Headscratchers / Vampire: The Masquerade

• It bugs me that in oWoD VtM, there was any doubt about the existence of Antediluvians. Two clans came up out of nothing through Ante diablerie in the last few hundred years, and a major faction is saying "yes, they're out there, controlling us". So why does the Camarilla deny their existence to a man?
  • Reconciling plot written later that contradicted the original setting state, of course! The in-universe version is, before the formation of the Camarilla the Long Night was a mess of vampire religious sects and cults - many of which were violently depleted during the Second Inquisition, and then the elders who formed the Camarilla decided those that remained didn't fit the society they were trying to build, so an unofficial "code of silence" was implemented regarding vampiric history, to discourage young vampires from digging, because a lot of those cults espoused beliefs and practices that could threaten the Masquerade. As the game plodded along into 4th edition the remnants of the old vampiric Second Estate - suppressed religious sects and mystic/spiritual clans - were rising to the surface and congealing together under the umbrella of the Sabbat, turning the game into a 1st estate/2nd estate tug-of-war between the Camarilla and Sabbat. Then 5th Edition did away with most of the Sabbat, but in 5E kindred society is once again rife with religious cults, including worshipers of Antediluvians and legendary Methuselahs.
  • Part of that is the Nosferatu being mostly in the Camarilla. They're being hunted by their stronger, eviler, utterly scary brothers so they know their antedilluvian is "alive" and kicking and killing them, but choose not to join the Sabbat, the guys known for hunting and killing Antes.
    • The guys known for saying that they hunt and kill Antes. When the Antedeluvians actually arose, the Sabbat was useless against them. Then again, given the cosmic power that the Antedeluvians throw around, that just made the Sabbat like everybody else.
    • The vast majority of the Sabbat rank-and-file sucks not only at killing Antes but at even surviving for more than a year or two before getting themselves slaughtered by the Order of Leopold or the Technocracy or a bunch of random cops hunting down "maniac gangbangers on PCP". As Betram Tung put it, "You ask me, the Sabbat make no sense. Look at me! I'm a monster! I'm a Lord of the Night! Do my bidding — wait, I'm dead, how did that happen?"
    • This is because the real Sabbat, the True Black Hand or Tal'Mahe'Ra, is a conspiracy that purposely created and is manipulating the regular Sabbat as patsies in order to support the return of the Antediluvians. Irony of ironies. Yes, this is all part of how the WoD is, as its name implies, a Crapsack World.
    • Anyway, the Nossies being the Camarilla doesn't make much of a difference either way. There are plenty of Nossie antitribu, too. The Clan doesn't care — for the Nosferatu more than any other clan, factional loyalty is just a formality and a convenience. The Nossies are loyal to the Camarilla because they happen to be the ones keeping law, order and the peace right now — they have no ultimate loyalty to them, none of the non-Nosferatu Princes, no matter how highly ranked in the Camarilla, have any knowledge of the sewer rats' personal security system, internal clan organization or deep secrets, and the Nossies sure as hell aren't relying on any Camarilla or Sabbat higher-ups whatsoever when it comes to their plans to survive the return of the Nicktuku.
  • Likewise, the Tremere got where they are because the historically verifiable Tremere diablerised Saulot. Granted, they wouldn't join the Sabbat because it's not their style, but their membership should at least know the other clan's founders can/might still be around.
    • That is a piece of their clan history that they deliberately worked to forget as early as they could. Advertising that the entire basis of your clan was an act of diablerie? That's effectively death among the Camarilla. Not just social death, Final Death.
  • It's not that they don't know that the Antedeluvians exist, its that they will not admit that the Antedeluvians exist. So long as the neonates & ancillae believe that the Camarilla elders are the pinnacle of power... the Camarilla elders will be treated like they live at the pinnacle of power. As for the real Antedeluvians? Pish tosh. They'll never wake up. Us elders can live high on the hog!
    • The Camarilla are all like, 'Yeah, those guys DID exist, but they're all dead now. Isn't that what the Sabbat did? Kill the last ones? Yeah, and please don't worry about the Giovanni or the Tremere. They did us a big FAVOUR for taking down those jerks. Now get back to polishing my collection of skulls!'
  • Another possibility is that the Antedeluvians' existence is denied out of fear. Some folks just don't want to face the idea that someday a big fucking blood-sucking monster with a power level that is OVER NINE THOUSSAAAAAANND!!! could one day show up and start making trouble in THEIR neighborhood.
