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Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Table of Contents
Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Table of Contents email at battlewizard@hotmail.com
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Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Prologue: A Gathering of Beasts
Prologue: A Gathering of Beasts
Bela Lugosi's dead, and so am I. But what's left of Bela is rotting in a pine coffin somewhere, while I have the opportunity to
sit here on the balcony, enjoy my drink and look at you. Correct me if I'm being presumptuous, but I suspect that I have the
better end of the deal.
I can tell by looking at you that you're not comprehending. Of course you're not these are cynical, rational times, and you're
not going to believe that I'm a dead man just because I say so. A century ago it would have been different well, it was quite
different the last time I had this little talk with someone but this is the age of facts. And the facts are that corpses don't move,
don't walk, don't talk. I'm terribly sorry, my dear, but I have a surprise for you: This corpse does.
So sit down. Please, I insist that you make yourself comfortable. Pour yourself something to drink, preferably from the
bottle on the left the stuff on the right is an acquired taste. It's going to be a long evening, and you're going to need a stiff
drink or two, I suspect. After all, in the next few hours I'm going to explain to you in excruciating detail why everything you
think you know about life and death is wrong. In other words, you don't know a blessed thing about the way the world really
works, and I'm going to open your eyes.
But I'm afraid, my dear, that you're not going to like what you see.
What I Am
Before we go any further, allow me to tell you that you're getting an unprecedented opportunity here. My kind doesn't talk
about itself to your kind - not now, and for the most part, not ever. We've spent five centuries wearing a stage curtain that we
call the Masquerade to hide the real show for you, but the end it comes down to one simple fact: We vampires don't want
you mortals knowing we're out there. It's for the same reason the wolf doesn't want the sheep knowing he's around. It makes
our work so much easier. And so, for example, though we go indeed posses the sharpened with which dime novels and the
cinema have branded us, you mortals will not see them unless we choose to reveal them. Like so.
You're looking pale, my dear. That will never do if we're going to be seen late - allow me to take care of looking pale for
both of us. Still, I must admit I'm disappointed that you seem so disturbed by the notion of my being a vampire. Take a
moment and compose yourself, if you can. Truth be told, I'm afraid that's the least of the shocks waiting for you tonight.
Please, don't waste time trying to come up with a rational, scientific explanation, because there isn't one. It's just what I am.
What many, many of us are - to many, by some accounts.
Damnation, are you truly that much of a fool? Sit back down. I said sit. Now watch. Hush, stop screaming. No one will
come to rescue you, and no one will call the police - not in this building. Discreet neighbors are a blessing to one in my
condition. It's positively. Victorian the way they ignore anything not directly in front of them.
So, at last you have your proof. Now do you believe me? Yes, it is blood in the other decanter; served cold like that, of
course, the stuff loses much of its taste. You can try it if you like, but I don't recommend it, no. You're not set up to enjoy
such things, at least not as presently configured.
Don't get ahead of yourself guessing my intention, my dear. If I were going to act according to your beloved cliches, your
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Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Prologue: A Gathering of Beasts
would be dead right now. I am a predator, after all, and you and your entire species are my prey.
Beginnings
I suppose we should begin with the basic of the whole thing. I am in fact a vampire, brought into this state of existence in
the Year of Our Lord 1796 by woman who was introduced to me as a quote unquote "lady of evening". The gentleman who
introduced us - one of her servant, I later discovered - had an add sense of humor.
But I digress. Yes. I do drink human blood. Without the nourishment it provides, I will wither away; with it, I will live
forever. Yes, forever. Unless destroyed - and destroying one of the Damned is no mean feat, I can assure you - we vampires
are every bit as immortal as the legends say. Only the sun, and the emotions it engenders, remain forever foreign to us: we
Kindred can drink in the night of countless ages, can remain unchanging while all that we crumbles to dust around us and
replaced by another stage-set that in turn crumbles to dust, and so on...
Ah, once again, I lose the way. Blood, yes blood. I can get by on the blood of animals - most of us can, except the true elders
of our kind - but such a diet is unpleasant. Unpalatable. No, we all want to feed on the best vintages, otherwise one goes
around all the time with a dull ache in one's gut that just never goes away. It gets worse the hungrier one gets, I might add; a
vampire who goes too ling without feeding is liable to demonstrate a regrettable lack of self-control.
