JOSEPH MOOOTHERRFUCKING PANDER!!!!!!

Ah, you trash sabbat man. pander lookin ass

You know...despite being a murderous vampire wizard working for an fascist vampire apocalypse cult, Kevin makes some good points about wages and taxes.

What are your top 3 favorite clans? Either to make a character for or to use as a Storyteller? :3

Oooooooh, thanks for asking! I'll do these in reverse order, build up to the best.

Number three: Malkavian

My original faves, and a clan about whom I have some sTRoNg oPiNIoNs. See, the thing with Malkavians is that for years and years and years it felt like nobody thought for two minutes about how the rules for Derangements work. Too many Malks were played as hapless victims of their insanity, driven to ooky-kooky comic relief bullshit behaviour or dark tormented scary deep mental anguish all the time - and that's not how it works. The Malkavian Derangement was incurable, as in it would never be removed - it was not insurmountable!

Derangements could be overcome through the expenditure of Willpower, scene by scene. Willpower could be recycled through a careful choice of Nature and Demeanour to indulge. Malkavians were about powering through, being a dangerous and cogent master of the mind whammy, surfing your own mind's wild tides with gritted teeth and every now and then, when it didn't matter so much, when you had the luxury of rest, unclenching your jaw and letting the madness take you.

Therese Voerman is my poster girl for what a Malkavian should be: she's competent, ruthless, and clearly has problems that she's keeping under control through sheer cognitive heft/letting Jeanette out to play when it's all too much.

Anyway. Malks. Love the Disciplines, love the Network, love the visions, love the savagery of a well done, targeted prank. V5 moving them away from "a specific instance of mental illness with oversimplified game rules" and toward "chronic mental overstimulation which manifests as a consistent game rules penalty" is a subtle change but a good one. None of my games feel complete without at least one Malkavian.

Number two: Lasombra

Elegant, classical, lordly, and aggressive. None of the subtlety and resilience of their Ventrue arch rivals: the Lasombra will break you in body (Potence) mind (Dominate), or both (Oblivion), and if you're mortal and you impress them, they will make you rise again.

I love the existential, spatial, cosmic horror of Obtenebration; I love their connection with the ocean and their warring against themselves over and over (and yet with an oversight body that transcends the lines of conflict); I love the hubris that swears they destroyed their Antediluvian and how that's come back to haunt them in V5.

They make great antagonists - I've always felt that in OG Masquerade especially, the Sabbat pillar clans' Disciplines were designed to enable cool boss fights, and being thrown around by a shadow monster or enveloped and consumed by a roiling tide of darkness... mmmm... sorry, I was supposed to be talking about tactical challenge, but then I got to thinking about how sexy Lasombra are and... look, check my intro post, Ib from LABN nailed the archetype and frankly she could nail me too.

Number one: Hecata

Always and forever. The OGs. Every incarnation of them has delighted me. Necromancy and vampirism walk hand in hand for me (I was a Warhammer Undead guy before I was a Vampire: the Masquerade enby). The Cappadocians are patient, thoughtful, genteel court wizards who get done dirty (by their mediocre "here to go!" Clanbook as well as by the Giovanni) and come back SCARY/become something new in hiding. The Giovanni are delightfully loathsome literary-Gothic villains - seriously, they're rich decadent incestuous black-magic loving Italians? did Anne Radcliffe write for V:tM? - AND sassy East Coast gangsters with a sorcerous twist.

They aren't perfect - the Family Reunion creaks with artifice, the Nagaraja shouldn't exist be there, there is no WAY a skyscraper in the middle of Venice is acceptable world building, the Nayson San An are one of those early WW concepts that's always going to be stained by racism, and what's been done to Necromancy over the years, from a rules bloat/design standpoint, is a bloody shambles.

I think a lot of what I love about them comes from me rather than from the developers. I've put a nonzero amount of thought into who ended up where vis. Reunion, Chamber, Council, into the history of Venice and its involvement with the Fourth Crusade and the collapse of Constantinople's Dream, into reinvigorating the gangster stereotype and into the history of Scottish banking and slave trading... but! but! no other clan has ever inspired me to do so many deep dives, to commit to such bits as "how do you make a Giovanni who can just hang out with any old coterie and you'd barely even know he was a Giovanni?"

The bottom line is that I like concepts with flaws, because flaws inspire creative fanwork. I yearn to work a problem, and the Hecata are raddled with problems. Marbled with them, like a tasty steak - they just need proper preparation to be served.

