Legends of the Holy Grail have existed in one form or another for more than a thousand years. Before Christian doctrine presented the tale of Christ’s sacred cup, Welsh stories spoke of vessels that restored the dead to life, and Norse tales depicted enchanted cauldrons that produced endless bounty. Stories of magical cauldrons, chalices and cups with similar life-giving properties can be found in the mythologies of the Celts, the ancient Greeks and even as far abroad as the Chinese. In medieval Europe, epic romances were written about brave, worthy knights who sought the religious enlightenment of the Grail.

Through the shadows of these tales came the Bron, an ancient bloodline of indeterminate origin. The Bron were once mighty kings, lords of the night who ruled the British Isles with an iron fist. Somewhere in the murky depths of history, obscured by time and the torpid dreams of elders, one member called down a terrible curse on his line for daring to seek the divine power of the Holy Grail for himself. Modern Bron disagree vehemently on whether this progenitor drank from the Cup of Christ or whether the true nature of the Grail lay further back in time, with Bran the Blessed and the enchanted cauldron that returned the dead to life, but the repercussions of the curse reverberate into this very night.

The Bron are a bloodline in exile, forever unable to attain the rulership that is their destiny. The curse laid on the bloodline’s founder causes the land itself to rise up against any Bron who attempts to claim domain. No matter whether the domain is in the heart of the city or the depths of the wilderness, the land will not accept a Bron as its master. For any Ventrue, being unable to rule securely within one’s own domain is a terrifying and horrific prospect, but to the Bron, who still remember the glories of their ancient kingdoms, it is quite possibly a fate worse than Final Death.

Forced to skulk on the edges of Kindred society with no domains to call their own, Bron often choose nomadic Requiems rather than bending knee to elders and suffering like servants in others’ realms.

These wandering “Fisher Kings” are a part of the bloodline’s sacred Grail Quest, undertaken in the late Middle Ages and continuing to this night. The Bron reason that the Grail cursed their founder, and so, if it is found again by a worthy Kindred, it can be used to lift the curse and allow the Bron to rule once again. That this was this same monumental hubris that brought down the curse on the line in the first place has not gone unnoticed by more cynical Bron.

With such a clear and obvious (if somewhat unrealistic) goal before them, one would think the Bron would present a focused and unified front to the rest of Kindred society. Sadly, as is often the case among vampires, the Bron are as split by ideological disputes as any other group of Kindred.

The main point of division among members of the bloodline is the very nature of the thing they seek: the Holy Grail itself. One camp, aligned with the Lancea Sanctum, states unequivocally that the bloodline’s founder was cursed for sipping from the Cup of Christ, the Holy Grail, as it has been portrayed for nearly a thousand years. Another group, tied strongly to the Circle of the Crone, insists just as adamantly that the curse laid upon their line is far older than the kine’s Messiah, and that the “Grail” was actually one of the magical cauldrons of Welsh and Celtic myth, which had the power to restore the dead to life and is believed to be an inspiration for the earliest Christianized Grail stories and a decidedly pre-classical Kindred creation myth. Still other members of the bloodline espouse more radical theories, claiming that the Grail is actually a metaphor for an enchanted stone that fell from the heavens or even the mortal bloodline of Christ.

Whatever the truth of the Bron’s curse is, it remains clouded by the Fog of Eternity and the simple lack of records from time past. With no clear direction or focus, the Bron continue to wander, modern Percivals pursuing a quest that has brought down kingdoms and consumed lives for two millennia or more. The Bron are a tragic legend of the Kindred: Princes without domain, Damned to eternal pauperism until they satisfy a quest that may have no solution.

Covenant:

The majority of Bron choose between the Circle of the Crone and the Lancea Sanctum.

Those Bron who fall in with the Sanctified espouse the Christianized doctrine of the Grail, albeit filtered through the dogma of Longinus. According to the Sanctified Bron, the Cup of Christ is both the antithesis of, and the counterpart to, the Spear of Longinus. In a sub-sect of this liturgical theory, there is a gender difference, too — the Spear is the male and the Grail is the female. While the Spear represents the Kindred’s ordained role as executors of God’s vengeance, the Grail is God’s gift to those of the Damned who serve Him most loyally. The Fisher Kings of the Lancea Sanctum believe that God grants a vision of the Holy Grail to those Kindred with whom He is well pleased as a signal of His forgiveness and mercy. To truly be worthy of achieving the Grail Quest, the Sanctified Fisher Kings must prove themselves as worthy as Sir Galahad. The difference, of course, is that while Christian knights were expected to be chaste, pious and humble if they were to prove worthy of attaining the Grail, Kindred are expected to be exemplars of God’s terrible vengeance against those who stray from the path. Sanctified Bron are often nomadic scholars, crisscrossing the globe in search of any sign of the Grail’s passage while leaving a bloody trail of gruesomely slain sinners in their wake.

The Bron who ally themselves with the Circle of the Crone take a different tack in their beliefs regarding the Holy Grail. The Grail, these Bron say, is not the Cup of Christ at all, but rather the cauldron described in ancient Celtic and Welsh mythic cycles, such as the Mabinogion. The early Christians, and the Lancea Sanctum after them, co-opted legends of the magical cauldron that could raise the dead, just as many pagan holidays and myths were Christianized to strengthen the early Church. Members of the Circle of the Crone branch of the bloodline search for the enchanted cauldrons of Cerridwen and other mythic figures, believing that, with the proper ritual, the Bron can repair the flawed magic that blights them with undeath and restore themselves to true mortality.

Other covenants claim far fewer Bron vampires. Among the Invictus, the Bron are nearly unknown, as the nature of their curse places them at a bit of a detriment among the power politics of the First Estate. The few Bron who join the Invictus tend to end up in subordinate roles such as Sheriff or Hound, dwelling in the Prince’s personal domain at her sufferance rather than claiming territory of their own. If the curse on their line ever ends, hough, it seems certain that many Bron would flock to
the Invictus’ banner to re-assert the rightful leadership the bloodline has been denied.

The Carthian Movement offers little to attract the Bron. The Carthians tend to be more interested in temporal politics than spiritual matters, and they seldom have access to unique occult lore that might aid in the Bron’s quest for the Grail. “Heretic” Bron, who espouse radical new theories about the nature of the Grail, sometimes find a home in the Movement but usually out of a shared sense of ostracism than any commonality of ideology and beliefs.

Although many Bron harbor a quiet optimism regarding the Ordo Dracul, few Fisher Kings actually enter the Order. Members of both factions claim this is because the Fisher Kings focus almost exclusively on the Grail, which can become an obstacle on their road to the Dragons’ brand of enlightenment. On the other hand, elders of the bloodline hear tales of the potent Blood masteries the Ordo Dracul possesses, and they cannot help but wonder.

Appearance:

Bron vary widely in appearance, depending on their approach to the Grail Quest. Elders of the line tend to be conservative in their dress, usually favoring dark suits with severe lines. Truly ancient members of the bloodline may still dress as the questing knights of old, at least within the privacy of their own havens. Many Bron were once members of secret societies sometimes connected with the Grail, such as the Templars or their descendants, the Free-masons; these vampires often wear the accoutrements of those orders.

Physically speaking, Bron have no common, unifying features. Due to the bloodline’s origins in the British Isles, most elders are of Celtic, Welsh or Anglo-Saxon descent, but, in modern nights, the bloodline spans all ethnicities and body types.

Haven:

Many Bron are nomads, wandering from domain to domain to follow the trail of the Holy Grail and keep the effects of their curse at bay. Such nomads find temporary havens wherever they can, or travel in modified vehicles that serve as traveling havens. More sedentary Bron lair wherever they can find a place to sleep the day away, often on the fringes of the city or in a domain unclaimed by local Kindred. The rare, lucky Bron who have a local patron tend to make their havens in libraries and museums, places where tidbits of Grail lore might fall into their hands.

Background:

In modern nights, most Bron choose their childer from the ranks of scholars and academics. Ideally, a Bron chooses a childe who specializes in the lore of the Grail (whether Christian or pagan, as the case may be), but such scholars have become progressively more rare in recent years. Many Bron Embrace scholars who focus generally on early Christian theology, Celtic history and myth or medieval European history, and continue the Grail-specific instruction during the first few years of the fledgling’s Requiem. Some elder Bron, especially among the Sanctified, prefer to Embrace soldiers, police officers or political activists, believing them to be the knights of the modern world. These traditionalists carefully study their prospective childer to ensure that they hold to the appropriate virtues.

Acolyte Fisher Kings, on the other hand, often Embrace those whose interest in the Grail is more mystical than historical. Occultists, New Age gurus and, in particular, educated devout pagans form the bulk of the bloodline’s representation in the Circle of the Crone. As the Celts believed in the perfection of the warrior ideal, from time to time Bron Acolytes also Embrace mortals with exceptional physical prowess. Unlike Sanctified Fisher Kings, pagan Bron focus more on raw, physical potential than knightly virtues. Boxers, outdoorsmen and survivalists are among the “warriors” sometimes Embraced by Fisher King Acolytes. Because the pagan myths of magical cauldrons are closely tied to the British Isles, most Bron Acolytes hail from that region, and many still dwell there.

Character Creation:

Young Bron very often favor Mental Attributes and Skills. The Grail Quest in modern nights has become one of research and study, not riding across the countryside with sword and lance. Older Bron still show a preference for Physical Attributes and Skills, but even newly Embraced Fisher Kings usually prize their Physical abilities. Social Attributes and Skills are usually of the least importance — artifacts and manuscripts don’t care how well-mannered you are, and there’s seldom anyone to talk to in the ancient ruins Bron sometimes explore in their search.

Beyond the basics of Attribute prioritization, Bron frequently diverge based on their covenant and preferred method of pursuing their quest. Sanctified Bron usually have Merits like Languages: Latin, Status: Lancea Sanctum and Contacts in the academic world. Fisher Kings in the Circle of the Crone, on the other hand, might speak multiple ancient languages, especially various forms of Gaelic, Welsh and Old English, with Allies and Contacts across the occult world.

Scholarly Bron usually devote effort to Skills like Academics, Computer and Investigation, with a smattering of Politics and Persuasion to help them gain access to the research materials they need. Merits like Fame or Status in the academic world help them gain after-hours access to the most exclusive research libraries in the world, but these Merits come with perils of their own in the form of recognition outside those circles. Haven, Herd and Resources ensure that the Bron’s Requiem is disturbed as little as possible by the vagaries of night-to-night unlife. Fisher Kings who actively pursue the Grail likely have dots in Academics, but complement it with Survival, Firearms, Larceny and Intimidation to better survive their wanderings. Merits such as Resources, Herd and Retainer are especially important to questing Bron, and many seek out Gangrel Mentors from whom to learn Protean.

Organization:

The deep schism that divides the Bron precludes them from having much internal organization. Neither the Circle of the Crone nor the Lancea Sanctum boasts a large enough Bron population to support any kind of bloodline infrastructure. Given the nomadic Requiems of most Fisher Kings, even finding all of them would be an impossible task, let alone organizing them. Across most of the globe, the closest thing the Bron have to an organization is the custom that those members of the bloodline actively engaged in the Grail Quest are given deference and aid by those who are not pursuing the Grail. In the past, this tradition cut across covenant lines, but the rift between the Circle of the Crone and the Lancea Sanctum has widened considerably over the past few centuries. Some Fisher Kings might still honor this tradition for a member of “the other side,” but a Bron Acolyte who asks a Sanctified for shelter while pursuing a rumor about Cerridwen’s magic cauldron takes her safety into her own hands, and vice versa.

Concepts: Enlightened occultist, grail historian, independent archaeologist, itinerant monk, Masonic conspiracy theorist, modern Celt, neo-pagan coven leader, nomadic Marchog, radical feminist, self-styled Galahad, skulker on the fringe of society

History

Like much of Kindred lore, the history of the Bron varies greatly depending upon the teller. While each individual Fisher King imparts his own take on the bloodline’s foundation, the greatest disparity is the schism between Sanctified and Bron Acolytes. Throughout the centuries, the ideological clash between these two factions has ranged from scholarly, if impassioned, debate to outright physical conflict. Modern times see the confl ict vary from domain to domain, ranging to either extreme. Nomadic Bron tend to be extremely cautious when meeting fellow bloodline members in new territories, at least until they understand the state of the local “scholarly debate.”

The Christian Grail

After the Crucifixion and the cursing of Longinus, many of Christ’s mortal followers fled Judea in fear for their lives. The kine scattered across Europe, many bearing sacred relics of their Messiah’s last days on earth. The greatest of these relics, the Holy Grail itself, was brought to England by Joseph of Arimithea and his brother-in-law, Bron. Along with their families, these two men became the guardians of the Grail, holding it in trust for the day a worthy would come to receive the blessing of enlightenment and healing the Grail offered. Joseph was dubbed the Grail King, since he had borne the Grail on the journey from Judea to Britannia, while Bron was named the Fisher King for the fish that was the symbol of God’s bounty and of the early Church.

Kindred scholars struggle to find an accurate date for Bron’s Embrace, but even the kine’s documents from that era are sketchy at best. Few Kindred writings from the early decades of the Common Era survived the fall of the Camarilla, and those writings that did are seldom concerned with the genealogies of obscure bloodlines. The best estimate Sanctified theologians can make is that the Fisher King took in a nocturnal pilgrim one dark night somewhere between AD 50 and 75, and the reward for Bron’s hospitality was to be brought into the fold of the Damned. Naturally, scholars of the Lancea Sanctum claim this Kindred pilgrim was one of their own, but few clues exist as to the identity of the Fisher King’s sire.

To the pious keeper of the Cup of Christ, the Requiem was a blasphemy. The Fisher King refused to accept the Damnation that had been laid on him, and, against his brother-in-law’s counsel, Bron ascended the Grail Tower, lifted the sacred chalice to his lips and drank deeply of the blood of Christ. The Grail had the power to cure any ill and undo any wound, no matter how grievous, and Bron fully expected to be restored to life by the divine blood. He was sorely disappointed. The following text, discovered by Sanctified archaeologists in AD 1765 and purportedly written by Bron himself, describes the result of the Fisher King’s rash act.

As I drank deep of the Blood of the Lamb, it seemed to me as though the Grail grew not empty nor even less full. Thou couldst drink from that sweetest of cups until the End of Days and thou wouldst taketh away not a drop, for such is the bounty of our Lord. The Blood burned my throat like liquid fire, and as I drank I did perceive that the candles about the altar dimmed and the tower grew blacker than the blackest night. The earth shook with the force of the wrath of the Lord, and I knew then that I had displeased Him.

