The mythology of the World of Darkness is a very complex thing. It was developed by a legion of people for 30+ years now, and it consists of many books, novels and supplements. The new plotlines were added and the existing ones refined. Of course, it often resulted in contradictory effects, like e.g. some metaplots events happening in only specific revisions of the setting, but overally it’s a smart and deep lore.

The whole setting is a one doomsday story. It really doesn’t matter when one places one’s sessions – be that ancient times, medieval, victorian or contemporary – there’s always a feeling of impending doom present. The fear for destruction of one’s being and the world around. The End of the World, the Apocalypse (Werewolf), the Oblivion (Wraith), the Banality (Changeling) and the Gehenna (Vampire). This one thing defines the whole mood of the each story told in that universe.

Is it true what I just said? On the second thought – not really, because, as always, it depends of the players how and what they want to play. As with every other setting, Vampire (and the whole WoD) allows one to tell all kinds of stories. You want comedy? No problem, you want action movie? Easy peasy. You want a slice of life? Absolutely.

The thing is all of those somewhere, somehow have always the bitter aftertaste. The comedy could be silly or really funny but sooner or later the vampire has to feed. Hunt or be hunted. That’s why one of the first most visible things in the lorebooks is how a vampire cannot maintain the relations with his mortal family. Well, she can try, but it won’t do good to anyone… On the contrary.

The vampiric state in VtM is a peculiar thing. No vampire knows for sure what are it’s origins. Many tried to explain the thing scientifically (Malkavian vampire Dr Douglas Netchurch…) to fail – there’s so many mystical and paranormal elements to the problem it’s just not possible to use just science to explain it. Some perceive it as a superhuman eveolutionary adaptation.  The ultimate predatory state, if you will. Some see it mythologically -as a curse. Such is the case of those western vampires, mostly from the Sabbat sect, believing that vampires come from the first murderer, Caine who slew his brother Abel, and was curse by God., and as such was condemned from the very start as was any offspring he dared to create.

And here’s the problem. It’s not the only possible explanation to it. First of all, Chinese vampires do not share that belief, and in fact, they are so bizarre in comparison to their western brethren, it sometimes makes the Caine story completely invalid. There are also multiple beliefs around how Caine came to power around western vampires (as stated in the most important vampiric text: “The Book of Nod”). One says he got his power from Lilith, who, predated him as a vampire (“Revelations of the Dark Mother”).  There’s an Egyptian strain, believing in Set as the first and the most powerful one, there’s an Arabic one, believing in Haqim as the progenitor… Many, many cults and beliefs, completely blurring the truth, whatever it may be.

The major belief, and the subject of coflict is the notion that Caine has created their first offspring, three vampires at first (the Second Generation) that created their offspring (The Third Generation) and lived with them in an ancient city of Enoch. But vampires are not nice, and curse or not, The Third Generation slain and eaten the Second. Caine left with grief and anger and the mithical Deluge was sent by God to cleanse the Earth from vampiric disease.

But some vampires from the Third Generation survived. These are known as Antediluvians, one of the scaries entities in the World of Darkness. Hidden, unbelievable powerful, godlike, always scheming and pulling all the strings.

All vampires fear that, if in fact Antediluvians exist, one day they will rise from the vampiric slumberstate – Torpor – and devour everyone, human or vampire. That is known as Gehenna in vampiric mythos.

Aparrently only but a number of vampires believes in the whole Caine and Antediluvian thing. Camarilla sect vampires does not, and treats the thing as an allegory, or a myth only. Sabbat, very nietzchean in their ways, on the contrary – the very existence of the sect is dedicated to oppose the Antediluvians. That makes them thing of the organizations like Camarilla pawns in the hands of Antediluvians, and therefore, an enemy.

That is the genesis of vampiric Jyhad, the everlasting war. That is the mechanic that brings the doom to vampires. That is the mechanic that makes them destructive beings, unable to create in the long run, and, by looking at the bigger scope of WoD – tools in the hands of godike creatures of the night.

