their best to hunt down creatures like this whenever they cross that final line between being just strange and becoming full-blown threats to the Masquerade. Different princes draw this line in different places, but most of them have a line. The line also changes its position depending on how powerful and dangerous the old vampire might be, of course, and on how strong or weak the Prince is.
- Walking Anachronisms in the Game
Far from being objects of ridicule, these creatures are true horrors. They ape another age, and perhaps even do it imperfectly, but their attempts at a Humanity long past only draws into sharp relief the way that all the Kindred ape the living. Characters who deal with such an elder or have him as a sire or patron may find him to be infuriating; it’s not that he doesn’t understand the march of progress — it’s that he doesn’t want to.
He refuses to countenance the fact that he might have to accept these things to survive. And if, as is sometimes the case in Kindred politics, other vampires’ survival depends on his (they signed up with his faction before knowing really what he was, or they’re his childer and are liable to be dragged down with him), he can become in his unwillingness to catch up a harbinger of terrible disaster for them all.
Playing the Part of such a character can be challenging. In game system terms, you could express this kind of disadvantage as a Flaw or a derangement. But a lot of roleplaying comes into it as well.
It’s important to remember that such a character is not by any means a figure of pity — you don’t waste pity on a creature who can tear your throat out with a flick of his wrist. He’s not a comic figure, either. The way his stubbornness ensures his regular sidelining at Elysium and the resentment this engenders is not by any means funny. They patronize him; they treat him As One would treat a neonate. He begins to conceive a toxic hate for the established order. And when a creature like that becomes hateful, only tragedy can result. And all because he is incapable of developing the self-knowledge to see that his inability to adapt has brought him to this pass.
On the other hand, he might actually want to be able to understand the present, but like a man suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, who knows that there are things he is missing in his mind, the vampire, try as he might, cannot operate in the world. The vampire sees that he needs to adopt new ways of thinking, but somehow fails to really get his head around the subtleties. He wants to dress for the Prince’s formal reception, but can only turn up wearing the same filthy, bloodstained breeches he has worn for centuries. Because they are the only clothes he really knows. Can he escape from this? The chronicle might well be set up to see if he can… before destruction takes him and everything he still has. - Case Study: Andrew the Tanner
Andrew the Tanner fell into Torpor some 200 years ago, and only recently awoke. He is a huge, bald-headed man. Even though, as a dead man, he doesn’t sweat, he reeks of it. He has a face like some kind of deformed bull, no neck to speak of, and forearms like the haunches of shire horses. The Tanner looks like a Nightmare come to life, made all the worse by the leather apron he wears, befouled with grime from countless murders and countless skinnings. He talks in the urban low-life vernacular of two centuries ago. He introduces himself as “a gentleman of taste and discretion, a master craftsman and a student of the arts,” and swears profusely and imaginatively, as only a man of his era can. But a huge, greasy, blood-stained figure in an antique leatherworker’s apron, who has breath apparently worse than any other individual on Earth, cannot be hidden for long. Andrew concentrates on the alleys and sewers, but already urban myths about knife-wielding maniacs haunting dark, foul-smelling corners of the city have begun to circulate.
This old villain refuses to have anything to do with the current leadership of the Kindred, partly because he knew the Prince his first time around and partly because some part of him knows that with his archaic clothes and vile smell, he could never make anything other than the most negative impression. He’s quite correct, and now that the Prince knows that the Tanner has awoken, she has issued a request that he be brought to her, without the Masquerade being breached further. Which is, of course, harder to do than she admits.
New Tricks
For every vampire elder who comes out of Torpor unable to deal with the world as it is in the modern day, another manages to adapt just fine. But how does one vampire get out of Torpor with his memory intact and his identity robust when another who is exactly the same age is wandering the streets wearing a Victorian top-hat and behaving like a rake from the last century?The whole thing doesn’t seem to obey any rhyme or reason. It seems to vary not just from vampire to vampire, but from Torpor to Torpor. Here’s a vampire who slept from 1563 through to 1701. That first time, she lost her identity practically whole cloth, and it took her nearly five decades to become as comfortable in her surroundings as her counterparts. She slept again from 1890 to 2005; this time she hasn’t just picked up exactly where she left off, but she already has the hang of e-mail and text messaging. She barely remembers the dreams this time around.