There are other tell-tale physiological sings of my condition. My heart does not beat; the strength of my will alone suffices
to force blood through my body. My internal organs, by all accounts, have long since atrophied into vestigial husk, but that
won't matter to a coroner, as once I am truly killed I will rapidly decompose into dust. In the meantime, however, I'm not
troubled by such trifles as breathing, extremes of temperature and the like. My skin is cold, unless I take effort to warm it.
Doing so takes effort, though, and the expenditure of precious blood. Regular food is an abomination unto me, and it doesn't
sit for more that a few second in that remain of my stomach. Even with eternity stretching before me, my dear, I have better
things to do with my time than to crouch over toilets, heaving ashes and gobbets into the bowl.
In layman's terms, then, I am no longer human. For all intents and purposes, I am simply a blood-drinking, ambulatory
cadaver, indistinguishable from any body in a morgue unless I am moving about. I save the niceties like warming my flesh
and remembering to blink for company, such as yourself.
So thank you, dear. Keeping myself fresh and rosy-looking for you is costing me more than you know.
Ah, we return to the drinking of blood, the defining act, as it were, of my state. Yes, am afraid it is necessity, though one can
leave one's prey alive. All that requires is a little self-control and a touch of effort to close the wound - and no, we don't all
drink from neck. You can cross another cliche off your list. The problem with leaving one's prey alive, however, is that
unless one has certain... protection, she remembers. Such breaches of the Masquerade are not looked on kindly by the
vampiric powers that be. Oftentimes, it makes more sense simply to kill.
My Drinking Problem
The crux of the matter, really, is that drinking blood not only allows me to perpetuate my existence, but also provides a
sensation unlike anything else this world has to offer. What is it like? My dear, words cannot describe it. Imagine drinking
the finest champagne and the sensation of the most sensual lovemaking you've ever experienced. Overlay that that with the
rush the opium fiend feels as he takes that first breath on the pipe, and you begin to have some sense, some tiny,
infinitesimal sense of what it feels like to drink the blood of a kine - excuse me, a living human being. Your modern-day
addict will lie, steal, cheat and kill for their little tickets to Heaven. Mine is better, and it makes me immortal besides. Can
you imagine the deeds I might commit to feed that hunger? Don't bother speaking possibilities; the truth than you can
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Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Prologue: A Gathering of Beasts
imagine. And I am considered to be a gentleman of my kind. Now imagine, if you will, some of my relatives, the ones who
aren't so nice as I.
They can - and do - commit acts that even I don't wish to consider.
And here you are, poor little mortal, learning how fragile your whole existence is.
Are you starting to be afraid yet? You should be.
The First Fatal Sip
In most cases, one receives one's first drink of blood on the night one becomes a vampire - one of the "Kindred", as we like
to call ourselves. The process is called "The Embrace", and has two distinct and rather difficult phases. The first is simple:
The vampire who wishes to create progeny drinks every last drop of blood he can from his intended "childe". This is no
different from normal feeding, save that one doesn't need to worry about erasing the memory or disposing of the corpse
afterward, and that one gets a very full meal indeed. The difference comes afterward.
Once the last bit of blood has pulsed its way out, the parent vampire - the technical term is "sire", not that you care yet - then
returns some of his ill-gotten gains. He bites his lip, or wrist, or whatever, and allow some of his blood to pass his victim's
lips. Assuming that the mortal does not actively and successfully resist the process - few do, believe me - and assuming that
the sire has not delayed too long in granting this gift, then the blood trickles down the victim's throat and revives her, albeit
as a vampire.
It sounds simple, does it not? The truth is, as truth is always wont to be, more complicated. My own Embrace would seem to
be the epitome of the lushly romantic gloss your age has put on my king, and even so I shudder in retrospect at the memory.
All of the ingredients of romance were there - the candlelit boudoir, the half-drink goblets of wine, milady's pale heaving
bosom - one would think we'd retreated from the party into the pages of a novel. And so we tumbled onto the bed, and, at
the height of passion, she plunged her fangs into my neck. Between the pleasure of the moment and the pleasure of her
feeding - yes, it is quite pleasurable for mortals, to the point of addiction for some - I was quite content to drift away. I
remember distinctly thinking that my mother had been right about me after all, and that loose women would be the death of
me, and I even recall laughing as my sire drank my life.
