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

4
Introduction
No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.
—Juvenal
Vampires: blood-drinking creatures of the night. Horrors born of darkness, whose sole
purpose in life — unlife, actually — is to slake their unholy thirst on the blood of the living.
Without doubt, vampires are monsters.
Monsters, though, need not always be unthinking, unfeeling terrors empty of remorse, or
even compassion or other human traits. Indeed, vampires can exceed their deathless curse,
themselves becoming antiheroes or even heroes.
Then again, some vampires truly remain monsters.
This is the purpose of The Requiem. What you hold in your hands is a Modern Gothic
Storytelling game, a live-action roleplaying game that allows you to build chronicles that explore
morality through the metaphor of vampirism. In The Requiem, you “play the monster,” and
what you do as that monster both makes for an interesting story and might even teach you a
little about your own values and those of your fellows.
A MODERN-GOTHIC WORLD
The setting of The Requiem borrows greatly from gothic literature, not the smallest amount
of which comes from the “set dressing” of the movement. Key to the literary gothic tradition
are the ideas of barbarism, corruption and medieval imagery. This World of Darkness can
be said to be our own seen through the looking glass darkly.
With regard to barbarism, the world of the vampires is like our own, but with a signifi cant
upturn in violence and decay. The streets are more brutal, with the desperate eyes of the unfortunate
ever watchful for someone more privileged from whom they can steal something to
make their own bleak lives more comfortable. Gangs are more active and violent; vagrants are
bolder or they obliviate themselves even more. Even those with vast resources are more fearful
of those who would harm them — or more jealous of those who rival their own wealth or power.
Their actions can turn fi erce with the slightest provocation.
Corruption goes hand in hand with the idea of barbarism. The world is nasty and brutish, and
anyone who can get ahead had best avail himself of the opportunity. This is a world of indulgent
clergy, avaricious businessmen, cops looking for a payoff and gangsters who have no other options
than crime. Even those who don’t fi t into such neat iconic archetypes face corruption of their own,
such as an unwed mother who fi nds herself addicted to drugs and sells her child for a few grams of
crank, or an otherwise honest journalist who fi nds out that his brother has become a bloodthirsty
creature of darkness and must keep the secret for kinship’s sake.
Medieval imagery adorns all of the visual elements of the setting, and it can even bleed over
into other aspects. Buildings soar heavenward, supported by fl ying buttresses, gilded when the
architects can afford it and studded by gargoyles that scare away evil spirits that are all too real.
Streets have fallen into disrepair. Even cities themselves are like medieval bastions, isolated
from the outside world, xenophobic and cut off. Anachronisms abound, from antique decorations
in otherwise ultramodern buildings to forgotten catacombs beneath bank vaults and
subway tunnels. Honest-to-goodness castles might exist in the World of Darkness where none
stand in the real world. Moss and vines cling everywhere. Torches and candles light hallways
and anterooms. Walls bear breaches, cracks or other signs of disrepair. Ars moriendi punctuate
works of art. A sense of dread and fear looms visibly on the face of every passerby.
Is it so strange, then, to believe that such a world hosts the Damned, as well?
mind’s eye theatre: the requiem • introduction