Now add another brick to the wall: 13 base vampiric clans come directly from Antediluvians. This makes the war a patricide war, and what can be more psychologically weighting than a mortal combat with one’s family? Aditionally, each clan bears a flavor, something of their progenitor is in their blood, giving them their powers and the curse.

The implications of that are grave. Just imagine – a part of your scary grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand……. -grandpa is a part of you…

Lets list the clans:

Ventrue – the vampiric nobility, and creators of the Camarilla.

Brujah – the rebelious warriors, in the days of old believing in humanitarian pronciples, now reduced to bravos.

Gangrel – beastlike Gypsy nomads.

Malkavian – deranged nutjobs, but there’s an immense knowledge on their madness.

Toreador – artists and poseurs. Vane.

Nosferatu – hideous and monstrous on first look, but in them the humanity burns the brightest.

Giovanni – necromancers

Tremere – warlocks. Mages of old turned vampires. Their magic changed too, for the better or worse…

Assamite – arabic assasins.

Followers of Set – Egyptian serpents.

Ravnos – Roma (Gypsy) tricksters and illusionists.

Tzimisce – Central European shapeshifters and body sculptors (literally..).

Lasombra – shadowmancers.

And there are bloodlines there too. They differ from the normal clan structures and their genesis is so bizarre they have to be treated separately, almost as clans with their unique powers and heritage.

 

This makes VtM a dance macabre (because vampires are undead..) of different flavours. This makes vampires very deterministic, with an illusion of free will and an overwhelming feeling of being but tools in hands (or tentacles…) of greater powers. In the scope of the whole WoD, vampires are unwilling servants of the very force that want to destroy everything – with a normal circle of life – creation, destruction, decay – which creates material for creation again, vampires do not participate in it. They are a pathology, a deviation. These attributes make them actually make Gehenna self-fullfilling prophecy.

In fact, there are scholars in the vampiric metaplot that learn that (Beckett)  Gehenna might not be a one time doomsday scenario – that in fact it’s periodical or happening over extended period of time. In other words – Jyhad is Gehenna.

As for the one time event, Gehenna was introduced as a supplement for the players to choose from 4 options, should they want to end their world in traditional style:

“Wormwood” (God destroys all vampires save for a few, who are given a chance at redemption)
“Fair is Foul” (Lilith takes her vengeance on Caine and his descendants)
“Nightshade” (the Masquerade is broken and the Camarilla divided as the Antediluvians awaken)
“The Crucible of God” (the Antediluvians rise up, ruling over or destroying most of the human race)

With the 5ed out on our doorstep though, I personally opt for Beckett’s point of view…

So, it’s the doomsday that marks unlives of the vampire (and all other denizens of the World of Darkness for that matter), with every step and on every occasion. The rope tightens constantly and this is the kind of storytelling players and storytellers alike  search for by playing this system.  They want ot be scared and feel hopelesness. And they want to fight it.

Is there a way to escape the doomed fate? Is there a way to somehow escape the endless loop of Jyhad? Perhaps. But this is a subject of another post, sometime. In the meantime, listen to the rhymes of ancient vampiric texts and arm yourself, Kindred:

On these signs, you must know,
that Gehenna waits, even at the door,
as an actor waits in the wings
It is coming! It is near!

Shine black the sun!
Shine blood the moon!
Gehenna is coming soon!

