DEDICATIONS

For all the VAMPIRE fans out there and for the love of the game.

DESIGNS
WRITTEN BY - The many creative creatures over the years,
most of this book is a collaboration of
Vampire the Masquerade Source books (With a little creativity on my part).

EDITED BY - Jasin Holliday, so any mistakes blame him.

ART
COVER ART DESIGN BY - Jasin Holliday | Vampire the Masquerade Logo
by Chris Elliott,Tomas Arfert.

BOOK DESIGN AND LAYOUT - Jasin Holliday

PHOTOGRAPY - iStock | ShutterStock Edited By - Jasin Holliday

THE CONTENT WITHIN THIS BOOK IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY

NOT FOR SALE.
TZIMISCE

Fiends,

Fleshcrafters,

Carpathians,

Voivode

1

Who are the
Tzimisce?
A blood moon casts a crimson light
over the land beyond the forest and
something fearsome howls its agony
into the night. The Tzimisce call these
lands their ancestral home. Since time
out of mind the Fiends have been
masters and lords of the domains of
much of Eastern Europe. But theirs is
a proud, selfish Clan for which
tradition goes only so far despite their
aristocratic origins. In fact, the Clan
claims to have destroyed its
Antediluvian, and in the wake of that
momentous event, helped establish
the foundations of the Sabbat.
Tzimisce practice a strange Discipline
known as Vicissitude that allows them
to twist the skin and bone of their
victims. In many cases, they
refine their fleshly arts by practicing
upon themselves, but they just as
frequently use it upon their lackeys
and retainers, turning their boyars
and szlachta (fleshcrafted ghouls) into
monstrous thralls. Vicissitude itself is
a much-misunderstood Discipline,
and debates over its origins
occasionally plunge the Clan into
vicious partisan rivalries. Clan
Tzimisce is a Clan of extremes, and
long, cold nights spent in remote
castles have turned the Fiends’
perspectives both greatly inward and
outward. Mystics of the Clan study a
philosophy of metamorphosis, seeking
to discover what lies beyond the state
of vampirism. An alien attitude of
spiritual secularism characterizes
Vicissitude, Tzimisce look however they
want, and they often want to provoke or
frighten. Some prefer extreme
modifications and experimentations
many Tzimisce. Young members of the
Clan often find themselves detached
from the historical role of the Fiends as
terrifying landed lords and throw
themselves wholly into a cause of their
own choice, whether as Sabbat zealots,
fleshcrafted horrors, or transcendental
koldun sorcerers. Given their ability to
manipulate their physical appearance
with their bodies that leave them
looking only vaguely humanoid. Others
seek to redefine and even transcend the
limits of their forms, rebuilding
themselves in the images of angels,
monsters, nightmares, and things even
less recognizable.
Tzimisce in
Kindred Society
Within the Sabbat, the Tzimisce are
the spiritual leaders and scholars, they
prefer being pack priests, Prisci, or even
not having titles at all and focusing on
personal development. Some vampires
even ponder (out of earshot, of course)
that the Tzimisce are not very sincere in
their attachment to the sect, and that
the only reasons they are even present
amongst the Sabbat is their dislike of
Camarilla clans (especially the
2
SABBAT CLANS
Tremere) and not fitting with the
Camarilla's policy of hiding among
humans (Tzimisce tend to see humans
as mere plaything below their
consideration). However, those
Tzimisce who show genuine
dedication to the Sabbat ideal are
paragons of their sect, impressing (and
even scaring) other Sabbat with their
fervor and contributions.
The Embrace
Tzimisce Embraces are supremely
selfish – often based on specific
obsessions or interests of the sire,
rather than any distinctive
characteristic of the childe. Those
with interests matching their own are
particularly prized, and many
Tzimisce childer were masters of their
field in life – whether this field was
medicine or serial murder is a trifling
distinction though.
Elder Tzimisce, particularly those of
the still-landed nobility in hoary old
domains, may have family lines from
which they Embrace, or they may
restrict their occasional siring to the
terrified villages suffering in thrall
beneath their estates. New World and
younger Tzimisce aren’t as
discriminating and are more practical.
Indeed, many Tzimisce fledglings are
little more than shock troops,
Embraced and warped to the limits of
their frames to cause revulsion and
revel in bloodshed until put down.
TZIMISCE

