Fantasy Heartbreaker is now the number five Google search result for “fucking dudes.”  Thanks, of course, to my recap of Dudes of Legend: How to be Fucking Awesome. And to you, the viewer.

Dragonsword of Lankhmar. Image from Demian's Gamebook Webpage.

(This one’s for Ethan, Justin, and Srith.)

Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are the definitive fantasy heroes. I love Conan and Bilbo, but my heart will always belong to two half-mad rogues fighting their way across the roofs of abandoned temples, stumbling their way down Cheap Street, or sailing to the edge of the world with a Mingol crew.

Leiber’s heroes are one of the main reasons I got into Dungeons & Dragons in the first place. My first D&D product was James Ward’s Dragonsword of Lankhmar gamebook set.

One of my best campaigns ever — the Adventures of Hackan and Marek — was a steampunk buddy fantasy directly inspired by the twain. We used the D&D 3rd Edition rules. Or parts of them, anyway.

Yet, no edition of D&D has modeled them particularly well. The builds presented in places like The Dragon and the various Lankhmar campaign settings required hacking the system. You needed some levels of thief, some levels of fighter, a sprinkling of Wizard. In fact, it’s the Mouser who suffered the worst¹.

Trying to fit his smattering of magical training into the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons magic system — much less the class system — appears to have vexed many TSR authors over the years. The Mouser used magic from time to time, but it was almost always under Sheelba’s instructions, as in “The Lords of Quarmall.” He accumulated magic books and trinkets in “Adept’s Gambit,” but for the most part couldn’t use them — if, in fact, they did anything at all.

Arguably his most important spell, when he chooses the path of black magic in “The Unholy Grail,” is a spontaneous ritual. And for the rest of his life, he never does it again — perhaps with good reason. Skinning AD&D or my beloved Rules Cyclopedia for got awkward fast.

Once you spliced sheets for Fafhrd and the Mouser together, it was difficult to actually play them. They had to start at advanced levels to capture their knack for survival and allow them those extra classes. High levels plus multiple classes meant they couldn’t level up at the expected rate of D&D heroes.²

3rd Edition fixed some of this. While the rogue class was diluted by thieving abilities becoming skills anyone could take, the twain became relatively easy to model as fighters. The Mouser got along well enough with Use Magic Device, or a level or two of sorcerer.

Still, D&D characters started a bit flimsy for our boys, and there was a new problem: magic items. In the d20 system, balance between heroes and monsters relied on, among other things, those heroes being equipped with enchanted gear.

Which brings us to 4th Edition. The ups and downs of the game have been widely debated, but in my estimation, it’s the first D&D that can build Leiber’s rogues right, and have them play like you’d expect, from first level. So, let’s do it.

Fafhrd

Fafhrd by David Petersen

Fafhrd’s Character Sheet

Brash, red-haired, and secretly in love with civilization. Fafhrd is a fighter, drawing the attention and anger of his foes and then spilling their guts across the floor.

First things first: we’ll be using the Inherent Bonus option, so that both of our heroes gain bonuses as they level without magic weapons or gear. After all, they live by what steel they can steal.

I’m often annoyed by the “raging barbarian” archetype, since it doesn’t fit most of the great barbarians of fantasy literature very well. Even Thongor was fairly clever and cool-headed. When Fafhrd rages, though, as he does in in “Lean Times in Lankhmar” and Swords of Lankhmar, he absolutely cannot be ignored. GIVE ME THE JUG, indeed.

Thus, we choose the battlerager fighter build. Fafhrd’s sturdy, too — Death lends the Mouser some of his strength in “The Mouser Goes Below,” yet he’s still up for a romp with Frix and her airship’s entire crew. Battlerager Vigor, then, is appropriate, leveraging that tough Constitution into temporary hit points when up close to something that needs hitting.³ Battlerager Vigor also favors Fafhrd’s preference for light armor, rather than the heavy stuff used by more knightly PCs.

But wait, it gets better. Battlerager Vigor also gives Fafhrd a +2 damage bonus when using an axe… like that hand-axe he’s been known to throw into a fray. That mitigates 4th Edition‘s bias against fighters using thrown weapons, but it still doesn’t make it an ideal attack, just a good supplement. Perfect.

Leiber’s battles are swift-moving, swashbuckling affairs, and so too the heroes. Thus, we’ll pluck the Combat Agility class feature from Martial Power 2.

We’ll give him a background of Geography – Mountains, getting him the Athletics skill he demonstrates as a climber. He’s been known to talk big to his enemies, so he’ll train Intimidate. As discussed above, his favored abilities will be Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity. Even early in his career, he takes quickly to the streets of Lankhmar, adding the Streetwise skill. And if the Mouser should fall and start making death saves, Fafhrd will be there to back him up and haul him out of trouble — Heal.

Fortunately, we only have to worry about two feats. Improved Vigor makes battlerager powers more effective, and Don’t Count Me Out bumps up most of his saving throws — fairly important in a two-man party.

The power names speak for themselves: Brash Strike, Crushing Surge, Knee Breaker, and my favorite, Bell Ringer.⁴ Footwork Lure fits the swasbuckling, dirty-tricks fighting style we’re going after.

Equipment’s straightforward: Graywand’s a longsword, Heartseeker’s a dagger, and we add on that light axe to round things out.

The Gray Mouser

The Gray Mouser by David Petersen

The Gray Mouser’s Character Sheet

Quick-witted, slippery, and not-so-secretly in love with himself… as well as any passing dark-haired girl. The Mouser is a rogue in name and class, as adept at slipping into palaces as at taunting and outmaneuvering his foemen.

The Mouser is a trickster rogue, and uses Cunning Sneak tactics, which let him stay hidden even while moving rapidly. His Rogue Weapon Talent makes Cat’s Claw deadlier than a dirk in the hands of a lesser man.

From his days as Mouse, the wizard’s apprentice, and his dark departure from that life in “The Unholy Grail,” the Mouser gains the Arcane Refugee background, and thus, the Arcana skill. That’ll give him good insight into magic and occult circumstances, as he demonstrates in “The Unholy Grail,” “Adept’s Gambit,” arguably Rime Isle and dubiously “Lean Times in Lankhmar.” Arcana will also help with those magical trinkets.

Abilities are simple: Dexterity to be nimble and Charisma for a tricky tongue. Skills are Thievery, Streetwise, Acrobatics, and Bluff — all staples of the Mouser’s adventures. He gets Perception, too — he’s sharp, even if he doesn’t act immediately on prickling suspicions.

Remember how I said Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t do the Mouser’s magic right? Well, 4th Edition has a ritual magic system, and the former apprentice can take the Ritual Caster feat in order to use them, using his Arcana skill. He also takes the Weapon Proficiency (Rapier) feat.

The Mouser’s Deft Strike lets him maneuver even as he lunges with Scalpel. We give him Sly Flourish for a core attack, and Riposte Strike for that fencing feel. Positioning Strike lets him move foes into position, and Trick Strike lets him maneuver an enemy around the battlefield for an entire encounter. Perfect for facing duelist rats in Lankhmar Below.

Now, we just need to add Scalpel (a rapier), Cat’s Claw (a dagger), and a few thieves’ tools.

