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

38
The Danse Macabre
Throughout their long history, the Kindred have engaged in an endless struggle — the coldest
of cold wars, fought in the shadows of mortal society. This internecine confl ict is known as
the Danse Macabre, and it nightly threatens to tear the entire race of the Damned apart.
This secret war is both the beginning and the end for the undead. As a race, they are destined
to blood and violence, yet their survival depends on peace between them. They are consumed
nightly by the possibility that the war will consume them, and they toil ceaselessly in fear of having
to forever struggle against their own kind. The confl ict is perhaps the greatest, saddest paradox
of the Kindred world, and as such, it is a fundamental aspect of unlife among the Damned.
DEUS VULT
Perhaps ironically, Christianity signaled the dawn of the Danse Macabre. Factionalism
spread like wildfi re through the mortals of Europe and the Holy Land, and for the fi rst time,
parallel ripples of dissonance emerged from Rome herself. Emerging from the wake of the
events of the Crucifi xion, the “Childer of Longinus,” as members of that covenant insist on
calling the earliest recorded vampires, were hardly content to sit huddled in their candlelit
chambers, speaking prayers to a father whose very actions had damned them, while wordlessly
and thoughtlessly accepting everything their sires had taught them. No, the world was
changing, and with it changed the undead. Some vampires likened Christ’s resurrection to
the mockery of their own, and many fell to bickering about the nature of his divinity. Indeed,
some blasphemous Kindred even suggested that Christ was either some kind of vampire or
Longinus, himself! And, naturally, these and other social fi ssures only further entrenched
elders and sires.
During the Dark Ages, what had long been seen as a heretical movement grew to become
the order of the night. Many believed that God had forsaken the world entirely, and they left
their ancient traditions behind in favor of the whims of appetite and petty egotism. Hostilities
between Kindred reached an all-time high as sires struggled to keep childer in line amid an
endless sea of darkness and fi re. Several religious orders emerged among the Kindred, each
possessed of a different slant on the nature of the Damned and their place in God’s world.
Many vampires latched onto the fringes of the Church and its scions, and the Damned were
some of the most active supporters of the early Crusades. Indeed, God Himself became the
foil that vampires would use upon one another, each more deftly than the last, in the name
of either power or righteousness.
All their bluster came to a head during the burning times of the holy Inquisition. Vampiric
infi ghting had grown so great, the Kindred’s arrogance so complete, that they drew
the attention of the mortal world. Although the effect was the widespread violation of the
First Tradition, the greater cause was the growing violation of the Blood-borne prohibition
against kinslaying and a decrease in the overall level of respect and love for God (or anything
resembling Him).
After the fi res of the Inquisition died down, the Kindred discovered that their numbers
had dwindled, their fortunes had crumbled, their society had shattered and new factions
rose almost nightly. When they looked upon what their confl ict had wrought, they neither
learned from what they saw nor endeavored to trace the disaster’s origin. Instead, the Kindred
all secretly blamed one another for the downfall of the system, and the species as a whole
turned inward. Where there had once been overt moves and periodic salvos into the domains
chapter one: society of the damned