3
 SABBAT CLANS

Factions Among Fiends The Romanian Legacy Foundation

Somewhere, there is a girl scarred with an
Anglicized name. She grows with a trace of our
Children of the Dracon blood coursing through her veins. She is
Metamorphosis takes on many odd forms, but
talented, intelligent, a prodigy. She is
none as strange as when seen through the
disturbed, prone to bouts of depression and fits
stained-glass window of
of rage. Neighbours find the mutilated bodies of
piety. The Children of the Dracon are a
local pets. She had tried to carve something out
monastic order of Fiends, tracing their roots to
of them, something she cannot name. Despite
Constantinople and claiming descent from the
her haunted life, she grows into a natural
first childe of Tzimisce. Flesh is their prayer,
leader, a fiery brilliance. Yet she is unfulfilled,
sculpting their sacrament, and they seek to find
still cannot find the nameless thing she sought
the divinity hidden within themselves and
in the flesh of all those dogs and cats. She finds
others. Heaven on Earth is just a nip and a tuck
the right classified advertisement or internet
away. The Children of the Dracon reject the
site, a non-profit genealogical organization.
influence of Kupala; even refuse to take part in
After submitting her family tree, she is selected
any ritae they believe has ties to koldunic
to attend a convention, which leads to a private
practices. Clan elders do what they can to
party at the estate of a distant relative. The
shield the Children from the political backlash
scene is a bloody bacchanalia — much of the
of this refusal. The knightly order exists to
decadent, much of the terrible. She is unafraid.
atone for some past sin of the Tzimisce.
This is what she sought. Before dawn, when the
Politically, they act contrary to nearly every
ceilings drip with gore, she is Embraced. The
major decision of the Clan proper, always
next night, she is assigned a sponsor and
sitting as angels or demons upon our shoulders.
introduced to the society of the Damned.
Their elders prefer the Children to remain
active in the Sect, rather than cloistering
That is the work of the Romanian Legacy
themselves. The order produces many templars
Foundation. Its board of trustees include names
and no few members of the Sabbat Inquisition.
such as Bratovitch, Obertus, Grimaldi, and
Children of the Dracon often come from the
Zantosa, and is composed of Cainites who came
Obertus revenant family. The training is
from our revenant houses. The Foundation
rigorous and begins while they are still mortal.
keeps the families in touch, hosts gatherings,
They travel the globe, learning the 12 legacies
and welcoming revenants into undeath. Such
of the order, returning to their monastery of
chosen are given something more than a spade
origin for the Embrace. If the initiate is an
to the head and a shallow grave. Not everyone
Akoimetai, the scholarly wing of the order, he
who carries our blood knows it. The Foundation
is entrusted with one volume from the Library
scours the globe for our wayward babes.
of the Forgotten. If a knight, he must carry a
Globalization has spread the seed of our Clan
letter he is forbidden to open, sealed by the
far, and this new millennium has revealed an
mark of the Dracon himself or some other elder
exciting harvest of such delicious fruit.
Fiend. Monasteries dot the globe, and often
serve as the haven for the local Children

