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A Modern Gothic Live-Action Storytelling Game

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mind’s eye theatre: the requiem2

CREDITSConcept and Design: Justin Achilli, Charles Bailey, Philippe Boulle, Carl Bowen, Bill Bridges, Dean Burnham,

John Chambers, Ken Cliffe, Conrad Hubbard, Mike Lee, Chris McDonough, Matthew McFarland, Ethan Skemp, Alex Teodorescu-Badia, Richard Thomas, Mike Tinney, Aaron Voss, Stephan Wieck, Stewart Wieck, Peter Wood-worth and Frederick Yelk

Vampire: The Requiem inspired by Vampire: The MasqueradeVampire: The Masquerade created by Mark Rein•HagenWritten by: Ari Marmell, Andrew J. Scott, Dean Shomshak, C. A. Suleiman, Alex Teodorescu-Badia and Peter

WoodworthAdditional Material: White Wolf Game StudioWorld of Darkness created by Mark Rein•HagenWorld of Darkness co-created by Stewart WieckDeveloped by: Alex Teodorescu-Badia and Peter Woodworth Editor: Carl BowenArt Director: Pauline BenneyBook Design: matt milberger

Interior Art: Samuel Araya, Aleksi Briclot, Avery Butterworth, Nils Hamm, Becky Jollensten, Brandon Kitk-

ouski, Cosimo Lorenz Panchin, David Seeley, Chris Shy, Chad Michael Ward and Cathy Wilkins Vampire: The Requiem Playtesters: Chastain Addington, Alan Alexander, Demian Anderson, Sara Anderson,

Nils-Johnson Andreasson, David Bergkvist, Kraig Blackwelder, James Luke Boswell, Cassandra Brackett, Ryan Brandos, Daniel Byström, Ben Chism, James Comer, Chris Cowan, Tara De Blois, Corey Dixon, J. Entsminger, Gala Ferriere, Kevan Forbes, Douglas A. Forsyth, James Ganong, Fred Grass, Jasmine Marie Gribble, Brent Halstead, Aaron Harmon, Robert Holmberg, Conrad Hubbard, Julian Hubbard, Charles Kelley, Steve Kenson, Bishop Lewis, Terje Loklingholm, Chad McGrath, Mario Meo, Krister M. Michl, Albert Mowatt, Robin Nair, Mike Nudd, Corey Ovendale, Matthew Petosa, Chris Renfroe, Mattias Renmark, Steven Sharpe, Malcolm Sheppard, Kearsley Shieder-Wethy, Dean Shomshak, Jeff Skagen, Justin Smith, Ted Sunnerton, Helen E. Taylor, Ph.D., Joseph Turner, Jarett Underwood, Rachel “Bunnie” Winter, Jim Zubkavich, and the White Wolf Game Studio

Camarilla Playtesters: Sean Alexander, April Asbury, Bex, Todd Branch, Joe Carron, Wes Contreras, Michael Curnutt, Miguel Duran, Aaron Fenwick, Mark Lewis, Kevin Millard, Hugh Montgomerie, Silja Muller, Randy Ochs, Charlie Rose, Guy Seggev, Jeremiah Spaulding, Nico van Aerde, Jason Walter, Eddy Webb

Pete’s Playtesters: Scott Adams, Kevin Allen, Fletcher Bennett, Rich Brodsky, Greg Curley, Dan DiFlavis, Jim Fillmore, Matt Florentine, Alyson Gaul, Lee Hefner, BJ Hinkle, James A. Hussiere, Scott Katinger, Frank Manna, Dan Schermond, Megan Strittmatter, Tim Sullivan, Jackob Thurston, Tome Wilson.

Prop Blood Recipe by: Kevin Allen

© 2005 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the pub-lisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only White Wolf, Vampire, World of Darkness, Vampire the Masquerade and Vampire the Requiem are registered trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Storyteller System, Storytelling System, Mind’s Eye Theatre, Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, and Awakening are trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White

Wolf Publishing, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fi ction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised. For a free White Wolf catalog call 1-800-454-WOLF.

Check out White Wolf online at:http://www.white-wolf.com/ and the global White Wolf live-action chronicle at http://camarilla.white-wolf.comPRINTED IN CANADA.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: SOCIETY OF THE DAMNED 8

CHAPTER TWO: CHARACTER 110

CHAPTER THREE: SPECIAL RULES AND SYSTEMS 216

CHAPTER FOUR: STORYTELLING AND ANTAGONISTS 296

APPENDIX: BLOODLINES 362

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4

A MODERN-GOTHIC WORLD

mind’s eye theatre: the requiem • introduction

Vampires: blood-drinking creatures of the night. Horrors born of darkness, whose sole purpose in life — unlife, actually — is to slake their unholy thirst on the blood of the living. Without doubt, vampires are monsters.

Monsters, though, need not always be unthinking, unfeeling terrors empty of remorse, or even compassion or other human traits. Indeed, vampires can exceed their deathless curse, themselves becoming antiheroes or even heroes.

Then again, some vampires truly remain monsters. This is the purpose of The Requiem. What you hold in your hands is a Modern Gothic

Storytelling game, a live-action roleplaying game that allows you to build chronicles that explore morality through the metaphor of vampirism. In The Requiem, you “play the monster,” and what you do as that monster both makes for an interesting story and might even teach you a little about your own values and those of your fellows.