Homebrew V:TM 5e Humanity Track

Hey everyone, just for fun I decided to completely rework the Humanity levels in Vampire 5e. The goal of this homebrew is to take away the “moral-goodness” assigned to high humanity ratings in the original VTM 5e version. This will theoretically give the player more roleplay and gameplay freedom for their character to behave how they want them to instead of equating being a “good” person with being of high humanity, and being an “evil” person equating lower humanity. Instead, I have tried to emphasize a closer connection with one’s beast to the descent down the track. This, I think, makes the Humanity Track more compatible with Sabbat PCs. Any other changes are my own personal preference, like how I think it’s pretty dumb that vampires can only rouse their blood to resemble humans if they are “good” people (and thus cant have sex if they are “too evil”?). This also is designed to give lower humanity vampires some actual gameplay advantages- which I think makes the decision for a PC to remain a good person more compelling as they must resist the temptations of tangible buffs to their stats. Enjoy!

Humanity 10: A great deal of effort is required to achieve this state of unlife, and the storyteller and player must come up with a story event that can allow their character to reach this level. Your beast is entirely in check, almost never a problem except in your absolute darkest moments. Many Kindred pursue this level of humanity in hopes of achieving Golconda- a nirvana-like state of complete peace between the human and monster within. 

You are able to eat and drink all human food and process it without having to throw it up- although it does not sate your Hunger.

With the beast within you so thoroughly leashed, you require significantly less blood to thrive. You get a pool of 4 dice to rouse your blood at the start of each night, and still only require 1 success to avoid getting hungrier. 

No matter the circumstance, your control of your beast is stronger than it could ever be over you. You do not ever have to roll for Frenzy.

You take only halved superficial damage sunlight every turn when exposed to it.

You heal Superficial damage as a mortal, in addition to vampiric mending.

You are capable of dreaming while in Daysleep.

Torpor Length: 12 Hours

Humanity 9: Most humans do not rise any higher than this level on the humanity track. You do not let the harsh sting of your Beast's hunger control you, and through steeled principles you are a master of your own actions. The beast rarely gets through to you, and if it does, you are able to keep it in the back of your mind while you feed.

You are able to eat and drink all human food and process it without having to throw it up- although it does not sate your Hunger.

With the beast within you leashed, you require much less blood to thrive. You get a pool of 3 dice to rouse your blood at the start of each night, and still only require 1 success to avoid getting hungrier.

The allure of spilled blood does not affect you as much anymore. You have a +2 dice bonus to Frenzy checks when you smell blood at Hunger 4 or higher.

You take only superficial damage to sunlight every turn when exposed to it.

You are capable of dreaming while in Daysleep.

Torpor Length:  24 Hours

Humanity 8: Many good-intentioned and philanthropic humans are at this level. Most Kindred at this level are freshly turned and the seductive whispers of their Beast haven't taken over their subconscious yet. You remember what you used to be and what you can become if you stop caring about your convictions. To remain at this level takes good self control and strong principles… or guilt. 

You are able to drink wine and process it without having to throw it up- although it does not sate your Hunger. 

With the beast within you leashed, you require less blood to thrive. You get a pool of 2 dice to rouse your blood at the start of each night, and still only require 1 success to avoid getting hungrier.

The allure of spilled blood is easier to resist. You have a +1 die bonus to Frenzy checks when you smell blood at Hunger 4 or higher.

You are capable of dreaming while in Daysleep.

Torpor Length: 3 Days

Humanity 7: This is the average level of most humans. You have a good sense of what is socially appropriate, and enough care in your heart to at least do right by the people around you. As a Kindred, your Beast gnaws at the back of your mind, an omnipresent reminder that you can never be truly satisfied unless you act selfishly. 

You are able to drink and stomach wine as if you have Eat Food activated, however you must throw it up by the end of the night.

You are capable of dreaming while in Daysleep.

Torpor Length: One Week

Humanity 6: Most humans do not sink any lower than this level. You are motivated mostly by your own interests and interests that serve your closest friends. It is easy to make it a habit to satisfy the Beast's urges, so long as doing so doesn't backfire on you later. What's the harm in indulging once and awhile? 

You are capable of dreaming while in Daysleep.

Human logic often eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. The difficulty of Terror frenzy checks is +1.