4
TZIMISCE
Neofeudalists
Behold the fiendish Don Quixote. A broken
anachronism to some, a folk hero to others.
Most likely, a bit of both. Not a faction in the
strictest sense, but an ideal, an attitude that can
bleed into the other factions. It creates strange
camaraderie. The Old Clan Fiend and the
Metamorphosist, normally at each other’s
throat, find grudging respect and native pride
when they acknowledge their mutual
neofeudalist leanings. The neofeudalists seek a
return to the nights of kings and serfs. They
claim vast domains, sire large broods, are the
most gracious hosts, but demoniacal to any who
trespass uninvited. As a point of honour, they
are self-sufficient from the Sabbat, whom they
are at odds with nearly as often as the
Camarilla. On the cutting edge of today, few
espouse this ideal. Fewer still actually live it.
Even fewer survive it for long. Seeing such an
exemplar causes something resembling
admiration to squirm in our wormy hearts.
However, nostalgia, even for something so
majestic, is still a pathetic, atrophied organ of
humanity. Kiss the vestigial hand growing out of
your cousin’s head, if you must, but know when
to break it off.
Exsanguinists
The Eldest explored the terrible vistas of
possibility, stared into the transcendentally
grotesque, and the only thing that disturbed it
was the Hunger. Immortality is relative, and if
we truly want to dance with eternity, the
Hunger must be conquered. The Exsanguinists
understand this. They know that feeding the
Hunger only deepens it, only erodes and widens
the ravenous well inside us, until all that we are
is nothing. Unlike other blood cults who gorge
on gore, the Exsanguinists practice feeding
abstinence. This Metamorphosist offshoot has
developed ignoblis ritae
to avoid drinking blood for as long as possible.
They teach meditative techniques. They throw
themselves into distraction. If they can increase
the length of time between each feeding, perhaps
recommend them as pleasant company.
The Oradea League
The Oradea League and the Tzimisce Antitribu
Semantics make for a tedious game, but the
Tzimisce, by and large, do not bother with terms
like “antitribu.” Though our personal visions,
and even our symmetries, may differ, a Fiend is
still a Fiend. Most belong to the Sabbat. The
rest, particularly the elders, are apolitical. Not
even the Oradea League bandies about the word
“antitribu.” They are an alliance of ancient
Tzimisce, powerful fiends who survived the
Anarch Revolt. They maintain their feudal lands
around the Romanian city of Oradea. A pledge
of unity ensures that an outside force attacking
one these puissant monsters will face them all.
The League has refused to submit to either the
Camarilla or Sabbat. There are a few individual
Tzimisce who have joined the Camarilla, but in a
Clan of monsters of such individuality, this
notion does not aggravate our vanity as it does
the Lasombra. Likely, the motivations of a Fiend
walking in the Ivory Tower would be very
personal, specific, and temporary, to make them
stomach the company of the Warlocks. Perhaps
there are Fiends there in hiding. Perhaps they
wear faces that are not their own.
5

