Therion
You have been lied to, brother. But rejoice now, for you have found truth at last, and it shall set you free.
In a covenant of inhuman beings ruled by their passions and led only by instinct, one can’t help but wonder how the Brood manages to maintain even a semblance of social order, composure or spiritual contiguity. In a primitive pack structure, where each member is more monstrous than the next, one wonders what sort of being could effectively shoulder the responsibility of guiding the others toward that very order, composure and spiritual contiguity. In such a harsh and alien context, what sort of creature could even know how to provide such guidance? And even if it did, what sort of creature could hope to inspire both confidence and fear in sufficient measure to make it all work?
The Therion is just such a creature.
While the Brood happily accepts aspirants of all clans and bloodlines, the Therion is the only vampiric bloodline that is actually unique to the Forsworn. Known as the “bloodline of the Beast,” the Therion are the gurus and shamans of the Forsworn, guiding their covey-mates’ Beasts toward greater wisdom and power. If The Crux can be likened to a wheel, with each covey member represented by a single spoke, then the Therion is the central hub, the anchor point for the bonds of his covey. A Therion’s primal understanding of the Demiurge, and of the Beast’s interplay with its ethos, surpasses that of most any other Brood member.
Due to the nature of their role in the covey, and of how they are created in the first place, the Therion are the subjects of equal parts reverence and fear from other Forsworn. The Therion are the product of a strange and powerful rite, performed by a covey with the specific intent of exalting one of their number into the bloodline. Similar to other Archontes, this rite is one that all Forsworn have an instinctive awareness of how to perform upon bonding with others of their kind via The Crux, but their actual understanding of the rite (and thus the Therion) is largely limited to what they feel — what their Beasts know as opposed to what their thinking minds know. This subconscious assurance has a tendency to make the Forsworn a little unsettled by the Therion, even by the one they “made,” but they know that having one around to aid them is far better than not having one around at all. It is almost unheard of for a Brood covey to have more than one Therion among its ranks, however, for the Therion’s gifts cannot benefit those tied to the Therion by blood more than once (thus making redundancy the only real purpose to having a second Therion in one’s covey, and its presence would undoubtedly do more harm than good).
In keeping with patterns central to other aspects of the Brood, the Therion focus on the Forsworn view of existence as being partitioned into three stages: mortality, vampirism and vampirism among the Forsworn. While some Therion hail from the rare ranks of those Embraced directly into the Brood, the vast majority led unlives of blithe ignorance among the Unlearned before hearing the Call, and most consider it a weakness for one to have joined the bloodline bereft of this crucial experience (with exceptions, of course, made for those Therion prodigies spoken of in Brood prophecy).
While most of their dark wisdom is, like so much else in the Brood, largely a function of the primal, of the instinctual rather than the intellectual, a number of Therion have attempted to express in written format the ideas most central to their bloodline over the centuries. The practice began in Italy, after a Milanese printer named Panfilo Castaldi developed an early printing press using blocks of moveable type (some 10 years prior to the work of a certain German goldsmith). Seeing the potential inherent in the machine, an Antinomian Therion of the time by name of Arturo Ceniza secured the plans and constructed for himself a duplicate. With this device, he printed the first copies of the tome that would come to be known by many names, the first and still the most prevalent of which is the Book of Threefold Darkness.
The closest thing the Brood has to a Bible, the Book lays out, in head-swimmingly cryptic and circuitous fashion, a series of interwoven treatises on the nature of the Beast and its relation to man. And, similar to the Bible, the Book was born of numerous authors, each of whom held different revelations and approaches, but nearly every version sees disturbingly consistent agreement on the basics, each version divided into precisely nine chapters. Ceniza’s true intent was for the book to serve as a powerful resonant, to help draw other vampires to the Brood, and as the Book’s legacy has spread, his wish has come true many, many times over.
The Therion is just such a creature.