The Grail fell from my nerveless grasp, and I fell to my knees as if stricken, pleading with the Lord God Almighty to forgive my trespass. The Blood spilled forth from the Grail in an endless river of crimson, and the Beast that writhes in my soul did stir and cry out for a taste of the Blood. It was then that I heard the voice of the Lord, and it did crack the air like thunder and howl in my mind like the Red Fear.

Thou hast drunk from that which wasThou hast drunk from that which was not meant for thee. In thy arrogance, thounot meant for thee. In thy arrogance, thou hast set thyself above the lord your god, forhast set thyself above the lord your god, for to him alone is given the judgment of men’sto him alone is given the judgment of men’s souls. Know thou bron, o fisher king, thatsouls. Know thou bron, o fisher king, that thy damnation is twofold. Thou art athy damnation is twofold. Thou art a childe of longinus, damned to the hunger ofchilde of longinus, damned to the hunger of thy blood, but also hast thou tasted the bloodthy blood, but also hast thou tasted the blood of my son, which was not thine to drink.of my son, which was not thine to drink. For thy sins, thou art doubly cursed, forFor thy sins, thou art doubly cursed, for the bounty of my generosity shall be deniedthe bounty of my generosity shall be denied thee, and all those who would have thee asthee, and all those who would have thee as their lord, for ever until the end of days.their lord, for ever until the end of days.

I abased myself before the voice of the Lord, pleading with Him to forgive my trespass. The Blood of Christ flowed about me like a pool, yet I dared not rise to right the Grail. At length, the trembling of the earth lessened, and the Lord spoke again.

Thou hast sinned against me, o fisherThou hast sinned against me, o fisher king, but know that i am a merciful god.king, but know that i am a merciful god. Thy damnation is complete, but this blessingThy damnation is complete, but this blessing i shall give thee: shouldst thou or any of thyi shall give thee: shouldst thou or any of thy line prove his worth in my eyes and seeketh theline prove his worth in my eyes and seeketh the holy grail, he shall find his way to this placeholy grail, he shall find his way to this place and be tested. He who passeth the test mayand be tested. He who passeth the test may drink from the grail and be healed, he and alldrink from the grail and be healed, he and all the scions of thy accursed line. Rememberthe scions of thy accursed line. Remember this, and know that i am merciful.this, and know that i am merciful.

With those words, the presence of the Lord departed. The earth ceased its quake, the candles flared to life and the Grail Chapel fell silent as a tomb. I rose to return the Holy Grail to its place upon the altar, but as I watched, the Cup of Christ faded from my sight until it was naught but a ghostly image of itself, which soon vanished altogether. I was unworthy now even to look upon my holiest of charges. In shame, I left the chapel. I have not returned since, though nightly I pray to God to grant me the wisdom to prove my worth. I remain here in my brother’s castle, guardian now of his bones as well as the Grail. I shall remain here until Judgment Day, if I must, waiting for the Lord to give me a sign.

The Bloody Path of Bran the Blessed

Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, the legendary hero Bran the Blessed ruled a kingdom in what is now Wales. Bran was a giant of a man, “too large for ordinary houses,” according to the stories set forth in the Mabinogion. Despite his epithet, Bran was a bloody ruler, fierce and implacable in battle. His name, which meant “Raven,” was said to have been given to him because he provided a feast for the carrion-birds whenever he went into battle.

According to the Bron historians of the Circle of the Crone, the history of their bloodline begins during the fierce war between Bran’s people and the Irish king Matholwch. Bran’s sister, Branwen, was Matholwch’s wife, though he treated her as little more than a slave. When Bran learned of his sister’s treatment at her husband’s hands, the Welsh ruler flew into one of his terrible rages, gathered his army and sailed across the Irish Sea to avenge the slight on his family’s honor. Ancient tales say that Matholwch was terrified by what appeared to be a forest coming over the sea, so numerous were Bran’s warships. When the Irish king saw Bran himself wading across the sea in the lead, Matholwch wisely sued for peace before he and his kingdom were destroyed.

As part of the concessions of the peace agreement, Matholwch built a great palace large enough for Bran to dwell in and passed the rule of the Irish kingdom on to his son Gwern. The conflict might have ended there, but several of Matholwch’s lords refused to bow before the invaders and engineered a plan to murder Bran and his Welsh soldiers. The Irish lords hid themselves and many of their soldiers inside sacks of flour bound for the kitchens of Bran the Blessed’s castle. Thus able to sneak past the hundreds of Welsh soldiers who guarded the castle, the Irish soldiers waited until nightfall to cut themselves free, and would have murdered everyone in the castle, but they were discovered by Bran’s cousin, Efnisien, who heard the flour sacks whispering to each other in the dark. Guessing the treachery at hand, Efnisien threw the sacks into the fire, roasting the Irish soldiers alive. Efnisien himself took this tale to Bran, and the giant king declared the peace forfeit and marshaled his forces to attack Matholwch.

Knowing that he could never defeat the more-numerous armies of Bran the Blessed, Matholwch had made a terrible bargain with an ancient witch who dwelt on a rocky island in the Irish Sea. The hag, whom some say was one of the Good Folk and some say was something less describable, gave Matholwch two items: a spear made from a strange, dark metal, said to be able to pierce the armor of the gods themselves, and an enchanted cauldron filled with blood that boiled even when no fire burned beneath it. Any dead man stewed in that pot would be returned to life to fight on the side of the Irish. The price Matholwch paid for this cauldron
is unknown.

The subsequent battle raged for many weeks, and the Welsh were nearly wiped out. The Irish suffered no casualties, and every Welsh casualty only served to swell the Irish ranks. With his bloody cauldron and his ensorcelled spear, Matholwch seemed invincible. After almost two solid months of fighting, Bran’s spies learned of Matholwch’s cauldron and its terrible restorative powers. Bran consulted with his priests and magicians, and, after long days of fasting and prayer, they hatched a plan to destroy the cauldron.

The next dawn, Bran led his soldiers into battle personally, and met Matholwch on the field. The two kings battled savagely from sunrise to sunset until, just as the last rays of the sun vanished over the horizon, Bran’s sword clove Matholwch’s helmet and bit deep into the Irish king’s skull. At the same instant, Matholwch’s spear pierced Bran’s side, deeply wounding the giant. Matholwch fell dead, and Bran, sorely hurt but not yet dead, collapsed atop his foe, feigning death. Matholwch’s lieutenants were fooled, and, gloating that Bran the Blessed would fight for Ireland by the next dawn, they dragged him off and cast him, still living, into the cauldron.

Immediately, the Irish knew they had been tricked. The ever-boiling blood went still and cold in the space of a heartbeat, the spell of resurrection shattered by the presence of Bran’s living soul. With a thunderous crack, the cauldron split in two, and Bran emerged, bathed in blood and forever changed. The cauldron’s sorceries, rather than restoring the dead to life, had brought undeath to the living. Bran emerged from his bloody baptism a Damned creature of the night, lusting for the blood of the living. His body rejuvenated and his hurts healed (all save the wound from Matholwch’s enchanted spear), Bran fell upon the Irish soldiers within Matholwch’s castle and slew them all. The Welsh army, inspired by the sight of their king risen anew, rallied and drove the remaining Irish into the sea.

With the Irish soldiers defeated, Bran the Blessed took control of Matholwch’s kingdom, solidifying his rule over the mortals. In life, Bran had been a great king, but in his Requiem, he lacked the sacred connection to the land that made a true king. Under the rule of the vampire king, the land withered and sickened. Crops died, cattle grew sick and produced no milk and the people cried out to the gods for justice. Bran refused to see this, and even went so far as to Embrace childer and grant them domains throughout his kingdom, spreading the blight even farther.

The mortal lords who served Bran finally took the initiative to deal with their undead king. While the sun was high one midsummer’s day, they entered Bran’s sleeping chambers on the premise of bringing tribute to the king and struck off his head with an axe. According to the histories of the Bron Acolytes, after the beheading, Bran’s eyes opened, and the king spoke with “the voice of the grave.” He told his lords to burn his body but to carry his head back to Wales and bury the skull facing south, to protect his home against invaders. Then he spoke to his childer, and though they were scattered across his kingdom, each one is said to have heard the voice in their dreams that day.

Bran laid a geas on his childer, commanding them through the power of the Blood to renounce their thrones and leave their lands forever. They belonged to the dead, and the dead did not rule the living. The childer were offered one chance to redeem themselves and reclaim their thrones: find the witch who crafted Matholwch’s cauldron or learn the secret location of another cauldron made by the same hag. Only by learning the secrets of the cauldron can they find the path back to true life and reclaim their blessed kingship.

Society and Culture

For the most part, the Bron lead isolated, nomadic Requiems. They come into contact with other Kindred infrequently, and with others of their own line even less often. When a group of Bron does congregate into a coterie, it is almost always to pursue some key facet of the Grail Quest. Even Bron who do not travel tend to dwell apart from their brethren, out of necessity (often, the only territory a Bron dares to claim is the Barrens, as even their unique curse cannot make the befouled places of the city much worse) or desire (sedentary Bron are usually bookish scholars who dislike interruption).

In the British Isles, where this bloodline is strongest, the Bron have slightly more structure to the manner in which the bloodline operates. The British Fisher Kings’ organization is common to the Lancea Sanctum and the Circle of the Crone alike, a curious fact that suggests that such organization may predate the schism within the bloodline. Groups of scholarly Bron, called Ysgolorion, secret themselves within Britain’s most prestigious universities and libraries, often swallowing their pride and serving as aides or Seneschals to the local Princes, as the protection of domain is denied to the Bron. These Ysgolorion (singular Ysgolor) scour the libraries of the kine and the secret journals of elder Kindred, seeking clues as to the Grail’s nature and resting place.

The Ysgolorion pass the information they glean on to the Marchogion, or wandering knights, who engage in the active fieldwork of investigation. Although the Marchogion often speak grandly of their Grail Quests, very few of them are actually directly engaged in a search for the Grail. Too much information has been lost, and the Grail has been too well hidden to make such a search practical. Instead, most of a Marchog’s time is spent looking for artifacts and tomes, clues that might point to other clues that may eventually point to the Grail.

Depending upon their age and prestige, Marchogion pass through Britain anywhere from once a year to once a decade. Younger, inexperienced Marchogion return more frequently, as they often aren’t as capable as their elders, and the Ysgolorion don’t wish to lose years worth of accumulated discoveries because a careless young coterie overestimated its abilities. Older Marchogion undertake longer pilgrimages and more important quests. Beyond this partnership of convenience, the Bron observe no higher authority. In many instances, Marchogion and Ysgolorion are as likely to carry on protracted, decades-long feuds as they are to exchange information or advance the progress of the Grail Quest.

Because of the deep divide between the branches of this bloodline, most Fisher Kings think of themselves as members of their covenant first and members of their bloodline second. Sanctified Bron celebrate their own versions of Good Friday and Easter, venerating the role of the Grail more than the role of Christ (and, according to some, more than the role of Longinus himself, a fact that has led Inquisitors to the havens of the Bron on more than one occasion).

Bron Acolytes sometimes focus on the worship of ancient gods and goddesses connected with magical, life-giving cauldrons: Bran is one such deity, as is the Celtic goddess Cerridwen. In places where Bron Acolytes gather in numbers, or even the rare domains that have Bron Princes, a ghoulish rite may occur on the winter solstice every 10th year. A Kindred from within the domain — preferably one who has earned recognition for protecting the Masquerade or defending Kindred society from some external threat — is selected and brought before the assembled Kindred at Elysium. From dusk until just before dawn, Kindred of the domain honor the hero, praising him and granting every luxury they have to offer. Revelers supply vessels of any exotic vintage he desires, along with whatever blood-borne intoxicants the hero might wish, and even the hero’s longstanding rivals may publicly declare any feuds or grudges to be things of the past. Just before sunrise, the throng escorts the hero to the southernmost border of the domain, where the Prince drives a spear of rowan-wood into the hero’s side. The hero’s head is removed with a single stroke of a sharp blade (to need multiple strokes is considered a terrible omen), then buried facing southward before the body crumbles to ash. According to the Acolytes, so long as the head remains undisturbed, it will protect their domain from outside attack, just as Bran’s head protected Britain.

Legends

The Bron have been the subject of many tales, myths and rumors throughout their history. Some of these stories have been tales of the quest for the Grail, others have been rumors hinting at dark secrets possessed by the bloodline or the perceived truth of their origins.

The Canticle of the Sepulchre Knight

The Canticle of the Sepulchre Knight covers a period from AD 1230 until 1350, approximately. In total, this work comprises seven volumes in its original form, each recounting one of the pilgrimages of Sir Godfrey la Rochenoire, a Sanctified Bron, in search of the Grail. Of particular note is Chanson IV, which recounts what may be Sir Godfrey’s closest brush with the Grail during his century of questing. In AD 1267, Sir Godfrey and his coterie set forth from Avignon, bound for Wales. While crossing the English Channel, their ship was banked in by a thick fog that even the senses of Sir Godfrey’s Mekhet companion, Jean-Pierre du Bois, could not penetrate. Their ship languished on a windless sea the entire night, and, just when it seemed dawn would break on the horizon and doom them all, the ship ran aground on a white, sandy beach. A castle loomed out of the fog above them, and the Kindred fled to take refuge from the sun within the castle’s walls. The lord of the castle introduced himself as Alain le Gros, and he seemed to know the vampires for what they were, for he led them to a dark, windowless chamber below ground and bade them rest for the day.

At dusk, Sir Godfrey and his coterie followed their host to the castle’s chapel, where the knight experienced a most peculiar vision. An exquisitely carved crucifix of marble hung above the altar, with an equally intricate statue of Longinus piercing Christ’s side with the Holy Lance. Blood wept from the statue’s wound and fell into a great chalice of gold and jewels. The chalice was set upon a stone altar, over which the blood had flowed in strange patterns, which Sir Godfrey and his companions likened to pagan icons. Three women dressed in the habits of nuns attended the Grail: one young and comely, one of middling age and plain appearance and one elderly and repulsive.

Sir Godfrey demanded to know the meaning of what he perceived as a pagan spectacle surrounding the Holy Grail, but Alain le Gros only smiled sadly and made no reply. Again, Sir Godfrey asked his question, and yet once more and again he received no answer. Thus insulted thrice over, Sir Godfrey was overcome by his wrath, and made as if to strike le Gros in his frenzy. The Grail women, seeing violence about to be done in the holiest of chapels, tore their hair and wailed. A baleful light, pale as the moon but harsher than the sun’s forgotten rays, poured in through the stained glass windows and rendered Sir Godfrey and his coterie blind and insensate.