Maybe it’s because, this last time, she conquered the dreams that plagued her while she slept (see p. 30 for more on how to do this). Or perhaps she learned something, or paid attention to some supernatural prohibition that she ignored before. Did a fellow vampire give her help before she lay down her head? Or were there allied Kindred ready for her, ready to impart information on how to rebuild herself in the present? How does she do it?
The Etiquette of Awakening
Many princes have instituted strict rules about what to do when Kindred in their domains find a torpid elder vampire. Some of these rules are political. Princes who have been around a long time inevitably make a lot of enemies. What are the chances that one of those old enemies is lying in one of those coffins? Or if not an enemy, an erstwhile friend? Or a vampire of repute and respect from times past? Or just someone no one has ever heard of?One Prince dictates that she must personally see a torpid vampire before anything else is done, and that the decision as to whether the elder should be awoken is hers alone. Another only requires knowing that a torpid vampire has been found, and makes it clear that the consequences of awakening a vampire in Torpor are on the head of the one doing the waking. A weak and paranoid Prince demands that any torpid vampires get destroyed immediately out of hand (but then, everyone ignores him anyway).
Along with the rules about how one decides whether or not a torpid vampire should be woken up come the rules about how the Kindred should go about awakening her. Does it need to happen somewhere silent and solitary or in the presence of the Prince, the Seneschal and the Primogen? Do the devoted of The Lancea Sanctum need to be present in force, singing hymns, or must the Acolytes make some sort of sacrifice before the drops of blood are allowed to fall on to the sleeping vampire’s lips?
Some of these things are matters of clan or covenant tradition. Some of them have a kind of sense to them. The Kindred dimly recognized long ago that how a vampire remembers the experience of Torpor has in part something to do with the way she wakes up. A human who has a Nightmare is more likely to remember it if he awakens suddenly. It’s like that, only multiplied thousands of times.
And the effects of the waking process really depend on the elder. For example, if the Acolytes perform an arcane rite involving knives, self-mutilation, naked dancing and rhythmic shrieking to ease the elder’s return into the world, he might, if he’s one of The Crone’s devotees himself, find it stirring and comforting. On the other hand, he might be just as likely to find it nightmarish, redolent of the werewolves who beat him into Torpor in the first place. He may have preferred Sanctified hymns — but on the other hand, those same hymns might bring reminiscences of fire and “purification.” A vampire awakens in a silent, darkened room — but he was driven into Torpor after having experienced the dungeon of a Lancea Sanctum Inquisitor, and spends his first few minutes back in the world shrieking and thrashing around.
Members of The Ordo Dracul have found from recording as many accounts of Torpor as they can that the effects of The Fog of Eternity may be alleviated or worsened by the manner of one’s waking, but that it depends on the vampire, and cannot be conclusively proven.
- Case Study: Francis Rose
Francis Rose was, in life, a choirboy, and the beautiful favorite catamite of a supposedly celibate Bishop. A Daeva of The Lancea Sanctum bestowed the Embrace on the sixteen-year-old, and more than five centuries later, Rose appears to be in the full bloom of his youth, a fanatical and charismatic Archbishop of the Sanctified. He is a disturbing monster, his androgynous beauty and angelic smile masking a cold intellect and a desire to manage his servants that a modern viewer would describe as arrant control-freakishness. Rose has fallen voluntarily into Torpor three times now, and each instance has taken steps to guard his body with Kindred bound to him by Vinculi and Ghouls entrusted to them in turn. Each time, on a date set in advance by Rose, the Sanctified have taken his body to the precise place he has stipulated — the crypt of the local cathedral — and there have sung through a short but precisely-written liturgy by the Archbishop himself, As One trusted servant slits his wrist and feeds his master.
Each time, Rose has awoken, smiling and ready once more to bestow love upon the worthy, test the likely and smite the unclean, without apparently experiencing any of the ill-effects of Torpor.
Do the liturgies work? Or is it the fact that they pander so completely to Rose’s minute pedantry? Or is it no more than a coincidence that the Right Reverend Francis Rose has awoken each time as himself? Will the next time be the occasion that Francis Rose loses his mind?