  • Also, it is implied, that many of the Camarilla elders are either directly controlled by Antediluvians and their lieutenants or subtly manipulated to remain in denial.
  • Also the average Kindred knows a good bit less about vampire history, world events etc than someone whose just read the main rulebook, never mind the clanbooks and other suppliments.
  • It's part of the Camarilla's myopic hypocrisy. They have their Traditions, their vampire laws, and do anything to prop them up, including publishing translated compilations of recovered fragments of the Book of Nod, supposedly written by Caine himself, and portraying the Traditions as his personal vampire laws, to give them extra legitimacy, since they were handed down by vampiric God himself. But those Antediluvians? Pa, fairy tales. . . never mind that the whole last third of the most complete Book of Nod is nothing but prophecies about the time the Antediluvians rise and start killing everyone.
• Speaking of antediluvians, Saulot learned about Golconda during his visit to the Kuei-jin in the east, and the concept was associated with the Salubri ever since. Wasn't one of the benefits of Golconda supposed to be immunity to diablerie? I mean, granted, Tremere was a mage, so he could probably have worked around that somehow, but...
  • Most people seem to think Saulot's had a plan by allowing the Tremere to rise to power. Three of the endgame scenarios in Gehenna have Saulot saving the world with the party's help, and the other one makes all the ancient's games rather irrelevant.
  • And if you read the sourcebooks, you'll se that it wasn't your average diablerie (for starters, it was performed in a ritual and done from a distance)
  • Saulot had long fallen out of Golconda by the time Tremere got to him.
  • In one of the source books (2nd ed) it reveals that Saulot has awakend inside Tremere and after a battle of wills took over and is now wandering around in Tremere's body while Tremere has now possessed the leader of the Tremere antitribu and killed them all in one big spell in mexico city.....
    • This ended up backfiring horribly in Gehenna when Tremere's body became a vehicle for the return of Tzimisce.
    • Wrong. That was Saulot's plan: Destroying Tzimsice from inside, who would otherwise be the ultimate victor of Gehenna, by giving enough time to the players to invoke the power of God through Humanity Fuck Yeah, and channel it to Tzimsice through Saulot. Saulot is apperantly the Lamb of God, and channels His wrath, destroying Tzimsice utterly.
• OWOD vampire nitpick, if vampires have basically been around forever, how can the fifteenth generation of vampires have not come into generations ago? Did the entire vampire population abstain from siring for hundreds of years at a time?
  • I think that at first, the Antediluvians and other Elders were afraid their Childer will turn on them like they did themselves to the Second Generation, so they abstained from siring too often. Coupled with the constant final deaths due to in-fighting, this probably kept the vampire population stable. Camarilla's Masquerade additionally put an extra leash on the process by giving power over new Embraces to the Princes. So it wasn't until shortly before the Final Nights that the vampire population experienced a demographic explosion (the Kine demographic explosion paved way for it, btw, since it became much easier to hide in their masses) and the fifteenth generation and thinbloods emerged. Also, it is pretty likely that if someone did create a fifteenth generation vampire before modern times out of scientific interest, they would have killed them and destroyed all records, given the dangerous nature of such discovery.
    • In the beginning, all vampires were apparently in the First City, then the Second City; when the population grew it was whittled down to manageable proportions, and the first to go were always the weakest, meaning weaker vampires didn't exist long enough to sire higher generations. Simple (un)natural selection ensured that vampire lineages wouldn't have the chance to get higher-gen since constant turnover and frequent diablerie meant that weaker vampires/younger vampires were killed. In relatively modern nights the population explosion of humanity allowed for more camouflage and more food, allowing the vampire population to grow; since vampires generally don't rule as openly/aggressively as they used to, particularly in the New World where thinbloods are most common, it's harder to locate and weed out the unlicensed or unwanted Cainites than it would have been in the smaller world of past ages. The increase in new vampires also means an increase in untutored Caitiff who wouldn't understand why they shouldn't Embrace others who would subsequently be weaker than the original Caitiff, and who might go on in turn to Embrace Caitiff of still higher generation. Note as well that the thinbloods are actually a sign of Gehenna; it's possible that their appearance is literally supernatural, that forces of Destiny or Fate or what-have-you prevented 15th-gen. vampires from happening until the End Times.
