50 Shades of Vampires, Part I

Originally published January 23, 2013

I enjoy tinkering with my antagonists. In D&D this might involve creating new monsters. In World of Darkness, this means vampires, designing new variant forms of these bloodsuckers. Almost every World of Darkness game I've run has broken the rules for vampires in some way.

Just one vision of vampires

Why vampires? For much the same reason that aliens are often human-like in science fiction. Vampires are relatable. They are human-like but still clearly different. Unlike zombies or tentacled horrors you can talk to them, have meaningful relationships with them, and even feel bad killing them. This gives them a lot of mileage.

Moreover vampires often exist in far-ranging conspiracies. Werewolves point to a smaller more pack based society, not the kind of evil conspiracies vampires often find themselves in. Mages tend to die of old age which changes how these conspiracies last over the ages. But Vampires are immortal. Vampires have minions and spawn, entranced mortals and blood fed wolves and rats. Vampires bring more options as antagonists than most other monsters.

Since they make such useful enemies, I find the need to differentiate each incarnation from the instances I've used before. Perhaps these vampires possess unique powers or have boons from odd alliances. Perhaps they have a different society or physical appearance than one might expect. These changes help surprise my players and keep them from being complacent about the monsters they face.

In this series I intend to discuss the various ways you can surprise your players with vampires. These techniques can be used for other games and other monsters. The important idea to is to free yourself from a single vision of what vampires are like. For this first part I will start off with one of my more ambitious departures from the classic World of Darkness vampire, the living vampires of the Circle.

The Circle

One of my more inventive alternative vampires were the members of the Circle. The concept evolved from the concept of a group of religious fanatic worshiping the stolen form of a millenia old vampire to something quite different. Drawing on material from the Vampire: the Requiem supplement, Ghouls, I took the ghoul family, the Children of Nirriti, and added additional material to make them a cult of ghouls and living vampires. By living vampires, I mean that they possess normal human bodies, augmented by Vitae. In this way they resemble ghouls but with greater capabilities. They are immune to sunlight and suffer no vulnerability to fire. These vampires then can operate at any time of day and possess positions of power and influence not normally accessible to vampires. Their unusual abilities caused a lot of confusion for my more traditional minded players. The added mystery and paranoia was a great addition to the game.

Vampire: the Requiem supplement Ghouls

The rational for these beings inside the game world was that they possess the "soul" of a vampire instead of that of a normal human soul. This, added to their hereditary ghoul nature, allows them to access vampiric powers without many of the downsides. They also lack some of the vampiric strengths: bullets hurt them like normal humans, they need to breathe and eat, and threats such as cold and electricity are still quite harmful. Additionally they lack features like fangs which made feeding difficult without special rituals.

As for how exactly how they gain a vampiric "soul"? That is discussed below but the full story will have to wait for a later article.

History

The full history of the Circle began over a hundred years before the Chronicle began. This cult began when a grotesque creature referred to as the Antediluvian was discovered buried beneath the city of Chicago in 1890. The Antediluvian resembles a hardened block of blood containing a humanoid figure. Mostly dormant its body is inhabited by an inhuman spirit that can remove and replace souls.

Its discoverer was betrayed by his servitor ghouls who realized the power it had. When prompted by blood and rituals it can be induced to transfer the vampiric essence to another vessel, like a living human. The discoverer was the first victim of this power. His vampiric "soul" was transferred to one of his ghouls who became the first of the Circle.

After the transformation, the ghouls quickly moved the creature and formed a cult (and later a ghoul family) to serve them. Protected by money and the ability to walk in the day, they were able to stave off the other vampiric covenants when they sought to destroy them. They have prospered while the rest of the city has failed, living in opulence on the north end of the city.

Abilities

As humans infused by vampiric essence they have some of the powers but few of the weaknesses of normal vampires:

• They lack fangs, though they know certain rites that allow them to consume blood as Vitae.
• They have blood potency and are subject to frenzy from anger, hunger and fear. However hunger frenzy only occurs if they have 0 or 1 Vitae in their system. Also fear frenzy does not occur for fire and sunlight except in the most recently transformed.
• They cannot create ghouls or addict others to their blood without special rituals.
• They do not age as long as they have vitae in their system and consume 1 Vitae per month. They do not need to spend 1 Vitae per day to awaken.
• They can hold up to their Stamina + Blood Potency in Vitae, though some rituals and devotions allow them to increase this.
• They can boost their pools with blood as normal as well as to reflexively heal damage.
• They can bear children who are extremely likely to be natural ghouls.
• Their vulnerabilities and strengths are otherwise the same as normal mortals.
• Their favored Disciplines are Crúac, Celerity, Resilience, and Vigor. They also have some knowledge of Auspex, Dominate, Majesty, and Obfuscate. They currently lack access to other Disciplines.
• As long-lived mortals they pay half of the normal experience cost for Allies, Contacts, Resources, and Retainers.

I decided to added Crúac as a favored Discipline to counter the groups lack of traditional vampire strengths as well as their otherwise limited Discipline selection.

New Powers

These rituals are of little use to other vampires but allow the Circle to accomplish some basic vampiric abilities:

Fangs of the Beast (Level 1 Crúac Ritual)

By drawing on the Beast, the Circle members can give themselves noticeable fangs. These fangs last until dawn unless dismissed earlier. They function in every way like normal vampiric fangs for feeding except they cannot be hidden without ending the ritual.

The Taste of Vitae (Level 2 Crúac Ritual)

The blood of the Circle member becomes inhumanly addictive like that of vampiric Vitae. It functions in the same way as Vitae for the purposes of addicting people and animals to their blood. By adding a point of Willpower to this ritual, they can ghoul animals and humans. This ritual also allows them to transfer Vitae (through bleeding) to others. This ritual lasts a scene.

This ritual has no effect if used by Ghouls.

Vessel of Blood (Level 2 Crúac Ritual)

The Circle member can temporarily increase their ability to hold Vitae. For the duration of a day they can hold Vitae up to the normal limits of Blood Potency.

Elder Vitae (Devotion: Crúac 2 + Resilience 2, 12 experience)

The Circle member increases their ability to hold Vitae. They spend 1 Vitae and making an Stamina + Occult + Crúac roll. Each success allows them to sequester a point of Vitae within their body (up to the normal limits of vampiric Blood Potency).

50 Shades of Vampires, PT. II