Archetypes
BAKER
You used to travel from town to town, a peddler of
the bizarre and grotesque. Ever the showman, your
macabre charm brought in the audiences to gaze upon
your freak show attractions. Occasionally, you took
their blood. Sometimes you kept an audience member
and added them to the menagerie. These days, you lead
a more stationary unlife. You’ve opened a House of
Oddities in the city. Your creations hide in plain sight.
This modern world celebrates the grotesque. The
gawkers come to you. Why just last week, a small band
of thieves tried breaking into your place. The look on
their faces when the pickled punks leapt out of the jar
to defend you…? Well, that was just priceless. “Safe
home, dear friends, and come again!”
FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENT
You have recently arrived in a new country. You carry
the soil of your homeland, but you seek to transcend it.
Just as the koldun of the old country commune with
the spirits of the earth there, you seek to find the
voices in this new soil. You research the lore of this
new place. You meditate on the ebb and flow of its
energy. You commune with these new people also.
Through Auspex, you peer inside of them. You taste
their emotions. You pluck out their joys, fears,
character quirks, and idiosyncrasies. You bury these
concepts in your brain. You perform mental grave
robbery, taking the spare parts to the laboratory in
your skull, trying out each intangible trait, grafting
them to your psyche in varying combinations. Every
night, you let loose a new creation, a new you. Let the
other Fiends play at their crude patchwork of flesh.
You construct Azi Dahaka in the mind. Foundation
Recruiter The blood of the revenant families has
spread so far and so thin. The right talent and genes
can surface almost anywhere in the world. The
Romanian Legacy Foundation sends you out to find
the descendants of the revenant houses who are now
SABBAT CLANS
far beyond the ancestral lands. You maintain a
Foundation website. You give presentations in hotel
convention rooms. You follow emails, birth
certificates, genealogy studies — the nearly invisible
trail of Tzimisce blood that spans the globe. You
conduct interviews. When you find the worthy, you
bring them in, saving them from the fate of dying as
exceptionally talented mortals. Lost in the Ivory
Tower The Camarilla took the city. Everyone was
destroyed, all of your packmates. Only you remain.
Desperate, you took on the face of one of the Ivory
Tower Kindred who died in the battle. You tasted his
heart’s blood and touched just enough of his
memories. Somehow, in the chaotic aftermath, the
ruse worked. But what now? All you know is the city.
Outside are the Lupines and death. How long can this
insane farce continue? You fall deeper and deeper into
this stolen identity, Sect, and Clan. The nights go by,
and Vinculum is a distant memory. This was only
supposed to be a temporary solution.
PARANOID FIEND
You’ve read the writings of an ancient of the Old
Clan. An Obertus monk preached to you about the
Dracon’s immaculate conception. You once talked to
a guy who talked with Lambach Ruthven. You’ve put
it together. You know what’s going on. But now, it
knows that you know. It began in small ways. You
woke to find your clothing torn, things in your haven
rearranged, a knife in one hand and fingers missing
from the other. One dusk, you found the words “BE A
GOOD LAD” flesh-scrawled into your chest. It’s in
there, watching you now, isn’t it? Now you spend all
your time in the lab. You’ve missed several auctoritas
ritae. The others are beginning to talk. Who can you
trust? You experiment until you collapse with the sun.
You write your findings in the dark, so it won’t see.
You tried to exsanguinate all of your vitae. You
removed your own limbs. It does no good. No going
back. You scream from the hyper awareness of
something the size of a planet greasily slithering
between your dead cells. You try to warn the other
Fiends, but no one listens. They say you are insane.
Really? Do they think so? Oh, how glorious that
would be if it were true.
6
TZIMISCE
SCHOLAR OF THE AKOIMETAI
You grew up among the Obertus. You learned the 12
Legacies and were Embraced a Child of the Dracon.
You travel the world, in study and pious
contemplation. You search for the Divinity Within.
You attempt to sculpt Heaven on Earth in the flesh.
Your hands are not an artist’s hands, but when inspired
by the Holy Ghost, you can find godhead in the crude
meat. You tap into something bigger than yourself and
are able to shape symmetry you could never have
imagined, forms that existed before dreams. Sometimes
you show mortals this primeval iconography. When
you show them your celestial face, when they scream
and sweat blood, then you are reminded of why angels
always must preface their visitations with the words
“Be not afraid.”
SHABBY VOIVODE
You are the land. You claimed a particularly opulent
mausoleum in the city cemetery as your manor. You
took in the homeless as your subjects. Democracy had
used and discarded them, and you gave them
something purer. To the few exceptional transients,
you gave the sacrament of your blood, from your bent
chalice, making them your personal bogatyri. You
control the city park where you hold court, but your
demesne grows alley by alley, shelter by shelter.
Judicious impaling taught the gangs where not to
tread. The urban birds and beasts are your eyes and
ears. Your word is law in the hearts and minds of
peasants. Your loving subjects made you a crown of
barbed-steel thorns. You live the neofeudalist ideal
better than your fellow Cainites, who hide in
penthouses or skulk in sewers. They laugh at you, but
it must be from jealousy.
WALKING URBAN LEGEND
The Eldest found transcendence in dreams, and you
seek inspiration in the dark dreams of others. You
travel the country, collecting urban and rural myths —
stories passed from mouth to ear — stories that live,
crawl, and evolve with each telling. You change with
the stories too, fashioning yourself into the monsters.
You are a hook-handed killer. You are the bleeding
woman who appears in the darkened mirror. You are
the Chupacabra. You enact the gory legends, enriching
the dead water soil in the nightmares of the kine.
Sometimes you focus on one legend, refining the
minutia of its image as you travel. You find
Metamorphosis through the nuanced regional
differences you discover from town to town, forced
evolution along the road. Scary stories are fun when
you’re dead!
WEAVER
You wield your bone shears with the gentle grace of an
artist. The miracles you can work with human leather.
The osseous jewellery. The bioluminescent gown. The
still living great coat, kept alive with vitae, covered in
eyes that still blink. The flesh and bone coffin you
designed for the Archbishop herself that lovingly opens
for her, every dawn, with the deliberation of a Venus
flytrap. For all the Sabbat’s talk of transcending human
customs, they still preen like demon peacocks when
they gather. Shock and awe. You give that to them. You
are in high demand. You give them post-human fashion
— post mundane. Not just garments; you give them
designer ghouls and designer selves. The packs strive to
be monsters, reach for freakishness, but many do not
have the skill to truly transform. The poor dears. Why
should the Fiends be the only ones to experience
Metamorphosis? Your Clanmates are so self-centred.
You were always extroverted. You want to share. You
want to give.
7
 SABBAT CLANS

