Torpor
The ancients called sleep the brother of death. This is even more true for vampires than for mortals. Every day, the Kindred enter a sleep that mortal senses and science cannot distinguish from death. The Kindred experience it much as mortals experience sleep. The Kindred can also enter a deeper sleep, however, in which their souls come even closer to death. The Kindred call this state torpor. A vampire’s daily sleep lasts a few hours, but torpor can last for centuries.
Causes
Wounding
Wounds sufficient to kill mortals send the Kindred into torpor, instead. If a vampire’s rightmost Health box is occupied by a lethal wound, she enters torpor instead of dying. (Recall that sufficient bashing damage can convert to lethal damage, so a good beating with, say, baseball bats can send a Kindred into torpor.)The duration of this torpor depends on the character’s Humanity and her Blood Potency. A high Blood Potency extends the torpor’s duration; so does having a low Humanity. High-Humanity vampires spend much less time in torpor than Kindred who have given most of themselves to the Beast.
To calculate the length of time a wounded Kindred spends in torpor, consult the following table. The character’s Humanity score determines a base time spent in torpor. Multiply that span by the character’s Blood Potency to find the total duration of the slumber.
Example: Persephone Moore has a Blood Potency of 1 and a Humanity of 6. (She became one of the Damned quite recently, and has not had time to either increase the potency of her blood or to lose much of herself to the Beast.) A Nosferatu rival of her sire Prince Maxwell spitefully vents his frustration by clubbing Persephone into torpor. Humanity 6 gives a base duration of two weeks; multiplying this by Persephone’s Blood Potency dots gives a total duration of just two weeks. At the end of that time, Persephone wakes up wondering what the hell happened.
For contrast, the Unholy has a Blood Potency of 7 and has certainly earned her moniker with a Humanity of 2. For all her power, though, a pack of bold Lupines gives her a good thrashing. The Lupines think they kill her, but they actually leave her in torpor. Her Humanity of 2 gives a base time of 50 years. Multiplying this by her Blood Potency of 7 gives a total duration of 350 years, give or take a few. Given such long spans of time, we don’t need to set an exact date for when she wakes. The point is, the Unholy stays out of circulation for a long, long time.
Zero-Humanity vampires form an important exception to this system. When they enter torpor from wounding, they sleep for an even millennium, regardless of their Blood Potency.
- Humanity | Base time Spent in Torpor
- 10 | One day
- 9 | Two days
- 8 | Three days
- 7 | One week
- 6 | Two weeks
- 5 | One month
- 4 | One year
- 3 | One decade
- 2 | Five decades
- 1 |One century
- 0 | One millennium
If the vampire lacks sufficient reserves of Vitae to heal at least three points of the damage (whether lethal or aggravated) that sent her to torpor, that torpor lasts longer than usual. Calculate the torpor’s duration as if the character’s Blood Potency were one higher than it actually is.
If the character succumbs to torpor with no Vitae left and has lost all of her Health points to lethal or aggravated damage, she awakens having recovered one Health point as a result of the torpor, which she doesn’t have to pay for with Vitae. In effect, the character recovers this Health point for free, as a result of the stabilizing sleep of torpor.
Example: Duce Carter is beaten into torpor by a pack of Kindred enforcers under Solomon’s command. When Duce sinks into torpor, he does so with only two Vitae in his system. Duce’s Humanity is 6 and his Blood Potency is 3. Normally, this would result in a six-week torpor. Because he lacks the Vitae to properly heal himself, however, Duce’s Blood Potency is treated as if it were one higher. This results in an eight-week torpor for Duce, and when he rises, the wounds from his right two Health boxes are erased — wounds recovered from the Vitae he had in his system and spent reflexively.
Starvation
A Kindred who sleeps during the day and who has no Vitae — but who is not truly in torpor — fails to rise. All Vitae in him has been exhausted, so he has none to spend to rise the next night. For every night that passes under these circumstances, the character suffers a point of lethal damage in lieu of spending Vitae. In this state, the character is incapable of functioning at all, yet is not in torpor. This is important because this vampire does not need exceptionally potent Vitae to be roused yet — see p. 178. At this point, any Vitae given to him allows him to rise as normal (fed only a few Vitae, the character probably rises in a hunger frenzy). Denied any Vitae from an outside source, a starving character continues to suffer one lethal wound a night until he slips into torpor.The character sleeps in torpor for a duration determined by the preceding chart: the base duration set by the character’s Humanity, multiplied by a number one higher than the character’s Blood Potency. At the torpor’s end, the character awakens with only one Health point restored, as discussed previously.
