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

arouse the envy of any Mekhet or Dragon. And strangest of all, it is said they have
the gift of prophecy and oracular vision. They know not merely the past, but also the
present and future of every Kindred to walk the Earth. Supposedly far more common
in ages past, they were deemed mad by other vampires due to their visions and
prophecies, and allegedly exterminated. Indeed, few Kindred awake tonight earnestly
claim to have knowingly met anyone of this mysterious bloodline, and most vampires
consider them long gone or a myth that never existed at all.
And yet, some Kindred maintain that the Moirai were true prophets. Surely they
would have seen their own end coming, and surely they would have taken steps to
hide themselves away, where none could ever fi nd them…
The Traditions
golconda • the traditions
Vampire society, such as it is, would have collapsed under its own weight long ago were it not
for the ties that bind it. Like any society, the Kindred world survives on the rules established
and agreed upon by its residents. Vampire “laws” are even more essential to the society they
concern because of the nature of that society. The Kindred are manipulative killers whose
mutual survival depends on their ability to get along well enough to remain suffi ciently hidden
from the eyes of their prey. As conservative covenants are fond of saying, lawlessness among
the undead is perhaps the greatest threat facing the Kindred tonight.
As a result, the Kindred have a body of vampire laws known as the Traditions. The three
most important of these laws are curiously universal, given that no common origin story is
accepted for the Kindred. They are immutable rules of the Blood, passed down as liquid truth
by way of the curse of undeath, and are hardwired into the very physiology of the Damned.
Upon the Embrace, each Kindred knows each of these laws intuitively.
Beyond the Traditions are the less offi cial, more fallible customs that arise within Kindred
society over time. After weathering centuries upon centuries of nominal adherence, a few of
these customs have become unoffi cial traditions of their own. Some of these latter-day laws
are provincial in outlook or unique to a particular clan or region, while others are observed
only within a particular covenant of Kindred. Three of them in particular are considered
nearly as important as the Traditions themselves, but without the fundamental connection.
They merely serve to further gird and bolster society as the Kindred know it. Each of the
Traditions gave rise to one such custom, and each is discussed after the relevant law.
A great many of the Kindred take the Traditions to heart. Others justify them beyond “That’s how
things have always been,” while still others accept them blindly as part of the Kindred condition.
Kindred who have studied such things often suggest that though these physiological conditions have
existed for as long as the Kindred themselves have, the actual wording of the Traditions as they are
understood tonight was one of the efforts of the now-defunct Camarilla. This is the most widely
accepted theory. Particularly fervent members of the Lancea Sanctum, unsurprisingly, sometimes
claim that the actual codifi cation of these customs is part of Longinus’ original dogma. Other
scriptural, quasi-religious or philosophical wordings also exist, such as those held by the members
of the hoary Circle of the Crone and the Ordo Dracul, but the core ideas of the Traditions remain
unchanged. True “heretics” against the laws of all Kindred were few and far between in the early
nights of the Damned. Despite their differences (and they had many), most of the Kindred were
in agreement about what was and was not a good idea for their kind, especially when their own
bodies told them it was so. They might disagree on theory or implementation, or even on basic
precepts, but few argued with the wisdom of such incontrovertible laws.
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