More than anything else, blood defines the Kindred. Within seconds after a vampire consumes blood, the vital fluid changes into something quite different that the Kindred call Vitae. Vampire Vitae looks like mortal blood, but it doesn’t flow like mortal blood. A vampire’s Vitae moves through her body at the behest of the character’s will, not because of a beating heart. Kindred don’t bleed when they are wounded; Vitae might pool slightly in the wound, but it does not flow forth unless the vampire wills it to do so.
Vitae retains its supernatural properties for a few minutes after it leaves a vampire’s body and is exposed to air, and then reverts to ordinary blood. A scientist who examines a sample of former Vitae would find a mixture of blood from many sources, with some of the cells broken down. Some Theban Sorcery practitioners know procedures to preserve the supernatural power of Vitae outside a vampire’s body, and blood that came from a vampire always retains a mystical connection that ritualists can exploit.
Kindred employ their Vitae for many purposes. As a vampire calls upon the occult power in her stolen blood, the actual mass and volume of Vitae in her body decreases. As a character uses up her Vitae, her skin tightens and blanches and her body shrinks slightly. She looks less alive. Feeding enables her to restore her lifelike appearance — as lifelike as the character can manage, anyway.
A player may spend Vitae in the same turn in which he spends a point of Willpower. Spending a Vitae is always a reflexive action. Even if the actions that doing so enable might not always be reflexive themselves (such as with certain Disciplines), the act of spending the Vitae is.
A vampire expends one Vitae in the course of his daily slumber. If a Kindred falls asleep without any Vitae in his body (an unlikely event, but it could happen), he enters a longer torpor for a duration set by his Humanity and Blood Potency, just as if he had lost all his Health points to lethal damage. See the rules for torpor that follow.
For accounting on the character sheet, mark off the Vitae when the character awakens. Usually, the Vitae is counted as being spent at nightfall, the normal time for vampires to rise. If a Kindred forces herself to wake up during the day, the character must expend a Vitae. If the vampire lets herself sleep again before night falls, she expends another Vitae when she rises again that evening.
Although vampires are dead, they can imitate some of the things that living people do. The Damned know this process as “the blush of life.” A Kindred can force Vitae into his outer tissues to give his skin a lifelike flush, or to force his heart to beat and his lungs to inhale and exhale in a normal rhythm. Kindred who want to engage in sexual intercourse — perhaps to feed upon a suitably distracted mortal vessel, or perhaps for simple pleasure — can force blood to the appropriate section of anatomy as well.
Normally vampires vomit up any food or drink they consume immediately. If a Kindred wishes to consume food or drink, her player must spend a Vitae. This is in addition to the “blush of life” a character may have already paid during the course of the scene, though a character need not invoke the blush of life to be able to consume food. At the end of the scene, the character noisily, messily and bloodily eliminates the consumed matter by way of regurgitation, so it’s best to make sure that no one’s around to see the Kindred afterward.
Imitating the appearance and functions of life or the ability to consume food for one scene costs a character one Vitae, and both expenditures are reflexive.
A vampire can call upon his Vitae to enhance his muscular power, speed and agility, or ability to withstand harm. In rules terms, for each Vitae the player expends, he adds two dice to one Physical dice pool — one based on Strength, Dexterity or Stamina. This boost lasts for one turn and is a reflexive action.
Example: Prince Maxwell is beset by three foolish street thugs who think they can mug him. Maxwell feels reluctant to endanger the Masquerade by using Disciplines, so he resolves to give the thugs a thorough but mundane thrashing. Hefting his stout walking stick as the young toughs advance (and wishing he had his saber instead), Maxwell calls on the Blood.
Thanks to his Blood Potency of 6, Maxwell can expend three Vitae in each turn. He fed earlier in the night, so he has a full 15 Vitae. Maxwell sees that all three punks carry guns, so he decides that his first priority is to not get shot. Three Vitae are pumped into his Strength, raising his dice pool by six dice, which is used to deal a drubbing to one of the thugs. (Maxwell’s player marks off the Vitae expended on the character sheet.) On the next turn, Maxwell’s player spends two more Vitae to raise Maxwell’s base Strength pool by four, pounding another one of the hooligans senseless. The Prince doesn’t mind expending so much Vitae on the fight. After he batters the punks unconscious, he plans to restore his losses from their veins.
A vampire can also use Vitae to heal wounds. See p. 173 for details, as the subjects of wounds and healing are significantly different for Kindred than they are for mortals. Spending Vitae to heal wounds is a reflexive action.
