The Moulding Room
The Eye behind the Camera, "I am nothing but I must be everything."
At some time in the 1980s, the surveillance culture took off in the United Kingdom. No one noticed the way that the cameras began to proliferate until they were everywhere, and it became impossible to walk in a public place without ending up on video. Conspiracy theories abound: they can see everything. If we are seen all the time, how does that change us? What does that make us? Who’s behind it?
To their human initiates — who are called Visitors — the vampires who sit in the Moulding Room (the Residents) say that they know the answer. They are the secret rulers of the surveillance society. They are the masters of exhibition, of a change in human attitude. Join, and you too can see through the cameras that guide us.
Power is found in the eye behind the CCTV lens, the photograph of celebrity flesh, the sex tape on the internet, the speed camera and the flash of the paparazzi. To know these things is power, both temporal power and mystical power. Information allows control; film and image has changed the way we view our selves, our inner lives and our bodies.
The Residents tell the Moulding Room’s Visitors that they are fulfilling a plan to transform the bodies and minds of the world – that they will be the new masters.
None of this is all true. The Moulding Room is a quasi-Situationist prank created in the 1970s. Without meaning, all things are absurd. Images supplant human perceptions. Bodies begin to mimic the image on the screen. Human flesh itself is changing, and the mind within the flesh, and the society around it. The New Flesh is governed by the image, and the image is everywhere. The Residents of the Moulding Room had no real influence over the surveillance boom, but see the value in directing the movement of society. Not for any purpose, mind. They do it because there is no meaning. They do it because it’s all absurd. They do it because they can.
To their human initiates — who are called Visitors — the vampires who sit in the Moulding Room (the Residents) say that they know the answer. They are the secret rulers of the surveillance society. They are the masters of exhibition, of a change in human attitude. Join, and you too can see through the cameras that guide us.
Power is found in the eye behind the CCTV lens, the photograph of celebrity flesh, the sex tape on the internet, the speed camera and the flash of the paparazzi. To know these things is power, both temporal power and mystical power. Information allows control; film and image has changed the way we view our selves, our inner lives and our bodies.
The Residents tell the Moulding Room’s Visitors that they are fulfilling a plan to transform the bodies and minds of the world – that they will be the new masters.
None of this is all true. The Moulding Room is a quasi-Situationist prank created in the 1970s. Without meaning, all things are absurd. Images supplant human perceptions. Bodies begin to mimic the image on the screen. Human flesh itself is changing, and the mind within the flesh, and the society around it. The New Flesh is governed by the image, and the image is everywhere. The Residents of the Moulding Room had no real influence over the surveillance boom, but see the value in directing the movement of society. Not for any purpose, mind. They do it because there is no meaning. They do it because it’s all absurd. They do it because they can.
Public Agenda
Praxis: The longer they’re in the cult, the more the Visitors are encouraged to subvert their lives, their industries, their bodies, their selves. They alter themselves with surgery. They implicitly allow recordings of their sexual exploits to circulate the internet. They leak salacious stories about themselves to the gossip rags. Politicians get caught on film with nubile mistresses, denying their sex acts with equivocal language (for example: “I did not have sex with that woman”) or allowing the tabloids to plaster the implications across hundreds of column inches. The photographers and low-grade journalists take compromising pictures of their famous colleagues, spying on them with their full knowledge and consent.
Meanwhile, every night the Watchers gather all the surveillance material they can find, handing over hundreds of meaningless CCTV tapes, which will never be viewed, to the archives of the Moulding Room, filling a secret archive in every city the cult operates in with vast amounts of moldering personal information, left to rot.
The Residents watch with amusement and interest. These people want power. They worship it. How far will they go before it stops? To what degree can they subvert and transform this society? How much can they change before society resists? And if they can change it utterly, what glorious horrors will result?
Meanwhile, every night the Watchers gather all the surveillance material they can find, handing over hundreds of meaningless CCTV tapes, which will never be viewed, to the archives of the Moulding Room, filling a secret archive in every city the cult operates in with vast amounts of moldering personal information, left to rot.
The Residents watch with amusement and interest. These people want power. They worship it. How far will they go before it stops? To what degree can they subvert and transform this society? How much can they change before society resists? And if they can change it utterly, what glorious horrors will result?
Demography and Population
Cultists: About half of the human Visitors to the Moulding Room are rich, or beautiful, or both. They’re minor celebrities, politicians, fashion models, pop stars and sports stars. They mingle with paparazzi and gossip columnists, the very people who transmit their private doings across the media. Among the most honored of the Visitors are the Watchers, those who have access to the CCTV that covers so much public space in the modern world. These are the eyes behind the camera. The ones who see. Promises of power and influence given to the Visitors are rarely hollow, simply because the Visitors are encouraged to help each other out. The Residents don’t need to do anything.