 (source: http://www.coven.50webs.com/BookofNod.html)

Check some art: https://www.deviantart.com/racca/art/Vampire-The-Masquerade-Clans-92161004?q=favby:floweringwolfsbane/1551097&qo=72

https://www.deviantart.com/zero0810/art/VtM-chibi-Clan-Lasombra-206976092 (and other clan chibis)

https://www.deviantart.com/axel-tw/gallery/ (vampire clans)

Pen & paper roleplaying games are there in the culture for half a century now. Semi-randomized storytelling is far older that that of course. The idea is as old as humanity itself I dare to say. Following Cohen, Pratchett and Stewart I also think that naming humans homo sapiens is giving our species far to much credit, and I also would rather name it “pan narrans” – “a storytelling chimpanzee”. From the hunter-gatherer tales near around the bonfire, through the recipient-oriented “One Tousand and One Nights” (to the point were Scheherezade has to adjust her stories accordingly so she could survive!) till 19th century, when Von Reisswitz created Kriegsspiel to teach Prussian officers tactics (a fun fact is that King of Prussia ordered every regiment to have a copy of Kriegsspiel).  Kriegspiel had many editions (at least 3) with revised rules, but all introduced some randomness into how the events developed. In the 1st and the 2nd revision it were dice, in the third, impartial experts. And thus, the role of a Game Master, an individual with knowledge, an arbiter of events was introduced in the 3rd version of Kriegspiel by du Vernois . American military followed with it’s Jane’s Fighting Ships and it was revered for it’s detailed unit descriptions (get it here) which started to serve as a first full-fledged rulebook ever . Then the wargaming  – tactical and narrative games with random elements, basing on scaled reproductions of battlefields with toy soldier miniatures – came into gentlemen homes. Important fact is that ancients (Minoans, Egyptians) also were fond of the miniatures so it’s possible the concept is also quite ancient… I absolutely adore the fact that the author of the “Time Machine” H.G. Wells was a wargamer:

Tactical and randomized elements of wargaming were used to a varied extent by many armies, businesses and organizations. But it was not until 1970s were an actual idea of unit or organization based storytelling shifted towards individuals. At first as a decision-helping roleplaying.Then into “man-to-man” wargames in the gaming world, where individual-based rules were used in a tactical environment.

Then came Dungeon & Dragons (and later Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) and what was a dice based boargame like entertainment started to shift into a storytelling based events. Players started to delve more and more into the “lore” – the setting of the fantastic worlds, expanded by numerous book supplements, descibing flora and fauna, politics and culture of those worlds. Within several years the amount of content, both produced by game developers and the players (as background stories for gaming events) was so big, it started to become a basis for novels. Works like the brilliant Raymon Feist’s “Riftwar Cycle” and Salvatore’s Drizz’t novels filled the bookshops next to the renowned books like “The Lord of the Rings” (which most of the rpg systems were based on to some extent).

The 80’s and the 90’s brought  true breakthroughs in RPG. Heavily climatic storytelling systems emerged. Warhammer in the Great Britain started to tell the dark story of an uneven fight with Chaos on an slowly dying world, in U.S.A the World of Darkness was created (myu personal favourite) which shifted the balance even more towards storytelling, to the point where dice were no longer that important, what really mattered was the story. Till this very day a multitude of systems and settings sees the light of day allowing tens of tousands of players to delve deep into magnificent worlds together on  problem solving quests.

The sheer amount of systems is so big it’s really hard to review them or advertise them all. It’s sufficient to say there’s at least one system (and of course often hundreds more…) for each branch of prose fiction created – be that fantasy, horror, science fiction, mystery, criminal etc. If someone wants either an interactive whodonnit or a vampiric possesion there’s a system for it somewhere out there. With everything, rules, background, information and true, extensive knowledge to posses to create new, interesting stories. I will be telling more of those, later.

Some of those evolved into Live Action RPGs which are basically a custume-based, theatrical plays with interactive storytelling…

People still don’t understand it sometimes it seems. And they are quite amazed when I tell them about popular writers who were rpg gamers first or learned RPG during interest in writing. Andrzej Sapkowski, the creator of the Witcher, Raymond E. Feist, the creator of Riftwar and many many more. Is it really so bizarre that storytellers practice in an interactive storytelling environment?

I’ll give you a deeper look into the subject, later.

Sources worth looking at: https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/