When the Sanctified knights returned to themselves, they found themselves lying in state in their makeshift haven aboard the vessel that had carried them from the shores of Normandy. The last rays of the setting sun had vanished over the horizon, and their sailors informed them that they would soon be landing on the English shore. Of the strange fog that had beset their ship for an entire night, the sailors professed no recollection. And yet, this was no mad dream shared by Kindred made torpid by the sun’s rays, for when Sir Godfrey arose that evening, he found his right hand severed cleanly at the wrist, as if by the sharpest blade on God’s earth. It is recorded in other historical documents of the time that this wound never healed and that Sir Godfrey bore the mark of his impiety and failure until, according to other tales, he met Final Death in Paris in AD 1384.

Secrets and Mysteries

The Bron are a secretive bloodline, and despite the legends that surround its members, few outside the line know much about them for certain. The history and organization presented in this section can be used as a source of rumors or stories told about the Bron. One or more of these truths might be the gospel truth in your chronicle. As always, Storytellers, use what you like and modify or throw out the rest.
One Truth:

The Bron are reclusive enough that few Kindred have ever met one, let alone two. In some domains, the very idea of Bron belonging to both the Lancea Sanctum and the Circle of the Crone is laughable. Depending upon who tells the tale, any rumor of Bron belonging to another covenant is either a case of mistaken identity caused by foolish pagans worshipping a saucepan or Christianized oppressors stealing the true faith of the people for their own purposes.
No Truth:

In modern nights, radical new theories about the nature of the Holy Grail have been put forward by folklorists and theologians. In an era when The Da Vinci Code has become a pop-culture icon (“It really makes you think”), it’s no wonder many Kindred, especially neonates and young ancillae, whisper that the Bron are looking in the wrong place for their Holy Grail. In fact, these Kindred say, the bloodline’s founder did stumble upon the truth sometime during the 1500s and went mad with grief when he learned he had been searching for a bundle of genealogical documents and ancient scrolls proving that Mary Magdalene was Christ’s wife and the mother of his child. In despair, the Bron told none of his childer (or, in some versions of the story, destroys the Grail documents to hide his failure) of his discovery and greeted the next sunrise.

Belial’s Bron:

According to this legend, the Bron are indeed seeking the Holy Grail — and probably other religious relics as well — not to lift their curse or restore their humanity, but to destroy them. Once, in the distant past, perhaps the Fisher Kings’ motives were pure, but during the Middle Ages the bloodline fell in with the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon, better known as the Knights Templar. The Templars were acknowledged as Europe’s foremost Grail scholars at the time, and it was even rumored that they knew the location of the Cup of Christ. They were wealthy and powerful, but that wealth and power corrupted the order, and they fell into idolatry and Devil-worship. The Church discovered the Templars’ blasphemies and executed almost the entire order. The Lancea Sanctum did much the same to the Bron members of the order. Despite these purges, a few mortal and Kindred Templars escaped and began a long, arduous search for the lost knowledge of the Templars, including the location of the Grail, the Spear of Destiny and other sacred relics. In some versions of this tale, the Bron are the secret founders of Belial’s Brood, while in other versions the Bron are merely the Brood’s allies.

In some parts of the world, people who commit suicide are said to come back as vampires. This legend may have some connection to the bloodline called the Children of Judas. Where the Children of Judas dwell, suicides increase — and some of these suicides become Children of Judas themselves.

Many Kindred hate and fear the so-called Suicide Kings. A cynic might suggest the Kindred hate and fear most other Kindred, but the Children of Judas endure extra suspicion. The Suicide Kings bring the siren call of self-destruction to other vampires as well as mortals. Perhaps this bloodline receives too much blame: Kindred can feel horror, remorse and despair without any help. The Damned may not want to admit how many of them choose suicide. When their fellows destroy themselves, it’s more comforting to blame an outside force than to suggest they had reason for such self-loathing.

The Children of Judas emerge from the Daeva clan. The Succubi slake their own desires by arousing the desires of others. The Suicide Kings gain the power to arouse the darkest, most enigmatic and perverse desire of all.

No one’s sure when the Children of Judas originated. The legend connecting vampires with suicide dates back to antiquity. Despite the bloodline’s name, however, members do not claim that their lineage began with Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ. Rather, they see a spiritual connection to the traitor disciple: Judas destroyed what he should have loved most, and killed himself in remorse. Many Children of Judas feel they, too, have betrayed what they love and destroyed themselves. They know all Kindred eventually must feel this self-hate as well.

The bloodline calls its alleged founder the Hanged Man. As a mortal, the Hanged Man supposedly lived in the Balkans during the late Middle Ages. The story goes that the Hanged Man was a vampire-hunter. After he retired, a vengeful vampire massacred the vampire-hunter’s family, then Embraced the hunter when he tried to hang himself in grief. The Hanged Man pursued his sire for decades before destroying her, then joined the Lancea Sanctum for an unlife of penance and renewed service to God. He is said to have destroyed himself in the 18th century, in an attempt at martyrdom.

Over the centuries, the Hanged Man sired a number of childer who sired childer of their own. The bloodline also adopted a number of Daeva who fell prey to self-disgust or who wished to add the Children of Judas’ power of Despond to their cruel schemes. One legend of the bloodline, however, says that Suicide Kings may arise spontaneously. If a Daeva Embraces a mortal who’s dying from an attempt at suicide, the childe supposedly bears the Judas taint and shall inevitably make the transition to the bloodline without any help. Some Kindred loremasters believe the Hanged Man was merely a noteworthy case of such spontaneous emergence, in a bloodline that may be as old as the Kindred themselves.

Covenant:
Children of Judas join the Lancea Sanctum in greater numbers than any other covenant. The bloodline’s reputed founder joined that covenant, and the Suicide Kings certainly excel at leading Kindred and kine to sorrow and contrition. A significant fraction of Suicide Kings join the Invictus, however, to skulk among that covenant’s large Daeva contingent. The doctrines of the Carthians, Acolytes and Dragons rarely hold special interest for the Children of Judas, and those covenants show little special interest in recruiting these Kindred.

A higher percentage of the Children of Judas prefer to remain unaligned than is usual for Daeva — especially among Suicide Kings whose lineage is known to other Kindred. The hoary vampires who lead the covenants may see a Child of Judas as a useful ally, but younger Kindred tend to fear the heralds of despair. Neonates and ancillae often hint to a known Suicide King that she might be happier in another covenant, preferably one in another city. The youngsters have not yet accepted that despair is both an intrinsic part of the Kindred’s curse and perhaps their only solace. These youngsters also do not realize that happiness may not be a Child of Judas’ goal.

Appearance:
Many Children of Judas share the attractive and stylish appearance the Kindred associate with Daeva. The bloodline’s habitual Embrace of suicides, however, forces the Children of Judas to draw from a more finite and less beautiful sample of the mortal population. Thus, many Suicide Kings (or Daeva who could potentially join the bloodline) look quite ordinary — though they may improve their appearance as much as possible through makeup, personal grooming and stylish clothing.

Haven:
Children of Judas, just as other Daeva, often design their havens to indulge their sensual appetites and lure their prey. The Suicide Kings’ obsession with sorrow and despair, however, may lead to odd touches: anything from a floor-to-ceiling print of Munch’s “The Scream,” to the polished skull of the Judas’ first kill sitting on the mantelpiece.

A Child of Judas who attempted suicide as a mortal often keeps reminders of his search for self-destruction. For instance, one Suicide King might keep coils of rope in his closet, while another Judas might have a medicine cabinet stuffed with bottles of sleeping pills. A third Judas might keep a selection of small, sharp knives on a tray next to her bathtub.

Background:
Similar to other Daeva, Children of Judas are drawn to the beautiful, the cultured and the elegant. The Children of Judas feel just as strong an attraction, however, for the desperate, the grieving and the self-loathing. From the widow who can’t imagine life without her husband to the PCP-addled thug who waves a gun at the cops, the pain of the desperate and grieving draws the Children of Judas like flies to rotting meat. And, if a Child of Judas should witness someone actually attempting suicide — why, the compulsion to Embrace becomes terribly strong. The Suicide Kings, therefore, come from every level of society. They may have any mortal age from teens to senior citizens. Both genders and all races are well represented.

Character Creation:
As a true cross-section of humanity, Children of Judas may have any balance of Attributes and Skills. After the Embrace, however, they often try to develop their Social Attributes, Skills and Merits so they can play the predatory games of seduction their Daeva appetites demand. Nascent Children of Judas often seem like second-best Succubi, preying on mortals who seem particularly vulnerable to emotional manipulation.

Organization:
The mortal Slavs of south-eastern Europe have a legend about vampires called Children of Judas, so other Kindred presume the bloodline remains most numerous in that region. However, Suicide Kings are found wherever mortals feel despair. The Children of Judas seldom congregate in numbers larger than three or four. Indeed, more Children of Judas than that could cause such a rise in the suicide rate that mortals could not help but notice. At least, that’s what many Kindred believe. So many Suicide Kings pretend to be ordinary Daeva that their numbers are hard to estimate, even for them.

One of the more widespread and persistent rumors about the Children of Judas says their founder faked his destruction, but actually left the Lancea Sanctum to join the secret society called VII. According to this rumor, the line’s founder sired a secret lineage of Children of Judas who all pose as ordinary Daeva. These undercover Children of Judas use their powers to drive other Kindred to self-destruction. Of course, no one has any evidence that such a secret lineage exists, and even the existence of VII is half-rumor. When Kindred who seem secure and content with their lot suddenly decide to meet the sun, though, it’s common for a few Kindred to bring up tales of hidden Suicide Kings.

Concepts: Abandoned spouse, dentist, desperate housewife, disgraced cop, downsized executive, grief counselor, hospice caretaker, old person who didn’t want to be a burden to her children, petty crook, picked-on teen, prostitute

Vitae contains undeniable power. Each drop offers new potential. The Kindred understand some of this potential — it feeds them, stirs their spiritless limbs and gives life to dead magic. That’s only a fraction of the possibility, though — the Vitae channeled through a Damned vessel offers a world of secret, untapped strength for those desperate enough.

The Galloi know this. These vampires believe themselves to be prime examples of what the Blood can truly do. The Kindred of this bloodline come from the Nosferatu, those monstrous creatures fearsome in flesh and spirit. The Galloi believe that the Blood has reversed this curse. They claim that Vitae not only feeds them and empowers them but has also literally made the fiendish beautiful once again, if only for a time. To re-form his gruesome carcass, the Galloi bathes in blood, immersing himself completely within it. Once he withdraws from his bath, his monstrous flesh is replaced with an eerily perfect figure. Others call this bloodline the “Pretties,” a bitter sobriquet illustrating the alarmingly unnatural beauty of these monsters. The Galloi do not discourage the epithet.

The bloodline has carried the knowledge of the ritual bloodbath since the primeval nights before Rome’s birth. The Pretties do not question from whence the power or wisdom comes. Revering the goddess Cybele, these blood-smeared cultists act as her voice among the Acolytes of the Circle of the Crone. The goddess’ worshippers long ago bathed in blood and gore to gain her favor, and her children (both Kindred and kine) do the same tonight. Those who do not know her wisdom — even those within the Circle itself — can be made to understand. It’s easy to show them the way, to reveal her veiled power through the offers of blood. The Pretties can grant Cybele’s favor to others, for a time. Of course, there is always a price.

Covenant:
With few exceptions, the Galloi belong to the Circle of the Crone. Moreover, many Galloi make particularly zealous Acolytes. A small minority of this bloodline makes their homes among the Invictus or the Carthians, eschewing any kind of spirituality and enjoying cosmopolitan Requiems of politics and power. Only the most marginal Galloi ever end up in the ranks of the Ordo Dracul or the Lancea Sanctum, however. Those Galloi who end up in the Order do so to understand (or exploit) their own mystic proclivities. The rare Galloi who becomes Sanctified generally does so to rebuke his own “heathen sins” and to find a new Requiem as one of God’s cursed children.

Appearance:
A Pretty’s appearance is dictated in part by his weakness (see below). When freshly bathed in blood, the vampire appears eerily beautiful, his form almost unearthly: skin like virgin porcelain, lips the color of fresh blood, long, delicate limbs and wide, bright eyes. Perhaps more importantly, the vampire appears androgynous. The creature appears not so much without gender as possessing both male and female aspects — roundness of breasts, a subtle musculature, an Adam’s apple upon a wine-stem neck. Many Galloi accentuate this gender ambiguity through fashion, wearing severe suits or overt configurations of haute couture. Some wear clothing that shows a surprising amount of skin, thus confusing the issue more. Others sport hairless bodies, shaving themselves bald or wearing wigs and penciling in their eyebrows.

When the vampire has suffered time away from his bloodbaths, however, he looks truly monstrous, like a skeleton swathed in rotten cloth. His skin becomes etched in deep wrinkles, and, sometimes, bones poke through frail flesh. At this point, the gender-ambiguous appearance also fades – the vampire’s original masculinity or femininity becomes more obvious beneath the monstrosity.

Haven:
Most Galloi favor modern (even minimalist) havens located in places of desperation. The Galloi realize that they have much to offer the hopeless. The Galloi can bring youth, beauty and other advantages to those who need them most, and that puts the Galloi in a position of power. Therefore, many Galloi establish havens near artist communities, within seedy neighborhoods, even among the struggling middle class. The Galloi obviously prefer to dwell within the cities, with the rest of the Kindred, though some Galloi enjoy the comforts and opportunity of more remote existence.

Some Pretties choose to dedicate their havens as shrines to the goddess Cybele. Cybele’s temples used to be underground; such subterranean sanctuaries represented the dark and earthy womb. In homage, particularly ardent Galloi choose havens beneath the ground, such as abandoned chambers off abandoned subway tunnels, the cellars of old houses or neglected bomb shelters. Even these subterranean dwellings tend to show off the vampires’ bizarre tastes in fashion, art and décor.

Background:
Potential Galloi often hail from desperate situations. The desperate seek answers and control, whether they realize it or not. The Pretties offer answers and control. Sires drag their childer into new misery and give them new perspectives on suffering from within the bloodline. Simultaneously, though, Galloi give hope where none existed before. They grant beauty where only ugliness thrived. They present a different reality in which fleeting solace lies in the shadows, proffered by secret gods, and where Blood is the key to all doors. The Circle of the Crone, and Cybele in particular, has the answers to life, death and everything in between. When the Galloi find a wretched-enough soul deserving of truth, they may groom him for the bloodline and eventually Embrace him or act as his Avus to allow him entry into this primeval lineage.

Character Creation:
Some Pretties value sharpness of mind, whereas others rely upon keen social wiles. Thus, individual Galloi tend to be particularly dominant in either the Social or Mental categories (both Attributes and Skills). Few Galloi devote any attention at all to the Physical, and, as a result, many vampires of this bloodline appear winnowed or gaunt. Favored Skills include Intimidation, Investigation, Occult, Persuasion and Socialize, the better with which to ply the Pretties’ cultic trades. Galloi often favor Social Merits, as well, and often have high Allies and Contacts, with Herd coming in a close third.