While the Brood happily accepts aspirants of all clans and bloodlines, the Therion is the only vampiric bloodline that is actually unique to the Forsworn. Known as the “bloodline of the Beast,” the Therion are the gurus and shamans of the Forsworn, guiding their covey-mates’ Beasts toward greater wisdom and power. If The Crux can be likened to a wheel, with each covey member represented by a single spoke, then the Therion is the central hub, the anchor point for the bonds of his covey. A Therion’s primal understanding of the Demiurge, and of the Beast’s interplay with its ethos, surpasses that of most any other Brood member.
Due to the nature of their role in the covey, and of how they are created in the first place, the Therion are the subjects of equal parts reverence and fear from other Forsworn. The Therion are the product of a strange and powerful rite, performed by a covey with the specific intent of exalting one of their number into the bloodline. Similar to other Archontes, this rite is one that all Forsworn have an instinctive awareness of how to perform upon bonding with others of their kind via The Crux, but their actual understanding of the rite (and thus the Therion) is largely limited to what they feel — what their Beasts know as opposed to what their thinking minds know. This subconscious assurance has a tendency to make the Forsworn a little unsettled by the Therion, even by the one they “made,” but they know that having one around to aid them is far better than not having one around at all. It is almost unheard of for a Brood covey to have more than one Therion among its ranks, however, for the Therion’s gifts cannot benefit those tied to the Therion by blood more than once (thus making redundancy the only real purpose to having a second Therion in one’s covey, and its presence would undoubtedly do more harm than good).
In keeping with patterns central to other aspects of the Brood, the Therion focus on the Forsworn view of existence as being partitioned into three stages: mortality, vampirism and vampirism among the Forsworn. While some Therion hail from the rare ranks of those Embraced directly into the Brood, the vast majority led unlives of blithe ignorance among the Unlearned before hearing the Call, and most consider it a weakness for one to have joined the bloodline bereft of this crucial experience (with exceptions, of course, made for those Therion prodigies spoken of in Brood prophecy).
While most of their dark wisdom is, like so much else in the Brood, largely a function of the primal, of the instinctual rather than the intellectual, a number of Therion have attempted to express in written format the ideas most central to their bloodline over the centuries. The practice began in Italy, after a Milanese printer named Panfilo Castaldi developed an early printing press using blocks of moveable type (some 10 years prior to the work of a certain German goldsmith). Seeing the potential inherent in the machine, an Antinomian Therion of the time by name of Arturo Ceniza secured the plans and constructed for himself a duplicate. With this device, he printed the first copies of the tome that would come to be known by many names, the first and still the most prevalent of which is the Book of Threefold Darkness.
The closest thing the Brood has to a Bible, the Book lays out, in head-swimmingly cryptic and circuitous fashion, a series of interwoven treatises on the nature of the Beast and its relation to man. And, similar to the Bible, the Book was born of numerous authors, each of whom held different revelations and approaches, but nearly every version sees disturbingly consistent agreement on the basics, each version divided into precisely nine chapters. Ceniza’s true intent was for the book to serve as a powerful resonant, to help draw other vampires to the Brood, and as the Book’s legacy has spread, his wish has come true many, many times over.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
Background: A prospective Therion can come from any vampiric clan or mortal walk of life. The determining factors revolve much more heavily around the character’s philosophical outlook and moral composition. Since no vampire comes to the Brood already a Therion, the importance of one’s background is, as so many other things among the Forsworn, primarily about the process. Facets of one’s first stage are pertinent only as they pertain to the attainment of the second stage, much as second-stage experiences are important primarily insofar as they pertain to one’s heeding the Call, and so on. If an aspect of a Therion’s background, mortal or otherwise, stands in the way of his Pursuit, it falls upon him to address it, but solely in the interests of deconstructing it and ultimately stripping the forgotten thing of its present or future hold over him. Otherwise, the things of the past are religiously, relentlessly, left to the past.