    • Actually, thinbloods were a sign of Gehenna because their much greater relative fragility compared to their "elders" meant that a lot of them would die, but they were still vampire enough to disturb the torpor of the early-gens (unfortunately, nobody knew this or they might have actively tried to buff those vamps up a bit instead of causing the very thing they were trying to prevent).
    • You're assuming that everyone knew that Fourteenth gen was the Official Beginning of the Thin-Bloods (tm). It's pretty easy to imagine a progress culling- say, everyone assume Eighth gen are the new thin-bloods, being unable to use six-dot disciplines, and there is a mass slaughter until enough Eighth-gen vampires slip through the crack to become the new normal. Then, everyone starts picking on the Ninth gen....
    • There have been vampires of all generations all the way down to the Fifteenth all along, they're just much worse at surviving the calamities of vampire history. The reason why there aren't 3000-year-old 13th-generation vampires running around is the 13th-gens of the time either diablerized their way to a lower generation or got killed since then. And any exceptions aren't about to draw attention to their weakness.
• If vampires are killed by a slight exposure to sunlight, even if it is reflected (remember how the Technocracy killed that Antidiluvian during the Week of Horrors with orbital mirrors), how come they do not feel any discomfort in the moonlight, which is basically reflected sunlight, as well.
  • Sunlight equals God's Face, which the vampires are banned from, yet the Moon is tied to both Gaia - a non-Judeo-Christian figure - and Lilith, part of the vampire mythos and the flipside to God (God punished Caine with night, Lilith found Caine in the night and taught him magic). Filtered sunlight reflects off of Gaia/Lilith's moon/mirror to lose the damaging powers imparted to it by being the unfiltered radiance of God. Or something.
    • But isn't Gaia hostile to vampires, as well? Why would it filter sunlight if the werewolves consider the bloodsuckers agents of the Wyrm?
    • Yes, Gaia is. But see: Lilith. It's implied that Lilith is as strong as Caine, if not stronger, and she's not hampered by the whole 'sunlight makes you die' thing; additionally, she's identified with the Moon throughout the various ancient texts, so it's entirely possible that the early affiliation - established long before pre-history - is sufficient to change sunlight enough so that it doesn't kill vampires on contact. Why? Well, that depends on your view of Lilith and her motives...
    • Lilith is in fact weakened or harmed by daylight, although it doesn't make her burst into flames. As far as the whole Gaia/Luna thing, that's Werewolf lore, not Vampire.
  • Because that is part of the Paradigm.
    • This answer should apply to every WoD-related headscratcher ever.
    • Fails in this case; the Mage main book notes that the Curse of Caine is one of few cosmological constants, that is it remains true regardless of if people believe in it and cannot be changed by True Magic.
  • Because once it reflects off the moon, it's no longer sunlight, it's moonlight - with a different metaphysical makeup.
  • I've read somewhere that the Setites, whose weakness is extra sensitivity to light, can sunburn under the full moon.
  • Because once moonlight reaches Earth, it is weakened over two hundred thousand times.^note The Moon is a convex spherical mirror and reflects incoming sunlight as though it comes from a point on the depth of half the Moon's radius. So, the focal distance is f, Moon's radius r=2f, the Earth's radius R=(ca.)=4r=8f, and the Earth-Moon-Distance D=(ca.)=60R=480f; The distance from the focus to the Earth's surface is then F=D-(r-f)-R=480f-f-8f=471f. The sunlight coming on 1 square cm or in of moon surface is then dispersed on 471*471=221841, and the intensity of the light diminishes accordingly. Wouldn't cause even bashing.
  • Worth noting: the vampire's various weaknesses are curses from God, mystical in nature rather then scientific. And much as the Technocracy would like to say otherwise, any of their really good stuff is also mystic in nature, just filtered through scientific foci. So the satellites that killed Ravnos/Ravanna/Zaputhrustra/whatever-the-hell-he-was-really-called were True Magic, not science.
    • But not "magic" either; it's stated repeatedly throughout the various gamelines (though especially in Mage) that "magic" and "science" are the same thing, which is in turn something greater than either facet. "Primal essence of the universe," maybe, but the actual stuff of Creation isn't "magic" anymore than it's "science" or "fae glamour" or "really really powerful Disciplines."
    • Well, sure. But the point is Vampires are hurt by the sun and not the moon because that is the way the curse works. The nature of sunlight or moonlight doesn't enter into it.
  • It is available as a supernatural flaw. Presumably the amount of light reflected isn't sufficient to cause them harm on a regular basis, but some Vampires are more sensitive and can be harmed. Also, see the Settie example above.
