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A tabletop roleplaying game in the Chronicles of Darkness line and Spiritual Successor of Vampire: The Masquerade. Players take the roles of vampires, people Cursed with eternal (un)life, supernatural power, and — oh, yeah — bloodlust and a fatal sunlight allergy.

In Requiem nobody knows exactly how the vampirism curse started. Some believe that they were cursed by The Powers That Be for a specific purpose, others believe that vampires are a concealed part of the natural world and there are those who think it's not important at all. But one thing is for sure, vampires have stalked and preyed on humanity for a very long time.

The mortals killed and brought back as vampires are in for a tough existence. The first thing to be noticed is the ever-present Beast, the name given to the urges that drive vampires away from their Humanity (one of them being an endless thirst for the blood of the living). Then there is the fact that fire and sunlight are the bane of their existance. They also have to socialize with other bloodsuckers that compose vampire society, which can be roughly described as vicious, and most likely deal with hunters and/or other nasty creatures that go bump in the night. Every night since the first is a battle for survival (metaphorical, or not). In addition (maybe as a compensation) they get powers like immortality, Super-Strength and supernatural charm, just to name a few, aside from the possibility that one night they may become the almighty overlords of the afterdark.

The various Splats of Vampire are as follows:

The Clans: A Clan is basically a blood family which is determined by the Sire. Instead of the previous game's thirteen (and then some) clans, clans being the most distinctive (and easily litigated) feature of White Wolf's system, it was whittled down to five "archetype" Clans, but each one of them has tons of Bloodlines that adds a few more variations.

The Covenants: The political parties and/or religions of the Kindred.

  • The Carthian Movement: Composed mostly by Neonates, the Carthians seek the best form of government for vampires based on mortal social systems which can be anything from strict Representative Republicanism to clan-based tyranny. Ironically, while Invictus-ruled cities generally tend to have the Carthian dissidents be the least amoral vampires in town, the Carthian-ruled cities detailed in the setting so far have all set new world records for going downhill fast. Apparently they make a far better opposition than administration.
  • The Circle of the Crone: An anthology of faiths and pagan cults that worships a variety of feminine deities incorporated in one entity, creatrix of vampires, the Crone (a.k.a. the Mother of all Monsters) and promote the idea that vampires are perfectly natural (in the way that leeches are natural). They practice the blood sorcery of CrĂșac that, as a downside, distances them from humanity.
  • The Invictus: The crĂšme de la crĂšme of Kindred society. Sheer force of meritocracy (Invictus screw-ups do not last long) generally makes them competent administrators, but since the faction has no code of ethics and their attitude towards political maneuvering is Machiavellian, Invictus-ruled territories are classic examples of ''At least the trains run on time."
  • Lancea Sanctum: Founded by the Roman Centurion Longinus, the Sanctified believe that God cursed them as vampires to unleash His Wrath upon sinners. They can range anything from Catholic (most common) to Jewish and Muslim in pomp and circumstance. Theban Sorcery, their kind of magic, is the invocation of dark miracles upon the world.
    • Blood and Smoke corrects their name to Lancea et Sanctum, and makes their focus Christian-only.
  • Ordo Dracul: By studying what it means to be a vampire, using a scientific method blended with occultism, they try to find a way to transcend the curse limitations, such as that little sunlight allergy. The result of such studies are the Coils of the Dragon, powers that negate some of their weaknesses. They make heavy use of a student-mentor program.

Plus two antagonistic Covenants:

  • Belial's Brood: Infernalists, self-titled the Forsworn, that believe that they should lose all traces of humanity and give themselves over to the Beast.
  • VII: They engage in terrorist acts against other vampires, and their minds can't be read beyond getting the image of the roman numeral 7. Beyond that, there is no set canonical explanation for who VII are; a variety of options are offered to choose from.