Theories
The Ordo Dracul isn’t alone in researching into how exactly one of the Kindred can come out of Torpor with his minds and memories intact.A number of Carthians see it as a political issue; drawing on some — human — Marxist theories that health and ideological approach are inextricably linked (as in, a healthy ideological position makes for a healthy mind), they propose that perfect ideological purity brings to the vampire the moral strength to resist the erosion of memory. Does their theory work? The Carthians Haven’t been around long enough for the theory to really meet with its proof. Besides, finding two Carthians who wholly agree on what constitutes true purity of ideology is not easy. If no one really knows what makes for the perfect expression of revolutionary doctrine, and the doctrines themselves Haven’t been around long enough to be proved, who can really trust them?
The position of several sects and sub-groups among the Sanctified isn’t all that different: true faith brings moral strength, and moral strength brings the power to resist the dreams and retain the memories. The advantage they have over the Carthians is, of course, that they’ve had the time to prove that it works — except that they Haven’t managed to prove it. Part of the reason is that, like the Carthians, even the most fanatical members of the most particular Sanctified splinter groups don’t agree on the minutiae of doctrine.
The prevailing view, among those members of The Invictus who care, is that it’s all in the blood. Vampires from the better, more ancient bloodlines have a better chance of coming out with their minds intact... because that’s the way the blood works.
A number of views persist among the Acolytes. One theory says that it’s a spiritual issue, that a vampire in Torpor separates from his ghost, and that it travels through the landscape of dreams. Another theory has it that the vampires who come out of Torpor with a full complement of memories are those whom The Crone has chosen to perform her will in the world. Which is all very well, but impossible to prove either way.
In fact, all of these theories have an “out.” If a Carthian or member of the Sanctified goes mad after sleeping, he clearly didn’t have that pure and perfect ideological position. If an Invictus vampire doesn’t keep his memory, his blood wasn’t pure enough. If an Acolyte falls prey to toxic future-shock, he was not favored by The Crone; his ghost lost its way and lost in its fight against the monsters of dreams.
Replacement
The Fog of Eternity isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. Another vampire of The Ordo Dracul put forward the idea not long ago that for most of the undead, The Fog of Eternity was actually one of the things that ensured the vampire’s immortality… that it’s not a flaw or a curse, but a necessary part of the vampiric condition. The theory goes like this: a vampire has a superhuman, eternally enduring body, but only a human mind, and a human mind missing some indefinable characteristic that only the living have. With a human mind comes a human capacity for memory, and a human capacity for memory is designed for a human lifespan.Were a vampire to remember too much, he’d go mad. So, during his inevitable bouts of Torpor, his memories fade, allowing him to think and learn new ways when he revives.
This theory is all well and good, but if it’s really not a curse, how come the reaction of the vampire to his state is, nine times out of ten, confusion? Why is it that Torpor dreams are so weird and unpleasant?
On the other hand, our Ordo Dracul researcher does at least make one important point: many vampires awaken from Torpor and immediately assimilate the trappings of their new culture, learning new languages, new skills (like how to drive, for example, or how to use a mobile phone) and the new rules of society. In a matter of a few nights, the vampire, while not quite a native, is perfectly able to hold his own in the future.
Why does it work this way for so many of the undead and yet not for others? Some vampires awaken from Torpor alone; others in the presence of several other vampires. Some vampires have the benefit of rituals and defined ceremonies. Others don’t. The torpid share no one factor that would help them to acclimatize themselves to the present day. But the remaking of an old monster depends very much on where that information comes from.
Indoctrination
Want to succeed among the Kindred? Get the power on your side. That’s patently obvious. But how do you do that? The hard way is to suck it in and become a complete toady, working insanely hard just to find a place. You hope against hope that the elders of your faction notice and throw you those few precious scraps of social Status. One night, you might be old and powerful yourself, but only when someone falls into Torpor... and then only until the bastard wakes up.Except... what happens when these powerful, evil old monsters wake up from their centuries-long sleep and they’re not wholly sure who their friends are, or even who they are? An ambitious vampire might be able to make a few marks on a blank slate and create something new. All it takes is someone to get there first (or, if you got there second, to wipe out the people who got there first), make sure things like Requiem diaries and other bric-a-brac are well out of the way, and supply the recently awakened elder with a quick indoctrination into your take on Kindred politics.