Organization:
The Galloi bloodline doesn’t have much in the way of formal organization. This bloodline’s hierarchy is that of the Circle as a whole, and many among the Pretties aspire to leadership roles among the Acolytes. The Galloi tend to feel that they are more dearly committed to the precepts of the covenant than the hoi polloi, and, therefore, consider themselves deserving of authority. (Those who don’t respect the hard-earned accolades of Galloi among the hierarchy will, at the very least, intimately learn the tenet that “tribulation brings enlightenment.”) Ambitious individual Pretties often seek to become Hierophants of the local covenant. The key advantage of this is that the Hierophant essentially sets the local focus of the Circle’s worship. In this way, the Pretties can establish Cybele as the core divinity of the Circle’s veneration. The Galloi grant Cybele favor (and in return, purportedly gain advantage themselves) by “enlightening” others with regard to her celestial power and dominance.

Individual Galloi broods occasionally follow minor rules of organization, some spoken, some not. Unspoken is the fact that Galloi do not operate alone. They almost universally support one another in discrete domains (braving a temporary itinerancy when necessary), for such a collective helps them establish ascendancy within the local Circle. The bloodline also celebrates holidays specific to Cybele. The Galloi tend to celebrate in these festivals and revelries only with each other. Other Acolytes participate in these venerations only by invitation, which can be either easy to obtain or hard to come by depending upon the Pretties’ political or religious agenda. The vampire who orchestrates these ritual celebrations is generally the eldest Galloi in the region, though not always and is called the archigallus. Occasionally the archigallus is simply the Kindred who has carried that responsibility for the longest time, whether new elders have graced the domain or otherwise.

Concepts: Art dealer, burn victim, club owner, dominatrix, Harpy, makeup artist, pawn broker or fence, pimp or madam, public eccentric, record producer, transsexual

For a few, rare Daeva, the seemingly wealthy realms of sight, sound and touch remain empty of promise, unable to satisfy the Daeva’s unique lusts. The most perfectly formed human figure, the most hauntingly melodic ostinato or the purest Xian silk offer these hedonists nothing in comparison to that which they crave. Even the flavor of the most exquisite Vitae, while certainly welcome, is only an echo of the one thing that can calm the special hunger within. These Succubi would forgo all of these luxuries, if they could, if only they could possess and consume the essential scent of all things, most especially things of the living variety.

For this legendary bloodline, odor is all that matters. Cursed with a sense of olfactory perception so acute that no scent can escape their notice, these Kindred are unable to deny themselves the ecstasy they experience by consuming certain scents. Of course, while many odors of interest might fascinate these peculiar vampires for hours on end, none is as arousing as that produced by the living. The hunger that compels most Kindred to fixate on the fl avor of still-warm blood spilling down their throats gives way to a similarly insurmountable need to savor the aroma of that blood instead. In a fashion not unlike a wine connoisseur relishing a new vintage, the Gulikan try to draw from Vitae every last drop of its aromatic soul, before they fi nally drink out of necessity.

While the Gulikan have an astonishing facility for detecting and recognizing scents, a singular talent for producing scents surpasses this ability. Certainly, such sensualists are capable of creating aromas that would put mortals in a similar line of work to shame, but the Gulikan’s possession of the means to capture and exploit the essential scent and supernatural power of Kindred Vitae has made this bloodline a legend among the Damned.

The Gulikan (roughly translated as “rose-blooded”) first appeared on the bustling market streets of Constantinople. Five years after the Great Schism between the Byzantine and Latin Churches, a Daeva named Eumathius offered as a gift to a deathless luminary a pomade that exuded an almost undetectable scent that caused others nearby to act as if held sway by the potency of the elder’s blood. Eumathius went on to produce other aromatic products for the ancient vampire as well as for various Primogen and other prestigious Kindred; these scented products became nothing less than symbols of status in undead society.

Unsurprisingly, Eumathius became an extremely influential figure in his own right. What his clients did not recognize until too late was that the numerous pomanders, oils, balms, soaps, powders and perfumes produced did not actually enhance the seductive power of the wearer. Rather, they extended the range and insidiousness of Eumathius’ own supernatural irresistibility. Unlike the Vitae of other Kindred, the potency of Eumathius’ own Vitae could be inhaled as well as consumed.

A seducer extraordinaire, Eumathius’ used proprietary Daeva charms as well, causing Kindred and kine alike to fall prey to the master Perfumer’s personal charisma. Countless mortals, including many thought to be the puppets and loyal playthings of other Kindred, as well as a dozen or more Kindred important in their own right, became Eumathius’ unwitting thralls.

Using his new-found dominance, Eumathius succeeded in winning permission to create a brood of his own, one that inherited its founder’s unusually aromatic Vitae as well as the inability to resist tracking down and relishing particularly captivating scents. For more than a century, the Perfumer and his rose-blooded offspring relished their place in society, all the while expanding the scope of their regency by luring more individuals into their invisible traps.

The Gulikans’ ruses came to a near end when Eumathius’ own weakness led him to violate the Prince’s law, breaking the Masquerade in a fashion that was certain to earn the Perfumer a judgment of Lextalionis. He did not meet Final Death, however. Using all his guile and discipline, the master of fragrances managed to replace the Prince’s favorite tobacco with one of Eumathius’ own construction. By the time Eumathius appeared before his sovereign to answer for his crime, the Prince was already so entranced by the specially prepared shisha that he dealt with the accused in a manner that stunned his advisors. The verdict left the Perfumer in a position that enabled him to continue exerting his unseen influence on his peers.

Tonight, the Gulikan continue to toil away in the same tangle of streets that once housed the greatest concentration of renowned perfumers in the world. Modern-day Istanbul is quite a different place from the magnificent city it once was, but, for the Gulikan, it remains home.

Their aromatic wares are no longer limited to only the local market, however. Tonight, high-ranking Kindred in Elysiums across the globe prize Gulikan aromatics. Those Kindred who purchase Gulikan products are well aware of the source of their power, but given their purchasers’ distance from the source and the great unlikelihood that they will ever encounter the actual perfumer who produced the goods, the Kindred feel safe enough to use the scented goods in order to profit from their legendary efficacy. A cologne that makes even the most intransigent mortals want to surrender their blood to a Kindred certainly has its value, even if the suicidal urge ultimately derives from another vampire’s Vitae.

A few Gulikan have actually turned their backs on their traditional trade and found their niche exploiting the small advantage that accompanies their horrid weakness. Offering their services as bounty hunters to Sheriffs and other Kindred needing to track down the living and unliving, these Gulikan command exceptional fees, and deservedly so. Those who choose this line of work dwell nearly anywhere, ever on the trail of someone who crossed the wrong vampire. The extraordinary exploits of a few of these Bloodhounds have only further cemented the bloodline’s legendary standing, making them as feared and yet as indispensable as any of the Damned.

Covenant:
As most Daeva, the Gulikan are most commonly found among the ranks of the Invictus. The First Estate produces the bulk of the Gulikans’ customers, and the Perfumers are most comfortable among these elite, able to profit both from the sale of their wares and the hidden web of thralls that they weave nightly. Powdered, oiled and garbed in only the most expensive, scented wardrobe, these olfactory wunderkinds are as much a part of the Danse Macabre as any who want to climb the Invictus ladder. If more than one Gulikan makes his home in the same domain, the competition is fierce. Nothing poses as great a threat to a Gulikan’s plans as another Perfumer who plies her own goods in the hope of wielding power over the local Kindred. Consequently, each Gulikan seeks to gain as many allies in the Invictus as possible in order to win over the competitor’s customers and pawns. Only in Istanbul, where the bloodline is strongest and established rules of competition based on ancient guild customs exist to govern their practices, do Gulikan suffer each other’s co-existence.

In some domains, the Lancea Sanctum is an attractive alternative to the Invictus. The Sanctified make use of incense and other perfumed products for a variety of purposes, giving a cautious Perfumer a chance to sway an entire congregation. The only downside can be a rigorous set of obligations that demand precious time better spent perfecting the next scented concoction.

The Ordo Dracul has few Perfumers among its number. For most, the outlook of the Ordo Dracul is far too esoteric, and the limitations on to whom the Gulikan may market their wares and in what capacity are all too commonplace.

The Carthian Movement is popular with those Gulikan who adopt the Requiem of a bounty hunter. The nature of Carthian politics allows the Gullikan to pursue prey that might otherwise be off-limits due to their social connections.

Until recently, the Circle of the Crone has never been a popular destination for the rose-bloodedy. In the past half-century, the Perfumers have taken a sudden interest, finding in Crúac a possible means to greatly expand on the possibilities inherent in their own special Discipline.

Appearance:
Despite their parent clan’s infatuation with physical beauty, the beauty of scent draws the Gulikan to their future childer. Many Gulikan select their progeny literally with eyes closed. Others, of course, rarely ever discern these distinguishing odors and judge the Perfumers on visual appearance first. For this reason, and for no other, most Gulikan at least make an effort to appear to fit in with their chosen peers, whether powdered and diamond-draped Harpies or a rustic congregation of Sanctified White Robes. Those whose Requiems consist primarily of playing bloodhound tend to be the exceptions, caring little if anything about appearance. For these Gulikan, their own hedonistic expeditions into the invisible world of aroma leading them to their prey matters far more than what the Gulikan wear or others’ opinions of them.

AN EVER-PRESENT SCENT
A habit that truly sets the Gulikan apart from other Kindred is sniffing. Kindred do not breathe, but the Gulikan habitually sniff the air in order to detect every odor they can. So ingrained is this practice, due to their bloodline’s weakness, a Gulikan make a concerted attempt to stop this activity for longer than a few moments. A successful Resolve + Composure roll allows the Gulikan to stop sniffing for a full scene, so long as he does not speak during that time. Any use of speech requires the Gulikan to inhale and expend air, a sensation that makes it impossible for the rose-blooded to resist sampling any passing scents.

Naturally, this habit, along with the Gulikan’s legendary status, makes it nearly impossible for the Gulikan to mask their identity most of the time. Some Kindred might eventually be able to put two and two together and recognize the incessantly sniffing vampire for what he is. Among the kine, this habit can also prove troublesome, as police officers, as well as many ordinary citizens, especially those in the underworld and those who live on the streets, will assume that the Gulikan uses cocaine or some other inhaled substance.

The fact that the Gulikan may visibly savor the odors they encounter only makes these weird hedonists that much more noteworthy, further complicating their Requiems.

Haven:
Perfumers need proper space to produce their wares, not only in terms of actual square footage and security but in terms of geography. In times past, Perfumers were primarily located in districts where the atrocious aromas wafting from the maceration vats and distillation tanks, not to mention the simple stores of herbs, oils and other pungent ingredients, would not disturb those with the wealth and influence to cause economic harm, the same people who consumed the Perfumers’ products with unremitting fervor. Even Gulikan who possess the most technologically advanced equipment still have no desire to draw undue attention should a spill or other accident take place. The smallest of inadvertent releases could result in all kine within 10 blocks to come swarming to the supernatural aphrodisiac!

Consequently, those rose-blooded who pursue Ortam almost always locate their havens in the Barrens, far from prying eyes and noses, as a precaution. They usually select large spaces, in order for the resident Gulikan to be as distant from the fires and heat needed in his work, with the personal sleeping chamber typically fireproofed, just in case. Intruders will be hardpressed to resist being overcome by the powerful fumes — from the sickly saccharine to the utterly noxious — that assault them upon entering a Gulikan’s haven, which is more laboratory than workshop. The master will require a constant supply of ingredients that are unavoidably used up with each use of Ortam.

Gulikan working as Bloodhounds have no need of such quarters but still prefer to bed down far from the wash of human odors that drenches most of the city, in order to keep temptation at bay as much as possible. Of course, when hunting, Bloodhounds dive into that sea of sweat, fl atulence, rotting food, soiled garments and every other source of human effluvia in order to indulge as only Gulikan might.

Background:
Although a childe is ultimately selected because she possesses a scent that the sire must claim for his own, only the dimmest Perfumer would adopt as his apprentice an individual whose wits leave something to be desired. Ortam is as much a technical exercise as an art. A prospective childe must master fundamental mathematics, a broad knowledge of herbs and related chemistry and an ability to carefully balance all the ingredients in a way that produces the exact result desired. Therefore, a childe’s merit depends not merely on her ability to be a companion or thing of desire but also on her potential as an exceptional student and useful assistant to the sire. College graduates, some skilled laborers and those with a demonstrated flair for creative prowess are highly prized.

Many Gulikan still harbor ancient biases and also prefer their protégés to be of a middle- or upper-class upbringing, ensuring that the fledgling will be able to fit in well with the bloodline’s usual patrons. In Istanbul, most who are Embraced are also of local birth, with mortal bloodlines stretching far back into the city’s earliest nights. Beyond the Bosporus, this degree of pedigree becomes less important. Bloodhounds who sire tend to focus much more on survival skills and take as their childer cops, streetwise types and even mortal bounty hunters, guaranteeing that the new vampires can hit the ground running. A fledgling Bloodhound’s will not have access to the acute olfactory ability of the bloodline until his blood is potent enough,; until then, he must rely on far more mundane means of tracking.

Character Creation: It almost goes without saying that Gulikan who fill the traditional role of Perfumer are best served by having at least some capability in Crafts, specializing in Perfume Manufacture. Similarly, Intelligence and Manipulation are both crucial for the ambitious character, enabling her to not only excel in producing effective aromatic wares but also in surviving and mastering the complex Danse Macabre. Bloodhound characters will want to emphasize investigative and combat abilities. Investigation, Brawl and a high Wits and Composure are essential boons to finding and capturing prey.

Mechanics aside, every player should put some effort into imagining the World of Darkness from the perspective of one who literally “sees” with her nose, rather than her eyes. Imagine the smell of rain-soaked pavement, the foul stench of trash Dumpsters, the acrid burn of fear, the reek of unwashed humanity, the scent of gunpowder and, of course, the tang of mortal blood. Numerous tricks, from closing one’s eyes during the game to burning incense or scented candles, can be helpful. To play a Gulikan requires some understanding of just how different the world is when odor, not form, defi nes that world.

Organization:
Traditionally, the bloodline is organized in a way not unlike a medieval guild, with masters, journeymen and apprentices. A master is technically any member who has learned the fifth level of Ortam. Once the Gulikan achieves this accomplishment, he customarily relocates to another city so as to not jeopardize the monopoly held by his former master, usually his sire.

A journeyman are a step below this august rank and is deemed to be any Gulikan who has demonstrated the third level of Ortam. Because journeymen represent potential competitors, sires often withhold knowledge of the third level of this Discipline for extended periods of time. This often forces the least of the bloodline, the apprentices, to leave their original masters in search of others more open to their apprentices’ advancement.