Torpor Length: Two Weeks 

Humanity 5: Honestly, who cares what others think anyway? You know what you're doing, and your instincts are often right. It's often difficult for you to put the needs of others before your own when you are hungry. You find yourself needing to sate your beast before you can clear your head and make the "right" decisions with careful thought. 

Your dominance over your natural prey is absolute. Mental disciplines always succeed against ordinary humans (even if they are not unsuspecting) if your dicepool for the roll is greater than their counterroll by a margin of 4.

Human logic eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. You always Terror frenzy when taking damage from sunlight or fire.

Torpor Length: One Month

Humanity 4: The Beast is difficult to deny. It takes a great deal of mental fortitude to put off opportunities to feed, and much more to make sure your prey is comfortable when you do. It's easy to slip into selfish habits, ignore the feelings of others, and become a monster- especially when doing so only harms others rather than yourself.

Your dominance over your natural prey is absolute. Mental disciplines always succeed against ordinary humans (even if they are not unsuspecting) if your dicepool for the roll is greater than their counterroll by a margin of 3.

Human logic eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. You always Terror frenzy at the sight of sunlight and large fires.

Torpor Length: One Year

Humanity 3: It is nearly impossible to look at humans and not see walking sacks of blood. Every moment of consciousness your blood tells you to indulge, or otherwise feed your deepest desires… and only the threat of societal and social consequences for doing so stops you.

Your dominance over your natural prey is absolute. Mental disciplines always succeed against ordinary humans (even if they are not unsuspecting) if your dicepool for the roll is greater than their counterroll pool by a margin of 2.

Your beast is attuned to the aroma of blood humans carry. You have a +1 die bonus to rolls attempting to locate specific humans you've either fed from or detected the Resonance of within 24 hours by utilizing their scent. The area you can track within is no larger than a single average room (human noses simply aren't that good).

You have a reckless ferocity befitting a rabid animal. You have a +1 die bonus to Athletics, Brawl, and Melee rolls.

Embracing your inhuman qualities, disciplines are easier for you to use. When using disciplines that require rouse checks, you can roll 2 dice instead of 1, and still only require one success in order to avoid getting hungrier. 

More monster than person, the traditional banes of vampires are more effective against you. You take +1 more aggravated damage from fire and sunlight every turn you are exposed to it. 

Human logic eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. You always Terror frenzy at the sight of sunlight and large fires.

Torpor Length: Ten Years

Humanity 2: Very few Kindred reach this level of humanity under the jurisdiction of the Camarilla, as the utter lack of shame and self-awareness characteristic of "humanity" is gone by this point. Powerful individuals at this level are rarely negotiable and only act in their own self-interests. Only Touchstones are able to break through to you at this level and keep you in check if those interests are harmful.

Your dominance over your natural prey is absolute. Mental disciplines always succeed against ordinary humans (even if they are not unsuspecting) if your dicepool for the roll is greater than their counterroll pool by a margin of 1.

Your beast is well-attuned to the aroma of blood humans carry. You have a +2 dice bonus to rolls attempting to locate specific humans you've either fed from or detected the Resonance of within 24 hours by utilizing their scent. The area you can track within is no larger than a single spacious room.

You have a reckless ferocity befitting a rabid animal. You have a +2 die bonus to Athletics, Brawl, and Melee rolls.

Embracing your inhuman qualities, disciplines are easier for you to use. When using disciplines that require rouse checks, you can roll 3 dice instead of 1, and still only require one success in order to avoid getting hungrier. 

More monster than person, the traditional banes of vampires are much more effective against you. You take +2 more aggravated damage from fire and sunlight every turn you are exposed to it. 

Human logic eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. You always Terror frenzy at the sight of sunlight and small fires.

Torpor Length: 50 Years

Humanity 1: Barely holding on to humanity, only the most desperate pleas from loved ones can prevent you from giving in to your Beast's overwhelming urges. Kindred at this level often don't survive unless they are powerful enough to fight against attempts to slay them- Hunters or otherwise. As a PC, it is often wise to invest EXP in raising your Humanity level at an appropriately cinematic moment when the raw power of this level is no longer needed.

Your dominance over your natural prey is absolute. Mental disciplines always succeed against ordinary humans (even if they are not unsuspecting) if your dicepool for the roll is greater than or equal to their counterroll pool.