It’s risky, but then, dealing with vampires is risky anyway, no matter whose side they’re on. And the sheer vulnerability of a vampire in the first stages of recovering from Torpor means that with the right blend of subtlety and cunning, with the right hidden-truths, half-truths and outright lies, he could be yours.
Or, from the other point of view: our vampire may not consider himself vulnerable. He has slept for two centuries. He is able to deal death without thought or twinge of conscience. And now he wakes up, and he doesn’t even know who his friends are. Can he admit this? No, he’d be showing weakness. He has to pretend he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t realize that they know he’s lost his self in the Fog, and that the lies that they’re feeding him aren’t the truths of his past. It doesn’t matter how old, powerful and vile he is. And so, he swallows whole whatever his new “friends” are feeding him, because he really doesn’t know what’s true or not, and he can’t bear the loss of face that comes from admitting he’s lost. Meanwhile, if the younger vampires manipulate him in just the right way, he’s the greatest ally they might have.
- Case Study: George Salem Douglas
George Salem Douglas fell foul of a group of Philadelphia hunters called the Chestnut Street Compact a long, long time ago. They left him for dust. About two years ago, a coterie of Carthian neonates found the old Gangrel’s emaciated form and, having realized what they had on their hands, pulled out the stake. Then they set to work. The result was a supremely manipulable elder, albeit one who hears voices and believes that the owls are after him (and who has a disconcerting habit of jabbing his fingers right through the eyeballs of anyone who says otherwise, friend or foe).
Once upon a time, he was Invictus, but now he’s a convinced Carthian, and while the vampires of Elysium recognize his formidable reputation of old, they find themselves surprised by his willingness to forsake his old allegiances and espouse the cause of Kindred democracy. He himself keeps wondering why he says and does the things he does, and why those who should be his friends keep him at arm’s length, while the reaction of his supposed enemies is even more ambivalent, suspended between pity and betrayal. The idea that he may have been duped has come to his mind, but he also knows, having been a Primogen once, that he cannot admit it, nor can he easily change sides without alienating everyone. But Douglas is no idiot, either. Soon, he will realize that the contradictions that trouble him are the key, and he will come to the conclusion that he has been duped. The vampires who currently manipulate him will be in for a terrible surprise when he begins to maneuver them in return to their Final Deaths, one by one.
Optional Rule: Regaining the Self
Seven Remedies
A number of things can, according to Kindred myth, help a recently awoken vampire to avoid the ill-effects of Torpor. They’re basically superstitions, but then, so are vampires in some circles. None of these remedies have been tested in any way that might be called scientific (much to The Ordo Dracul’s disappointment), and so even if one works, it’s hard to know if it was the remedy or some other factor.- Mix the Vitae used to awaken the torpid elder with a homeopathic infusion of aconite and belladonna.
- Bring an innocent (defined as a human who does not know of the existence of the Kindred, and on whom no vampire has ever fed) as the first victim for the newly-awakened’s thirst. Allow the awakened one to feed on the victim until death. Fresh blood cleanses the palate and the soul.
- On the contrary: feed the awakened one on the blood of animals for three nights after his awakening. This will wean him back onto the blood, for the richness of human vitae intoxicates, and in a time of weakness, intoxication can be disastrous.
- Only awaken a torpid vampire on the new moon. Too much light from the sky, too soon, and the dead lose themselves. The moon brings madness, especially to those who are vulnerable.
- Find a childe of the awakened one, and sacrifice him to his sire. Allow the old one to diablerize the younger, and thus regain the shard of his soul he placed in the childe before he slept.
- The vampire has some of the memories of the dead man, but he is not the dead man. He is simply a hollow, hungry corpse and a dead man’s memories. But every vampire’s ghost walks abroad, and all a vampire need do to never suffer from The Fog of Eternity again is to find his own ghost, and diablerize it.
- The vampire who awakens from Torpor must never enter a home again without being invited, and must never cross running water. If she observes these prohibitions, she will not lose her mind the next time she falls into Torpor.