Adventuring

Skill Challenges provide lots of opportunities for Fafhrd and the Mouser to work non-combat scenes together (as in the duel in “The Lords of Quarmall”). A liberal interpretation even allows them to combine their efforts unknowingly from different locations (Swords of Lankhmar, “The Lords of Quarmall,” “The Frost Monstreme” and more).

At level 1, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are ready to take on the challenges of “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” before traveling the breadth of Nehwon (and gaining some levels) in “The Circle Curse.”

Most of the twain’s foemen also model well in 4th Edition. Anyone interested in seeing me adapt “Ill Met in Lankhmar?” Or another of the twain’s adventures?

Sally Kimball is a martial defender.

Every year, CCP has a corporate retreat.

It’s about the only “corporate” thing we ever do, and it’s mainly to get people on different projects better acquainted. So for four hours a year, we pretend we’re a regular ol’ company and do some team building. After that, it’s games and booze again.

Except… some of us never stop gaming.

Our facilitator (think of her as the GM) decided to start with an exercise (game) called Spy.  She explained the rules like this:

• You will be divided into two groups.
• Each of you will receive a slip of paper. It will say “You are a spy” or “You are not a spy.” The total number of spies in the game is unknown.
• Your group will receive a word problem to complete.
• A spy must attempt to sabotage the solving of the problem.
• If you suspect a player of being a spy, you may accuse them. If a majority vote of the group concludes that the player is a spy, they are sent outside.
• At the end of the game, each falsely accused spy will cost the team 100 points.

That might be an okay game… except that it was given to a group of roleplaying game designers. Both groups finished very quickly. Neither group accused any spies.

The facilitator was floored. According to her, she’s run this game hundreds of times, and there’s always at least one player exiled. She asked us why we didn’t accuse any spies. We kind of blinked for a minute, and then I said that the game mechanics were transparent. Her turn to blink.

You’ve probably figured it out already, but here’s how Encyclopedia Brown did it:

As soon as we were separated into groups, we determined the following:

• Since there are no other scoring numbers in the game, 100 points is an arbitrary value. It could easily be one point. It’s just supposed to sound big, like damage in a Final Fantasy game.
• The narrative of a team-building exercise is that we should work together and trust each other. Therefore, there are actually no spies.
• Even if there are spies, the only mechanic in the game for changing your team’s score is to lose points by making a false accusation. Not accusing anyone guarantees your team’s score stays at zero, the highest possible number.
• There’s no rule for competition between the two groups, or rewards for successfully solving the problem. Therefore, we’re only competing with ourselves at the game of not accusing anyone.

That only left the matter of the math problem. This was supposed to be the hard bit, but it’s actually just a set of addition and subtraction operations obfuscated by a thin narrative. Sound familiar? Ethan solved it, checked his work and had it peer reviewed within two minutes.

I’ll admit, there were two places where we could have screwed up:

• One of the players wanted to be exiled so that she could have a smoke.
• I suggested that we refuse to provide the answer to the facilitator and instead sell it to a rival government.

How could this exercise have been improved?

Well, it’s relatively simple to design a game of paranoia and mob rule. As Eddy pointed out, you can just riff Werewolf (the Andrew Plotkin/Dimitry Davidoff one, not the Bill Bridges/Ethan Skemp one). The mechanics of that kind of game are pretty well known at this point.

That’s a party game, though, not a team building exercise. If you want to keep the central narrative of learning that there are no traitors, your best chance is to obfuscate the situation a little better.

I’m not a fan of this kind of game design¹, but there are established design patterns, and they’ll fool people for the span of a 10 minute game.

So, some possible improvements:

• Present a fictional scenario which encourages the players to think like someone other than an office worker trying to complete (not even necessarily win) a team game. Anything from the Cold War will work, pretty much.This at least suggests a level of distrust that a group of apathetic or analytically-minded participants otherwise lacks.
• Include more mechanics for modifying the team’s score. You still weight them so that players hose themselves by accusing spies, but you introduce enough complication that the players won’t figure it out quickly, and you deny them access to a clear copy of the rules, therefore creating the possibility in their minds that they missed something.²In this case, it’s actually better to use smaller numbers (for example, one instead of 100) . Use of large numbers creates the impression of large differences between those numbers — that’s why it’s a common device in video games. If you want to fool people into making the wrong decisions, you first want to fool them into thinking the differences in risk between possible decisions are small, but that the differences in reward are large.
• Use a central challenge which is easier to sabotage than arithmetic. Ideally create a challenge where the group is looking for the best decision rather than an objectively right answer.
• Put multiple groups in competition. Use time as the primary means of determining the winner. If players think someone else might win by finishing faster, they’re less likely to take the time to analyze the rules.
• Add some kind of reward for winning. Your target players are assumed to be a group of office workers who are used to doing a regular quantity of work for a regular delivery of reward. Fundamentally, they’re at this exercise as part of that work/reward cycle, so it’s the job of the designer to motivate them to care about the outcome.An immediate reward (candy, maybe) is better than a medium term reward (Target gift cards). If you’re going to fool your players, every element of the game has to have them thinking in immediate terms.

At the end, though, you’re still left with a game that only delivers its intended story (and moral) if the players lose. That’s not going to be a satisfying game. It’s true that it might create player unity against the GM/facilitator, but the GM is there representing the larger authority of the employer. So even if the design brings players together by making them resent the GM, they’re only transferring distrust and resentment onto their own organization.

A better overall approach is to follow the PvE design principles of computer and tabletop games, making the antagonists a part of the narrative (“oh noes, the Soviet Orcs!”) while providing benefits for the players to work together against a real but limited chance of failure.

The facilitator should appear to be a neutral party, introducing challenges that are presented as a part of the game and narrative. Rewards should be offered for success, in order to motivate genuine cooperation, but there should also be a consolation prize, because if you present a chance for failure, people will sometimes fail.

And that’s why team-building consultants should hire game designers.

The clanbooks, in better hands than mine

(This one’s for Hope. She knows why.)

After writing new material for Requiem for Rome for a few weeks, I was going to pull back from Vampire material a little bit. (I still might. What do you folks think?)

As it happens, though, I was doing a little cleanup, and I ran across the original introduction to Kiss of the Succubus. I thought it might provide an interesting peek into the clan book design process.

Originally, Ayesha of “All Tomorrow’s Bodies” was going to be the book’s compiler. The framing device was going to be you, the reader, traveling cross country right after the Embrace, with only Ayesha’s notes to guide you. The detective story elements that I used in “All Tomorrow’s Bodies” were going to be a stronger theme throughout the book.

The rest of the plan was pretty much the same: the Old Bat and the plot and most of the same stories were going to be in there, though the documents were going to be in a slightly different order.

However, Chuck Wendig wanted to use a fledgling on  a roadtrip as the framing device for Savage and Macabre, and I felt that it was more archetypal for a Gangrel than a Daeva. So Kiss moved over to being a family album. That let me shake up Ayesha more in the parts of the book she kept, which made those stories stronger, and the ongoing story in the series that much better.

That progression of the clan books was important, especially at the start of the series. We didn’t want to jar players who’d been with us and were used to a sort of top-down, scholarly approach to content. Well, we didn’t want to jar you too much.