Your beast is highly attuned to the aroma of blood humans carry. As a well practiced stalker of prey, you have a +3 dice bonus to rolls attempting to locate specific humans you've either fed from or detected the Resonance of within 24 hours by utilizing their scent. The area you can track within is no larger than a single building. 

You have a reckless ferocity befitting a rabid animal. You have a +3 die bonus to Athletics, Brawl, and Melee rolls. 

Embracing your inhuman qualities, disciplines are easier for you to use. When using disciplines that require rouse checks, you can roll 4 dice instead of 1, and still only require one success in order to avoid getting hungrier. 

More monster than person, the traditional banes of vampires are especially effective against you. You take +3 more aggravated damage from fire and sunlight every turn you are exposed to it. 

Human logic eludes you when faced with your kind's greatest fears. You always Terror frenzy at the sight of sunlight and fire, no matter the size.

Torpor Length: 100 Years

Humanity 0: A Wight- Kindred who have fully embraced the beast and lost all semblance of their former selves. Wights are impulsive, monstrous vampires who operate entirely on an overwhelming desire to feed. They are capable of pretending to be human by rousing their blood and using higher-level problem solving skills, but this often serves to make them more terrifying assailants. Due to the drastic nature of this level, a fitting story event should be discussed between the player and Storyteller before a character reaches it.

PCs who reach this humanity level are no longer controlled by their players and effectively become hostile NPCs with all the gameplay buffs and debuffs of Humanity 1. 

Characters at this level may raise their level back to Humanity 1 if they are at zero Hunger, and a touchstone attempts to "bring them back"- an action which the Storyteller may decide the difficulty of. 

Wights are not often able to articulate intelligent thoughts. They cannot use Dominate disciplines other than Compel.

Torpor Length: 300+ Years

Thanks for reading and let me know if you like it or even if you want to use it for a game! I hope it made the descent to becoming a wight specifically make more sense. (How does being comically evil at Humanity 1 transition to mindless animal at Humanity 0?) Additionally, I hope this makes wights seem a little bit more threatening and impactful to potential narratives. Imagine a Humanity 0 vampire passing as a human in the sole pursuit of feeding to kill. Pretty scary! The dichotomy I was going for was high humanity makes it easier to live a "normal" human life that doesn't need to do much vampire stuff, while low humanity makes it easier to be a terrifying threat to humans.

Also, please forgive any grammatical or formatting mistakes, I wrote all this on a separate document and tried to copy paste it onto the mobile web browser version and you know how that goes.

Hello to new followers and Welcome!

I’m not an artist (haven’t drawn or painted since grade school!), but am a die-hard V:tM RPG fan.  I utilize the in-game Character Creation (CC) tool in Cyberpunk 2077 to create my V:tM OC Synn (with the help of a lot of mods) as I love the photorealism of the characters that CP2077′s CC tool creates.

I’m still running my old Cyberpunk 2077 1.5 instance, but will be switching over to the new 1.6 Edgerunner patch to create more V:tM shots of Synn with plans to add her Sabbat pack mates in shots with her, plus more “vampiric” specific screenshots. A lot more prep work involving more mods to ensue.

In the meantime, I’m recycling old shots as well as posting other V:tM content, but new content is coming down the pipeline.

6 TTRPG Rules You Should Steal - Running RPGs

Love this sort of thing.

Like these in particular, too.

The Kult rule kind of reminds me of is the Vaulderie ranking back when I played in the V:tM Sabbat LARP, which we never quite mastered but it was really interesting. This strikes me as slightly better since it overcomes the difficulty of trying to remember the rp aspect with a mechanical aspect. The ideal is both but in the heat of the moment, rp relationships between artificially influenced motivations and in character motivations can be hard to remember. Like, our charcters would naturally be enemies but we’re blood bound to each other so... how does that play out in a combat???