Given the small size of the lineage, this structure gives the Gulikan a sense of community that crosses the globe, a situation that promotes the sale of Ortam wares far from a Gulikan’s home domain. For example, a journeyman in one place sells an item he is yet incapable of producing. He contacts a master Perfumer in a far-off place and acts as the middleman, selling the master’s products in his own domain, sending most, but not all, of the profits back to the more learned Gulikan. In addition, the journeyman might provide the master information about the buyer, usually for an additional cut of the profits, so that, one night, the master use as he pleases the influence he has acquired over the oblivious customer.

Gulikan in Istanbul observe this organization rigorously; elevation to the next rank, particularly to master, comes with great ceremony. Elsewhere, such formalities often enjoy far less obedience, though any Gulikan who wish to advance their understanding of Ortam never entirely ignore the formalities.

Only the Bloodhounds dare to turn their backs on the long-standing customs of the bloodline. Bloodhounds need only their own company and someone willing to provide their few wants in exchange for unprecedented tracking services.

Concepts: Avant-garde artist, creepy assassin, drug lab scientist, dutiful bloodhound, fashionista, iron-fisted perfume empire matriarch, leather-clad biker, New Age hippie, respectable member of the gentry, reverent priest

The Nameless Man walked the roads. He saw the greed in the world, and gave his possessions away. He saw the hunger in the world, and gave his food away. He saw that the only thing he could control in the world was the Man. Penniless and hungry, he became the Master. Then he was Embraced. And very little changed.

So go the legends of the Kuufukuji. They claim to be an ancient bloodline, thousands of years old, originating during the ancient nights of East Asia. As the tales say, a man known only as the Nameless Master founded the line. He was a monk, the head of a monastery dedicated to poverty and service to a local village. After the Nameless Master was Embraced, he continued to preach the concept of poverty and fasting to his childer. This extreme rule forced the Hungry to control their Wassail, and even gain power from the loss of Vitae.

Kuufukuji dwell in remote communal havens, usually on the outskirts of a town or city, much like the monks of nights long past. The Kuufukuji’s havens are nigh-inaccessible, and the Kuufukuji have a reputation for being strong warriors and hermits. Still, some Kindred seek them in modern times, since rumors of the Kuufukuji’s existence have stretched to claim that their diminished need for blood and their supreme control of the Beast has helped the Hungry reach Golconda — or at least bring them closer to it.

Mekhet factions in some cities deny the Kuufukuji’s existence entirely. In other domains, where a monastery or temple of Kuufukuji is known to exist, the Mekhet downplay the Hungry’s power, claiming that their near-religious desire to avoid feeding will cause the Kuufukuji to die out. While their numbers are not what they once were, the Kuufukuji are still very much active. They do not argue with others of their parent clan, however, as their mastery of the Man leaves them needing no affi rmations from outsiders.

The Kindred who have managed to convince a Kuufukuji to train them have nearly always fallen prey to their own Wassail, and met their merciful ends at the hands of the Hungry monks overseeing their training.

The Hungry follow the Traditions the same as any other Kindred. Few substantiated acts of Kuufukuji diablerie exist, even when they are forced to slay a childe who threatens the temple with Wassail. Although their temples, libraries and martial arts schools are commonly run by mortal agents or ghouls (or open only at night), the Kuufukuji take great pains not to violate the Masquerade. As for childer, well, no Kindred wants her bloodline to die out, regardless of the rules. Neonates are hard to come by, as the Hungry must find fledglings worthy and possessing of enough willpower to be able to handle the constant burden of fasting.

Many vampires who have encountered one of the Hungry have assumed they are mad, stoned or otherwise disconnected from reality. This impression stems from the near-constant state of meditation that a Kuufukuji must maintain in order to survive the constant hunger. Kuufukuji of tonight can be seen as anything from powerful wise women to haughty charlatans.

Childer who do not bend to their sires’ will and undergo the training necessary to attain Shihai — the “Discipline of Control” — often try to flee the monastery. If they manage to escape without their superiors or sires finding them and correcting the childer’s errors of judgment, they find themselves tied to a feeding pendulum. If they grow too hungry, they lack their bloodline’s strength to control the Wassail. If they frenzy and feed too ravenously, their bloodline’s weakness incapacitates them. These miserable childer may be hunted by either their own bloodline or a Prince’s forces before they can spiral out of control.

Parent Clan: Mekhet (though some misguidedly claim Daeva)

Covenant:
While many Kuufukuji prefer only the companionship of others of their bloodline, some Kuufukuji do ally themselves with covenants. The organized obedience that permeates the Invictus appeals to many Kuufukuji. From the time of their Embrace, the Hungry must know obedience, or they are forced to exist in a tormented state until they are exterminated. One must show deference and respect to one’s sire: the clear hierarchy of the Invictus fits the dojo mentality quite well.

The Lancea Sanctum considers the Kuufukuji to have great potential for heresy, as the Hungry rely only on their own powers of self-control to personify the Beast, rather than acknowledging the power of God. The Lancea Sanctum follows God faithfully, but its members are shackled with the need for blood — but the Kuufukuji are not burdened by this need. Do they still need God? The Hungry do not seek guidance to the realm of spirituality. They’re already at their destination. This makes them dangerous to the Priests of some parishes.

Although vampires of the Circle of the Crone and the Ordo Dracul also acknowledge religious influences, the Hungry are drawn toward these covenants more often than the Lancea Sanctum. Those who follow the Crone often relate to the Acolytes’ philosophy of challenges paving the way to enlightenment. One of the Kuufukuji’s core philosophies, after all, involves constant struggle for command of the Man and control over the part of the Kindred that is the Beast. Those who follow the Ordo Dracul appreciate that covenant’s emphasis on learning, mastery of the Man and the Beast and respect for elders, all of which are frequently taught by sires of the bloodline as well. The Hungry sometimes become philosophical siblings with those who learn the Coils of the Dragon, finding solidarity in their small victories over the blood hunger.

Some neonates find themselves drawn to the Carthian Movement, thinking that with their fledgling powers they can help bring about the changes that local chapters of that covenant desire. These Hungry sometimes try to teach their meditative powers to their fellow Carthians, often with disastrous results. Many elder Hungry look down on the Carthian Movement, mainly because one of its most basic rituals involves the exchange of possessions, and the Kuufukuji do not allow their neonates to own anything but the clothes on their backs.

Appearance: Until the last couple of hundred years, the Hungry consisted only of East Asian Kindred. As European and later American influence reached East, the culture of the East also affected the West. Although the bloodline still sees relatively few white, black or Middle Eastern Kuufukuji, Asians don’t make up one hundred percent of the population anymore.

The Hungry tend to look regally undead. Refusing to spend Vitae to force their bodies to have the appearance of living humans, they suffer the consequences of skin color that ranges from palest white to a nearly blue tint.

As numerous Kuufukuji hail from a monastic background, many tend to dress in monk’s robes. They favor the stereotypical favorite color of the Mekhet: black. Hungry who have taken the bloodline West commonly adopt the local dress to blend in, but continue to favor understated colors and simple clothes. Some Hungry have built temples under the guise of martial arts schools or museums that allow them to retain their preferred method of dress. The bloodline emphasizes the exclusion of worldly things, including personal vanity and belongings — rare is the Hungry with more than a few changes of clothes, if that. They also tend to either shave their heads or wear their hair tightly braided.

Haven:
The Hungry prefer havens that are somewhat remote. They do need access to Vitae, of course, but, ideally, they occupy temples on the outskirts of villages, retaining the image of the roles they held in life: that of monks of the solitary monastery who must send acolytes into town from time to time to acquire food.

The handful of Kuufukuji who have trickled into large Western cities such as San Francisco and Vancouver, aim for discreet apartments that they turn into sparse temple-like domiciles. These Kindred find themselves leaving their Requiems of poverty behind, preferring to do more than merely survive. Their funds, taken from either victims or allies persuaded to do business for them, are spent only on the Kuufukuji’s safe havens and on nothing else. These Kuufukuji still exist in the simplest way possible.

Still others have taken refuge in existing temples or martial arts schools, slowly and covertly killing or Embracing the owners and assuming new ownership.

Background:
A thousand years ago, Kuufukuji Embraced only monks. The Nameless Master gradually Embraced the monks of his monastery, and the bloodline spread from there. Tonight, in the best-case scenario, the childer chosen by most older Kuufukuji come from acolytes in a monastery or students in a martial arts school.

If a Hungry sire is not presiding in a temple or martial arts school, she commonly searches for possible childer with personalities that reflect a strong will and powerful mental acumen. A star student who spends a great deal of time alone fits the bill. An avid follower of Eastern thinking is also a prime target for Embrace. Some sires search for people who remain calm in the face of great stress. Some Hungry even test the boundaries of the Masquerade and purposefully create crises for potential childer in order to watch how they react. Those who panic or hide their eyes fail to make the cut, but those who act in a calm and precise manner are often cultivated further.

Character Creation:
Only those with strong presences can join the fellow Hungry in a journey to the perfection of the Man. Weaker-willed characters crumble under the weight of the balance that the journey seeks to maintain. Members of this bloodline have strong Composure and Presence. Manipulation comes in handy for high-ranking Kuufukuji. In addition, most Kuufukuji favor Physical Attributes and Skills, as martial arts come to play an important role. Kuufukuji never hide themselves behind a high-tech safety net of surveillance cameras, electric locking mechanisms and guns. The body is the most reliable weapon a Kindred has; it is always available and cannot be confiscated or corrupted. Although some players treasure Mental Skills for Kuufukuji, most players place these Skills third, knowing their characters will meditate and study ancient texts later in unlife.

Social Skills that are vital to the Hungry are Empathy, Expression, Intimidation and Subterfuge, allowing a Kuufukuji to present the balance within while testing the balance of others.

As martial artists, the Kuufukuji find that Brawl, Athletics, Stealth and Weaponry come in handy the most. In nights gone past, the elders did not allow their childer to learn Firearms, but even the oldest Kuufukuji admits these nights that such knowledge can be useful, so the elders neither condemn nor condone learning such Skills.

Even those who fast need sustenance at some point, and many Kuufukuji keep a herd for their own use and that of their childer. Fighting Merits such as Fighting Style: Boxing and Fighting Style: Kung Fu fit well with this bloodline, and the strongest Hungry have Meditative Mind.

Organization:
The organization within the Kuufukuji is formal, following the hierarchy of Japanese dojos. The Soke leads the local chapter, the inheritor of the Nameless Master’s mantle. Each city has a Soke, and on the rare chance that one Soke should meet another, they are considered equals in rank, regardless of age. Sokes are ostensibly responsible for all the Kuufukuji in the domain; a Soke inherits much of the role of Primogen as it is observed on the bloodline’s level. The punishment the Soke metes out to those who cross her is usually more terrible than a Prince’s sentence.

Below the Soke will be any number of Sempai, Kindred of enough age and experience to be considered teachers and masters themselves. They must also be obeyed by any of the Hungry. The Sempai, and the Soke, are the only Kuufukuji allowed to sire childer (within the Prince’s decree, of course). Any lower-ranking Kindred who breaks this Tradition will see his childe destroyed and suffer punishment himself. Although still leading an unlife of poverty, the Sempai have greater freedom within the domain to hunt, perform services for the Soke or other Kindred and interact with mortals, as long as the vampires do not violate the Masquerade.

The majority of the Kindred in a dojo or temple refer to themselves and each other as Gakusei. This emphasizes that everyone is a student, and may remain so for years. The unlife of a Gakusei largely involves strict adherence to the rules of the bloodline, obedience to the Soke and devotion to the Disciplines and meditation. Some Gakusei who can be trusted to control their Beast sufficiently serve as Kuufukuji liaisons and messengers in the domain. If a Gakusei is invited to hunt with a Sempai, this invitation is considered a great honor, and likely a hint that a promotion is imminent. Most Gakusei feed on animals, captive mortals or ghouls in elaborate rituals designed to quash the predator’s desire. Obedience is the best stepping stone to the honors of Sempai.

Having only three levels of bloodline hierarchy both limits infighting and adequately serves the small number of Kuufukuji in a given domain. Playing politics to graduate from Gakusei to Sempai is considered the lowest form of disrespect for both one’s Kindred siblings and the Soke. If a Gakusei disrespects the Soke, the Gakusei is likely to find himself out of the temple — and likely out of the domain, if Princely edict reinforces the bloodline’s ostracism.

Every Kuufukuji, from Gakusei to Soke, calls his sire Sensei as a term of respect and honor. Even the Nameless Master had a sire, and all sires must be honored.

Solitary Kuufukuji call themselves Ronin, but the local Soke probably refers to them as trouble at best and prey at the worse. A Kuufukuji without a master is a dangerous thing indeed.

Concepts: Eastern mystic, martial arts student, monk, nomad, prostitute, sage priest, sin-eating martyr, street urchin, understanding Primogen, wandering confessor

THE HUNGRY WHORES
A few factions of Kuufukuji around the world claim that their parent clan is Daeva, insisting that a prostitute Embraced the Nameless Master, making her an arguable predecessor of the bloodline, if not its progenitor.

Whether this is true or not, Kindred of these factions do seem markedly different from members of the bloodline in other cities, often having a better flair for congress with mortals than the secretive Mekhet. In addition to acting more overtly than most of the Kuufukuji, these Daeva Kindred also learn the Majesty and Vigor Disciplines instead of the Mekhet Disciplines of Auspex and Obfuscate.

The Kuufukuji of other domains say only that if one meditates and searches the soul enough, anything is possible, but no matter what one learns, the past is unchangeable.

Regardless of this internal schism, many Kuufukuji keep herds of prostitutes and use them to bring in some of the money that keeps the temples and monasteries solvent. Not very monastic, true, but being Damned is not very monastic either, and changes happen in unlife.

Although few among in Kindred society know it, the Kuufukuji who do not acknowledge the prostitute as the Daeva mother of the bloodline have been surreptitiously hunting those who do. The “Hungry Whores,” as the Mekhet Kuufukuji call them, exist only in a few cities in the East, though at least one faction has surfaced in North America. This grudge is subtle and roils beneath the radar of even these Kindred, consisting mostly of character assassination and quiet vendetta rather than street brawls.

These warring sides of the same coin may essentially be two different bloodlines. They have an entangled history and a shared mystic property of the blood, but they are not the same thing. The “Hungry Whores” can fit in a chronicle as freedom fighters who wish to free a prostitute herd of the Hungry, claiming that they deserve to be honored more. Many of the of the Daeva Kuufukuji are former prostitutes themselves, who feel that during their lives they were used and tossed away. To use prostitutes as sustenance is even more degrading than sex, and these former prostitutes do not feel the Kuufukuji honor the sire of the clan by their feeding practices.