So the series starts with a history, something that’s almost a World of Darkness book as it would be written from inside the World of Darkness. You pretty much know how to relate to that already. The second book is a family album. It’s a bit more personal to the compiler, it’s a bit more flowery in a couple of ways, which suits the Daeva really well. And then, bang, Gangrel gets even more personal, because almost the entire book is someone’s diary. Which sets you up for a plunge into conspiracy and occultism with the renovated Mekhet, after which you make a blind turn down the wrong alley and meet the Nosferatu entirely on their terms.

And with that, here’s a peek into a version of the book that never quite was.

***

[PRODUCTION -- This is a neatly handwritten document, probably a photocopy, even better if it's a mimeograph. The original author is Ayesha, the lead interviewer used elsewhere in the book.]

Good stories start with dead girls. My upbringing talking, obviously, but I graduated early from Nancy Drew to Black Mask. Did a lot of reading, before I could play. So, here’s the start of your story, and here I am, the dead girl to get you started.

I’m dead. You are, too. That’s why you need to listen to me. I don’t know who did it to you, but from now on: the world’s out to get you. Doesn’t matter who you were yesterday. Tonight, you’re a predator. And you’re probably hungry.

You’re a [PRODUCTION -- put vampire scratched out or markered over or something?]. I won’t use that word again. You don’t get to, either. You don’t say that word. You don’t tell the truth about what you are to anyone, ever. Early nights, that’s going to be very hard. Do you have a girlfriend? Probably not. If it’s a chick that ripped you from the grave: she’s not your girlfriend. Hopefully by the time you see her again, I’ll have taught you enough to keep her away.

Rule one: start lying. Get used to it now because it will be very, very hard. Right now, you’re fighting the urge to go running to your mom or your best friend or somebody and tell them everything you know. Which is not much but is too fucking much for anyone to hear. Do not pick up the phone, do not press send. Do not ever tell the truth again.

Tell anyone, and someone will die. Maybe you. Maybe them. But there is not a single kind of good that can come from you telling what you are. The worst, stupidest lie you can tell is better than someone knowing that you’re a half-step away from opening them like a milk carton. (Oh, and by the way, you are. I’m sorry.)

Why am I helping you? Because helping you helps me. Somebody’s just handed you my biggest secret, and you’re in a very good position to blow it.

What do I want in return? Anonymity. If you make it: rewrite this. Change the personal specifics in this document. Hand it to the next sad sack like you. [PRODUCTION -- Assume this has been done, several times over. If you have any awesome ideas to make that clearer, go ahead!]

Alright. Now let’s get you dinner.

Only in my imagination...

Relevant to my last few entries, today is the anniversary of the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths.

The Visigoths departed after their sack. Perhaps Conan would have been happier if he’d done the same thing.

When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.

– Robert E. Howard, “The Phoenix on the Sword”

Requiem for Rome

In the final chapter of our bonus content for Requiem for Rome, we delve into the secrets of the very eldest Kindred, by whose measure the Senex is just a stripling.

If you missed the first two parts, here they are:

• The Cross, the Chapel and the Spear: The secret origin of the Lancea et Sanctum.
• Blood and Bulls: Pagan cults in the era of Requiem for Rome.

The Methuselahs

Wander any direction from the city, and you’ll see the ruins. The rotted outline of an old cottage, the pile of stones marking an old fire or an ancient grave. Go far enough the right way, to the east, journey by night and by sea, and you can stand among greater wreckage still. The remaining walls of the first cities, the sand that covers the footprints of the first men. You won’t be able to tell what any of them were for, not now. What did that wall support? Who chiseled that faint relief? There aren’t any answers. The ruins are ancient, silent, unknowable. But some of them are hungry.

The dead are old, but their nights span only a few hundred years before they slip into torpor. Before they wake, their Blood thins and their memories change, colored by dreams and nightmares. For vampires, memory is a constant companion, but a treacherous one. Still, there are a few vampires who escape the Fog of Eternity. They may slumber, but they keep hold of their potent Blood. These Methuselahs remember their past as well as any mortal, and have the strength and cunning of creatures who have been elders several times over.

Stories About the Methuselahs

The vampires of Rome have many stories about the Methuselahs, but these stories contain only fragments of the truth.

The memory of Methuselahs is eternally perfect: True. A Methuselah can recall any period from his mortal life or Requiem as well as a man of thirty might recall his teens. (If he possesses the Eidetic Memory merit, this likewise applies to his entire existence.)

The ancients keep their own Masquerade, concealing themselves from us as we conceal ourselves from the living: True, almost. Few Methuselahs have ever met, and they certainly don’t encounter each other frequently enough to have a culture or traditions unique to them. However, common problems breed common solutions: a vampire who has survived thousands of years has mastered hiding from both fearful mortals and jealous childer.

Methuselahs hunger for the Vitae of the dead: True. A Methuselah suffers from the same rarified thirst that elders do. Like an elder, an ancient may sire other vampires to feed his hunger, but his longevity lets him make the sacrifice of Willpower to create them again and again. Childer may not be disposable, but they come close. A Methuselah might cultivate a brood for a few dozen years, and then destroy them in a single night of feasting.

Methuselahs shirk the Fog of Eternity through the veneficia, or pacts with the Strix: False. No pagan ritual nor Theban miracle allows vampires to shirk the Fog of Eternity. Monstrous spirits might offer eternal memory, but they keep their promises only in part, or not at all. The ancients keep their memories and power by tremendous force of will.

The ancients watch us, and subtly manipulate our every move: False. Methuselahs have their own, personal goals. They may well manipulate other vampires, but, like vampires, usually find that mortals make better tools. This is particularly true over extended periods of history; successive generations of human beings renew their determination and vitality. Vampires may hold their course against the currents of time, but this ultimately becomes a liability.

Methuselahs possess every manner of supernatural power: True. While no Ancient is truly omnipotent, they have had time to unlock any secret of the Blood that an elder has, and likely keep them in greater numbers. A Methuselah may also have honed his skills to levels unheard of among humans. Like a younger vampire, though, he has trouble genuinely inventing anything.

As our ancestors, the ancients may be called upon through Blood and sacrifice: True. As an extension of Blood Sympathy, a Methuselah can recognize her own grandchilder, no matter how many generations removed. Some or all of them may be able to hear prayers accompanied by the spilling of the supplicant’s Vitae.

The sight or scent of Methuselahs drives vampires to Frenzy: Sometimes true. Most Methuselahs have found ways of limiting the effects of the Predator’s Taint upon other vampires they encounter, but the obscene potency of their Blood drives vampires to Frenzy and madness when unchained. There are few reliable accounts of meetings with ancients, but those stories almost inevitably feature a moment of recognition that permanently scars the younger vampire. More dubious tales claim that entire cities have been destroyed when an ancient passes through, driving the vampires to insanity and destruction in his wake.

The Methuselahs in Your Stories

The “gothic” the genre is named for was originally a physical place or object, a long-dead artifact casting foreboding shadows over the present. The ancients are living ruins, whose preservation against age and sleep only makes them more alien and frightening, whose determination has worn away their fine details but reveals their terrifying strength.