White wolf forms

Although vampires can use extinct languages in order to keep secrets from mortals, they are a problem for long-range communication as everyone involved needs to know the same extinct language(s) and most were not that widespread. Life would have been a lot easier if White Wolf had given Vampires their own 'Cainite' language (probably a hodgepodge of terms from down the centuries, and probably stripped back grammar-wise due to all the influences on it). Language is one of those things never really discussed in V:TM. Personally, I'd go with it depending upon the vampire's age, older ones use 'u', unless they've managed to get use to the 'new-fangled spelling'. Rather than make such a fuss, those who have the knowledge and care could have played up the whole language angle - Sabbat 'Latin' is puposefully atrocious, Anarch 'Latin' is just poor, young Camarilla vampires are a bit sloppy, some wrong terms are hallowed by age or sect (perhaps as a sort of shibboleth) and a few elders get very cross or even violent when you don't get your Latin right (and when one remembers that the pronunciation of Latin changed down the centuries and by region, what any given elder regards as correct is hard to say).īut, if that still leaves a bad taste in your mouth, I'd love to read about how you manage to explain how Latin ever managed to transform into the Romance Languages, how it managed to evolve from Proto-Indo-European and how we ended up with Law French if it was an immutable example of perfection.Ĭlick to expand.(Off topic - Spotted the Reply With Quote button at last - either it disappeared for a while or I've had a real blindspot for it, as I just couldn't find it for looking - probably because I wasn't looking this time.) (Also, although perhaps I'm mistaken about this, wasn't Ritae a Sababat term? I can easily see Sabbat vampires not caring about their Latin being correct at all, especially when it comes to the length of a vowel where the length change is barely noticeable!) It has to be remembered that Vampires are not common, especially in the medieval period, and it would not be difficult for Medieval Bob to convince his fellows in the absence of an Ancient Marcus or educated Johannus to correct him/diablerize him (and if there was such a fanatical Marcus, I think we would find no Romance language speaking Vampires for a long time - although I daresay that would make for an interesting setting element). Manus ends in -us and 'as everyone knows' -us is the masculine ending (of course, it isn't always, as this whole sorry argument shows) but it is an easy mistake to make if you lack a comprehensive understanding of Latin and, until someone can show me figures that 'prove' that the majority of vampires were well-educated in Latin, I think it is a reasonable in-game excuse to just say that they fluffed it just as the designers did in real life. I can just imagine the fun the pedants of the future have with that one, unless it has become accepted as good English. Not so bad in spoken English perhaps, where it can be taken as a slurred form of ''ve', but I have seen reasonably well-educated people use it in written English. To take an English case, 'have' is well on its way to mutating into 'of' (via 've), a completely unrelated word. If supposedly educated lawyers could let it degenerate so. Vampire the Masquerade is so completely ridiculous, I can play it with horrible latin.įor me, Masquerade was at it's best when it (and the group playing it) admitted to its laughableness and everything was aimed to crazy awesome action, intense melodrama and bizarre horror.Ĭlick to expand.Strangely enough, Law French was a real language originally (one of the variants of what is called French and derived from that seemingly immutable language called Latin). It would be nice to get accurate latin, yes.īut this is a setting where the Clan of Artists are the bullfighters, err Toreador, and the Clan of Rebels are the misspelled Witches, err Brujah. There is a lot more of this in the nWoD, just follow the link above to get a taste. The fix to the fuck-up is rather elegant, but the fuck-up still came first! So, yes, we can complain about it. Justin Achilli chose Lancea Sanctum for "sounding badass", obviously being oblivious regarding latin grammar. Lancea et Sanctum is the redeeming retcon introduced in Requiem for Rome. It's just plain wrong, excruciatingly so for me as a german. I posted in that thread about the abysmal german in Ancient Mysteries for Requiem.īeing a native native german, I can assure you that it's not old high german or anything like that. White Wolf's errors in the nWoD have been discussed here, including language.

Sometimes you diablerize a 6th generation malkavian while in a hunger frenzy brought on by getting a little too into impersonating a baali cult leader with fleshcrafting and a demonic knife someone handed you, and THAT’S VALID.

My spouse’s Lasombra, Tell. I think this one’s the closest I’ve come to what Tell’s supposed to look like. You know Lasombra; they’re always halfway in shadow.

What would you recommend as a good starting point for...trying, to build a plot?

I'm more used to working with pre-written campaigns, and tweaking them/editing them/twisting them to fit my needs versus coming up with a whole new plot.

But from what I'm gathering, V:TM is much more sandbox-y than where I'm coming from (dnd)

Well, I don’t actually build plots. I build problems.

Take an interesting world, like VtM, and identify a problem that might arise in it that interests you. Gehenna is coming? The Malkavian antediluvian just rolled into town? The Sabbat is going to war against your city? Maybe all of the above, fuck it.