The vampires, meanwhile, are a very different group. About half of them (the ones with two or more dots in Initiation into the cult) are in on the joke. They’re mystics, experimenters, and simply those who want to know everything. Frances Black isn’t privy to the truth yet, and has joined out of curiosity. She’ll find out soon and may give herself whole-heartedly to it. She has little else left. A Carthian revolutionary, equally clueless, sees the transformation of human society and flesh as the first step to transforming vampiric society. An Acolyte who feeds on the blood of porn stars and their parasites understands absurdity, and enjoys the violation of flesh. A former spy, driven mad by constant surveillance and Embraced by an Invictus Prince who wanted him to continue in the same vein, sees how meaningless it all is, and embraces it, collecting all he can to subvert and alter the structures that made him crazy. A celebrity photographer, who was nocturnal when he was alive, fulfills the unspoken transaction between the Moulding Room’s members, treating his camera as a sacred eye. Vincent Moon uses mass-market occult trash to govern everything he does, partly because it means no more than anything else. And partly because he’s completely insane.
The vampires, meanwhile, are a very different group. About half of them (the ones with two or more dots in Initiation into the cult) are in on the joke. They’re mystics, experimenters, and simply those who want to know everything. Frances Black isn’t privy to the truth yet, and has joined out of curiosity. She’ll find out soon and may give herself whole-heartedly to it. She has little else left. A Carthian revolutionary, equally clueless, sees the transformation of human society and flesh as the first step to transforming vampiric society. An Acolyte who feeds on the blood of porn stars and their parasites understands absurdity, and enjoys the violation of flesh. A former spy, driven mad by constant surveillance and Embraced by an Invictus Prince who wanted him to continue in the same vein, sees how meaningless it all is, and embraces it, collecting all he can to subvert and alter the structures that made him crazy. A celebrity photographer, who was nocturnal when he was alive, fulfills the unspoken transaction between the Moulding Room’s members, treating his camera as a sacred eye. Vincent Moon uses mass-market occult trash to govern everything he does, partly because it means no more than anything else. And partly because he’s completely insane.
Foreign Relations
Covenants: Some of the more radical, less reputable Carthians get invited into the Moulding Room because subversion is what they’re all about. Sometimes, the Residents will try to sound out a member of The Invictus or The Lancea Sanctum. The Invictus see control of the mortals as worthwhile; the Sanctified see their suffering and understand attempts to lead them astray as tests of faith. Members of the Circle of the Crone who understand the mystic value of dissipation also join. The most fertile ground for recruits is The Ordo Dracul, whose members understand experimentation for its own sake.
Worship
Ceremonies: The neophytes of the Moulding Room meet on Monday nights in the lounge of some opulent residence. Dressed in lounge suits and evening dresses, they perform magical rites using the trappings of the surveillance culture as their focus. They use images of conspiracy theories and celebrity icons as sacrificial elements. They pray over copies of those magazines that keep close tabs on celebrity love lives and private affairs. They re-enact and re-film a notorious celebrity sex-tape, changing it with each iteration, transforming it gradually into a surreal horror of blood and death. They hoard and copy surveillance tapes. A camera stolen from a paparazzo becomes a sacred object. The members degrade themselves, performing all sorts of perversions with each other, as the masters – the vampires – watch. The vampires who participate take this a step further. Come the end of the rites, the vampires take a chosen few to a private, second ceremony, where there are no cameras, and where the subversion extends even to human flesh.
• The character understands CCTV cameras, and loves them. She gains a free specialty in Surveillance tied to the Investigation Skill.
••• The character is now a Resident in the Moulding Room. She has access to the unique Discipline of Detournement: the subversion of her own flesh so that society may itself be subverted for (new dots x 6) experience points.
••••• The human members of the Moulding Room have been cherry-picked to be powerful, rich and beautiful. At this level, a Resident of the Moulding Room can use their connections as her own: neophytes must grant her access without question to their own ties and alliances. This amounts to an extra three Contacts chosen from these sources: Government, Print Media, the Police, Medicine and the Entertainment Industry.
Initiations
The Visitors (and the lowest grade of Resident) are denied the chance to see the full rites of the cult.• The character understands CCTV cameras, and loves them. She gains a free specialty in Surveillance tied to the Investigation Skill.
••• The character is now a Resident in the Moulding Room. She has access to the unique Discipline of Detournement: the subversion of her own flesh so that society may itself be subverted for (new dots x 6) experience points.
••••• The human members of the Moulding Room have been cherry-picked to be powerful, rich and beautiful. At this level, a Resident of the Moulding Room can use their connections as her own: neophytes must grant her access without question to their own ties and alliances. This amounts to an extra three Contacts chosen from these sources: Government, Print Media, the Police, Medicine and the Entertainment Industry.
Type
Religious, Cult
Related Traditions