That said, certain fundamental personality traits do seem to appear more often than not among the Therion, despite their disparate nature as a bloodline. Foremost among these is a strong tendency toward introspection, an inborn gift, if you will, for what people call “soul searching.” A vampire who does not yet know who (and what) he is or what he believes is not yet ready to be a Therion. Second only to this trait is the Therion’s ability to bear witness to anything and everything in the interests of attained enlightenment — what some Brood scholars have dubbed “an avid willingness to gaze unflinchingly into the abyss.” The ascension of a Therion’s blood opens his eyes to images and truths that would easily shatter more delicate minds, and history has shown this propensity to develop early on in the mortal lives of all but the rarest few of the Therion.
That said, certain fundamental personality traits do seem to appear more often than not among the Therion, despite their disparate nature as a bloodline. Foremost among these is a strong tendency toward introspection, an inborn gift, if you will, for what people call “soul searching.” A vampire who does not yet know who (and what) he is or what he believes is not yet ready to be a Therion. Second only to this trait is the Therion’s ability to bear witness to anything and everything in the interests of attained enlightenment — what some Brood scholars have dubbed “an avid willingness to gaze unflinchingly into the abyss.” The ascension of a Therion’s blood opens his eyes to images and truths that would easily shatter more delicate minds, and history has shown this propensity to develop early on in the mortal lives of all but the rarest few of the Therion.
Common Dress code
Appearance: The Therion are almost deliberate in their lack of consistency in appearance, as a group. What connects one Therion to another is not clan, or faction or even blood, but something far more ephemeral. One tells the Therion of a Brood covey not by the color of his skin or the clothes draped over his frame, but by the way his brothers and sisters act in his presence, and if one pays close enough attention, by the inscrutably disquieting and utterly alien look in his eye. The Therion are monstrous and detached, regardless of their outward seeming.
If they could hide their homicidal insanity, they wouldn’t. The image of the Therion that gets spread in the whispers of other Kindred might make you think there’s just one of them, but you’re not so lucky. According to rumor, they shave their bodies, so that no hair competes with their dark eyes for attention. They go barefoot, because they’re not afraid of a little pain. They wear loose ponchos sewn together from the best parts of human skins, stained and branded with angelic glyphs stolen and defaced by a thousand years of Satanists. The Therion chew on these ponchos to keep their hunger at bay. Dizzying black tattoos run down their arms to utterly black hands, dripping with blood, which they walk through, leaving behind bare red footprints.
How much of that fearmonger’s image is true? Any of it? Meeting a Therion is the only way to know the truth — if you survive long enough to know you’ve met one.
If they could hide their homicidal insanity, they wouldn’t. The image of the Therion that gets spread in the whispers of other Kindred might make you think there’s just one of them, but you’re not so lucky. According to rumor, they shave their bodies, so that no hair competes with their dark eyes for attention. They go barefoot, because they’re not afraid of a little pain. They wear loose ponchos sewn together from the best parts of human skins, stained and branded with angelic glyphs stolen and defaced by a thousand years of Satanists. The Therion chew on these ponchos to keep their hunger at bay. Dizzying black tattoos run down their arms to utterly black hands, dripping with blood, which they walk through, leaving behind bare red footprints.
How much of that fearmonger’s image is true? Any of it? Meeting a Therion is the only way to know the truth — if you survive long enough to know you’ve met one.
Art & Architecture
Haven: As important as the Therion are to their coveymates, the Therion take no special pains to make their havens in any one particular place or fashion, as a rule. They will, however, often assume the role of covey Seneschal, opening their own havens for use as communal resting, ritual or meeting spaces, or in some cases, securing a separate place exclusively for the covey’s use. Once a Haven is established, the day-to-day details are typically left to subordinates (often a trusted ghoul of the covey), but the trust a covey places in its Therion is the often the first step to getting such measures underway, if not resolved outright. After that, it’s just a matter of making sure the Haven is secure, wherever it may be.