Great. Figure out what that means. Who is already mobilizing against it? Who is looking to take advantage of it? Who wants to join forces with it? What are their plans? What will happen if your players do nothing? What will happen if the threat comes to pass? What time constraints are on the table?  What resources are in play? Who knows about those resources? Who has them now? Who has the power to take them away?

Now you have a problem with 30 different people all looking to respond to it in some way. Some of them are allies. Some of them are enemies. Everyone has their own agenda.

Now drop your PCs into the middle of this, sit back, and watch what they do. That’s the plot.

Look, I love Vampire: The Masquerade lore. I think it is rich as peanut butter pie and entirely stupid at points, but you have to appreciate the commitment to both the scope of the world building and the devotion to its fine details, especially since a good 80% of it seems useless for, you know, running a game.

That said, this is Guide to the Sabbat (1999), the third book on the Sabbat and a substantial revision of the organization’s portrayal and operation. So, most vampire clans want to keep on hiding and scavenging on humanity, because largely, some semblance of their humanity is still intact. This is mechanics as narrative – player characters need to take care against increasing their power, which errodes their humanity, lest they succumb to the Beast and are removed from play.

Sabbat offers an alternative – embracing the Beast. The Sabbat knows that all the vampire clans descend from a handful of hibernating ancients who will awaken soon. When they do, they will feed not on watery human blood, but the blood of vampires. Sabbat isn’t down with that, so they’ve completely embraced their vampireness and seek to destroy the ancients and, after that, will probably enslave humanity as livestock and bathe the world in endless night. They also worship devils. In short, they’re the psychotic vampires you probably wanted to play, but never could.

Earlier incarnations of the Sabbat (talking game design, not lore) were just that: psychopaths, like Severen in Near Dark. This made them fairly unplayable, because, well, the game is called the Masquerade, and Sabbat isn’t really down with that. This sourcebook, for the revised (third?) edition backs off the psychopath angle a bit. The psychos are still around, but the successful Sabbat vampires are a bit more restrained. Like Jesse Hooker in Near Dark.

Basically, if you wanted to run your V:tM game like Near Dark, you want Sabbat. That Bill Sienkiewicz cover accurately and entirely captures the essence of Sabbat. Lots of Guy Davis illustrations inside continue to sell it.

happy pride from me and the losers i larp

Jackson Hemlock - Werewolf, Theurge, Shadowlord Briar Thornwood - Vampire, Brujah Anti, Sabbat Sapphire - Vampire, Caitiff, Anarch Dolly Ann-Marie, Vampire, Gangrel, Camarilla

How would Valerius do in V:TM?

In short, he would be a Ventrue antitribu, even though the Moroi feels more traditionally Toreador. A lot of it fits:

Dominate, Fortitude and Presence is a very good discipline array for him vs. his stat array in WOTR (focus on STR / CON / CHA), and even the alternate discipline array (Auspex instead of Presence) works well for him as he has a high perception score.

Mid-to-low generation - probably around 7th naturally, but he would be the type to commit diablerie in order to strengthen himself and subsequently lower his generation. I imagine it would be something of a bloodline tradtion, since canonically the Dragaveis started mating with vampires to strengthen their bloodline.

Ventrue typically Embraced nobles, warlords, knights, merchant princes and in more modern nights - politicians, financiers, lawyers and judges. Valerius fits both types - he's both a noble and a judge. They also have an emphasis on honour, chivalry, duty. They like to maintain their own power, want to remain at the top.

He is extremely fussy about who he drinks blood from, similarly to how a Ventrue's Bane is Rareified Tastes - that is, they can only take nourishment from prey who fit a particular preference.

Similarly, the V5 clan compulsion, Arrogance, fits him well; the compulsion is "sometimes, the need to rule rears its head in the vampire" and they will stop at nothing until they assume command of a situation and someone obeys an order from them. This is extremely on brand with Valerius' "don't tell me what to do" approach with his diplomacy council and his gradual descent into tyranny as Governor.

Now as for the antitribu part - that is, him being part of the Sabbat vs. the Camarilla - it fits his more zealous personality. The Ventrue antitribu were often the knights or paladins of the Sabbat, appropriately nicknamed the Crusaders, and were often the ones championing their cause.

There's a few roles within the Sabbat he would fit into well - Pack Priest (usually a Tzimisce role, but considering his canonical faith and his role in it, it could suit him nicely); Templar (usually one protecting a Bishop), Archbishop (the Sabbat equivalent of a Prince who rules a city -in this case, Drezen) or even as a Sabbat Inquisitor who roots out heretics for the Sabbat.