Use Methuselahs to remind players that history reaches back long before Rome, and that both mortals and vampires go back long before history. No convenient creation story can change that monsters from hoary prehistory still walk the earth.

The Methuselahs represent difficult truths, but they’re also sources of knowledge; torpor, Nero’s fire and other losses make the memories of Rome’s elders unreliable at best. A neonate or ancilla who somehow gained the patronage of a Methuselah could find himself privy to information about his elders’ sins or the resting places of vulnerable vampires. That is, if the Methuselah is truthful and can be persuaded. Bargaining with ancients should be difficult but absolutely possible.

Avoid the impulse to use a Methuselah as a tool to permanently block the players’ or characters’ goals. Similarly, try not to use them as “boss monsters.” Fighting a thousand-year-old vampire ancient might be cool once, but after that, everything else is a step down. That’s not to say never have a Methuselah present a physical danger. They should be frightening combatants just as they are frightening tacticians or manipulators. Just don’t make fighting them to the Final Death a regular occurrence.

If it comes to confrontation, ancients generally aren’t enemies to defeat in a brawl or a debate; their many Disciplines and well-developed Skills make that difficult. Fleeing from or tricking one is slightly more feasible. The best way to avert the wrath of a Methuselah is to convince her you’re on the same side.

The desires of the ancients are difficult to satisfy. Their goals have to keep them occupied across hundreds of lifetimes, yet the avenues of ambition open to the living are closed to them. No vampire will ever be an Alexander or a Caesar, no matter what rumors from Africa might claim. One might protect her mortal family, who she plans to forge into a tribe and then a nation. Every time they are nearly destroyed, she must start anew. Another might seek to master every discipline of mortal arts, only to find that mortals surpass him in every generation. An ancient may be well aware that her pursuits seem Sysyphian, but she is also certain that one day she will roll the boulder over the hill.

Ancients usually have low Humanity, having inured themselves both to terrible acts and to plotting the same. At the same time, they don’t tend to have many Derangements; grievously insane vampires don’t become Methuselahs, and Methuselahs who degenerate don’t survive. An ancient might have many strange habits and ideas, but these rarely impede his function. On the other hand, a Methuselah’s Virtue, Vice and Derangements are good weaknesses for characters to exploit.

Example: Zagreus

Quote: “Tell me everything. I don’t care how long it takes.”
Background:

The creature called Zagreus tells many stories of his origins. This is only one.

The man was born in Babylon, near the beginning of Hammurabi’s reign. He learned to speak when his mouth could scarcely form the words. Brilliant as a child, he grew to be a great scholar and a charismatic priest. He fawned over Hammurabi as the king imposed his code of law, and eventually sat by the king’s side in judgement.

The young priest became ill with a wasting disease, and was tended by a woman who had grown fond of him. The granddaughter of a vampire, she knew that her ancestor’s blood still preserved her mother’s youth. She went to the vampire’s cave and endured the caresses of his thralls, begging for her beloved’s life. The old monster had little sentiment left, but listened as his descendant spoke eloquently about the priest’s virtues. Finally, he decided to grant her request, but instead of making the priest a ghoul, the vampire Embraced him.

The night cowered before the dead priest’s righteous glare. In a century’s time, he had driven away the beast who sired him and claimed Babylon as his own domain. He grew lonely, for he had forgotten the young woman in his early nights, and she had died of the same disease she saved him from.

The priest sired a brood, but was driven into the desert by them, just as he exiled his own sire. He found another city, and sired another brood, but destroyed them before they could grow mighty.

Eventually, he developed a method: creating fledglings once every few decades, and only ever appearing to them cloaked in an aura of awe and wisdom. He teaches them that he is God, and they are his special creations. Essentially, he forms blood cults of vampires and uses them to sustain himself. When he must commit himself to a period of torpor, he transfixes a number of them to feed upon when he awakes and leaves the rest to spread his word. Eventually, he wakes and joins his own cult.

The priest took the name Zagreus from a God he worshipped briefly in Greece, before he abandoned the Dionysian mysteries for those of the Orphics. He wants to meet God, and that’s the only reason he bothers with vampires or mortals outside his cattle-cults. Since his mortal youth, he has believed implicitly in a divine lawgiver, a being like the king he so admired, but with dominion over the entire world.

Yet, his studies with countless mortal cults and his own process of thought have revealed to him numerous problems with that proposition. Similarly, he believes his vampirism is a state of divinity, but has yet to deduce its purpose. He has learned that a weak “blood-god” may become greater by devouring a strong one. Thus, he sifts patiently through every belief of the living and the dead, looking for the true path to reach and devour his almighty lord.

Description: Zagreus looks like a young man who has seen too much of the sun, perhaps a caravaner. His features are unusual, but generally suggest West Asian heritage. His accent is also foreign; Egyptian, usually, but completely unidentifiable when he allows his disguise to drop.

Storytelling Hints: Zagreus presents himself as a neonate or ancilla, and can mitigate the Predator’s Taint to mimic either.

He is currently travelling towards Rome. He’s spoken with missionaries from the Spear, and their mysteries make more sense to him than anything he’s heard in a long time. He travelled through Jerusalem shortly before the execution of Jesus, and wonders if God’s son might have been there to meet him. Having missed that chance, he wants to absorb the teachings of Longinus, and discover where the centurion dwells or sleeps.

Zagreus uses Majesty freely, but takes great care to make sure that he appears to be winning friends, students or worshipers by natural charisma or (much more rarely) radiant divinity. He’s good at blending in, but won’t bother to disguise his curiosity if something seems particularly important; he’s confident in his ability to make excuses afterwards.

Of course, Zagreus is nothing if not a liar. Perhaps his true origins are those revealed in Immortal Sinners…

You see what I did there.

Merit: Sympathy for the Devil ●

Once per scene, a player whose character possesses this Merit may roll his character’s Humanity, plus one additional die, instead of the character’s ordinary dice pool.

Hack: Exposure

(Hacks, introduced in Dudes of Legend, are special features of a character not governed by the character creation rules or experience system. They are offered to characters entirely at the Storyteller’s discretion.)

It’s not the burning, it’s the shining.

Some vampires think it’d be great to be able to walk around in the sun. They think the curse is that the light burns them. They’re missing the point completely.

Okay, so, say you step on a nail, right? You feel pain. It stings like a motherfucker. But do you go “oh my God, why have you cursed me with the eternal weakness that I must face pain when pierced by sharp objects?”

No, you don’t, because you’re not a dumbass. You go, “well, clearly, I’m not supposed to step on fucking nails.” If you think about it a little further, you consider that maybe you’re supposed to have intact feet, and not be bleeding all over the place, and you realize that pain is your body’s way of telling you not to do that shit.

That’s actually what that burning is when you feel the sun. The burning’s a defense mechanism, a warning response to stay in the dark. What’s it warning you about? That if you stay in the sun, the herd will know you for what you are. Might be pretty for a few minutes. You might shine like diamonds, but so do the teeth of the wolf. And the herd knows that. In the deeps, in the lizard brain, in the soul.

Now, some humans, they have a condition called congenital analgesia. They don’t feel pain at all. They have no warning when their skin’s being torn open, when their bones break, whatever.