Major organizations
Covenant: Vampires outside the Brood are incapable of manifesting this bloodline. A Therion who chooses to raise his Humanity or join another covenant (and thus leave the Brood) does not stop being a member of his bloodline, but similar to other Forsworn, he does lose all Investments. In addition, a Therion apostate also loses knowledge of any Choronzon powers he may have learned, as well as any Devotions for which Choronzon and/or Investments are a prerequisite.
Organization: As one might expect, the Therion have little organization to speak of when it comes to other Therion. While the caste itself is large and influential in the covenant worldwide, each Therion, similar to each Brood covey, is very much an individual, and beyond that, an important member of the covey he serves. All other considerations pale in comparison to an Advocate’s duties to his bonded brothers and sisters, though Brood members outside the covey can expect to be treated with some respect, particularly if they, too, are of the Therion’s own faction. Depending on the region, and the number of coveys present therein, the Therion of a given faction will stay in communication with each other (this is especially true of those in The Nameless and the Perfecti of the Scarlet Rite), but like just about all Forsworn, are leery of getting too involved in one another’s business.
Organization: As one might expect, the Therion have little organization to speak of when it comes to other Therion. While the caste itself is large and influential in the covenant worldwide, each Therion, similar to each Brood covey, is very much an individual, and beyond that, an important member of the covey he serves. All other considerations pale in comparison to an Advocate’s duties to his bonded brothers and sisters, though Brood members outside the covey can expect to be treated with some respect, particularly if they, too, are of the Therion’s own faction. Depending on the region, and the number of coveys present therein, the Therion of a given faction will stay in communication with each other (this is especially true of those in The Nameless and the Perfecti of the Scarlet Rite), but like just about all Forsworn, are leery of getting too involved in one another’s business.
Parent Clan: Any (though Gangrel is far and away the most common). Brood members of at least Blood Potency 3 can adopt this bloodline without need for an Avus if they have at least two other Brood members to aid them in the rite. In essence, covey and Vaulderie combine to replace the need for an Avus. (See Chapter Two.) This is the only way for a character to join the Therion.
Nickname: Advocates. (This name is only known and used in so far as it is the word that best describes the complicated concept that comes to mind when the Forsworn speak to one another about their bloodline in the Tongue of the Beast.) In practice, what a Therion is called has more to do with the faction affiliation of the speaker than anything else. The vast majority of Scarlet Rite-dominant coveys, for example, refer to the Therion as Perfecti, while Antinomian coveys tend to call them “magisters” and Archons often refer to one as a “Fortunatus.” The Nameless deliberately avoid speaking of the Therion outside of the Tongue. Character Creation: A Therion is likely to continue focusing on whatever Traits he favored before adopting the bloodline, with an added interest in developing his Wits score. The Therion are repositories of primal wisdom, and as such, tend to focus on such Skills as Animal Ken, Empathy and Occult. Physical Traits tend to merit the least attention for those who walk the path of the Advocate, but as they are still vampires (and Forsworn vampires at that), Skills such as Stealth and Survival will always retain their appeal. Depending on the character’s role in the story, he may find it worthwhile to pursue acquisition of Contacts who can be of benefit to his covey, but on the whole, Merits tend to take a back seat to other pursuits once a character becomes a Therion. Remember that a character must have at least three dots of Blood Potency to even be eligible for the bloodline.
Bloodline Disciplines: When a character adopts this bloodline, his player selects two of his clan’s favored Disciplines. The third is dropped and replaced by Obfuscate. The bloodline Discipline is Choronzon, the hallmark of the Therion.
Example: The Daeva head of a Brood covey reaches Blood Potency 3 and decides to inherit his blood legacy as his covey-mates’ resident Therion. After the character spends the requisite permanent Willpower dot and engages in the proper Vaulderie ritual, his player selects Celerity and Majesty from among his clan Disciplines, thus dropping Vigor and acquiring Choronzon and Obfuscate.