    • Or maybe not. The Supernatural flaws are kinda weird. One you can take makes you vulnerable to all crosses, not just those empowered by True Faith, which explicitly isn't linked to crosses any more than to any other religious icon.
    • UV Light...blame UV light...UV light doesn't reflect off the moon, its to weak to do so as its short wave light energy and not long wave like actual photons. There you go, vampire problem solved.
    • I hate to unsolve this problem because that is a good answer, and works for vampires in the Blade or Underworld universes who are harmed by UV light......but Kindred aren't. As shown in the video game, Bloodlines, UV light doesn't hurt them, it is a magical curse.
    • Page 232 of the Revised Edition, "Fortunately for vampires, the light reflected from the moon is not strong enough to inflict any serious damage, though some suffer the equivalent of mild sunburn if they are exposed to the light of a full moon and aren't wearing any protective gear." Page 302, under the Light Sensitive Flaw "...and the light of the moon can cause lethal damage in a mannar similar to the sun...."
• The book "Milwaukee By Night" (which is about the Real Life city of Milwaukee in the World Of Darkness and the activities of vampires there) had me scratching my head twice:
  • The section about East Downtown says vamps particularly like feeding on people at the Milwaukee Athletic Center in part because "such vessels are much less risky to drink from since they can loose more blood without getting too weak to survive." But if vampires went around drinking people's blood without killing them, wouldn't that break the Masquerade?
    • Mortals don't remember being fed on. Victim dies only when a vampire loses control and drinks human dry, which happens from time to time.
    • Okay, thanks for clearing these things up for me, but that leaves me with another question. If mortals don't remember being fed on, then how do some vampires have a "herd" of the same humans who they feed on over and over? How can a mortal join a herd if each time they're fed on they forget afterward?
    • Humans don't forget the whole experience, just the specifics. Vampire uses the 'being fed on feels like sex' schtick, and humans are left with vague memories of a very pleasant experience. Some like it so much they keep coming back for more, and form a Herd.
    • On page 186 of the first edition player's guide, a letter from one vampire to another advises feeding on the homeless because "no one will believe them if they remember it anyway." Does that mean the people fed on only *usually* forget, but not always? Or did the rule that people forget the specifics of the experience not come till later editions?
    • The general idea is that the experience of being fed on by a vampire fogs up the mind so they don't remember it specifically enough to recall the "he drank my blood" bit, instead just remembering an attack or a night of freaky sex or heavy clubbing or whatever. But some people are sharper than others and have better memories so there's always a risk that a human will remember, it's just not likely. Also the context matters; if a vampire grabs someone in an alleyway, drinks then runs off then the victim will probably just remember being attacked, if a a vampire grabs someone then spends ten minutes grandstanding about how they're a big bad vampire then bites them the victim will remember all that nonsense.
  • In chapter 3 of that same book, the vampire character Akawa talks about how much he hates the city and "fed from animals rather than touch the stinking vessels around me." If vampires can survive by feeding from animals, why don't more of them do so? Even if they don't value human life, wouldn't feeding from animals be safer since they wouldn't have to hide from humans to avoid being killed anymore?
    • Human vitae is much richer and tastier than animal.
    • Animal blood gives a lot less energy than human. I for get the actual rules but basically you need to drink much more from an animal to get one blood point. As such you have to be pretty dedicated to feed on animals only, since you'll need to spend a lot longer each night feeding. Also the Beast wants human blood; stick to animal and it's harder to fight off.
    • Many sourcebooks point out that feeding on humans is an incredibly pleasurable experience for vampires, as intense as a powerful drug high - especially since in the absence of actual food and sex it's the only physical pleasure that vampires can feel. It would require incredible willpower to turn down that high in favor of drinking nothing but comparatively bland animal blood night after night.
  • In game terms, if memory serves, a cow, notably larger than a human, has five blood points, half what an adult human has. That's how UN-nourishing animal blood is.
• At various points, it's made clear that the Sabbat supposedly hold the Masquerade in contempt, considering it cowardly to hide from 'inferior' humans. If such is the case, and the Sabbat control large portions of North and South America, how can the Masquerade still exist? Just how long could the Camarilla keep it hidden from the rest of the world if packs of Sabbat were regularly and openly using their supernatural powers and doing as they pleased with their victims in the streets of places like Mexico City, where the Camarilla can do nothing to stop them? I seem to recall some fluff about how the Sabbat are hypocrites and, in practice, maintain a Masquerade while pretending to be above it, but it seems like such an absolutely critical part of Cainite existence, and so tricky to maintain without special efforts to maintain it, that an 'informal understanding' simply wouldn't cut it.