So, too, some vampires. A flaw in the blood. No fear of the light, no pain from the sun. They have to learn to keep themselves hidden. The condition is transmitted, if unreliably, from sire to childe.

These Kindred families tend to shun the cities… their weaknesses are too easily exploited if revealed. And that’s if they don’t look like liabilities to the Powers that Be in the first place.

System

Instead of suffering damage from the sun, an afflicted vampire exposed to sunlight suffers an effect called Exposure. This phenomena allows humans to instinctively understand the vampire’s nature as a supernatural predator, and causes them to react to that according to their own dispositions. Some become obsessed. Others, repulsed.

The most obvious effect of Exposure is that, when seen in bright sunlight, the vampire’s appearance takes on an uncanny quality–a halo, a diamond shine, the appearance of well-carved marble. In lower levels of light, however, the effects are entirely social.

An individual character encountering a vampire in partial sunlight displays one of the following reactions, as determined by the Storyteller:

- Terror: Instinctively understanding the vampire’s predatory nature and overwhelming power, the character is driven to sudden and absolute terror. If the victim believes she can overwhelm the vampire with violence, she will. If she believes the vampire will overwhelm her, she takes any steps necessary to escape. (For those looking for a more detailed system, these effects closely mirror vampiric Fear Frenzy.)

- Submission: Recognizing an overwhelming threat, the mortal simply bows to death. Treat as the result of a successful Intimidation roll, with the additional effect that the victim will not physically resist the vampire for the remainder of the scene. In future encounters, the mortal may experience this effect again, or experience either the Rejection or Obsession reaction.

- Rejection: Sensing danger, the human will rationalize the vampire as “creepy” or “weird.” From this point forward, once per scene, avoiding or shunning the vampire allows the victim to gain a Willpower point, as if he had indulged his Vice.
This effect can only be removed as if it were a Derangement.

- Obsession: The mortal senses danger, but responds to it with intellectual curiosity or romantic arousal. From this point forward, once per scene, seeking out or discovering a fact about the vampire allows the victim to gain a Willpower point, as if she had indulged her Vice. This effect can only be removed as if it were a Derangement.

Daeva: Kiss of the Succubus

I recently did an e-mail interview with Louis Garcia of the Dead Gamer’s Society on meetup.com. I really had fun talking about creating the clanbooks and the process of relaunching Vampire: The Requiem in 2007. I also shared part of the outline for The Danse Macabre.

Vampires, families, and dirty dansing. Go check it out.

By the way, one of the questions references an earlier interview with RPG Review.

Continued from The Cross, the Chapel and the Spear. Concluded in Requiem for Methuselahs.

Blood and Bulls

Requiem for Rome

Rome’s pagan religions were once spectacular. The Cybeline priests dressed as women and castrated themselves in the city streets.
Pagan belief wasn’t just a matter of holy days and celebrations, though. The Gods, many and varied as they were, were woven into the fabric of state. Take Cybele again. Her cult in Rome was small and politically insignificant until the Punic wars.

Her partisans in the Senate insisted Cybele would deliver Rome from Hannibal; when Rome was victorious, the Senate enthusiastically brought her worship to Rome, and built her a shrine on the Palatine hill. There, along with the older Gods of Rome, she watched over the business of the Roman government, giving her implicit assent to the Senate’s actions. In the Republic, statues of the Gods were sometimes arranged to share meals with the Senate, usually to thank them for military victory or to propitiate them following its defeat.

Today, Cybele is gone from the Palatine Hill, along with the other Gods and the power of the Senate. Rome, dwindling and no longer the home of the Gods, is a city spiritually wounded. Some of those wounds are easily filled by the Church of Christ, but some become abcessed.

The Great Foreign Gods

Rome’s most popular Gods, particularly those whose cults survive underground, were imported within the memory of elders.

Isis: In the centuries before Christianity, Romans embraced a series of cults of supreme Gods, who were seen as the highest among their pantheons. In her native Egypt, Isis was the wife of her twin, Osiris, who she coupled with even in her mother’s womb. Osiris was murdered and dismembered by their other brother, Set. Isis, however, was able to find most of his body and bring him back to life. Osiris lacked only his penis; but Isis’ generative powers were so great that she could still conceive.

The Isis myth is genuinely ancient (Mekhet elders say that she was old when their sires were young), but her cult might never have found Rome if she had not been attached to another deity, Serapis.

When Alexander the Great died, his general Ptolemy became king of Egypt. Ptolemy saw strife between priests of the Egyptian and Greek deities, and so recruited the two wisest and most cunning priests in Alexandria. He employed them to create a new deity, one who would unite followers of Gods from both pantheons.

At the priests’ instruction, Ptolemy procured a nameless and foreboding Greek idol and christened it Serapis. Serapis combined the traits of several deities. The priests’ cleverest move was explaining Serapis’ connection to Osiris. The Egyptian priests led the worship of Osiris’ Ka, which was only one-ninth of the Egyptian soul. Ptolemy’s priests declared that Serapis possessed Osiris’ Ka–but also his entire soul, and so his cult was greater than that of Osiris.

With his wife, still Isis, Serapis was exported all along the Nile and then abroad. Isis, with her impressive resume, gradually began to dominate the worship of their followers. By the time she was brought to Rome, she had been declared Queen of Heaven and greater than all other Gods.

Isis is also a good example of how faith could divide the dead long before Christianity.

The Daeva consider themselves the priests and priestesses of a feminine deity, whose husband died and who raised him from the dead, along with their line’s sire (usually called Lilith). Some Daeva, therefore, took enthusiastically to the worship of Isis, seeing her as an equivalent to Inanna, Ishtar, or other Gods of their sires.

Others, however, viewed her as an enemy; her mortal cult performed rituals with alignment to the sun and fertility, neither of which they thought appropriate for the Goddess who raised the Dark Maiden.

Since the rise of Christianity, many pagan dead believe they were right, that Isis was a forerunner of the hated Christians. They see parallels between the Virgin Mary of the Christians and Lancea et Sanctum and Isis, Queen of Heaven. This bitter memory has been enough to quiet those who would venerate the mother of Longinus (a prostitute and, some say, murderess).

Still, such a cult seems almost inevitable.

Cybele: Cybele, so the story goes, was a Goddess who admired a young shepherd named Attis. Unfortunately for Attis, Cybele witnessed him having sex with another woman, and struck him with madness as revenge. Attis castrated himself, and swiftly bled to death. The gory spectacle moved Cybele to mercy, and she resurrected him from the dead.

Rome did not adopt Cybele in her role as a fertility Goddess, however. When Rome seemed destined to fall beneath Hannibal, Cybele’s worshipers preached that she could deliver victory over the Carthaginian invader. Indeed, they said, it had already been foretold, and they displayed prophecies to prove it. The prophecies were confirmed by the oracle of Delphi, representative of the popular Greek God Apollo.

The Senate made a sacrifice to Cybele, and when she delivered the promised victory, they welcomed her to Palatine Hill. She was brought before them in a fragment of a fallen star, which was enshrined in a new temple.

