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Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

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Kindred that thrives on blood and doesn’t care who it hurts. When Kindred come in contact,<br />

they innately fear or see each other as a challenge. Indeed, all Kindred vie for limited resources<br />

and secrecy, and other Kindred threaten both. In a world where Kindred must skulk and kill to<br />

survive, how trustworthy is any other vampire?<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>Requiem</strong> weighs on the Kindred soul. When one knows he will never truly die, he has<br />

no sense of urgency. Over the course of forever, what can sustain a vampire’s interest, or even<br />

a Kindred of a century of unlife? In the interests of fi ghting off their own timeless malaise, the<br />

Kindred plot and scheme against each other. Once they’ve exhausted all of the sources that<br />

legitimately brought joy or interest to their unlives, many turn to treachery in hopes of provoking<br />

any response at all from their jaded emotions.<br />

This last, then, is the true Danse Macabre, the “dance of death” orchestrated by vampires<br />

to elevate themselves above their peers. It is a dangerous dance, punctuated by vampiric<br />

traps, scheming elders, ambitious neonates and ruses that can take decades, centuries or even<br />

millennia to come to fruition. <strong>The</strong> Kindred potentially have forever to concoct their master<br />

plans and hatch their vendettas — they have no need to rush. For many vampires, revenge<br />

is best when left to grow cold, prompting another turn in the Danse Macabre in response.<br />

Thus the cycle continues indefi nitely.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Danse Macabre is equally a saving grace and a resignation to damnation, for it distracts<br />

the Kindred from their nihilistic, introspective <strong>Requiem</strong>s, but only by causing confl ict that<br />

jeopardizes those very <strong>Requiem</strong>s.<br />

CLANS<br />

A clan is a vampiric lineage. <strong>The</strong> Kindred acknowledge fi ve clans, and all Kindred belong<br />

to one clan or another. <strong>The</strong> most widely accepted theory regarding clans is that they are like<br />

“families” of vampires. Members of clans all inherit certain mystical commonalities, from<br />

acumen with certain Disciplines to traditional shortcomings for their particular type. One of<br />

the failings of the “families” theory is that none of the clan progenitors are reliably known,<br />

and only a few are guessed at with any degree of confi dence. Certainly, the clans came from<br />

12<br />

chapter one: society of the damned

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