Tracking humanity for him would be kind of pointless, but a Path of Enlightenment - the Path of Honourable Accord, which reeks of pure Lawful Evil to me. Nicknamed Knights, this path is full of Ventrue antitribu. They put a high value on ritual and ceremony; they always honour their agreements (which Valerius did - I can only think of one exception and that was Daeran, if only because it would break his agreement with Liotr ); they put an emphasis on duty over personal gratification which suits Valerius' mentality of "I have no duty but to my hunger and my goddess" and is something Camellia had a great time tempting him out of; and they're often regarded as being stern and taciturn - fitting in with Vellexia's own assessment of his character ("you're a stern knight-in-armour [...] it is duty, not love that reigns in your heart [...] your unshakeable devotion makes you even more desireable.")

I also maintain that Camellia would be a Toreador antitribu so there's that too.

For the OC ask thingy!

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? 

(Besides VAMPIRES! I mean 😆)

Fucking hell... ask me the hard ones, Marshie...

OK. Sorcha's original concept was very much Of The Social Media Age. She's an Instagram vampire, an underground party planner, a drug chemist, she's had at least one Vice article written about her. That aspect got played down as she became more #harrowcore over time - actually, that's another thing, the NA necromancy novels that have come out in the last few years have definitely pulled me in a different direction. Sorcha would not be as she is now without Ninth House, Harrow the Ninth, The Library of the Dead... I can drop literary influences for her because she's listened them all as audiobooks and that's part of her goth gril deal.

Alistair's history is inextricable from Glasgow's, in the twentieth century. He's the character I have a full CV worked out for, the spots where he intrudes into and overwrites real historical figures are clear, the incidents which led to his ghouling, jailing and Embrace are all there, he clawed his way out of the Gorbals and their glow up is his as well.

Luciana has an aesthetic influence. Venice is a wonderful city in which to be an old vampire - elegant and decaying, timeless and under siege by modernity, tourist trap yet people still live and work and study there. I will die mad that V:tM closed it off so effectively by saying GIOVANNI TURF and putting the majority of the player base off the place entirely, but it also plays directly into my hands so I'm not going to complain about it too much. But anyway: the rot and romance and fragility and the kind of... authenticity, but also the reality that it is a living city, that the airport is just over there and the cruise ships make the foundations shake, and real death is not pretty and romantic, it's rank and arbitrary and carnal? That's where Luci comes from.

Santino is about the music. Of course he is. He is inextricable from that Eighties-Nineties period of music culture where print journalism was a thing, indie wasn't a genre, and specifically the turning point where goth was deemed Unfashionable and grunge was everywhere. The moment it all crystallised for me was writing the fake Quietus snipped about Driftback: how if they'd come along ten years earlier they'd have been goth rock superstars, ten years later and they'd have been up there with your female-fronted-gothic-metal boom. That sense of being out of time is core to Santino. It comes to all vampires eventually, and he was dealing with it before he was even Embraced.

Penny is a Bond girl gone bad. There's no other way of putting it. She was always rooted in that Cold War spy-versus-spy drama, even though her origins have shifted further back to Bletchley Park and Edwardian England. Her exaggerated Englishness is a bit she can't put down now that the Sabbat has burned out so much of her selfhood, too: she's an alien, she's a legal alien, she's a Camarilla English girl in Sabbat Arizona.

Riley was deliberately engineered around a sort of Tipping the Velvet point: Victorian queerness and gender and sexology vaguely simmering away in the backstory. I'd been reading A Bitter Remedy and Daughters of Night earlier in the year so I think "historical queerness and class barriers" were definitely in the mix.

interrupted thaumaturgy ritual in a back alley...intruder is on dangerous ground...as it’s the last thing he’ll see.

Ogay I know this basically interests no one but I’ve been really wanting to elaborate on this one subject. As a small disclaimer to newbies or as a memo to myself. It mostly concerns my ( sorta overpowered ) vampire muse Gwi.

In this blog, we have three different vampire muses ( I may add more in the future ). All of which are somewhat made according to the standards of White Wolf’s storyteller tabletop game Vampire: The Masquerade. The game is pretty popular, having an intricate ( and sometimes confusing ) universe, with tight rules that really forces players and writers to think about every aspect of their characters, their actions and such. Why am I saying that? Mostly aimed at those who are not in the fandom and may get confused about these very same rules and standards.