Weakness: All Therion suffer from their parent clan’s weakness. A Nosferatu Therion remains as frightful as a Ventrue Therion remains mentally deranged. Those who adopt this bloodline suffer from an additional blood-borne debilitation, however, and some find it a grave one indeed. Once a vampire has gone through the mystic transformation that makes him a Therion, he may never again sire childer. Forsworn Advocates are incapable of passing on the Curse, and should they try to Embrace anyway, their subjects always die screaming, their eyes turning a glossy black before smoldering painfully away into thick, black ash. This infertility is a sacrifice on the part of the Therion that cannot be undone, and the Forsworn look upon it as further proof of the bloodline’s devotion to the Brood.
Concepts: Anthropologist, clinical euthanasist, Confessor, idiot savant, modern primitive, philosophy professor, psychonaut, street chemist, swami.
Both the Therion bloodline and The Doulosi ghoul family are oddities of vampire physiology. How does a bloodline emerge without a parent clan? How does a ghoul family solidify its mystic properties enough to pass on the supernatural power of the Blood without also inheriting the unique aspects of the clan from which they derive their power? If bloodlines can be formed without the fetters of blood shackling them to one clan or another, if ghoul blood can achieve the difficult goal of graduating to a full-fledged ghoul lineage without an intimate debt to any one clan, why don’t more vampires strive to win this kind of flexibility for their own bloodlines and their own Ghoul Families?
In the fictional game world of Vampire, the answer is simple: The Therion are not really a bloodline and The Doulosi are not really a ghoul family. At least, not in the same way that other loodlines and Ghoul Families are. Rather, they are unique anomalies of the Blood, perhaps caused by ancient contact with hellfire but reproducible through the same Vitae-altering methods that Kindred use to transmute their essential blood from that of a clan to that of a bloodline. The sanguine mutations that make a vampire into a Therion, for example, are not strictly the same as those that result in more traditional bloodlines, but the changes these transformations cause in the Blood render vampires unable to adopt any other bloodline. The effect is similar for The Doulosi — their weakness even demonstrates how volatile it can be to mix these blood anomalies with more common vampire blood factors.
In the Language of the game itself, the issue is even less fantastic: What happens in the game world and how it’s described in the game mechanics are not always the same. Vampires in and out of the Brood mistake the Therion and The Doulosi for things more commonly encountered (bloodlines and ghoul families), but that doesn’t make them the same. The effects of the Therion and The Doulosi on gameplay are similar enough to those of regular bloodlines and Ghoul Families that it’s not worth your trouble to learn new systems to use them. The role that these elements play in Belial’s Brood require these mechanisms to be available to characters of any clan, and opening each element to any clan is the most direct way to represent that in the game. Five different Therion bloodlines could have been described — one for each clan, for example — but that would just use more pages to say the same thing.
The basic mechanics of The Doulosi, as described in this book, are enough to use them in most Vampire chronicles, but if you want more information on proper Ghoul Families and how they work, get yourself a copy of Ghouls.
Nickname: Advocates. (This name is only known and used in so far as it is the word that best describes the complicated concept that comes to mind when the Forsworn speak to one another about their bloodline in the Tongue of the Beast.) In practice, what a Therion is called has more to do with the faction affiliation of the speaker than anything else. The vast majority of Scarlet Rite-dominant coveys, for example, refer to the Therion as Perfecti, while Antinomian coveys tend to call them “magisters” and Archons often refer to one as a “Fortunatus.” The Nameless deliberately avoid speaking of the Therion outside of the Tongue. Character Creation: A Therion is likely to continue focusing on whatever Traits he favored before adopting the bloodline, with an added interest in developing his Wits score. The Therion are repositories of primal wisdom, and as such, tend to focus on such Skills as Animal Ken, Empathy and Occult. Physical Traits tend to merit the least attention for those who walk the path of the Advocate, but as they are still vampires (and Forsworn vampires at that), Skills such as Stealth and Survival will always retain their appeal. Depending on the character’s role in the story, he may find it worthwhile to pursue acquisition of Contacts who can be of benefit to his covey, but on the whole, Merits tend to take a back seat to other pursuits once a character becomes a Therion. Remember that a character must have at least three dots of Blood Potency to even be eligible for the bloodline.