  • The Sabbat unofficially agree with the Masquerade in principle, as they've also seen first-hand what happens when the kine are riled up, but they still hold the Camarilla and their methods in contempt - as much because of old hatreds between specific clans (like the Ventrue and Lasombra, or Tzimisce and Tremere) as actual philosophical differences. The Sabbat see the whole structure of the Camarilla as a giant pack of puppets serving the elders and maybe even the Antediluvians, and the fixation on Humanity as a weakness. Plus, for all the Sabbat go on about their contempt for the Masquerade, at the end of the day they're all still territorial, paranoid, opportunistic predators who can't help but ultimately be hypocrites forced by their nature to play some of the same games for which they condemn others. Though they'll still occasionally violate the Masquerade just to make the Camarilla waste time and resources covering it up.
    • The Sabbat internal logic seems to go "eventually we will rule over the pathetic humans openly but right now we're fighting the Camarilla so best not start a war on two fronts." Tacitly admitting that humans are genuinely threatening but hypocrisy is part and parcel of the Sabbat. Note that they rail against the elder oppression of the Camarilla while mostly doing that their elders say anyway.
  • The Sabbat were originally pure antagonists, so their "Fuck the Masquerade" mentality worked. Players started finding them more interesting, so they were retooled to be playable, and the emphasis on discarding the Camarilla Traditions was downplayed to keep the game from breaking wide open.
• According to the Clan Novel Saga, Lasombra signature character Lucita has a tattoo in the shape of a black rose on her breast. How is this supposed to work? Lucita was a medieval Aragonese princess, tightly surveilled by her father and his retainers. She couldn't exactly run off one night to get a tattoo during her mortal days. But modifications made to the Kindred body disappear within the night, or within days, at most.
  • Level 1 Thaumaturgy Ritual "Brand" makes tattoos permanent by pouring molten silver over it while incantating.
  • Like many V:tM headscratchers, you can dismiss it by saying it's magic-related. Just like another Lasombra, Marcus Vitel, who had a magic clasp that negated his clan weakness. Try to think about that for a second.
  • She's a Lasombra. She did it with an extremely basic level of Obtenebration that just about any Lasombra could do.
• As of 5e, there's very little motivation to keep the Masquerade up - almost to the point that it's unbelievable that any but the most ancient and naive Vampires would consider it a viable option. Gehenna is actively occurring and the Masquerade itself is in the process of falling and has already fallen for most human governments - the entities with the ability to do the most harm to Kindred society. The admitted nature of Technology Marches On makes maintaining it for any significant time impractical. The Kindred's best bet as a whole is almost certainly taking the initiative to out themselves and rely on celebrity and popular kindred already imbedded in Kine media or other high-ranking stations to try to make a plea for at least temporary co-existence and selling the medical benefits of Kindred blood and Disciplines to a public that might consider paying for them. The only advantage to keeping the facade going at this point is that it makes feeding slightly easier than it would be if the Masquerade fell. The Second Inquisition has all of the disadvantages of the Masquerade falling (namely swarms of highly trained hunters backed by world governments) with none of the potential advantages (managing to get human political support for Kindred).
  • It is really the most viable option, but it'll need to be restructured or reinforced, possibly with tech or magic. This controlled reveal scenario isn't really feasible. WoD vampires, collectively, have a wide array of powers. If you ignore other supernatural beings, any weird incidents or mysterious disappearances will, reasonably so, be blamed on them. They've been doing such things for thousands of years. The Masquerade also provides a Weirdness Censor. The thing that pushes most humans not to ponder whether Heinrich Himmler was a vampire which inevitably leads to - did vampires engineer the Holocaust?
• Was reading the first edition player's guide and its essays on role-playing, and one essay (page 138) says "you must kill regularly without losing your soul." However, the corebook says (page 117) that vampires can feed on a person without putting their life in danger as long as they don't drink more than half of the person's blood pool (and implies that vampires can restrain themselves in that way and thereby avoid risking humanity loss). So why must they kill regularly?
  • There's a reason why they made another edition. That said I think it was probably just poorly worded; vampires can and usually do feed without killing but between misjudging how much blood a human can afford to lose and frenzies most vampires will kill some people even if they don't want to.