YES, Gwi is a canonical character from a media that has nothing to do with the V:TM setting, but I really stretched his concept, character and timeline to accommodate him on the setting since I’m familiar with it since my teens. Because, I admit it, I didn’t really like his original source material, neither the drama entirely. I didn’t even like his face on the manhwa. He was the sole reason why I kept up with it to the end for I’m a sucker for a beautiful vampire. I haven’t been this bewitched for one ever since that homoerotic tension™ between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire ( Vampire Chronicles were also an inspo for this setting btw ).

When you create a vampire OC to play in an adventure in this setting, usually there’s a lot of things you have to consider. Generally, an average vampire that wanders around in our contemporary age is somewhat “weak” and recently embraced. Vampires numbers tend to be controlled to avoid getting the attention of humans and other creatures, like werewolves, mages and, of course, hunters. Since I don’t want this to get more confusing than it already is, let’s just leave them aside and focus only on vampires. Vampires still may succumb to their thirst, which would make them easy targets, controlling their numbers also. Not to mention all the complicated politics and backstabbing that their history has had ever since the first city of vampires was created millennia before Christ. Falling asleep for long periods of times ( known as torpor ), would require either a lot of strength, reliable allies ( which needless to say are hard to find ), secretiveness, and luck to not be found out and be awaken at some point. And IF you get to wake up, you’d have very little humanity left on you and basically would not know A THING about where you are.

Long story short, for a vampire to last for so long in this particular setting, it takes a WHOLE LOT of power ( political, physical etc. ), cunning, strategy, self-control and SHEER LUCK. Characters that are 200/300+ years old in this setting are already pretty powerful. Some with high ranks in vampire hierarchy. A smidgen of them has reached 1.000+ years of age. Most of the vampires you see around have “weaker blood” ( also refered as “high generation”, that is, their distance from the original vampire, which, according to this mythology, is Caine yeah, that one from the Bible ). 

One thing I want people that are not from this fandom to understand is that my take on Gwi wouldn’t be a playable character according to the standards of the game. He wouldn’t go in an adventure with a coterie and such. He’s an Elder. One that has used the system to his favour. He would be either an NPC or a Final Boss. Not unkillable, but you would have to make an unmeasurable effort to take him down, let alone kill him ( again ). My main struggle is that I frequently come across vampire ( and other species in general ) muses that are “old as balls” and can’t really grasp the understanding of how Gwi’s age plays a huge part not only on his characterization, but also on his powers ( supernatural, political, etc. ) and his views on society ( vampiric or otherwise ). Some people use the age just for shock value, which is totally okay and I encourage you to do that, but in this particular setting, the passage of the years is really important, especially when major events happen every once in a while. He saw with his very own eyes the world changing year after year, people’s lifestyle changing. and, more than anything, he saw, one after the other, his clan and sect mates fall. That affects someone’s mind for sure. 

Gwi is and has always been a villainous character. He won’t be essentially nice to you unless he can take something from you ( be it a good laugh and entertainment or some important connection and exchange of favours ). I’ve attributed to him a rank that allows me to easily move him around and place him anywhere ( again, using the standards of the game ). I also encourage you to take a look at this post to have a notion of how his clan is usually played. Sure, I doubt he believes in half of the Catholic beliefs the sect he’s part of uses, he just used the premade structure of the sect ( Sabbat ) and applied on a territory without a great organisation of vampires ( since the other sect, Camarilla, was focused mostly on Europe ). I am considering the presence of another kind of supernaturals that exist in the setting ( Kuei-Jin Wan Kuei ) in his scenario, but since their numbers are smaller, it would be easier for vampires ( who can effectively increase their numbers by bitting and embracing new childers ) to set and take over the territory. I had an entire chain of command for Gwi, but that would be a topic for later.

I have two totally playable characters according to the rules. Junior and Allen are made to be your standard average vampires that go out in an adventure to save the world and such ( in spite of being AU versions of canonic characters too ). Their clans are actually playable even on the video-game versions ( here & here ) of this setting.

But since I seem to still be drawn back to this villain, I’m writing this to every one of my potential rp partners to not be mad or confused about him, and to be honest you can sincerely bring any doubt or concern you may have to me. I’m not an EXPERT on Vampire setting nor even on character conception, but I doubt there’s anything that can’t be solved with dialogue  ♡