Most Disciplines do not cost Vitae to use. Some of the most formidable powers do, however, as do the rituals of Crúac, Devotions and the rare, exotic Disciplines known to some bloodlines. See each power or ritual to see how much they cost.
Even mortals can taste the stolen life that charges them with power and turns them into ghouls (see p. 166). That power makes Vitae the most delicious taste in the world. What could satisfy more than life itself? Stolen fruit is always sweetest. Anyone — mortal, animal, vampire or other — who drinks a vampire’s blood risks becoming addicted to it. They want to taste that power again. A character might know perfectly well that this bloodthirst could enslave him, maybe even destroy him, but knowing doesn’t make the thirst easier to resist. Just like an alcoholic offered a shot of whiskey, it’s all too easy to swear that you’ll quit — after this one.
In rules terms, any time a character who has imbibed Vitae receives a chance to do so again, the player rolls Resolve + Composure. A single success allows the character to resist the temptation.
The more one gives in, the harder it is to exercise self-control. Each time a character gives in to the thirst for Vitae, subsequent attempts to resist temptation suffer a cumulative -1 die penalty on the Resolve + Composure roll. Eventually, the character’s Resolve + Composure dice pool drops to zero and a chance roll is all that’s left. At that point, the character is completely addicted. Not only does he have very little chance to resist the thirst, he doesn’t want to. A derangement (see p. 186) is imposed instantly if the player makes a dramatic failure on a Resolve + Composure roll to resist the temptation of the Blood.
Addicted mortals and animals often become obsessed with drinking mundane blood, thinking that they might gain some power by doing so. They also frequently grow obsessively dependent on any vampire who supplies their Vitae, becoming willing to do anything — anything! — for another fix. The Kindred exploit such addiction, but doing so carries its own risks. Obsession can take many strange forms. Ghouls might preemptively punish themselves for imaginary infractions, to show “the master” the depth of their loyalty. Two ghouls might become insanely jealous of each other. A ghoul might think that his master speaks in his mind, telling him to do things. Others suffer even stranger varieties of insanity.
Addicted Kindred have been known to wound themselves to lap at their own blood. Vitae addicts also often turn to diablerie in their search for an even greater rush. The connection between Vitae addiction and diablerie is so strong that many Kindred simply assume that a known Vitae addict is also a diablerist and blame him for any unexplained disappearances of local Kindred. If no one has disappeared, the Prince and Primogen might still order the Vitae addict to be chained and driven into torpor. Twenty-five years of torpor — long enough for a vampire’s Blood Potency to drop by one — cures Vitae addiction... or at least the physical craving. The memory of pleasure can start the cycle all over again, but at least the character’s dice pool to resist Vitae is reset to the standard.
If a mortal or Kindred character can resist the lure of Vitae, +1 die bonus is gained to subsequent attempts to deny the thirst. The character can beat her nascent addiction if the player ever scores an exceptional success on a Resolve + Composure roll. It’s as if the character never tasted Vitae at all. If she drinks vampire blood again, however, she feels the thirst once more.
When a character falls short of complete addiction, the thirst for Vitae can fade with time, as long as the character avoids temptation. For each year in which a character stays away from any exposure to Kindred blood, one die is added to Resolve + Composure pools to avoid temptation. A character never really beats the thirst, however, until the player scores an exceptional success on the Resolve + Composure roll.
Special Exceptions
In certain special cases, Kindred can drink another vampire’s blood without risking Vitae addiction. Most importantly, the Vitae consumed during the Embrace does not provoke a further thirst for vampire blood. Compared to the shattering power of the Embrace itself, the addictive qualities of Vitae are as a light breeze compared to a hurricane.Some rituals also require one vampire to drink another’s blood. Such blood rites do not addict participants. In such cases, however, the Kindred use small quantities of Vitae, and the ritual channels the blood’s power to a specific goal. The ordinary Vitae-junkie just lets the power roll over him. It’s the difference between a doctor prescribing an opiate and a fiend shooting up. The drug is the same, but the application, the effects and the dangers are very different.
Elders, Addiction and Diablerie
Vitae addiction does not seem to become a problem for vampires who are so old and potent that mortal blood no longer sustains them. They must feed on other Kindred, but they do not seem to suffer the derangements and lack of control of Vitae addicts... unless they commit diablerie. In that case, the elder risks diablerie addiction. (Indeed, merely drinking vampire blood is different from the act of diablerie — described momentarily.) Diablerie addiction works just like Vitae addiction, but a player must roll her character’s Resolve + Composure for her to resist the urge to diablerize another vampire, even if the character knows her crime could be discovered in a short time and bring her destruction. Few threats inspire as much terror among the Kindred as the possibility of such a diablerie-crazed elder.