For more details on Clans, Covenants and other creatures that composes the Requiem line go to Character Sheet


This game features examples of:

  • Age Without Youth: The Oberloch bloodline have the unique weakness that their bodies continue to age after the Embrace, leaving their elders astonishingly decrepit.
  • A God Am I: Every member of the Asnam bloodline. To wit, the Asnam are a Daeva bloodline whose special abilities allow them to make a ghouled human appear prettier than he really is, transfer blood or willpower to or from one of her ghouls over large distances, sleep in the body of a ghoul and prepare a child in such a way that, when the Asnam would suffer Final Death, their soul is instead transferred into the body of the child. They are also true egomaniacs, which allows the Storyteller to grossly underplay the difficulty of a task up to two times per scene.
  • Almighty Janitor: A few, but one of the more straight examples of the trope is Sam, from the New Orleans setting book.
    Everybody knows Sam. Sam is the friendly if quiet fellow who meanders around town, occasionally muttering to himself in low and often hushed tones. Sam is the unassuming homeless man who spends most of his time in one of the few New Orleans parks that aren’t regularly monopolized by the flow of mortal men in ugly pants (most notably Audobon Park, Louis Armstrong Park and the northern half of City Park). Sam is the crumpled old wino who keeps to himself. Everybody knows Sam—right?
    Wrong.
    • In truth, Sam is probably, in terms of physical and mystical might, the single most powerful vampire in the entire state of Louisiana. He was an elder when the current elders of the city were barely more than fledglings themselves, and faked his own Final Death, falling into torpor, where he slept until the late 20th or early 21st century. And he appears to have slept at the center of a network of Ley Lines, which... changed him somehow.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: Every last one of the Covenants is some combination of this and the Ancient Tradition.
    • The Invictus is closest to the Ancient Conspiracy side of things, and are the ones most likely to be involved in manipulating mortal matters.
    • The Lancea Sanctum are mostly an Ancient Tradition, only getting involved in humanity when they need to be scared straight.
    • The Circle of the Crone are barely even an Ancient Tradition, much less a conspiracy, given how splintered they are as an organization. Nonetheless, they've managed to pass down the secrets of CrĂșac for millenia, so there's at least something to them.
    • The Ordo Dracul is a downplayed version because they don't even really care about vampire politics, much less the affairs of mortals, so long as they're allowed to study in peace.
    • The Carthians are a lesser version because they're not really all that ancient- they only date back to the Enlightenment, which makes them practically neonates compared to the other Covenants.
  • Animal Eye Spy: An advanced Animalism power lets the vampire temporarily transfer their mind into an animal, taking control of it and gaining its senses as their own.
  • Animorphism: The signature discipline of Clan Gangrel, Protean, lets the vampire transform into an animal like a wolf or bat. They start with a single alternate form and can learn more by spending XP.
  • Apocalypse Maiden: This is either the Crone, or a potential daughter of hers. No one's entirely sure.
  • Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: The Phanariot and the Louchet are ghouls who have developed an immunity to the Viniculum, either through a collective pact with an otherworldly entity (Phanariot) or as part of a deal with true Kindred to remove some of the Blessed with Suck qualities of existence (the Louchet). Since it's assumed that ghouls are more or less the collective kicked dogs of the vampiric world, everyone who doesn't know of their existence beforehand assumes they're just loyal gofers. Naturally, this is an impression they do everything in their power to cultivate, right up until they ask Who's Laughing Now? and cut off their "master's" head.
  • Appeal to Authority: A Prince never needs to explain him or herself to anyone, and can punish anyone who questions them. However, as a matter of practicality, Princes will usually at least explain their actions to the Primogen, since Princes that seem to act too recklessly and can't defend themselves can often find themselves without their jobs... or their heads.
  • Appeal to Novelty: The Carthian Movement was initially just a collection of rabble-rousing neonates that were angry about the stodginess and perpetual stasis of vampire society. But then a few elders thought it might be a nice idea to try out some of these strange new ideas like "democracy" and "personal liberty," and soon the Movement rose to prominence alongside all the other covenants.
  • Appeal to Tradition:
    • The Invictus inherently trust things that are old because they are proven, rather than new things that are potentially unreliable and volatile. This includes their political beliefs, of course, but it also extends to their personal belongings and tastes (part of the reason they tend to retain fashion styles from their time alive, even if they're several hundred years out of date).
    • Downplayed in 2e; the Invictus are still pretty traditional, but they are also more adaptable when it comes to technology than they were in 1e.
  • Arc Symbol: Owls are very present in vampiric folklore, such as stories about clan origins. They represent the Strix.