Bane
The Tzimisce are inextricably tied to their
domains of origin, and must rest in the proximity
of at least two handfuls of “native soil” earth from
a place important to her as a mortal, such as the
soil from her birthplace or the graveyard where
she underwent her Embrace. Each night spent
without this physical connection to her land limits
all the Tzimisce’s dice pools by one dice per Bane
level, cumulatively, until she has only a single die
in her pool. The penalty remains until she rests for
a full day amidst her native soil once more.

Clan Compulsion
HOSPITALITY
A noble lord and exalted predator, the vampire
feels their Blood call for civility. They are the lord
of their domain, and to disrespect their guests is to
disrespect themselves. While within their domain
or haven, the vampire suffers a two-dice penalty to
any and all rolls that would adversely affect their
known guests. This Compulsion lasts until the
guests leave the vampire’s domain or haven.

Disciplines
Animalism:To Tzimisce Animalism is more proof
they are the Lords of the land, the beasts of the
land even bend to their will.

Auspex: Nothing is hidden to the Tzimisce for

long. Tzimisce use Auspex to enhance their
senses, strengthening their sight or hearing to a
supernatural level, or to see what is underneath
the surface, the true nature or things.

Vicissitude: Vicissitude is used to bend the will of

the flesh to their desires. They use it to mold
ghouls into horrors, and their own bodies into
god.

8
TZIMISCE
MEDICINE SPECIALLITY
BODY CRAFTS
Tzimisce who wish to use Vicissitude well often
specialize their knowledge of Medicine in an art
known as Body Crafts. This specialization enables its
possessor to make all manner of alterations to living
and dead flesh and bone. It also gives insight into more
mundane techniques; many Tzimisce are skilled at
flaying, bone-carving, embalming, taxidermy,
tattooing, and piercing.
Vicissitude
Characteristics: Vicissitude is the signature power of
the Tzimisce and is rarely shared outside the Clan
(though it is known to some other Cainites of the
Sabbat). Similar to Protean in some ways, Vicissitude
allows vampires to shape and sculpt flesh and bone.
The wielder must establish skin-to-skin contact and
must often manually sculpt the desired result for these
powers to take effect. This also applies to the use of
the power on oneself. Tzimisce skilled in Vicissitude
are often inhumanly beautiful; those less skilled are
simply inhuman. There are rumours that Vicissitude
is a disease rather than a “normal” Discipline, but only
the Fiends know for sure, and they aren’t talking.
• Type: Physical
• Masquerade Threat: High. It is very difficult to
explain the effects of Vicissitude as natural, but
not impossible if you use it creatively.
• Blood Resonance: Melancholy.
• The blood of the sad and desperate - Anguish
and torment fuels Vicissitude.
Level 1
MALLEABLE VISAGE
A vampire with this power may alter her own bodily
parameters: height, build, voice, facial features, and
skin tone, among other things. Such changes are
cosmetic and minor in scope — no more than a foot (30
cm) of height gained or lost, for example. She must
physically sculpt the alteration, literally shaping her
flesh into the desired result.
• Cost: One or More Rouse Checks
• Dice Pools: Intelligence + Medicine. Or Perception
+ Medicine
• System: The player must roll a Rouse Check for
each body part to be changed, and then roll
Intelligence + Medicine. To duplicate another
person or voice requires a Perception + Medicine
roll and five successes are required for a flawless
copy; fewer successes leave minute (or not-so-
minute) flaws. Increasing one’s Looks Trait
requires at least eight successes and the vampire
must roll an additional Rouse Check for each dot
of Looks increased beyond their natural total.
• Duration: When a Kindred uses Vicissitude to alter
mortals and ghouls this is permanent. When used
on vampires of higher Generation, the effects of
the power last for one night per success rolled and
must be “healed” as per aggravated damage.
Vampires of equal or lower Generation can choose
to heal the effects of Vicissitude as though they
were superficial wounds. While the subject must
roll Rouse Checks to “heal” the effects of Malleable
Visage, they are not actual wounds and cause no
real damage.
Note: Nosferatu always “heal” Vicissitude
alterations, automatically without Rouse Checks.
The ancient curse of the Clan may not be
circumvented through Vicissitude. The same
applies to physical deformities from the Gangrel
Clan weakness.
9