Voluntary Torpor
Kindred can also enter torpor deliberately. Sometimes unlife just gets to be too much and a Kindred decides to sleep in hopes that some of her problems will be solved by the time she wakes again. Elder vampires also sometimes use torpor to reduce their Blood Potency when feeding becomes too inconvenient.Vampires seldom enter voluntary torpor lightly. An extended torpor usually requires abandoning all responsibilities in the Kindred world and all the influence so painstakingly built in the mortal world. A Kindred might hope that his childer remain reasonably loyal and greet him with respect when he rises again. He might also hope that his centuries of experience bring him honor among other Kindred and win him at least a minor title in his covenant and city’s undead community, but he cannot realistically hope to resume his old offices as if he’d never left.
Voluntary torpor lasts at least as long as the base duration set by the character’s Humanity. At the end of that time, the character wakes if his player makes a successful Resolve + Composure roll. If the roll fails, the character remains in torpor for another increment of time, and so on, until the number of increments equals the Blood Potency the character had when the torpor began. At that point, he rises automatically.
Example: Scratch finds himself on Prince Maxwell’s shit list and decides to lay low for a while, seeking refuge in voluntary torpor. His Humanity is 4, so he spends at least one year in torpor. After that year, Scratch’s player rolls Resolve + Composure but fails to achieve any successes. Scratch remains torpid for another year, at which point the player succeeds on the roll and Scratch is free to rise. If rolls to wake kept failing, and Scratch’s Blood Potency were 5, he would rise automatically on what would be his player’s fifth attempt.
After the first increment passes, the character can also try to wake up if something disturbs his body. The character can recognize a disturbance if the player succeeds at a Wits + Auspex roll (if that Discipline is possessed) at a -2 penalty. If trouble is recognized, a Humanity roll is made for the vampire to rouse himself. If the disturbance is at night, a successful roll means the character wakes completely. During the day, the character can stay awake for one turn per success rolled. An exceptional success allows the character stay awake for the rest of the scene. The player can also make extended Humanity rolls to prolong the character’s period of activity (see p. 184). The character achieves full wakefulness if the player accumulates five successes in the extended action, but the character falls asleep again if the player fails any of these rolls. (This is the same as the normal system for a character to wake up during the day, but under more challenging circumstances for rousing from voluntary torpor rather than from normal sleep.)
Note that no Vitae is spent upon waking from torpor, as it is upon waking from a day’s sleep.
Staking
Finally, a vampire enters torpor when a wooden stake penetrates his heart. Only wood has this effect. Rods of metal, plastic or other substances can damage the vampire by piercing the heart, but only wood induces torpor. Kindred mystics offer a number of religious and occult theories for why wood has this power. Most Kindred simply accept it as a fact of unlife.Driving a stake through a vampire’s heart is extraordinarily difficult. The feat requires a melee or ranged attack with the stake. In combat, the attacker suffers a -4 dice penalty to strike so precisely. Then the attacker must inflict at least three points of lethal damage for the stake to actually thrust through the vampire’s body and into the heart. The staked vampire immediately collapses into torpor, appearing stone dead for all that a mortal could tell. A staked vampire remains in torpor indefinitely. The Kindred awakens only when someone or something removes the stake from his heart. An unwary mortal might remove the stake from what looks like a mummified corpse. A rat might gnaw at the stake enough to dislodge it, or termites might eat the stake away completely. Until something like this occurs, however, the vampire sleeps. Grim tales among the Kindred tell of vampires who work around Princely edicts forbidding murder and Humanity erosion by trapping their enemies with stakes through the heart and burying them in secure and secret crypts, there to sleep until the Day of Judgment.