Once again, the Daeva see easy parallels with the story of Inanna and Lilith, and the claim that Attis died from madness rather than direct violence appeals to them. Many of them came to Rome already devoted Cybelines. The Gangrel find something to admire in self-mutilation, in overcoming pain through devotion to God. The Julii never took to the worship of Cybele. The Punic wars were a pperiod of relatively slow Embrace, so few living Cybelenes were brought into the fold.

Vampiric rites venerating Cybele often feature the castration of dead priests. The castration of Attis is performed with all the attendant spectacle of mortal celebrations, but just before dawn instead of at high noon. The next night, the worshipers awake, and the priest regrows his genitals, even as he rises from the sleep of the dead.

Empty Houses

The living still use the temples as landmarks. A traveller who asks for directions will be oriented with reference to a temple of Apollo or Minerva.

Yet, they are beginning to forget. They simply describe the building by its facade, or by the faceless statue standing in front of it. The Gods have been cast out of their houses. Many Christians won’t even set foot upon grounds once consecrated to the old Gods, except to leave their garbage.
The earliest temples that still stand are built of wood. They occupy rectangular lots originally set aside for priests to contemplate the night sky. To divine the future, these augurs required an open view of the night sky to the horizon. Thus, they were set on high ground or facing away from obstacles. The most important feature of the temple was the boundary lines, which could be marked with walls, cloth, or even shallow trenches.

The Cult of Augurs remembers these temples. Many still mark out consecrated spaces, sprinkling blood and salt along a carefully-determined rectangle. Yet, it is hard to see the sky in Rome, with buildings crushed against each other, rising two and three stories, and with the smoke and vapors of the city rising. Some priests complain that they cannot tell the future with these obstacles, while others cry blood or cackle with sick delight, concluding that there is nothing left to see. The Eternal City has been tall and crowded for centuries, but the arguments of dead priests rarely change.

Temples from more recent centuries are made of stone, a practice imported from Greece. They are fronted with imposing facades, and often arranged in rows, creating long, imposing blocks of black against the sky. Marble also became common for a time, though usually only as decoration. Temples once pale and gleaming in the moonlight are now defaced with chunks of darkness where the marble has fallen or is being quarried away.

Those statues that still stand in or before their temples are pock-marked with chipped paint and obscene graffiti, and many of the terra cotta roofs lie in pieces in the street, drifting like Autumn leaves and without regard for the boundaries of sacred space.
The other vital piece of a temple was the altar, where sacrifices (of produce, animals or, by night, men) were offered. The altars of the most popular Gods were crowded with treasure donated by conquering generals and wealthy devotees, and every being worth praying to had at least one interesting artifact. The humblest might have only the broken bowls of beggars, but those possessions were once dear as well.

These treasures are long since vanished. Most were looted, by Christians or common thieves or even by the Senate, to pay for some long-forgotten war. For any given temple, though, there is a tale of how the priests escaped with gold and gems and hid them underground, and how a keen young man might find it. These are the tales young men tell each other, for they do not know the world beneath.

Through fires and rebuilding, many temples have effectively sunk into Necropolis, and those still see use. Some are still places of worship, where Gods selected by the Propinqui are revered by solemn dead. Others have become havens, stuffed with the bodies of whole broods or coteries during their daily sleep.

In previous decades and centuries, when a temple fell or burned, it was almost always rebuilt eventually. The God housed within might change, but the space was still sacred, and, more to the point, available. Today, however, the fortunes of Rome have declined; even if the worship of pagan Gods was still permitted, there are fewer wealthy patrons to endow the temples.

Cults of One

The Romans’ former policy of tolerance left each individual or household to choose their own Gods, as long as they paid lip-service to the Gods of the Roman state has created tremendous diversity. No Roman knows how many Gods are worshiped in the city; even if he could count the temples, the worshipers have gone home, driven out by soldiers.

In this way, the rise of Christianity has only made the pagan faiths harder to count. They worship in caves or in darkened houses, or quietly in the insulae to avoid the hearing of Christian neighbors. Even a soldier who evicts worshipers from a pagan temple may retreat to a cave with his fellows to sacrifice a bull to Mithras. Religion among the Romans is and always has been personal.

How does a pagan cult spread? They don’t generally inspire mass conversions in the sense Christianity does. Most Gods attract worshipers by recommendation from one friend to another, or by being passed down from father to son or mother to daughter. Many Romans perform peculiar rituals whose origin–or patron–they can not even say, if asked.

Every fifth day, a man pricks his finger and smears a design of three pillars upon the south wall of his room. He doesn’t know why he does it; perhaps he picked it up when he was a soldier, or his father taught it to him. What he does know is that if he does not do it, he has nightmares of a beautiful woman whose eyes are obscured by smoke. She caresses him until dawn with fingers like razors. So he performs his little ritual, even as he mutters a prayer to his savior Christ.

This kind of uncertainty haunts Christians and pagans alike, and particularly those who don’t know which they are. A woman’s mother sacrifices a chicken to Juno and sprinkles its blood across the garden. The daughter cares for the old woman with some embarrassment, chiding her for ridiculous pagan practices, but never quite arriving in time to save the chicken. When her mother dies, she finds herself conducting the sacrifice in her absence. Her children chide her, but they let her alone, and she knows they will carry on the practice when she, too passes on.

The laws of the dead exempt them from the laws of the living, but the laws of Gods and spirits are something else. Many of the dead adapt personal spiritual practices to take with them into the long night. Indeed, compared to pagan Roman life, death in Necropolis has a paucity of public ritual, making personal practices even more important.

Spirits

Early Roman spirituality was heavily animistic, and the people of Rome carry its little legacies to this day. Many family or personal rituals descend from obeisances to the spirits of the hearth or the threshold.

Players and Storytellers familiar with the modern World of Darkness know that there are many spirits that personify the natural world and attend to mortal thoughts. Are they the same ones the Romans believed in? Could they have inspired not only Roman ritual but even its famous Gods? That’s up to you; we’re referring to practices that vampires will see in Rome, not importing the mechanics of the present day.

The dead, of course, have their own spirit legends. They speak of owl-cries in the desert which precede delirious visions, of witch-corpses who tell tales in groves long ago given over to the weeds.

Ancestor Worship

Though each clan of the dead keeps its own Masquerade, and the Christian priests rant ecstatically about eternal paradise and the evils of consorting with spirits, many Romans know that the dead do not entirely depart the living. The vast weight of pagan and Christian beliefs has not yet crushed the belief that the living can still reach out to the dead, and vice versa. After all, how could it crush love?

Ancestor worship is a household cult, with each family having their own rituals, their own ways of remembering lost fathers and grandfathers. There are almost always gifts or sacrifices; often these are buried in the ground or immolated in the hearth. Some treat their ancestors like minor gods, leaving a slaughtered, but whole, animal in the place of memory for a night or two.

There are always stories, too. When a man dies, the only stories told are of his life; what used to make him laugh, what he was like when he was angry. His daughter might retell stories he in turn told about the war, or about his own father. As years go by, though, as the father becomes a grandfather, the stories grow. His daughter, cradling a child, tells him about the time their landlord’s bully-boys tried to throw the family out, and how her father brought her gold coins, even though she had neglected his sacrifice. She tells him about his older brother, who died in his blankets, and how her father returned that night to hold her.