Level 2
FLESHCRAFT
This power is similar to Malleable Visage, but allows
the vampire to perform drastic, grotesque alterations
on other creatures. Tzimisce often use this power to
transform their servitors into monstrous guards, the
better to frighten foes. Only flesh (skin, muscle, fat,
and cartilage, but not bone) may be transformed with
Malleable Visage.
• Cost: One or More Rouse Checks
• Dice Pools: Dexterity+ Medicine
• System: After rolling a Rouse Check, the vampire
must grapple the intended victim. The player of
the Flesh-crafting vampire makes a successful
Dexterity+ Medicine roll. A vampire who wishes
to increase another’s Looks Trait does so as
described under Malleable Visage; reducing the
Attribute is considerably, though truly inspired
disfigurement may dictate a higher difficulty. In
either case, each success increases or reduces the
Attribute by one. A vampire may use this power
to move clumps of skin, fat, and muscle tissue,
thus providing additional padding where needed.
For each success scored on a Dexterity + Medicine
roll, the vampire may create body armour rating
of 1 in the subject’s, at the expense of either a
point of Strength or a health level
(vampire’s choice).
• Duration: Same as Malleable Visage.
VICISSITUDE
Level 3
BONECRAFT
This terrible power allows a vampire to
manipulate bone in the same manner that flesh
is shaped. In conjunction with Fleshcraft,
above, this power enables a Vicissitude
practitioner to deform a victim (or herself)
beyond recognition. This power should be used
in conjunction with the flesh-shaping arts,
unless the vampire wants to inflict injury on
the victim (see below).
• Cost: One or More Rouse Checks
• Dice Pools: Strength + Medicine vs
Stamina + Athletics
• System: The vampire’s player must make
a Rouse Check and make a Strength +
Medicine vs the subjects Stamina +
Athletics each success inflicts one health
level of aggravated damage on human
victim and superficial damage to
vampires as their bones rip, puncture,
and slice their way out of their skin.
Bonecraft may be used without the
fleshshaping arts, as a defensive and
offensive weapon as well. The vampire
may utilize this power (on herself or
others) to form spikes or talons of bone,
either on the knuckles or fingers as an
offensive weapon or all over the body as
defensive “quills.” If bone spikes are used,
the vampire and victim takes one health
level of superficial damage (the vampire’s
comes from having the very sharp bone
pierce through his skin — this weaponry
doesn’t come cheaply). In the case of
quills, the subject takes a number of
superficial damage equal to five minus
the number of successes. These health
levels may be healed normally. Knuckle
spikes inflict Strength +1 superficial
damage. Defensive quills inflict a hand-
to-hand attacker’s Strength in superficial
damage unless the attacker scores three
or more successes on the attack roll (in
10
TZIMISCE
which case the attacker takes no damage); the
defender still takes damage normally. Quills
also enable the vampire or altered subject to
add two to all damage inflicted via holds,
clinches, or tackles. A vampire who scores five
or more successes on the Strength + Medicine
vs Stamina + Athletics roll may cause a rival
vampire’s rib cage to curve inward and pierce
the heart. While this does not send a vampire
into torpor, it does cause the affected vampire
to lose gain one hunger dice, as the seat of his
vitae ruptures in a shower of gore.
Level 4
HORRID FORM
Kindred use this power to become hideous and
deadly monsters. The vampire’s stature increases to a
full eight feet (two and a half meters), the skin
becomes a sickly greenish-grey or greyish-black
chitin, the arms become apelike and ropy with