And then, as I lay there watching that shimmering door open before me, as my soul took its first faltering steps toward I
leaven, she calmly slit her wrist and poured the vitriol of eternal life down my throat. You can mock me for not rejecting
what she offered, but even in the face of Grace, life is sweet. Her blood seared as it trickled past my lips and down my
throat, and I found myself wanting to live. The pain the blood brought was proof that I was alive. And, when it became clear
that I would not be ascending, the shining door vanished with a feeling of ineffable sadness, leaving me with my sire and a
murderous hunger. Fortunately, my sire was kind enough to see me through the change; she'd seduced my best friend prior
to stalking me, and cached him in an adjoining room like a shrike stocking its larder. While I felt my body dying cell by cell,
he lay senseless, waiting far my hunger.
Ah, yes, the hanger of creation. That little bit of blood that one's sire uses to bestow the Embrace isn't much - a few drops
with more mystical than nutritional significance. They certainly don't provide enough sustenance to satisfy the hunger of a
newborn vampire. So the newborn childe had better pray her sire has laid in a few bottles or, better yet, a few bodies for the
moment, so that there's something to feed on right after change. I've witnessed the horror of newly Embraced Kindred giving
in to that uncontrollable hunger and ripping to shreds whoever was nearest in their madness. When that first thirst is upon
you, you will do whatever you must to feed. You will kill your lover, your child, your parent or your priest to sate that thirst,
and you will be glad to do so - for as long as the frenzy lasts.
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Vampire: the Masquerade Revised - Prologue: A Gathering of Beasts
There, my dear, is the rub. Because no matter how long you're in that state of frenzy, no matter what triggered it - fear or
hunger or pain or rage - no matter how long you give in to the animal inside you, you can't control what you do and you
always come down. And that's when you must deal with the consequences of what you did when that animal wearing your
skin was in control. And the first frenzy is never last. One would think it gets easier to deal with that loss of control as one
grows more experienced. One who thought that would be quite wrong.
The Beast
A vampire's animalistic side is called the Beast, in what is, I suspect, an attempt to demonize it by dissociation. Alas, merely
giving the monstrous urge a different name is not enough to tame it. In the end the Beast always wins, I'm told. If one
survives long enough as a vampire, one is forced by one's own nature to do some obscene things. And eventually, one gets
acclimated to committing those atrocities and moves on to new ones, and whatever was human in that vampire dies. When
the last bit of humanity in vampire dies - and once you watch enough friends, lover ones and descendants pass into the dust
of ages, it does die, rest assured - then the Beast takes over once and for all. The vampire becomes an animal. If you ever
reach that stage, the odds are you won't even notice when you get put down like a mad dog.
If you will is strong, and you've got a decent sense of self, you can hold out for decades. Centuries, even - I have spoken to a
Kindred who is over two millennia old. But you are never, never free of the fear that the Beast will one night triumph, and
that fear is what the Beast will use to bring you to bay.
Of course, the best way to fight the Beast is to keep oneself in fighting trim, and that means eating regularly. Then again,
eating regularly usually means that sooner or later, you start killing kine - mortals, pardon me again - and the more Kine you
kill, the easier the killing gets. So the Beast wins that way, as well. Even if you don't mean to, even if the process begins
with an accident, sooner or later you get inured to the sight of a brand-new corpse that you're responsible for, lying dead at
your feet. After the tenth, hundredth, thousandth or whatever corpse, it stops being a person and becomes an object, a vessel.
A footnote in your history of the ages. And you, at that moment, cease to be remotely human.
A Return to Blood
But there's more to blood than just food, a lot more. There's power to it, so much so that some vampires call it vitae - "of
life". Blood above and beyond what is needed to survive can be put to a variety of uses. The legendary vampiric strength or
speed? A product of the proper application of blood. Invulnerability to mortal woes? Another draught from the same well.
I've had pistol emptied into my belly and not slowed down a whit. Blood powers many of the "magical" talents ascribed to
us as well; you've witnessed one. And of course, I can flush blood to my skin so as to appear, well, almost human.
There is price to be paid, of course. The more blood I spend on such parlor tricks, the more quickly I exhaust what is in my
belly. The more quickly I empty my gut, the sooner I need to feed - and hunt - once again.
You would prefer me to cease the charade of warmth, then? I am in your debt. It is so refreshing to meet a young person
who is willing to look past appearances, don't you think? Hmm? My dear, were you six times your current age you'd be a
child to me. "Young" is relative term.
Tsk. I'm feeling a bit hungry. Would you care to escort me out on the town? The other option is that I leave you here as
prisoner, and I'd prefer not to do that. No doubt you'd try to get inventive and escape, and I'd lose some antiques as you
smashed things in the process. You, my dear, a replaceable. My possessions are not. It's that simple.
The Lies
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