The setting of The Requiem borrows greatly from gothic literature, not the smallest amount of which comes from the “set dressing” of the movement. Key to the literary gothic tradition are the ideas of barbarism, corruption and medieval imagery. This World of Darkness can be said to be our own seen through the looking glass darkly.

With regard to barbarism, the world of the vampires is like our own, but with a signifi cant upturn in violence and decay. The streets are more brutal, with the desperate eyes of the un-fortunate ever watchful for someone more privileged from whom they can steal something to make their own bleak lives more comfortable. Gangs are more active and violent; vagrants are bolder or they obliviate themselves even more. Even those with vast resources are more fearful of those who would harm them — or more jealous of those who rival their own wealth or power. Their actions can turn fierce with the slightest provocation.

Corruption goes hand in hand with the idea of barbarism. The world is nasty and brutish, and anyone who can get ahead had best avail himself of the opportunity. This is a world of indulgent clergy, avaricious businessmen, cops looking for a payoff and gangsters who have no other options than crime. Even those who don’t fit into such neat iconic archetypes face corruption of their own, such as an unwed mother who finds herself addicted to drugs and sells her child for a few grams of crank, or an otherwise honest journalist who finds out that his brother has become a bloodthirsty creature of darkness and must keep the secret for kinship’s sake.

Medieval imagery adorns all of the visual elements of the setting, and it can even bleed over into other aspects. Buildings soar heavenward, supported by flying buttresses, gilded when the architects can afford it and studded by gargoyles that scare away evil spirits that are all too real. Streets have fallen into disrepair. Even cities themselves are like medieval bastions, isolated from the outside world, xenophobic and cut off. Anachronisms abound, from antique deco-rations in otherwise ultramodern buildings to forgotten catacombs beneath bank vaults and subway tunnels. Honest-to-goodness castles might exist in the World of Darkness where none stand in the real world. Moss and vines cling everywhere. Torches and candles light hallways and anterooms. Walls bear breaches, cracks or other signs of disrepair. Ars moriendi punctuate works of art. A sense of dread and fear looms visibly on the face of every passerby.

Is it so strange, then, to believe that such a world hosts the Damned, as well?

Intr o duc t i on No man ever became extremely wicked all at once. —Juvenal

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5 a modern-gothic world • a timeless curse • tradition and breaking from it

A TIMELESS CURSE Most vampires believe that their kind didn’t just pop into existence one night to scare a cow-

ering mortal populace. Most of the Kindred, as vampires call themselves, believe that vampires have existed for as long as they have had men to prey upon, and that they have followed mortal civilizations since humankind first formed them. Others believe in a vampiric genesis not unlike that of Adam in the Bible, and that the Kindred have been chosen by whatever power makes the decision to let them stalk the night. Still others believe that vampires are part of the natural but hidden order of the world, attaching vampiric origins to pagan beliefs and ancient mythologies. Many vampires don’t care at all, believing the mystery to be as demonstrably unknowable as the question of mortal life’s origin. Whatever the case, whatever the truth, it is known that vampires have preyed upon the world since ancient times. Kindred society’s admittedly fallible memory marks the undead as active during the height of the Rome, if not before. Even those unreliable stories suggest that Kindred activity might have existed further back in time.

TRADITION AND BREAKING FROM IT The Kindred, the unique vampires of The Requiem, have certain differences from the

vampires you have encountered throughout literature and popular culture. This game assumes that most stories involve a domain of vampires — a city’s Kindred population — as opposed to the more solitary stalkers of seminal fiction. From the Dracula of Bram Stoker’s novel to Lord Ruthven of John Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” the undead are often depicted as lone fi gures. On the other hand, the vampires beneath the Theatre des Vampyres in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles functioned as a group, as did The Lost Boys and the nomadic fi ends of Near Dark.

None of those visions of vampires really serves the purpose of The Requiem, however. Those groups of vampires are inherently antagonistic in their stories, while the solitary vampires don’t really accommodate the group dynamic of Storytelling games. As such, for the sake of the game, we’ve adapted the cultural notions of the vampire to one more suited to a troupe of players. We’ve added our own mythologies and social structures to the mix, the better to highlight the highs and lows of the undead condition. Our — your — vampires have the selfishness of the solitary predator, but also the social urges of creatures who fear the malaise of being left to their own company for eternity. The result is a conspiratorial blend of horror and suspense, a truly gothic mixture of mad-ness, corruption, sensuality, mistrust and violence, all set against a backdrop of livid moodiness.

CLANS Each Kindred is a member of a clan. A clan is a group of vampires who all share common

characteristics. Popular Kindred mythology suggests that all vampires are assumed to have descended from one common Kindred, the founder of that clan, though no one knows who those founders might be. When a vampire Embraces a new Kindred, the progeny is of the same clan as the progenitor. Certain “sub-clans” of vampires also exist, known as bloodlines, but a vampire can never change her clan.

COVENANTS Covenants are like clans in that they are distinctions of vampires. The difference between

clan and covenant, however, is that one chooses his covenant. If clan is family, covenant is political, philosophical or even quasi-religious membership. Indeed, some vampires choose to belong to no covenant at all, acknowledging no authority higher than themselves.

MYTHS AND FACTS Where does The Requiem’s mythology diverge from popular belief? Where do the conceits

ring true? The following statements outline real-world legends of the undead, clarifying their truth or falsity in the World of Darkness.

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