Anatomy of an Elder Vampire
Age and power do not ameliorate the ravages of the vampiric condition, but elder vampires do exist. They play the same political games as younger Kindred, but as age advances and the mind deteriorates, vampires become less rational…and therefore more dangerous.Elder Vampires in a Chronicle
Elder vampires can be difficult to integrate in a chronicle. The implications of hundreds of years of unlife and untold layers of personal history, not to mention the raw power many elder vampires possess, make it easy for an elder character to inadvertently overstep the role the Storyteller has in mind. A way to manage this is to give the character a set role built into the architecture of the chronicle. For example:The elder is the Prince of the city in which the characters dwell. Unless you’re running a high powered chronicle in which the characters interact with the upper strata of Kindred society on a regular basis, or the Prince is an exceptionally active force in his subjects’ night-to-night existence, this puts a potentially problematic elder character firmly in the background, to be dealt with or not as the plot requires. The same goes for elder characters who occupy official roles in the court. Unless the characters have reason to interact with the individuals holding those offices, the elder character can be used as dramatic “background music,” ignorable or engageable as the situation requires. At the same time, don’t be afraid to use these characters as plot hooks or motivators simply by reputation. If an ancilla expresses reluctance to break one of the Prince’s rules, even if there’s virtually no chance he would ever find out, the characters should wonder why. Is the elder’s reach really so long?
Another possibility: The characters are the brood (or wards) of one particular elder vampire and are the executors of his estate and his night-to-night interests. Consider how active the elder is (Sleeper, Spider, or Wolf — see p. 54). Some elders are active forces in the unlives of their childer, and their demands require a significant amount of attention on a night-to-night basis. Some elders are a more passive force, in Torpor as a result of extreme age and Blood Potency, lost in the ennui of an immortal being, a scholar whose studies consume the majority of her attention. Some elders are very simply absent, but nonetheless exert significant influence from afar: the elder is a traveling diplomat or other mobile authority figure for court, clan, or covenant, and rarely interacts with the characters except through retainers delivering orders or missives. The elder might even be in Torpor, manipulating and advising the characters through dreams and other esoteric methods (see Doorways of the Eyes and Mind, p. 70).
Similarly, an elder who becomes involved in the characters’ unlives might be a nomad of malevolent or benevolent providence. The wandering cannibal known as the Unholy represents one extreme example of this possibility. An elder who stalks other vampires for sustenance is a boogeyman for the Kindred, and any chronicle involving such a character could be used to play up the ultimate horror of the vampiric condition with great effect. On the other hand, a wandering elder could also be a wise sage or Mentor figure to a coterie of young Kindred seeking answers about themselves and the Kindred in general — but where vampires are concerned, such advice is never free.
Elders Among Themselves
Younger Kindred often think of elders as staid, educated and cautious individuals. Yes, they are dangerous and predatory, but they don’t lash out like neonates do. They keep the Predator’s Taint under control, and don’t circle each other snarling like uncultured animals. These Kindred might be somewhat correct in this assertion, but for the wrong reasons.Elders are usually less apt to react badly to Predator’s Taint, but that’s because they’ve usually been around long enough to meet most of the vampires in a given region, or learn some tricks to help control it. When two elders meet, they establish dominance quickly, and often away from prying eyes. Some cities are less civilized than others, though.
Elder dominance displays are often terrifying for younger Kindred to witness. Younger vampires, with their younger Beasts, often settle their instinct-driven need to establish a hierarchy with a few growls and perhaps a lunge. Elder displays are somewhat more complex, ritualistic, and often violent, particularly when clans or covenants differ. Elders of the same clan or covenant are often already heavily laden with acknowledged places in the relative hierarchies of those groups. Among elders of differing clans and covenants, however, the Beast often rules first meetings. Bloodshed is not uncommon, especially among those elders who can no longer feed on human blood, brute-force expressions of personal strength establishing rough standards of conduct. This violence is often highly ritualized in its forms, ranging from duels using rules forgotten most mortal historians to quasi-religious forums that resemble intense philosophical debates on the surface, but carry the promise of violence should one’s orthodoxy prove inadequate.
Somewhat rarer, but no less dangerous, are the Discipline duels in which two (and sometimes more) elders engage each other in a contest in which they prove their mastery over the powers of the blood. A Dominate duel, for instance, might consist of two vampires trying force each other to drink from a cup containing the blood of a more-powerful Kindred. In an Obfuscate duel, both participants remain unseen until the moment is right to strike — the duel is actually to first blood, but as the Discipline extends beyond simple invisibility, it involves much more mystical finesse than a swordfight.
