Literature / Vampire: The Masquerade

The Beautiful Dead.

A large number of novels were printed for the Vampire: The Masquerade by various authors during the height of its popularity. The novels all take place in the World of Darkness and feature vampire protagonists as they exist under the Masquerade. The Elders rule as a Decadent Court while Anarchs attempt to overthrow them for their own freedom. Beyond them, the sinister Sabbat threaten to plunge their world into an even darker night.

The most popular of the novel series was the Clan Novels, a thirteen book saga (plus one anthology) that details the invasion of the Sabbat of the Eastern United States as numerous vampires attempt to settle old scores as well as compete for an Artifact of Doom called the Eye of Hazmiel. Other novels include the follow-up trilogies Brujah, Lasombra, and Tremere. These books mostly starred the Signature Characters of the gameline such as Lucita, Anatole, and Hesha.

A similar series to the Clan Novel series was made for Vampire The Dark Ages that detailed all of the clans of that period as well as the Grail Covenant Trilogy by David Niall Wilson. There were several crossover characters from the original Clan Novel series as vampires are, well, immortal.

The books went out of print after the Gehenna event and became collector's items before Onyx Path Publishing began publishing their own World of Darkness anthologies in 2017. In 2019, Crossroad Press would start re-releasing the novels starting with the Clan Novels, Grail Covenant Trilogy, and Dark Age Clan Novels. They received the rights to print the rest of the World of Darkness in 2023 and began republishing them in 2024.

• The Blood Curse Trilogy
• Masquerade of the Red Death
• The Prince Duology
• Clan Novels
  • Clan Novel Trilogy: Brujah
  • Clan Novel Trilogy: Lasombra
  • Clan Novel Trilogy: Tremere
• The Grail Covenant Trilogy
• Walk Among Us

List of the original novels

• Dark Prince (1994)
• Prince of the City (1994)
• The Beast Within (1994)
• Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy 1: Blood War (1995)
• Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy 2: Unholy Allies (1995)
• Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy 3: The Unbeholden (1996)
• Dark Destiny: Children of Dracula (1997)
• Grails Covenant Trilogy 1: To Sift Through Bitter Ashes (1997)
• Grails Covenant Trilogy 2: To Speak In Lifeless Tongues (1997)
• Grails Covenant Trilogy 3: To Dream Of Dreams Lost (1998)
• Dark Tyrants (1997)
• Eternal Hearts (1999)
• Clan Novel 1: Toreador (1999)
• Clan Novel 2: Tzimisce (1999)
• Clan Novel 3: Gangrel (1999)
• Clan Novel 4: Setite (1999)
• Clan Novel 5: Ventrue (1999)
• Clan Novel 6: Lasombra (1999)
• Clan Novel 7: Assamite (1999)
• Clan Novel 8: Ravnos (2000)
• Clan Novel 9: Malkavian (2000)
• Clan Novel 10: Giovanni (2000)
• Clan Novel 11: Brujah (2000)
• Clan Novel 12: Tremere (2000)
• Clan Novel 13: Nosferatu (2000)
• Clan Novel Anthology (anthology; 2000)
• Clan Novel Saga 1: The Fall of Atlanta (2003)
• Clan Novel Saga 2: The Eye of Gehenna (2003)
• Clan Novel Saga 3: Bloody September (2004)
• Clan Novel Saga 4: End Games (2004)
• Clan Brujah Trilogy 1: Slave Ring (2003)
• Clan Brujah Trilogy 2: The Overseer (2003)
• Clan Brujah Trilogy 3: The Puppet-Masters (2003)
• Clan Lasombra Trilogy 1: Shards (2002)
• Clan Lasombra Trilogy 2: Shadows (2002)
• Clan Lasombra Trilogy 3: Sacrifices (2002)
• Clan Novel Trilogy Tremere 1: Widow's Walk (2000)
• Clan Novel Trilogy Tremere 2: Widow's Weeds (2001)
• Clan Novel Trilogy Tremere 3: Widow's Might (2002)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 1: Nosferatu (2002)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 2: Assamite (2002)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 3: Cappadocian (2002)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 4: Setite (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 5: Lasombra (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 6: Ravnos (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 7: Malkavian (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 8: Brujah (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 9: Toreador (2003)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 10: Gangrel (2004)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 11: Tremere (2004)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 12: Ventrue (2004)
• Dark Ages Clan Novel 13: Tzimisce (2004)
• Gehenna: The Final Night (2004)
• The Endless Ages (anthology; 2017)
• Of Predators and Prey (anthology; 2017)
• The Beast Within (anthology; 2018)
• The Dawn of Heresies (anthology; 2018)
• Walk Among Us (5th Edition, 2020)