In her later years, graying and weak, she tells only good things about her father, because she knows she goes to join him soon. She cautions her children to only speak well of the dead, and never to forget the sacrifice.

Rituals for ancestors are usually simple affairs, particularly tonight. The exception used to be the Parentalia, from February 13th to the 21st. During the Parentalia, the temples were closed and no business was conducted, for fear of retribution from the dead, whose jealousy frightened even the Gods. Dinners were held in honor of parents and siblings gone.

The poet Ovid, still read tonight, warns of a Parentalia which was neglected. He describes tremendous losses at war and to plague, and funeral fires around the city. The dead, Ovid claims, rose in an army that night to take their due. Deformed, moaning creatures roamed the streets, taking any of their descendants they found back to the underworld with them.

Some elder Propinqui claim to remember this event, and recall it with satisfied smiles to their childer. They boast that once upon a time, the living denied the dead, and even lit fires over their tombs; they say that they entered the city in force with the Nosferatu to take vengeance. The living would not feast for the dead, and so the dead feasted upon the living.

Younger vampires listen, and they disbelieve. For though some of them still visit their families, they cannot imagine a night without Masquerade. Above, the living listen in their Christian churches during what was once the Parentalia, and they shiver. For it has been neglected for many years.

Crassus

Quintus Crassus’ family remembers him for his wealth, and for his brush with greatness. They remember him for the fortune in real estate and slaves, which he left to them and which they have retained through Rome’s changing luck. They remember that he funded Julius Caesar in his bid for Praetor and later Consul.

They don’t remember him as an inveterate gambler and they don’t remember how he fell to the edge of ruin. Crassus was a talented architect, but a drunkard and a fool. He trusted easily, but everyone he trusted betrayed him, with two exceptions: his wife, Livonia, and his uncle, Lysander. Crassus wasn’t particularly close to his uncle when he was growing up; Lysander lived some ways outside the city, his father told him, in a grand villa. Quintus Crassus met him only a few times.

When Crassus was in his cups, and on the edge of ruin, though, his uncle came to see him. He promised the young man that if he did as he was told, he could have riches beyond what he had gambled away, beyond what he owed. The older man told Crassus that all he had to do was bring his wife and make sacrifice with her to honored relatives. The ritual was short, and confusing; Crassus passed out after sipping his uncle’s strange wine. Sure enough, though, his fortunes picked up. Not only did the customers his uncle introduced him to pay well, his luck at gambling improved; he was blessed.

The months passed and, in gratitude, Crassus set out to visit his uncle, bringing a cart full of gifts and his newborn son. He found Lysander’s villa, but the slaves did not recognize Lysander’s name. Confused, Crassus demanded to meet the owner of the house.

The man told Crassus that his uncle was many years dead, but that he himself owed his fortune to Lysander’s generousity. Lysander had left him the villa and slaves, though most of those who knew the old master were dead or freed. Crassus realized he had met a ghost, and drank heartily to thank his uncle.

His descendants do not know this story. Sometimes they are helped by a man with family features, or asked to do him small favors. They call him Quintus Crassus. But he is not Quintus, and he was not Lysander.

Vampires also venerate their ancestors, whether by blood mortal or eternal. Many broods, particularly among the Daeva, perform rituals of abasement before their sires, and address them in explicitly religious terms. Most, however, worship their sires and grandsires only after they have succumbed to torpor. They gather by their forebears’ moldy sepulchers and sing hymns of mourning and fear. Some broods Embrace only on these days; others shed no blood upon them.

Dead whose sires come from the Middle East tell stories of distant ancestors whose blood does not thin with torpor, and who, though mad and wild, can recall with perfect memory the deeds and names of their enemies. These are called Ancients, or among the Jews, Methuselahs.

They attempt to keep these creatures away through rituals that might be supplications or might be wards. The most common is to stake a mortal corpse as they would transfix a vampire, and to bury him at a crossroads in the world above. The dates vary, but the task is always performed in silence, lest the sound attract the Methuselahs’ attention.

The Julii perform a similar observance of their own on February 4th, in which they murder a young boy upon the floor of the Camarilla, then bury him in a shallow, stone-lined pit near the surface. The exact reason has changed with time. Tonight, they devote the sacrifice to Julius Senex, and they individually offer the same prayers and gifts they would to their immediate sires.

They remember, though, that the Senex himself once performed this ritual with them. Did he seek to propitiate Remus, or something else?

A present for those missing Gen Con…

…which was continued in Blood and Bulls and Requiem for Methuselahs.

The Cross, the Chapel and the Spear

Requiem for Rome

During the peak and collapse of the Roman civilization, Christianity finds a home in the hearts of the living, from which it is drunk greedily by the dead. The mortal legions now serve a Christian emperor, turning people out of pagan temples and breaking up ancient rites. The ostensibly pagan Legion of the Dead recruits more Christians (or Monachals, or Sanctified) every night, and these creatures refuse to arrest their fellows.

Yet, what this new system of beliefs called Christianity actually is creates almost as much confusion and violence among the Christians themselves as between Christians and pagans. The Emperor Constantine attempted to create a single, universal Church when he declared his new religion to be that of the Empire, but adherents of his Nicene Creed still shout and brawl in the streets with Arians, while the Gnostics gather in private, seeking salvation not only from sin and suffering, but from their own fleshly bodies. In the underworld, disciples of the Monachus debate adherents of Vitericus Minor… sometimes even on the Camarilla floor itself.

In Rome, Christianity has yet to coagulate, and instead runs hot and wet from believers. They paint pictures of heaven in the blood of their enemies, and the dead follow suit.

Cities on the Cross

The Roman poor are packed into the cities, trapped with nowhere to go. Others shelter below the ground, taking refuge in caves, tunnels and sewers. Some even squat in abandoned temples, too cynical–or desperate–to believe the rumors of ancient and bloody rites reenacted by ghosts in the dark.

From the very beginning, these people–spat upon, degraded and hopeless–will be fertile ground for the seeds of faith. The promises of Jesus, however, are not the only appeal of the new faith. Christian faiths, though varied and complex, share a central message of friendship and brotherhood. Christianity spreads quickly, then, through social webs of friends and family. It also encourages not merely evangelism but service and generosity to one’s fellow man. Jesus spread the word of God first to his friends, and then took them to Jerusalem as missionaries; the early Christians are no different. The ritual which will become Catholic communion, for example, is a full meal, shared by Christians at the houses of friends.

These social networks which spread and form through Christianity thrive in urban areas. Christianity, in all its many early forms, is a religion of the city.

The Chapel

The same urban poor who embrace Christianity are the staple food of vampires. The dead are often messy when they feed, particularly in Rome itself. Their passion gets away from them and they kill. Roman citizens are missed when they disappear, and vanishing slaves don’t go unnoticed, either. A Roman who has only one or two slaves likely has personal relationships with them, and even the rare Roman with hundreds of slaves may jealously guard his property. Either slave owner is likely to pursue runaways. All but a few vampires, therefore, feed on the poor, who will only be missed by other wretches. While victims’ families and the mob may be dangerous, poor people are generally safer victims than the rich.

The dead, like Augustus, spend nights in Masquerade among the rabble. Many of the mob also crowd the upper levels of Necropolis, more frightened of cold and abuse than the strange noises below. The dead feed upon the living, and they hear their words. They show mercy, and Embrace childer with strange new beliefs.