The Macellarius are as much gracious hosts as they are grotesque gluttons. Make no mistake — these Kindred are Ventrue down to the marrow in their dead bones. Spawned in the nights of mad, decadent Rome, the Macellarius come from the oldest of money, cherish their ancestral roots and are desperate to rise once again to the top of the ranks like so much clotted cream. They simply see themselves as Ventrue with — rarefied tastes. These vampires find nothing wrong with preserving their unique predilections. Providing the Kindred with an epicurean pedigree is the Macellarius’ natural duty, an essential obligation that few Kindred are willing to indulge. Oh, sure, the curse is a curse, it’s awful, bloody awful, but that doesn’t mean one cannot attempt to enjoy those staid moments caught in the throes of this ceaseless ennui. There’s nothing wrong with indulging in one’s own hungry proclivities from time to time, is there?

Unfortunately, few others see it that way. The Kindred whisper about those of the Macellarius lineage, muttering about their unspeakable appetites and ruthless initiative. Everyone knows that these obese, unsightly creatures do not merely drink blood. They swallow it by cheek-stuffed mouthfuls, consuming it in gulps and gobbles. They drain body after body, even going so far as to bottle the stuff, seeing themselves as gourmandizing vintners of exceptional draughts of Vitae.

Worse, most “Gluttons” don’t stop there. Many of these vampires carry the already gruesome act of consumption one step further, eating the bodies of their victims. The Damned can’t eat food, not really, but some among the Macellarius can — provided that the food is the raw flesh of a mortal body. The Gluttons who partake in this peculiar delight do so with great abandon, forcing countless gobbets of human meat into their withered guts. They swallow the bloody chunks whole, and bask in the resultant power.

Long have they dwelled on the fringes, waiting in the periphery of the Danse Macabre, content to host their parties and dine upon death. But, recently, their hungers have pushed many of them out of the darkness and again into the world of the other Kindred. The Macellarius are thirsty for more, salivating for another taste of temporal power and unworldly pleasure. Will the other Kindred stand in the Gluttons’ way? Or will Kindred society welcome these gluttonous powerbrokers back into the fold?

Covenant:
The Invictus is a natural home for the Macellarius. These vampires associate themselves with that most distant of vampiric covenants, the Camarilla, and, therefore, the Invictus is of particular attraction to this bloodline. (The Sanctified are too concerned with spiritual nonsense to be of use to most Macellarius. They are far too interested in worldly pleasures to find any comfort within the Lancea Sanctum.) The Acolytes of the Circle make too much trouble for themselves, while the Carthians don’t know the taste of true power. A rare few Gluttons have gone to the Ordo Dracul (some have a deeply experimental nature and may believe themselves to be more “evolved” than other vampires due to their sometime ability to consume human flesh), but most Gluttons stick with the First Estate. The Invictus does not punish the cutthroat spirit of hungry vampires, and, in fact, encourages such behavior. The vampires of the Macellarius believe themselves to be ideal covenant members — better than most, if not the fi nest of all.

Appearance:
The most obvious characteristic that the vampires of this bloodline share is obesity. The Kindred of the Macellarius are unavoidably obese (see “Weakness,” below) — 200 pounds is essentially the bare minimum for the Gluttons. Many tend to Embrace larger childer, as well, meaning that several of the lineage are abhorrently fat, bloated to sizes of 400 pounds or larger. Beyond the size of these vampires, most Macellarius dress well and are groomed impeccably. They have tailor-made suits of the finest Thai silks and Egyptian cottons, and most are accustomed to wearing makeup (blush, lipstick) to appear more “human.”

However, not all Macellarius are so well-kept; many who begin to grow mad begin losing touch with the bloodline’s signature style, and grow disheveled and unkempt.

Haven:
The “families” of the Macellarius tend to own large swathes of land outside the cities, and most make their homes in these places. Many own vineyards, manor houses, luxuriant farms or other sumptuous estates. From here, the vampires exist like tumors — establishing their own blood supply and swelling in number. Not all of the bloodline stay away from the city lights, however. Many younger Macellarius seek out the sprawling urban blight and its many hidden delicacies. Such Kindred tend to make their havens in upscale suites and townhomes, often near places that offer the vampires their most favorite sensory stimulations — the smells of a fish market or a steakhouse, the sight of little children playing on a playground, the sounds of cattle and hogs being butchered and rendered.

Background:
Most Macellarius vampires were once mortal hedonists, epicures, even artists. The bloodline seeks those of especial taste, curiosity and hunger. They might be chefs, restaurateurs, butchers, writers, painters, even event planners. All Macellarius must exhibit a deep and personal commitment to good taste, manners and breeding.

Meaning, of course, that most vampires of the bloodline begin wealthy. Only a rare few “lower-class” individuals were ever allowed into the bloodline, and those who were accepted were tolerated either because they showed some rare taste or because the Embracing vampire (or Avus) was feeling cruelly ironic that day. Luxury and prosperity are of deep significance to the Macellarius. These vampires are used to having nice things, and their tastes (palate and otherwise) grow only stranger and more specific as their Requiems deepen. Possession of wealth is admittedly only a stepping stone to a true gourmand’s existence — but it is a necessary step, nevertheless.

Also, while it seems petty, a vampire’s girth goes a long way toward illustrating his suitability within the Macellarius lineage. Frankly, the fatter the better. Obesity to these creatures is no grotesquerie, but is instead the watermark of sophistication and refinement. Size is no detriment — the greater the body mass, the more affluent the vampire. Fat to them is merely a collection of sweet meat and suety tissue. Plumpness reveals a Kindred with prurient taste. Simply put, Rubenesque vampires are more likely to be chosen for this bloodline than any other; one’s own physical magnitude is equally an expression of one’s own personal power and style.

Ultimately, no matter the life once led, all Macellarius are invited into the blood because they demonstrate an unswerving commitment to fulfilling their abnormal hungers.

Character Creation:
Macellarius are likely to sport high Social Attributes and Skills — these are their tools and weapons. Similarly, Social Merits are common, as well. A Glutton may have high Stamina but low Dexterity (a direct reflection of her obese body), and may also have lower Resolve and Composure scores to show how poorly a Macellarius gives in to her baser urges.

Organization:
Every Macellarius household has three significant positions of power: the summus, medius and imus. The imus is generally a neonate, responsible for setting tables, bringing plates, arranging décor and other more menial tasks. The medius, normally an ancilla within the bloodline, is responsible for the food. If mortals will be sitting at the table, the medius prepares (or has someone prepare) mortal victuals. If vampires will be dining, he procures the blood most appropriate for the situation. He even goes so far as to feed the animals of the estate (usually horses, hounds, raptors). The summus, always an ancilla or elder, is the host. While all Macellarius are committed to social duties during every dinner event, the summus is the one most responsible for comfort, conversation and administrating business. Even if the guest-of-honor (called the locus consularis) is actually going to be the final course of dinner, the summus still does his best to make the victim feel at home and at ease. These three roles generally only come into play during those times when the family is entertaining; otherwise, the eldest of the house makes all the rules, whether he is the summus or not.

Ultimately, this means that most Macellarius havens are home to three or more of the blood. They stick together; family is important, after all. Where there is one Glutton, there are at least two more, equally friendly — and ravenous.

Concepts: Cultured drug addict, deranged socialite, event planner, exquisite gourmand, Master of Elysium, repulsive Harpy, serial cannibal, sous chef, venture capitalist, wealthy hedonist

Melissid Animalism
Unlike most other Kindred, the Melissidae are adept at affecting insects, specifically swarming insects, such as ants, termites, wasps, hornets and bees — the Melissadae gain a +2 bonus to affect insects instead of the standard –3 penalty as described on pp. 116–118 of Vampire: The Requiem. The Melissadae are, conversely, less able to affect other kinds of animals, suffering a –1 penalty for uses of Animalism that affect creatures other than insects. Swarms of insects controlled by a Melissid count as a single creature for the purposes of Animalism.

Although the standard powers gained with Animalism •, •• and •••• normally require eye contact with the animal subject, it’s impossible to make eye contact with a swarm of several hundred insects. Insects don’t really use sight the way that higher animals do.

There’s no standard way in which Melissidae make contact with insects, but all Melissadae manage. All Melissidae who have developed Animalism • have the ability to call a single insect from a swarm or hive to them, and it’s through this single insect that the Melissid will communicate with the swarm of which the insect is a part.

How this communication happens differs from Queen Bee to Queen Bee. One Melissid might simply allow the insect to settle on her body, on her face or hand, communicating with the creature through her skin. Another Melissid might open her mouth and allow the insect to fly or crawl inside, then keep it alive in her closed mouth for the duration of the power’s use. Another Melissid might allow an insect to settle on her eyeball, holding the insect in her eyelashes until such time as the power’s duration ends, at which time she frees the insect or kills it.

Unlike other Ventrue, the Melissidae don’t need to maintain concentration when using Subsume the Lesser Spirit (Animalism ••••). When connected with an insect swarm, the Queen Bee becomes one of the swarm, and the swarm becomes an extension of her own body.

Ventrue who join the bloodline find their Blood warped to produce the Melissidae’s effects in this manner.

A handful of Kindred still exist tonight who, during the late 19th century, participated in the destruction of the Melissidae.

Those who witnessed the pogrom still talk about the Melissidae, even tonight, and the stories grow in the telling. The Melissidae, they say, could vomit swarms of wasps. They say that Melissidae had a sting, imparted with no more than a brush of the lips, which could send you into an ecstasy of pain. They swear that the Melissidae behaved like the “Queen Bees” of ersatz hives that were populated by mortals who had been twisted into near-mindless drones and forced to submit to a hive-mind by a unique power of the blood. The one thing these elders agree on, however, is that the Queen Bees’ blood was sweeter than anything any of them will ever taste again. It tasted like honey.

Yes, they still talk about their fallen foes. However, when asked exactly why the Melissidae were destroyed, these elders become somewhat vague. The Queen Bees must have done something. After all, Kindred from five clans and many covenants and nations each, entirely independently, pursued the Queen Bees’ destruction. Charges or no charges, rival Kindred enthusiastically pursued the Melissidae, who soon vanished, gone but not forgotten. Now they’re a cautionary tale for the Kindred, a fount of wild tales about insects and drone-people and blood like honey.

The enthusiasm of the Queen Bees’ pursuers proved inadequate, however. The Melissidae were not com- pletely destroyed. The Melissidae still rule their hives, even tonight.

They keep much quieter than they used to, these nights. They have developed ways to hide their hives and ways to mask their mindless servants.

In the back of every Melissid’s undead brain, she feels an itch, a chittering, rustling presence: the beginning of a hive-mind. Hungry, it needs to grow, it needs to control, it needs to surround itself with drones and workers, so that it can find comfort. To be alone in her own head fi lls a Melissid with a sense of panic.

This panic drives the Melissadae. The Queen Bees don’t just want control, they need it. They have no choice. A few Melissidae, repelled by a realization of what they’ve become, try to escape. For those who have their powers, though, it’s too easy to use them, to give in to temptation. A little push there, a twist here. One thing leads to another, and soon the Kindred finds herself surrounded by slaves. She’s become the slave master.

The Melissidae force their herds to be insects and believe, in the creation of a perfect community formed in imitation of nature, that they are acting in the interest of the common good. At some point, most Melissidae develop the power to erase individual thought from a mortal’s brain, forcing him to share consciousness with the Queen Bee’s other mortal thralls. The Melissidae believe that mortals must exist like this. The mortals, as drones, occupy their proper place while the vampire occupies hers, and this is harmony. If the kine need to learn to accept this — and they generally do — then the Melissid has a duty to ensure that they take up their rightful place. It’s all for their own good.

People need to love each other. The Queen Bees make them love each other. Workers and drones need authority. The hive is right, the hive is good, the hive is love, the hive is everything.

It’s all a lie, of course. No common good survives in the hive. Drones and workers exist to provide sustenance for the queen. The Melissidae do not imitate nature so much as they mock it, the all-giving, life-loving mother of the hive replaced by a dead, hungry monstrosity.

The Melissid social experiment is an exercise in sociopathy. It’s not about social concern or about the common good or about love. It’s about control. The irony is that the need for control imprisons the Melissidae. It controls them.

Covenant:
The Melissidae tend not to agree wholeheartedly with any of the five major covenants, but this doesn’t stop them sometimes finding some common cause. Due to their heritage, however, they usually find it best to keep their bloodline hidden. It’s useful for a Melissid to have allies, and quite a reasonable number of Queen Bees have made at least a show of joining one of the covenants, and not always because they respect the covenants’ philosophies. For some, there’s safety in numbers, and that’s all.

If a Melissid in modern nights wishes to claim allegiance with a covenant, she more likely than not chooses the Invictus, for the simple reason that its strict, stratified social order has at least some commonality with the Melissid vision. Melissidae may maintain hives that look like religious communities, and these sometimes find sympathy with the Lancea Sanctum. A few Queen Bees — those whose hives resemble communes or socialist cells, for example — might take cover inside the Carthian Movement.

Very few Melissidae have joined either the Circle of the Crone or the Ordo Dracul so far. Both covenants have strict ideas about what a vampire should be, and it’s very difficult indeed for a Melissid to even pretend to have the commitment to that sort of vampiric vision. Although elders in each of the five major covenants had some part in the bloodline’s attempted destruction, the Melissidae who know about the purge don’t seem to hold a grudge. On the other hand, many Melissidae don’t know about the purge, either because their sires never thought it important enough to tell them, or because some of the Queen Bees found out about only it in the minutes before they were destroyed or forced into torpor.

Appearance:
Whatever or whoever Queen Bees may have been in life, in undeath they all have this in common: they are always meticulous. Their obsession with control manifests itself in an attention to clean, fastidious lines. However they may dress, whether in hippy chic, socialist minimalism or the attire of a Republican housewife, it’s always perfect and, as Humanity diminishes, this perfection itself becomes excessive, freakish, somehow wrong. A Melissid may have too-perfectly coiffed hair, so styled and sprayed that it’s immobile, or cut very short. Pants and skirts bear razor-sharp creases, blouses are whiter than white, scarves and ties are knotted just so, shoes are clean, jewelry is tasteful and minimalist. Makeup is flawless, whatever style the Queen Bee affects. After a while, they all look like mannequins.

The sense of unease created by this attention to sartorial detail is compounded by the way the Melissidae move. The more their Humanity erodes, the more they move like insects, their absolute stillness punctuated with brief, twitchy movements — the quick, repeated click of a tongue against the teeth, the crack of knuckles as the hands clench, the cocking of the head to one side, a sudden flutter of eyelashes. Insects surround them. Few Kindred feel at ease to see a single bee or a wasp crawl out of an immobile Melissid’s nostril or mouth and fly away.