Bloodline Disciplines: When a character adopts this bloodline, his player selects two of his clan’s favored Disciplines. The third is dropped and replaced by Obfuscate. The bloodline Discipline is Choronzon, the hallmark of the Therion.
Example: The Daeva head of a Brood covey reaches Blood Potency 3 and decides to inherit his blood legacy as his covey-mates’ resident Therion. After the character spends the requisite permanent Willpower dot and engages in the proper Vaulderie ritual, his player selects Celerity and Majesty from among his clan Disciplines, thus dropping Vigor and acquiring Choronzon and Obfuscate.
Weakness: All Therion suffer from their parent clan’s weakness. A Nosferatu Therion remains as frightful as a Ventrue Therion remains mentally deranged. Those who adopt this bloodline suffer from an additional blood-borne debilitation, however, and some find it a grave one indeed. Once a vampire has gone through the mystic transformation that makes him a Therion, he may never again sire childer. Forsworn Advocates are incapable of passing on the Curse, and should they try to Embrace anyway, their subjects always die screaming, their eyes turning a glossy black before smoldering painfully away into thick, black ash. This infertility is a sacrifice on the part of the Therion that cannot be undone, and the Forsworn look upon it as further proof of the bloodline’s devotion to the Brood.
Concepts: Anthropologist, clinical euthanasist, Confessor, idiot savant, modern primitive, philosophy professor, psychonaut, street chemist, swami.
Parent Clan: Any?
Both the Therion bloodline and The Doulosi ghoul family are oddities of vampire physiology. How does a bloodline emerge without a parent clan? How does a ghoul family solidify its mystic properties enough to pass on the supernatural power of the Blood without also inheriting the unique aspects of the clan from which they derive their power? If bloodlines can be formed without the fetters of blood shackling them to one clan or another, if ghoul blood can achieve the difficult goal of graduating to a full-fledged ghoul lineage without an intimate debt to any one clan, why don’t more vampires strive to win this kind of flexibility for their own bloodlines and their own Ghoul Families?In the fictional game world of Vampire, the answer is simple: The Therion are not really a bloodline and The Doulosi are not really a ghoul family. At least, not in the same way that other loodlines and Ghoul Families are. Rather, they are unique anomalies of the Blood, perhaps caused by ancient contact with hellfire but reproducible through the same Vitae-altering methods that Kindred use to transmute their essential blood from that of a clan to that of a bloodline. The sanguine mutations that make a vampire into a Therion, for example, are not strictly the same as those that result in more traditional bloodlines, but the changes these transformations cause in the Blood render vampires unable to adopt any other bloodline. The effect is similar for The Doulosi — their weakness even demonstrates how volatile it can be to mix these blood anomalies with more common vampire blood factors.
In the Language of the game itself, the issue is even less fantastic: What happens in the game world and how it’s described in the game mechanics are not always the same. Vampires in and out of the Brood mistake the Therion and The Doulosi for things more commonly encountered (bloodlines and ghoul families), but that doesn’t make them the same. The effects of the Therion and The Doulosi on gameplay are similar enough to those of regular bloodlines and Ghoul Families that it’s not worth your trouble to learn new systems to use them. The role that these elements play in Belial’s Brood require these mechanisms to be available to characters of any clan, and opening each element to any clan is the most direct way to represent that in the game. Five different Therion bloodlines could have been described — one for each clan, for example — but that would just use more pages to say the same thing.
The basic mechanics of The Doulosi, as described in this book, are enough to use them in most Vampire chronicles, but if you want more information on proper Ghoul Families and how they work, get yourself a copy of Ghouls.