Beloved Pet

One unspoken family tradition is that many Oberlochs keep pets. Different members keep critters for different reasons. Some prefer the company of animals to mortals or each other. Some raise and train animals for the purposes of being guard or pack animals. Others even keep beasts as an emergency source of Vitae. Most pet-keepers gravitate toward fairly mundane animals, usually dogs like Shepherds, Dobermans or Bull Terriers. The occasional Oberloch raises something unusual like a goat, hawk or mountain lion, but such exotic creatures are rare.

One thing is true for most pets: They’re part of the family. Animals are loyal. More so than most people, the Brood believes. While pets may not be treated like royalty, they’re granted a place approaching equality.

Of course, the downside of animals is that they die. Living things perish, and ghouled animals may still have a limited existence, one that typically falls far shorter than the span of its Oberloch master. Line members don’t take well to their pets dying. It’s like losing a brother or daughter.

Some Brood have devised a way to preserve beloved animals from the clutches of death. This Devotion, while far from pretty, actually brings an animal back to limited life, animating rotted flesh and splintered bones into a reasonable facsimile of the once-living creature.

Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: This Devotion requires no roll
Action: Special

The ritual required is not simple, demanding a considerable amount of time and preparation. The Oberloch sheds his own blood into the animal’s rigid mouth. He must also destroy something sacred to him (perhaps a faded picture of his mortal mother or a trusty pocketknife), scatter the useless debris into a hole with the animal, and bury everything before sunrise. The element of sacrifice has become synonymous with raising a dead animal, but no one’s really sure if it’s a mystical/occult contributor or simply an offering to some unknown force. Regardless, at the rise of the next moon, the animal crawls free from its grave.

“Reborn” animals are quite unpleasant. Their forms are frozen in whatever stage of decomposition they were in before revivification. A beast’s skin is patchy and mangy, and may bear festering wounds. A creature also reeks of putrefaction, like a day-warmed road kill.

A resurrected pet possesses a number of advantages and disadvantages. Aside from its hideous appearance, it’s slow. The animal’s original Speed and Initiative are halved (with fractions rounded up), and any rolls involving Dexterity suffer a –1 penalty. Finally, the creature is highly vulnerable to flame; damage from fire is aggravated.

And yet, the creature gains a dot of Strength and two dots of the Resilience Discipline. It can regenerate one point of bashing damage per turn and one point of lethal damage per hour, reflexively. (This healing does not remove a creature’s undead scars. The animal still retains the physical flaws and rotting flesh intrinsic to its unholy existence.) Reborn animals are immune to wound penalties, as well, and are not subject to unconsciousness rolls when their last Health boxes are filled with bashing damage. Health levels lost to lethal damage batter and tear a creature’s flesh, but its parts continue to operate as it struggles to reassemble.

A creature reborn in this manner is unflinchingly loyal to all members of the Brood. A “beloved pet” never attacks an Oberloch unless manipulated by another vampire’s use of Animalism. All attempts by non-bloodline members to manipulate a creature through Animalism suffer a –2 penalty.

An Oberloch can maintain a number of undead pets equal to her Animalism dots at one time.