All of these forms vary widely from place to place, covenant to covenant, and clan to clan. The manner in which elders in Chicago establish hierarchy would not be acceptable practice in New Orleans, or the way the elders of The Circle of the Crone decide who takes precedence would not satisfy the needs of the Carthians or The Invictus. This is one more reason that neonate and ancilla practices tend to be simpler — they just don’t have the experience or knowledge base to know what kind of challenge would be appropriate. Once elders have established their pecking order, however, challenges to that order are comparatively rare. Younger vampires are more likely to seek frequent upwards or lateral advancement than their elders, who have, in general, already achieved great power and influence within their own spheres. Those elders who do challenge the established hierarchy are either ambitious, and therefore dangerous, or are acting from some strong conviction concerning the incompetence or inability of those ranked above them. Elders also do not normally waste their time and effort on challenges that do not stand to yield definite returns on their investments — they’d prefer to manipulate younger vampires into doing it.
Elders and the Maintenance of Power
Many elders have spent vast amounts of time and vast sums of money to acquire what they desire. Sometimes these things are material benefits that can only be obtained by maintaining an active interest in the rapidly changing modern world. Sometimes elders seek positions of power and influence within Kindred society. Sometimes they pursue spiritual development within the practice of their covenant’s particular beliefs. Savvy elders quickly realize that none of these goals are possible to obtain and maintain alone, and that they require the assistance of competent retainers, both living and undead, to keep what they have worked for. Such assistants are made, not, born: the capacity to recognize raw ability and nurture it to refined expertise is a survival trait that the most powerful and well-positioned elders cultivate. Extremely particular elders select their servants, and occasionally their childer, in earliest childhood and slip into their lives as Mentor and patron figures that provide carefully calibrated aid at proper intervals, guiding the development of their chosen mortals like an artisan gardener tending a bonsai. Others take a more pragmatic and less artistic route: they hire the tenders of their fortunes and their personal needs from professionals trained to those trades. The world never lacks for lawyers and stock brokers and personal assistants, after all, and all it takes is the blood to insure loyalty to death and beyond.Some elders, less high-maintenance in their personal needs, take a more modern approach to the management of their finances, employing accountants and allowing computers to parcel out funds as necessary while they engage in more worthwhile personal endeavors of spiritual or intellectual development. Of course, they face the same problems as mortals who let computers pay their bills for them — a hacker can take advantage of the situation, and a bank error or computer glitch can tangle things up for months.
Elders and the Thirst
As vampires age, they grow more powerful and their blood grows more potent. Accompanying this power, though, are restrictions on what makes suitable prey. Eventually, only Kindred blood suffices.Several methods of managing the elder thirst exist, though none is perfect or without its dangers. By far the most common is for the elder to enter a palliative period of Torpor. During the sleep of ages, the blood of the elder thins and grows less potent: he loses an order of personal power but he also loses the desire to consume his own kind.
On the other hand, the elder also has the option of remaining awake and growing in power. There exists no Kindred taboo against consuming the blood of another vampire for the purposes of sustenance, only against destroying another vampire and devouring her soul. Some elders simply choose not the take the risks of Torpor, preferring to gather and maintain a group of other vampires, generally vampires hundreds of years their junior, to serve as their herds. Often these vampires are members of an elder’s own extended lineage, grandchilder and great-grandchilder, or else the offspring of members of an elder’s own clan or covenant who “volunteer” them for the honor of service in order to curry favor with a demonstrably powerful and ancient elder vampire. In truth, so long as that elder is careful in his feeding practices, he can avoid the danger of this course of action: devouring the soul of another vampire in the grip of hunger frenzy. One method of managing such a strategy is to have a large Herd of vampires, who can be rotated regularly into and out of service. The Kiss is not, after all, an unpleasant thing to experience or no one would ever submit to it; the same is true for a vampire feeding upon another vampire and such relationships contain more than a few undercurrents similar to a codependent sexual/emotional relationship. (Note, of course, that it is possible, though unlikely, for an elder to develop a Vinculum to a younger vampire — see p. 162 of Vampire: The Requiem.)
Yes, it's true, it can be lonely, walking among these poor, silly people for all this time. But you musn't complain. After all, there will at least always be something to eat.
— George Salem Douglas, Gangrel of Philadelphia
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— George Salem Douglas, Gangrel of Philadelphia
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