The cults of the living have always infiltrated the dead. Often, the Propinqui welcome them for their novelty, bringing color and flavor to unlives spent among bleached bones. By the end of the first century, there are already Kindred in Necropolis babbling about the son of God, whose cult will admit no other divinity. The Nosferatu, who have deliberately Embraced the anonymous poor for centuries, carve a meeting-place in the rock. The Worms sing and hiss the praises of the One God, whose name is Jealous. They drink wine mixed with blood, and by miracles do not spit it forth again.

They are betrayed. The other Worms know well the ways of their kind, and tell the dead above that there is Vitae in the communion draught, tapped from the veins of slumbering elders and unwary Kindred. The Legion of the Dead takes torches into the depths, felling or burning any vampire they find. To their surprise, there are not just Worms, but Courtesans, Wanderers, and even Founders. When they reach the sanctum of the Christians, it is filled with a foul vapor, and it explodes on contact with the flame. Legionnaire and Christian alike parish in the flames. Some claim the explosion was an accident. Others believe that the resurrection cult committed suicide, imagining a life beyond Final Death.

The explosion is felt throughout Necropolis, and it echoes. The Camarilla forbids the cult of the atheists. They prescribe crucifixion before the dawn for any creature found praying or sacrificing to the Jealous God. Their mistake is critical. The Nosferatu sense fear, and along with the Gangrel see a weapon to be used against the Propinqui. The Mekhet wonder about the secrets of death and resurrection underlying the myth of the Nazarene, even as the Daeva smile at a new taboo. Only a few dead actively defy the Senex’s mandate, but those few are enough. They cajole their friends, Embrace Christian childer. Above all, they remember and they resent, nursing long grudges as only vampires can. They remember the Sanctum.

The Spear
When Jesus, called Christ, is executed on the hill of skulls, his followers beg for his body. To ensure that he is dead, the soldier standing watch pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, and is rewarded with a torrent of blood and water. The blood covers his arm, and a droplet falls upon his lips. The taste is sweet, and as the disciples retrieve their teacher from the cross, the soldier licks his arm and spear clean. The spearman becomes Damned without passing the jaws of death, transfigured by the blood of the Savior.

The undead soldier finds himself wracked by hunger for more blood, but nothing from the veins of man or animal can match that which fell from the body of the so-called King of the Jews. He takes “Longinus,” from the spear with which he murdered God.

33 years after that murder, Longinus receives a revelation from God, through an angel called Vahishtael. Vahishtael reveals to Longinus that there are other dead who refuse to die, and that the soldier must bring them purpose. Longinus goes forth to preach among the dead. The core of his teaching is that vampires are Damned through sin: either their own or that of their sires. They are given the shadow of life to herd the living back to righteousness.

Longinus is met at first with confusion, and then with anger. He begins to stalk the pagan cults of the Middle East, appearing to them as an angel of blood and annihilation, revealing the falseness of their Gods. He smashes idols and decries sloth. The established dead of the region are shocked by his actions, yet some are drawn to his teachings. Longinus’ followers (who may or may not include his childer) are not only Jews, but representatives from the pagan faiths. From the cults of Lilith, tended faithfully by the Daeva, they learn the subtle tempting of the living, even as they throw down the Dark Maiden from her pedestals.

The Disciples of the Blood are not numerous, though. Later stories name only 13 of the admitted Damned. When the Jews of Jerusalem revolt against Roman rule in 70 AD, many of Longinus’s followers, and perhaps the spearman himself, join them. When the rubble settles and the vampires of Jerusalem gorge themselves on Jew and Roman alike, the mad preacher is nowhere to be found. They assume the soldier and his cult have been destroyed. They are very wrong.

Over the next century, letters emerge discussing the teachings of Longinus, many allegedly transcribed from the words of the soldier himself. The source is the Monachus, a Christian theologian Embraced to the bosom of the Damned. His followers say he is the childe of Longinus, or one of the first 13. His letters achieve great popularity among Jewish vampires, as well as those Embraced from the growing Christian movement.

In 232 AD, the Monachus and his followers openly celebrate Mass for the first time in a cave just outside Jerusalem. Inside the cave are only the Monachus and his closest followers. Outside, a group of the dead lie in wait, to destroy them. The angel Vahishtael whispers word to the Monachus, however, and he keeps those in the cave praying until dawn. Sunrise somehow catches the assassins unaware, and they are destroyed in fire and frenzy. The followers of the Monachus rejoice, and declare the cave the Sanctuary of the Lance.

From the Testament of Longinus

The dead men of the city gathered there, with murder in their hearts and flames in their hands. But the angel of the Lord whispered to the Monachus: “Do not go to your haven, for you will be set upon by your enemies.” So the Monachus and the disciples slept in the cave.
When they arose the next night, the Damned looked out of the cave, and their enemies had been burnt up by the sun. The Monachus laughed: “They are slothful, and continue their Sabbath past sunset.”
And so those who gather in numbers but do not accept God are called sabbat.

1 Sanguinaria 9:16, trans. Roberts

Covenant
The Monachus and his followers are expelled from Jerusalem. Though their partisans remain hidden among the city’s dead, the most visible of the preachers and penitents are scattered throughout. Many of the Mekhet, as well as members of other clans, return west to the ancestral home of their Blood in Egypt. Others march by night for Rome, where they hide and tempt the Christians. Longinian theology becomes widely popular among the vampiric Jesus cults in the late third century, and is well on its way to becoming the dominant paradigm in the fourth. The Testament of Longinus provides the dead with their own messiah, and an identity separate from the living they consume. They are the Damned, and they know what their covenant with God is. Word spreads East to Rome of a Black Abbey consecrated somewhere by the Monachus, a new Sanctuary of the Lance and beacon of strength for the Damned.

In Rome, neither the followers of Longinus nor any Christians are accepted by the Camarilla. The hundred cults of damnation and salvation fight among each other like dogs, but can always spare the bite of their fangs or the growls of their sermons for those who have not yet learned the truth. After all, they say, we are all Damned and all Kindred in the eyes of God.

The Monachal Apocrypha

No extant version of the Testament of Longinus explains quite why Longinus Embraced the Monachus. Most versions of Torments contain a passage in which Longinus is impressed by the Monachus’ faith and courage, but many vampires of the Chapel and Spear say the story began before that. They say that the Monachus was a Christian theologian called Theodas, whose writing impressed Longinus. They produce as evidence copies of first century, which share a distinctly Longinian interest in the punishment of sinners. The Monachus, they argue, is the true author of the Testament and scholar of the Damned, and the actual recipient of divine revelation. Longinus was merely the hand that thrust the spear, where the Monachus’ lips speak the word of God.

Few of the Damned in Rome have ever met the Monachus, and those who have reject the Theodas letters, and particularly the implicit belief that the Monachus received revelation as a mortal. Several of them, though, enthusiastically acknowledge that he was a Christian before the Embrace and a great scholar besides.

The last positive reference to the letters of Theodas is a copy of a sermon transcribed in Jerusalem in the sixth century.

More interested in the pagans? Check out the sequel, Blood and Bulls.