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The books contain the following tropes:

• Action Girl: Plenty of Kindred women can kick as much ass as the men, if not more so.
  • Lucita de Aragorn is consistently shown to be one of the most dangerous Kindred alive and engages in many action scenes.
  • Fatima Al-Faqadi is an Elder assamite and according to the novels, the first female Embraced by the Assamites. Later, it's retconned to being the first woman in the Web of Knives.
• All Myths Are True: Averted in the V:TM books at least. The universe had a very specific Judeo-Christian mythology beginning with Caine. Played with as some vampires worshiped Set and other gods.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Camarilla is a bunch of scheming evil vampires who are obsessed with their own power and value human life very little. By contrast, the Sabbat are actively malevolent and kill at the drop of a hat. The Anarchs are A Lighter Shade of Black to the Camarilla, still being vampires but being somewhat more concerned with human life by and large.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • The Sabbat, even in their own novels, are thoroughly unsympathetic bastards.
  • The same is applied to the Giovanni and Setites, though with considerably more style and class than the Sabbat.
• Antihero: All of the protagonists since they're vampires and not the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire kind.
• Apocalypse How: All of the novels speak of the coming Gehenna and eventual doom of vampiredom. It happens.
• The Beautiful Elite: The Toreador were shown to be this with the Ventrue usually not much far off. The Lasombra later join the clans who are always among the prettiest.
• Blood Magic: All Tremere wield this. Some other vampires have similar power but it is a rare gift.
• Broad Strokes: All of the novels were set in the same continuity but some events like the Red Death were largely glossed over.
• Decadent Court: The Camarilla leadership was composed of this but all vampires suffered from it to an extent.
• Canon Discontinuity: Eternal Hearts was stricken from the canon and is considered an Old Shame for the line.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Books like Dark Prince and Prince of the City were clearly written before everything was nailed down, leading to things like Eastern vampires being another form of Cainite.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The novel line climaxed with Gehenna: The Final Night.
• Evil Versus Evil: Much of the books deal with the conflict between vampires and there's usually only A Lighter Shade of Black, if that.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Vampires, werewolves, and mages oh my. Also changelings, mummies, wraiths, Imbued, demons...
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Resoundingly averted. All of the vampires (with only a few Neonate exceptions like Ramona) are ruthless, dangerous, and vicious.
• Horror Hunger: All vampires have one of them, called the Beast.
• Kiss of the Vampire: The bite is portrayed as incredibly pleasurable for both parties throughout the novels.
• Lesbian Vampire: Lucita, one of the signature NPCs of the series. She was bisexual, though.
• Masquerade: It's kind of in the title, though the Dark Ages shows it was much weaker and would eventually lead to the First Inquisition.
• Rebellious Rebel: The Anarchs seem to exist solely to be irritating to the Camarilla.
• Religious Vampire: A common enough quality among the Damned with Anatole, Moncada, Hesha, Fatima, and various others all possessing strong religious beliefs.
• Stronger with Age: All vampires are like this but we actually get to see some go from being Neonates to unstoppable ancient badasses.
• Urban Fantasy: It was called "Gothic Punk" back then but fit most of the tropes.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Many of the novels had humans ignore giant fleshcrafted monsters going through downtown Washington D.C. and open combat between the undead.
• Our Vampires Are Different: They all share some commonalities but they each are possessed of different powers as well as weaknesses depending on what Clan they're from.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: Notably averted as vampires couldn't actually even engage in sex for much of the line's history. This was later retconned.
• Vampire Monarch: Vampire society is built around the idea of each major city having a Prince who holds court around them, as in the games.
• Villain Protagonist: Most of the books star vampires themselves and usually they're still self-interested monsters.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Vampires are pathologically incapable of not plotting against one another so every book has the Camarilla, Sabbat, and Anarchs engaged in in-fighting even when they're fighting each other.

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