Haven:
The havens of the Melissidae also tend to house their mortal drones and, therefore, tend to be quite sizable, places with enough space to accommodate a dozen or more people comfortably. For example, some Melissid have created hives in derelict stately homes, factory units and call centers. The Melissidae are too few to make many generalizations, but, whatever their hives are like, whether cult compounds, remote villages, monasteries or New Age communes, the havens are always clean. Everything occupies its proper place, even in those places where things might not be expected to be. It can seem quite peculiar to see a junkie commune’s drug paraphernalia neatly arranged or the accoutrements of an S&M dungeon placed with the precision of military kit laid out for inspection.

Despite the cleanliness and order of these places, inevitably, insects congregate in huge numbers. A wasps’ nest hangs under the stairs of a perfect suburban home, but the inhabitants do nothing. A row of beehives sits in the back lawn of the monastery. Ants’ mounds surround the sorority house. The bugs are always there. They don’t bother the inhabitants, who allow the wasps to settle on hands and the ants to crawl up legs without flinching.

Background:
The Melissidae are almost all female. It’s not that the bloodlines observe prohibitions against Embracing men. However, the Melissidae are naturally drawn to Embrace women, simply because it feels right to them for a Queen to be female. They are the mothers of their hives. Other than gender, no other single criterion affects how the Melissidae select childer. The Queen Bees Embrace whosoever they choose, and choose, more often than not, based on nothing more than personal whim.

Melissid childer almost always join the bloodline.Some are forced to do so. Some, by the time their Blood matures, have themselves been so tightly bound (via Vinculums or with conditional uses of Dominate) that they could hardly choose otherwise. Some don’t realize that they have an alternative. Most, however, simply metamorphose into full members of the bloodline one night without even realizing.

Queen Bees have likened becoming a full-fledged Me- lissid to emerging from a chrysalis, like changing from a soft, empty maggot into something colder and hungrier. A new Melissid feels her Blood turn to honey; she feels a clawing need, the second consciousness hatching in her mind. At that point, she’s a Queen Bee forever.

It’s hard to imagine an “ordinary” Ventrue electing to join the bloodline, and certainly no tales have so far surfaced regarding a vampire approaching the Melissidae with the intention of joining them. Having said that, should a situation arise in which a vampire does ask to join the Melissidae, it’s likely that she’d be accepted immediately, no questions asked. A Melissid Avus would assume that the transformation of the Catechumen’s blood would take care of any questions of attitude. In most cases, she’d be right.

Character Creation:
Melissidae normally prioritize Mental and Social Attributes and Social Skills. Physical Attributes and Skills often fall low among priorities.

Many Queen Bees have at least one dot in Animal Ken, and several, at some point in their unlife, have learned Beekeeping as a Specialty.

Mental Merits are extremely common. Melissidae who still dwell in their sire’s hives usually have at least one dot in Herd and Haven. Those Melissidae whose relationships with their sires are good often have a dot in Mentor. Retainers are rare for new Melissidae, as any servants they have probably serve their sires directly.

Organization:
Tonight, maybe a dozen or so Queen Bees remain active, mostly in the United Kingdom. The handful of Melissidae in the United States seem to have kept to the East Coast, though rumors of mortals behaving like insects and vampires vomiting wasps have sprung up among the Kindred as far afield as rural Colorado and the San Fernando Valley of California.

Melissidae society, such as it is, boils down to a single principle. A lone Melissid builds a hive of mortal drones, one at a time. She decides at some point to take a childe. The Melissid neonate becomes a privileged member of her sire’s hive, and is allowed free rein, though she is expected to act as her sire’s agent in the world outside. When the childe has become experienced enough to create her own drones, she is cut loose and ordered to build her own hive elsewhere.

Melissid neonates are not usually obliged to remain with their sires. While most Melissidae, overcome by the mounting panic that accompanies separation from the hive, choose to stay with their queen, some, out of disgust at what they have become or out of hatred for their sire, choose to strike out on their own. If other Kindred find themselves having any contact at all with a Melissid, she’s probably a Queen Bee without a hive of her own — whether she has a home with her sire or is truly alone — either because her sire is no more, or because she has found the will to strike out or because she cannot bear to be reminded of her own potential.

Concepts: Abbess, cult leader, dominatrix, faithful wife of a philandering politician, female executive trapped by the glass ceiling, lady of the manor, most popular girl in school, New Age hippie guru, socialist demagogue, sorority leader, the perfect housewife, unrequited lover

Devotions
The Melissidae have developed a number of Devotions unique to their bloodline. Although based on common Disciplines, none of these powers can be learned by outsiders. Most of these Devotions depend on the unusual nature of the Queen Bees’ Blood, and attempts by vampires outside the bloodline to learn these powers have failed.

The ubiquity of these powers among the Melissidae has made the Devotions easy to learn within the family. As a result, most Melissid Devotions cost fewer experience points than they otherwise would. In fact, all of these Devotions (with the exception of Body Colony and Mock Mind) don’t even need to be taught. They just come to a Melissid whose powers are ripe (and who has spent the requisite number of experience points), a gift of the Blood. Melissidae often find that they possess these powers for the first time without even realizing. The idea comes unbidden, as the hive-mind suddenly manifesting a new extension of its will.

In game terms, this means that once the experience points have been spent, the Melissid character can take the power. However, its first use should be roleplayed, as the Melissid realizes, not always with delight, what she can do. The Melissid’s player obviously spends the experience points, but the use of the power for the first time may elicit shock, horror or overconfidence in the character.

Since the publication of Polidori’s The Vampyre, mass media has created their own images of the undead. Some Kindred find these glamorized, romantic reflections of themselves insulting; others find them funny, though their laughter often has a hollowness or bitter edge. Few books and fewer movies or TV shows capture the ugliness running through the Danse Macabre.

A few Kindred, however, love these images. They wish they were the vampires they see in the movies: beautiful and powerful, stylish and deadly — and untroubled by a ravening Beast. For some Kindred, this wish goes all the way back to their mortal days. Decades ago, when “sexy movie vampire” still meant Bela Lugosi, at least one foolish mortal got his wish. Thus began the Players, one of the most mocked and scorned bloodline in the World of Darkness.

The Players yearn to stalk through the night as dark gods of lust and blood like the Daeva, whom the Players see as closest to their movie-vampire ideal. Unfortunately, the Players are Mekhet. They’re good at hiding, eavesdropping and running away. Well, whoop-de-do.

Still, the Players are very good at hiding — from other Kindred, the kine and especially themselves. Like movie stars, rock gods, sports stars and supermodels, they create magnified images of what they would like to be, or what other people would like them to be. Who sees the real person behind the glitz? Who even wants to, really?

Through sheer desire for the superstar glamour they saw embodied by the Daeva, the early Players wrought a change in their blood. They can learn the supernatural allure of Majesty. This Discipline, and the talent for Obfuscate that comes from their Mekhet heritage, lets the Players pose as the charismatic creatures they long to be. Dracula, Lestat, the Lost Boys, Angel — and them!

The bloodline quickly spread beyond its original obsession. The glamour the Players see in movie vampires is not far from the glamour of celebrity entertainers. They, too, attract fawning mortals and can get away with nearly anything. Players use images of celebrity to draw in mortal prey. The Players want more than blood. They want fame. Oh, how they want it — the power to step into a room and become the instant center of attention. The power to stand on a stage, and have the audience love them! Even if the stage is just a table at a nightclub, and the audience a few star-struck college students.

Of course, it doesn’t work out the way they want. The glamour always fails. Kindred see through the Players’ poses most easily, but even the most enthralled and bamboozled mortal eventually sees through the illusions. The demon queen the mortals loved more than life is just a bimbo on a perpetual liquid diet. The brooding, tormented anti-hero is just a self-centered whiner. The star athlete never played sports, and the supermodel never trod the runway. The Players don’t give up, though. There’s always another mortal to enthrall.

Nickname: Wannabes, Posers and less printable names. A few Players call themselves the Lonely Ones when they want to exploit vampire-lifestyle groupies.

Covenant:
So far, most Players are unaligned. Connections through sires and broodmates help a great deal in joining any covenant, and the Players are too new to enjoy the benefits of undead nepotism. The lineage began among Mekhet with little knowledge of Kindred society, and many Players still get more ideas about vampirism from movies than from other undead.

The Wannabes who learn about Kindred society often find the Carthians the most accessible, due to the covenant’s strong ties to the mortal world and contemporary culture. On the other hand, the pomp and grandeur of the Invictus appeals to the Players’ sense of drama: beyond a doubt, the Invictus seem like the glitterati among the Kindred. The Acolytes, Sanctified and Dragons are too arcane to appeal much to Players, and leaders of these covenants often despise the Wannabes for their obsession with image and the cutting edge of pop culture.

Appearance:
Wannabes come in every race. Male and female Players are equally common. Almost all are young in mortal terms, however, and at least moderately attractive. Street-chic fashions (often a few years out of date) such as velvet shirts or tight vinyl miniskirts and bustiers are common, while some Players prefer meticulously ripped T-shirts and jeans. If it was in one of last year’s mega-blockbuster movies, though, Players will wear it. Wannabes are especially recognizable by their gorgeous, immaculately gelled and blow-dried hair.

Haven:
Players often dwell in lofts or condos with the décor dutifully copied from fashionable magazines or TV shows. Some Wannabes imitate the styles of other vampires, though: for instance, a house with faux-Victorian gingerbread nailed on for the would-be Ventrue or a derelict church’s crypt for one who likes the angst potential of the Nosferatu. There’s always a coffin.

Background:
Many Players began as entranced groupies of their sires. Sometimes a Player can’t accept that a mortal admirer has escaped her power, and so Embraces him to keep the illusion going a little longer. Sometimes a mortal begs for the Embrace because he wants the same glamour and power his sire seems to possess — the mortal doesn’t realize it’s all a fake and his sire is the last person who would set him straight. Future Wannabes are not always ensnared by Disciplines or Vinculums, either. They may simply want to be cool, sexy vampires, or they might see how the Player affects other mortals and want that power for themselves. The prospect of staying young and pretty forever is a powerful lure all by itself. So what if you have to drink blood to do it? Compared to the diets, plastic surgery and other stratagems celebrities use to prolong their looks, undeath doesn’t look that strange — until you’re there and it’s too late.

Character Creation:
Social Attributes and Skills are primary or at least secondary for Players. Very often, a Player’s charm or looks attracted her sire to her out of the other mortal groupies. Mental Attributes and Skills tend to be tertiary or secondary. Players almost never start out with high ratings in any Skill: in life, they were the half-talented, the also-rans, who never quite had what it took to become stars. Any Merits are also low-rated, such as minor Contacts, the rudiments of a Martial Art or minimal Status in a covenant. Striking Appearance •• is possible, but not the higher-rated version (at which one can become famous on looks alone). Most of all, Players gather Herds of mortal admirers.

Organization:
The Players are too new to have evolved any formal ranks, titles or institutions of their own. If a city hosts several Wannabes, they might gather in some trendy location to preen, try out cool taglines on each other and engage in competitive flirting. Players often try to steal away each other’s mortal admirers — possibly to feed on them, but sometimes just to show who’s coolest. Wannabes often brag about the important Kindred they know: “As I was saying to the Ventrue Primogen last week … .” Stories about brooding contests are slanders.

Instead of creating a culture of their own, Players immerse themselves in mortal institutions and subcultures in which they can indulge their lust for the trappings of fame. Trendy bars, nightclubs and other nocturnal entertainments are their favored haunts, as well as parties held by and for the beautiful, rich and at least semi-famous. The intrinsic limitations of undeath keep Players from pursuing real fame, but some of them find roles in the lower ranks of the entertainment industry. What does it matter if you tell jokes poorly, miss notes or mumble your lines? You can make the audience applaud!

The lineage began in Los Angeles, the glittering, mad heart of media illusion. Players remain most numerous in southern California. In recent decades, however, they have appeared in other cities with strong media industries such as New York, Vancouver and London, with rumors of Wannabes as far away as Hong Kong and New Zealand. Now they are spreading out even farther. A Player could take up residence in any city in the Western world, and maybe beyond.

Concepts: Bartender with a screenplay at Universal, body double for J. Lo’s foot, celebrity’s bodyguard, child star who grew up, failed actor, last year’s boy band member, movie geek, over-the-hill model, professional Dracula impersonator, sports non-star, stalker, third-rate stand-up comic

Devotions
The Players’ tendency to learn a few dots each of multiple Disciplines gives them the potential to learn many different Devotions as well. They seldom realize that potential. The Kindred often guard Devotions even more jealously than their Disciplines. The Wannabes developed several Devotions of their own, however, and trade them quite freely. Tue to the bloodline’s obsessions, the price for teaching a Discipline or Devotion is usually something such as an introduction to a famous entertainer and a chance to feed one time from her.

The Players’ Devotions usually involve presenting a false image. No supernatural ban prevents Wannabes from learning Devotions that do something real. They simply have more interest in the semblance of glamour, so they invented Devotions for that purpose. Or to put it another way: they don’t want to become powerful Kindred; they want to play them on TV.

Of all those once born of woman, the Kindred, those who have shed the coil of mortality in exchange for an eternity of Damnation, are the monsters. The Kindred are unliving souls doomed to shadow and a feast of blood. However, even among monsters, some inevitably stand out as distinctly horrific.

One bloodline so embodies the twisted curse that all vampires suffer that the bloodline’s very presence is a thing of unprecedented disgust, a vile reminder of just how inhuman the Kindred really are. Yet paradoxically, even the most disciplined Kindred, entranced by their own inability to comprehend such cruelties of Embrace, find it difficult not to stare at these piteous mockeries of flesh and bone. These Freaks are renowned for their grotesquery, each singularly deformed to the extreme, and put to shame their mortal sideshow counterparts. So accursed is the Freaks’ Vitae that it literally twists and reshapes the corporeal shells of all new members, forever warping them into forms that mimic the most egregious congenital defects suffered by the kine. No alteration is too dramatic, leaving many Freaks severely handicapped.

For all the additional pain and inconvenience they must endure due to this bizarre lineage, the Freaks possess an uncanny degree of strength that few outsiders, to their misfortune, can guess. Although largely shunned by the greater Kindred community, the Freaks share a tremendous bond with others of their ilk. Few coteries — most often simply referred to as Carnivals — are as tight-knit as theirs — and with that intimacy comes power. The Carnival may not partake in the highly visible movements of the Danse Macabre, but a Carnival, despite its public face, is always more than a mere sideshow. The Freaks’ ability to turn their seeming physical limitations into unexpected advantages provides these monsters a unique edge, allowing them to enter places no other Kindred or kine can penetrate and, just as effectively, escape from places and situations that would be impossible for others. Those witnesses unfortunate enough to see a Freak putting on the Show — the bloodline’s signature Discipline — are in for an unpleasant surprise. Unable to pull their attention away from the disturbing display before them, they are open to all manner of inimical activity instigated by the bizarre vampires. Wise Kindred avoid the Carnival if they hear that it has come to town. Fools soon find themselves much worse off for the experience.