ragged black nails, and the face warps into
something out of a nightmare. A row of spines
sprouts from the vertebrae, and the external
carapace exudes foul-smelling grease.
• Cost: Two Rouse Check
• Dice Pools: N/A
• System: To awaken the Horrid Form the vampire
rolls two Rouse Checks. It takes a full turn to
change and no other action can be made during
that time. In Horrid Form the vampires Physical
Attributes increase by three, but all Social
Attributes drop to zero, except when dealing with
others also in Horrid Form. However, a vampire
in Horrid Form who is trying to intimidate
someone may substitute Strength for a Social
Attribute. Damage inflicted in brawling combat
increases by one due to the jagged ridges and bony
knobs creasing the creature’s hands and body.
• Duration: One scene unless ended voluntarily
before that.
Level 5
BLOOD FORM
A vampire with this power can physically transform
all or part of her body into sentient vitae. This blood
is in all respects identical to the vampire’s normal
vitae; she can use it to nourish herself or others,
create ghouls, or establish blood bonds. In Blood
Form the vampire cannot be harmed other than
sunlight and fire, however they can be diabolised in
this form. If all this blood is imbibed or otherwise
destroyed, the vampire meets Final Death.
• Cost: One to Three Rouse Checks
• Dice Pools: N/A
• System: The vampire may transform all or part of
herself as she deems fit. Each leg can turn into two
Hunger Points worth of vitae, as can the torso;
each arm, the head, and the abdomen convert to
one Hunger Point each. The blood can be
reconverted to the body part, provided it is in
contact with the vampire. If the blood has been
utilized or destroyed, the vampire must spend a
number of Hunger Points equal to what was
originally created to regrow the missing body part.
A vampire entirely in this form may not be staked,
cut, bludgeoned, or pierced, but can be burned or
exposed to the sun. The vampire may ooze along,
drip up walls, and flow through the narrowest
cracks. Mental Disciplines may be used, provided
no eye contact or vocal utterance is necessary,
although the vampire can perceive her
surroundings just fine (but the perceptions are
always centred on the largest pool of blood). If a
vampire in this form “washes” over a mortal or
animal, that mortal must make a Composure roll
or fly into a panic.
• Duration: One scene unless ended voluntarily
before that.
11
 VICISSITUDE

About Our Bane

We are the deathless lords of man and

beast. Spirits tremble at our evocation. Yet,
we pay fealty to two handfuls of dirt. How
did this happen? Noddists cite myths in
which Caine curses our entire line. Koldun
believe it is a debt owed to the spirits of
the land. Proud Fiends insist this is neither
curse, weakness, nor indebtedness, but a
symbol of their connection to the homeland.
But which homeland? The world spins, and
now every patch of soil calls out to one
Clanmate or another. This soil might come
from home, their grave, or from some patch
of earth otherwise meaningful to the
Cainite. I have another theory. We travel
the far vistas of sensation and thought. We
leave behind all things familiar — the sun,
palpitation, human morality, even our
identities and forms. Perhaps the soil is our
concession, our one allowed anchor when
we sail out into the Dead Water and
explore the outer regions of contemplation.
Perhaps the Eldest was wise in imposing
this rule on his children, as he sent them
off to the terrible, alien stratospheres.
What would our inward journey cost us
without this precaution? Maybe the
Malkavians merely forgot to take their two
handfuls with them.

12
A GUIDE FOR 5TH EDITION