Symptoms
Effects of Torpor
During torpor, a vampire’s body seems utterly inert. Over the decades, it slowly shrivels in on itself until it seems like a mummified corpse. This happens more quickly if the character lacks the Vitae to heal all the damage he suffered when forced into torpor. A vampire starved into torpor looks withered already.The vampire dreams slowly during torpor. These dreams tend to reflect the Kindred’s state of mind when he entered torpor. If he slumbered willingly, his dreams remain largely peaceful, if not particularly sensible. If the Kindred entered torpor during a struggle (as is often the case), his dreams are full of wrath and terror. His mind can stay frozen on one thought or emotion for centuries. Kindred might awaken obsessed with Kindred or kine who became dust long ago.
Then there’s the culture shock. Most of the world has changed more in the last century than it did in the previous thousand. Kindred who awaken from centuries of torpor often seem out of their minds, just because they are so out of touch with the modern world.
Decades or centuries of torpid dreaming scramble a Kindred’s memory. Events from his past lose order. Fantasies and nightmares from dreams mix into real memories, so a vampire cannot tell which is which. Did he really hear two Primogen plotting against him — or was that just what he feared was happening? Did unbound Kindred really destroy his hated sire, or did he merely wish they had? Some Kindred write diaries and memoirs to refresh their memories in case they must endure a long torpor, but no memoir can capture everything. Some Kindred also wonder if open or hidden rivals might have found their diaries and rewritten them as part of subtle schemes to manipulate them. Other Kindred rise from torpor to find their memoirs gone, looted by savvy witch-hunters who used the notes to hunt down other Kindred — a Pyrrhic victory at best over one’s enemies, and a considerable risk to one’s progeny and Allies. Such is the Paranoia bred by the Danse Macabre.
No matter what causes torpor, a vampire still loses one Vitae per day. Any Vitae the Kindred uses to heal wounds does so in the normal order. After torpor of any length, therefore, a Kindred wakes up with no Vitae at all. Hunger frenzies are extremely likely after a vampire rises from torpor. The Storyteller may call for a Composure + Resolve roll to resist frenzy the first time the character encounters any creature upon whom she can feed.
Example: When Solomon’s bullies sent Duce to torpor, Duce had two Vitae left. Upon reaching torpor, he spent those two Vitae, thereby Healing two of the lethal damage points he had suffered. That left him with no Vitae remaining in his system, so he begins shriveling at the end of the next day, when Duce would normally have spent the Vitae to sustain himself. When he rises, he is starving, but at least he has those two Health points back.
Example: Scratch voluntarily went into torpor to evade the Prince’s wrath. As he had no wounds to heal when he did so, he had no need to immediately heal Health points, so all of his remaining Vitae went toward sustaining his body (at the normal expenditure of one point per day). Since Scratch’s torpor was going to last at least a year (see the example on p. 176), he wouldn’t have enough Vitae to tide him over for that complete length of time. If someone with more potent blood (see the “Forced Revival” sidebar) found him after only a few days of cold sleep and revived him, he might still have unused Vitae in his system.
For every 25 years in torpor, a Kindred’s Blood Potency drops by one dot, though never to less than 1. This decrease does not affect the length of torpor, though. The total duration of the slumber depends on the character’s Blood Potency when torpor begins, no matter how the trait changes during the long sleep.
Treatment
Forced Revival
Kindred can awaken early from torpor if someone feeds them sufficiently potent blood. One must force at least two Vitae into the torpid vampire’s mouth. If the blood comes from a Kindred with a Blood Potency at least two dots higher than the torpid vampire’s current Blood Potency (taking into account time already spent in torpor), the sleeping character awakens, no matter how much longer her torpor would have lasted on its own. If the vampire is fed Vitae that isn’t potent enough, she remains in torpor, and the taste of blood likely permeates her dreams. In either case, blood fed to a vampire to revive her counts toward a Vinculum over her as well as potentially creating blood addition.Blood fed to a torpid vampire that’s not potent enough to rouse her can still be useful to the slumbering Kindred. The Vitae can be spent reflexively to heal wounds. Any Vitae that isn’t spent to heal is exhausted at the normal rate of one for each night that follows.
Some Kindred believe that certain Theban Sorcery rituals can rouse a Kindred from torpor… or force one into the long sleep. Rumor has it that the potent blood of Lupines can also bring a vampire out of torpor early. As always, Storytellers must decide on the truth or falsehood of such legends.