The Carnival claims its founder was known at the height of her celebrity as Anulka, the Bohemian Mermaid, a sideshow freak who toured Europe with a small circus during the 18th century. Legend has it that Anulka was treated worse than the trained animals and was kept locked in a cage for most of her adult life, an object of ridicule and fascination who earned the owner of the circus enough lucre to forgo any consideration of Anulka’s release. The malignant barker came to a just end at the hands of a blighted Kindred named Hagal, who is said to have taken pity upon the exploited Anulka, a creature even more repulsive than himself. Hagal took her as his own childe and, with her assistance, usurped control of the circus from its fi nancial overseers.

Upon Hagal’s mysterious demise, Anulka created childer of her own, fledglings whose bodies underwent traumatic transformations as the full power of their sire’s Vitae infused them with her utterly warped psychology. Freaks like their creator and, therefore, unwelcome even among Kindred society, these childer cleaved to one another as family, and their circus became a traveling horror show, its formerly human oddities both its greatest attraction and its darkest secret.

In time, the circus became too great a threat to the Masquerade — at least that’s the story most Kindred tell — and was destroyed in a night of bloodshed and fire. Not all the Freaks met their ends, however. Those who survived fled. Later, some established their own nightmarish Carnivals with their own twisted broods. Tonight, a small number of these vile bands survive. A few provide the darkest of entertainment for other vampires, putting on the Show in Elysium in return for feeding rights or other favors. Other Carnivals travel from domain to domain to survive, playing to Kindred and kine alike as the Freaks pass through each domain, using the Show to maintain the First Tradition even as they reveal the true horror of the Requiem.

Covenant:
Rarely is the Carnival welcome among the covenants. Even rarer is the Freak who wishes to belong to these often insular societies. Few Kindred have any desire to associate with beings who so blatantly embody the hidden horror that lurks within every vampire. The Freaks’ deformities are too painful a reminder of just how far the Kindred are from the mortals they once were. For the most part, the Freaks stand outside the covenants, forming their own exclusive Carnivals — essentially a bloodline and covenant in one. The Freaks don’t necessarily hold any particular antipathy toward one covenant or another, however. They reserve their spite only for those who actively move against them, either collectively or as individuals.

The Invictus rarely opens its doors to the Carnival, unless the First Estate wishes to employ the Freaks, officially or otherwise, usually as objects of entertainment intended to add a dash of grotesque fancifulness to Elysium. Freaks are too visibly distorted for the First Estate. They resemble everything the Kindred upper crust detests. On the other hand, those Freaks who do cozy up to these powdered wigs, even if in a servile manner, can learn a great deal. Most Kindred peacocks are unable to recognize the scheming intelligence behind the eyes of a vampire with no limbs, and fewer still would deign to consider such a vampire a potential threat.

Generally, the Carthians are not much different from their dynastic cousins. Some Carthians may give lip service to lofty ideals such as equality and inner worth, but these pretenders want no more to do with a band of deformed blood-drinkers than with a pack of Lupines. The Freak who does find acceptance is still likely to face social stigmatism, making any political ascent a Herculean task, indeed.

The Kindred of the Lancea Sanctum view the Carnival in two distinctly opposing ways, depending on the personal doctrine of the believer. Some Sanctified see the Freaks as creatures doubly Damned and, therefore, worthy of pity and charity. This is fine, for nothing is an easier score than taking advantage of the foolishly naive. Some Freaks have used this attitude to exploit the Sanctified, even joining the covenant’s ranks for a time in order to reap the greatest benefit.

The danger lies in the covenant’s other view of the Carnival. Even the most doted-on charity case eventually meets with a Priest who is convinced that this bloodline is nothing more than a blasphemy that should be expunged from the world, the sooner the better. Worse, some Zealots are of the mind that the Freaks are touched by the Devil, their deformities proof that the Adversary has put his own mark upon them. These Sanctified make it a personal crusade to cleanse the city of the Carnival, and, given the overall attitude of most vampires toward the bloodline, the Sanctified rarely find too much opposition to their witch-hunt.

The Circle of the Crone is perhaps the most open to these aberrations, though the Acolytes certainly do not go out of their way to extend the Freaks any invitations. Should a disaffected Freak wish to become an Acolyte, she will likely find a place made for her at some table. Still, few Freaks are drawn into the ranks of the Acolytes, especially since the bloodline’s physical form makes it difficult to properly participate in the covenant’s rituals. On the other hand, the covenant’s belief in learning from pain is occasionally appealing, given that most Freaks are in some degree of constant pain anyway.

The only covenant that gives the Carnival real pause is the Ordo Dracul. It is rumored that at least one Freak has been initiated into the Order’s ranks, but, for the most part, the only role the Dragons have reserved for the bloodline is that of curiosity. The Dragons’ interest in how Vitae can cause gross transformative changes in Kindred makes the Freaks more likely subjects of study rather than peers.

Appearance:
Physical deformities are the defining characteristic of the Carnival. What a Freak looked like prior to joining the bloodline is largely irrelevant after her Vitae has been fully transformed into that of her new family. It might be worth noting that a character is Caucasian, French, full-bearded, large-breasted, etc., but all this falls by the wayside when compared to the horrifying changes the Carnival’s blood wreaks upon the bone and sinew of its newest members. Exactly how the individual’s body will change is anyone’s guess. Each change is unique, and no factor seems to play a determinate role in the hideous transformation. The only certainty is that the Freak is severely deformed, with some Freaks being so altered that they become virtual invalids. It is easy to see just how hellish the Requiem of a Freak can be. More on what qualifies as an appropriate deformity can be found in the discussion on the bloodline’s weakness, below.

Haven:
A Freak’s haven primarily falls into one of two categories: mobile or established. A number of Freaks are nomadic, spending only a brief time in a location before moving on. Therefore, many prefer a mobile haven, one that allows the Carnival to pack up at a moment’s notice, should trouble rear its ugly head. Given the treatment most Carnivals receive among their fellow Kindred, mobile havens are almost a necessity. Depending on the size of the Carnival, the Freaks may use a station wagon, SUV, van, truck, RV or even bus as their four-wheeled sanctuary. In some cases, the Carnival may employ more than one vehicle; in these instances, the entire group hits the road in a caravan. In some parts of the world, actual wagons, drawn by steeds usually fortified with the blood of their undead masters, are still employed for this purpose.

All conveyances share aspects in common. First, rarely does a Carnival have the funds for something new. Motor vehicles are usually at least a decade old and held together with as much spit as welds. At least one member of the Carnival often possesses the mechanical know-how to deal with the regular maintenance required to keep the vehicle moving. Not only are such rolling heaps of scrap metal inexpensive to obtain, they tend to offer substantial advantages over newer models. Older vehicles are usually heavier and sturdier. They offer far more protection from minor accidents and rough roads. Older vehicles also go unnoticed far more so than glittering new coupes just off the assembly line, affording the Carnivals the veil of the Masquerade.

Finally, although older vehicles do require frequent repairs, the work is relatively simple and requires only basic tools. De facto mechanics can find parts in most junkyards on the cheap. Compare this to the downtime required to fix a newer car, and an older car makes perfect sense. Almost universally, these vehicles sport blacked-out windows or at least some means to keep out the sun, as well as sturdy locks. More than one Carnival also uses menacing dogs to guard the caravan during daylight hours, which is usually not too much of an attention-getter given the Freaks’ preference for parking in out-of-the way spots, such as junkyards, abandoned industrial zones and similar places. (For more ideas on mobile havens and survival on the road, see the Vampire supplement Nomads.)

Despite the safety that mobility offers, some Freaks choose the protection of something more permanent. The greatest advantage to this is that the Carnival can establish an enduring sideshow, which in turn creates a reliable herd for the Freaks to feed from without having to face the unknown night after night. The downside, of course, is that the Freaks have to find some degree of acceptance among the city’s other Kindred, even if only on the surface.

Again, the Freaks’ reputation precedes them, and few Princes are willing to permit the Carnival to set up shop in their domains. Even if only a fraction of the heinous stories told about this bloodline are believed to be true, suffering the presence of the Freaks is out of the question for all but the most sympathetic, apathetic or scheming Kindred lords. However, given that most vampires who have clawed their way to the top of the Kindred social order probably qualify as the latter, some Princes have admitted the Carnival, albeit usually with special restrictions to ensure that such mercy does not come back to haunt them.

Urban havens are usually established in places that afford the Freaks both privacy and drama. For them, the haven is not only where they hide away from the sun but also a stage to be used to lure curious kine into their grotesque company. Forsaken warehouses, factories, tenements and similar structures prove to be excellent havens. Inside, the Freaks do quite a bit of remodeling, even if it’s not apparent to visitors. Numerous hidden passages, escape routes and redoubts are created, along with areas where the foolhardy can gather to gaze upon the outlandish feats of the Carnival, unaware that they have walked into a trap.

Part boudoir, part salon, part theater, part bunker and part charnel house, a Freak’s haven is her domain in the truest sense of the word, a place in which no one else, living or otherwise, can find comfort. Even welcomed guests have a hard time stomaching the disturbing blend of showmanship and nightmare evidenced not only in the demeanor of the host, but in the furnishings and decoration that pay homage more to Bosch’s infamous Garden of Earthly Delights than to Barnum’s big top.

Character Creation:
Aside from the matter of the precise nature of the deformity the character suffers, a player should consider how the character compensates for that flaw, even if indirectly. A Freak whose legs completely withdraw into his torso still needs a way to get around. This could mean a board with wheels, a carriage pushed by a Retainer or simply a much greater reliance upon his arms for propulsion, using them literally as replacements for his missing limbs.

For obvious reasons, Physical Attributes are tremendously valuable to the Carnival. Feeding is difficult enough without having to deal with such things as vestigial hands, malformed jaws, oversized and useless feet and so on. To overcome these afflictions, the character should consider at least one Specialty that counterbalances his weakness. Athletics Skill Specialties are especially common among Freaks. For example, a “Lobster Boy” ancilla whose hands are too horribly deformed to be used for most ordinary tasks might specialize in Foot Dexterity, enabling him to use his toes in place of his fingers, while another Freak cursed with backward-jointed knees and condemned to travel on all fours might specialize in Scrambling or even Climbing.

Despite the emphasis on physical capability, few Freaks rely on might and agility alone to make it through the night. Mental and even Social Attributes can be the character’s real forte. Allowing others to fall prey to the false assumption that the bodily handicaps so evident are indicative of other personal shortcomings is a hallmark of this bloodline. Because few Kindred wish to spend enough time around the Carnival to learn the truth about the Freaks’ inherent strengths and weaknesses, Kindred are often easier to manipulate, usually to their detriment.

Freak characters don’t trust their bodies alone to reel in the dupes. Most Freaks have at least one trademark gimmick, stunt or talent they use to ply their audience to enhance the Show. Fortune-telling, driving nails into their head, sword-swallowing, magic acts: all are popular. Practically the only thing these bizarre vampires won’t do to enthrall an audience is play with fire.

Emphasis on Expression, Persuasion and Subterfuge is particularly appropriate for these characters — anything that aids them in putting on a show. Ultimately, a Freak character has to be playable, and that means he must be able to hunt, find safety from sunlight and not spend every moment fl eeing from hunters, whether Kindred or kine. A well thought-out combination of Attributes, Skills, Specialties and Merits, along with a bit of luck and camaraderie can see even the most sorely deformed to victory, even if it is only one night at a time.

Organization:
The Carnival is not just a bloodline but a full-fledged society akin to the Invictus or the Carthian Movement. True, the Carnival is admittedly too small both in number and reach to claim to be a covenant, but, for all other intents and purposes, the Carnival functions as one. Its members share a number of customs and practices along with a body of lore unknown to outsiders. They have their own pecking order and their own brand of justice tailor-made for the Carnival. Most important, they stick together. Few, if any other, Kindred suffer as these misshapen creatures do, and that suffering binds them together in a way that even Blood cannot.

Each Carnival — the term refers to the bloodline as a whole as well as to an individual coterie — is led by a single Freak, who is responsible for ensuring that the entire group is safe from sunlight, discovery by mortals and Kindred harassment. In return for this leadership, this Freak receives a payment from each member of the Carnival who wishes to put on her own show. This Privilege, as it is called, usually consists of a Vitae tithe, ensuring that the Carnival’s leader can spend his time guaranteeing the safety of the Carnival, rather than looking for sustenance. Freaks who have spent at least a year or so with the Carnival usually enter into this agreement; those who have spent less time have to wait until they have a little more experience under their belt first. The Carnival also attracts a few benighted Kindred unrelated to the bloodline proper who wish to join its twisted ranks, as well as a number of kine who handle all the sundry tasks necessary to the safety of the Carnival as well as the success of the Show.

The bloodline’s roots may be in Eastern Europe, but the Carnival’s greatest numbers are in North America. Here, the circus and, later, the carnival found their greatest popularity, and, here the Carnival continues to exploit this historical fact. Although few ordinary carnivals and sideshows remain in business tonight, the Carnival continues to serve the very powerful, albeit mostly unspoken, need of the kine to witness oddities, blasphemies and outright horrors of humanity in what seems to be a safe environment. Whether as a traveling show that quietly advertises ahead of its arrival in order to drum up a crowd or as a semi-permanent spectacle that holds regular shows for a steady stream of the curious, the Carnival finds no lack of an audience and, thereby, no lack of a fresh supply of blood.

Concepts: The Alligator Lady, The Astonishing Merman, The Frog Man of Borneo, The Girl With No Face, The Human Skeleton, The Irish Leprechaun, The Missing Link, The Rubber-Skinned Woman, The Two-Headed Man, The Vampire Worm of Old Spain

SAMPLE DEFORMITIES
Skin Afflictions: Scaly or rough skin of a reptilian or elephantine appearance; excessively loose skin.

Hirsutism/Baldness: Excessive hair or baldness.

Missing/Extra Limbs: Completely or partially lacking arms, legs, hands or feet, as well as possessing extra limbs, wholly or partially.

Deformed Limbs: Any variety of disfigurement of the arms, legs, hands or feet, which can include altered shape, fusion or hyper-extended joints.

Deformed Torso: A trunk that can bend in any direction and is often forced into an unnatural position by default.

Emaciation/Obesity: Condition leaving the Freak almost impossibly slender or large.

Facial Deformation: Shrunken head, pinhead syndrome, extra ears, missing lower jaw or any other grotesque abnormality of the head.

Many other deformities exist and can be used, provided they are severe enough or are used to simply add more horror to the Freak.