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

dead cultures • the body count
though they’re part of something, to counter the extreme isolation they would otherwise
suffer for all eternity.
The Kindred are still outsiders, proponents of this idealized state, but at least their domains
and clans and covenants allow them to be outsiders together.
Many elders, of course, consider such theories a heap of mealy mouthed, revisionist, selfindulgent
effl uvia spewed by idle childer with no knowledge of the way the world works. As
they cannot provide any evidence for their conservative, “society has always existed thus”
attitudes, however, elders aren’t likely to silence the social theorists any time soon. And thus
the Danse Macabre continues on one more front.
THE COVENANTS
A covenant is a social unit of vampires. Each is an artifi cial group comprising Kindred
with similar philosophies, ideals, political aims and even religious notions. Vampires can
usually belong to only one covenant at a time, as members are somewhat exclusionary
about their principles, but Kindred sometimes leave one covenant to join another,
evade notice of membership in multiple covenants, or actively concoct false identities
with which to spy on other covenants. Some vampires belong to no covenant at all.
While all of these groups receive greater treatment elsewhere in this book, it helps to
familiarize yourself with some of their basic notions.
The Carthians seek to reconcile Kindred society with modern governmental
structures and social systems. In any number of cities across the world, the Carthian
experiment is in some stage of its inexorable cycle, running from naïve idealism to
“the revolution eats its children.”
The Circle of the Crone venerates a variety of female fi gures as an amalgamated
creator of vampires, the Mother of all Monsters. Regarded as pagans by some of the
more conservative Kindred factions, the Circle relies more on holistics and redemption
than on the penitence and guilt of other ideological covenants. Its members are
sorcerers and blood witches.
The Invictus is the aristocracy of the night. Neofeudal and corrupt from within, it
is nonetheless a powerful covenant that draws strength from tradition. The Invictus
claims to trace its roots back as far as ancient Rome, if not before.
The Lancea Sanctum looks to Biblical history for its spiritual outlook. The covenant
seeks to infl uence Kindred society with the strictures of Longinus, who was believed to
be a progenitor turned into one of the Damned by the blood of Christ. The covenant
practices a magic that draws on elements from Biblical times, when God’s will was
manifest.
The Ordo Dracul is a neo-Victorian faction not unlike a secret society. It commands
mystical knowledge and rituals that allow members to transcend their vampiric state.
The covenant claims descent from the historical Vlad Tepes — Dracula himself.
Kindred who belong to no covenant at all are known by many names, but among
the most universal are “the unaligned” or “the unbound.” They have no formal
structure, and many just want to handle the Requiem on their own terms, rather than
those of covenants or other institutions.
THE BODY COUNT
So how many Kindred are there? They must exist in pretty substantial numbers if they’ve
got a society, yet they’ve managed to keep themselves more or less hidden from the majority
of the mortals around them.
The truth is, Kindred numbers vary from city to city. In most small cities, the proportion
of undead to mortals tends to be relatively low: One vampire per 100,000 or more mortals
is not uncommon. In large cities, the ratio is usually nearer one vampire per 50,000 mortals.
In some cities that seem to draw the Kindred for whatever reason — cities such as New York,
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