  • Artificial Insolence: Vampires are prone to Frenzy when they're provoked, hungry in the presence of blood, or threatened by fire or sunlight. If they fail a dice roll to resist it, their Beast takes over and forces them to fight, feed, or flee.
  • Art Reflects Personality: Vampires are Damaged Souls with Creative Sterility, so their art might be technically impressive, but it almost never makes any emotional impact on the viewer unless the vampire manages an exceptional success on a Humanity roll while making it.
  • Ascended Demon: The mythical state of Golconda is believed to free a pure-hearted vampire from their Beast — according to some, at least.
  • Asshole Victim: The Black Hounds only pursue vampires who have Jumped Off The Slippery Slope or are getting close to it, and in the case of genuinely repentant ones, leave them with only a nasty burn and a warning.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking:
    • Any vampire that lives long enough to become Prince is probably not someone you want to mess with... unless they're a Puppet King, in which case they are probably controlled by someone you don't want to mess with.
    • This also goes for most Primogen, and anyone who manages to get into the leadership of their respective Covenants.
    • As a general rule, the more titles an Invictus noble has, the less you'll want to be on their bad side.
    • Averted (mostly) with the Ordo Dracul. Rank in the Ordo is generally earned through study of the Coils of the Dragon, which often requires so much time that they don't really have time to kick ass. That said, do not mess with one of the Sworn of the Axe, who are this trope up to eleven.
  • Badass Bookworm: Besides the inherent badassery that comes from knowing certain Coils (such as learning not to frenzy and how to minimize damage from fire and sunlight), the Ordo has an entire group of these known as the Sworn of the Axe. They were founded by Mara, the most violent of the Brides of Dracula, and they will gladly kill you if you threaten the Ordo.
  • Being Good Sucks: Not all the time; it's more that Evil Feels Good. However, the opposite of the Gangrel Red Surrender—which may or may not even be real, but which is rumored to exist—results in getting penalties where the Surrender gives benefits and vice versa, for a single night once per week... and one other ironic twist:
    It feels awful. Humanity is no pleasant thing. Denying the Beast feels sick, wrong, tainted. The vampire concentrates overmuch on all the wrong things she’s done and recognizes herself for the monster that she is.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Ending a story like this is par for the course.
  • Blessed with Suck: It is not fun to be a vampire. Those who disagree tend to become ash in the wind one way or another. To the point that, in 2e, many of a vampire's own inherent powers can cause them to lose points of Humanity — use some of that Super-Strength or Super-Speed? That's a Humanity 9 "sin". Survive an attack thanks to your combination of Super-Toughness and Healing Factor? That's a Humanity 7 sin. Even your immortality causes you to slip towards monstrosity; only vampires with a Humanity of 1 are immune to the need to make checks for surviving centuries.
    • An interesting case study of this are Bloodlines. Bloodlines can be born from a vampire getting incredibly old and powerful in blood manipulation, allowing them to create a special Discipline or make an Out of Clan into an In Clan Discipline, making it cheaper to buy. The downside? The vampire and likely most if not all of their progeny now get an extra Weaksauce Weakness, even if they don't want the spiffy new powers! It's no surprise that a good number of bloodlines were created as a result of said founder surviving a particularly nasty curse.
      • Of particular note are the Kallisti, a Daeva bloodline outlined in the Invictus sourcebook. On paper, they are the ultimate social manipulators, with Dominate, Majesty, and a bloodline Discipline called Perfidy, which is basically emotional control geared towards causing as much chaos as possible. Plus, they have access to Celerity if things get dicey. The catch? Their bloodline weakness is that their blood doesn't cause Vinculum. This doesn't sound too bad until you realize that since vampires (once they reach an appropriate age) can only feed from other vampires, any elder would give his left arm for a blood slave that he can drink freely from without any emotional ties. The Invictus practically keeps them as pets, letting them play tiddly winks with local politics as long as their elders can tap their veins whenever they please. If you're a Kallisti, and word gets out about the weakness of your bloodline, expect a long stay chained up in an elder's basement as he farms you for blood.
  • Blob Monster:
    • A vampire using the Yama’s Benefice power of the Sakti Pata Discipline can turn themselves into one of these by possessing their own blood and then animating it seperately of their corpse-shell. This can even help them escape death, allowing their blood to ooze out of their destroyed body before it is completely destroyed and try to find a new corpse to inhabit.
    • The extinct Pijavica clan, introduced in Blood and Smoke. When the Pijavica Embraced, the victim died, and if the corpse was left to rot long enough the new Pijavica would burst out as a sentient mass of blood. Given enough time, they'd eventually develop into a mostly human form.
  • Blood Bath:
    • One bloodline of vampires, the Galloi, bathe in blood to make themselves more beautiful.
    • Macellarius and Noctuku feeding habits are this trope. Noctuku, at least, can absorb blood through their skin. Macellarius are just so disgusting and gluttonous they tend to slop their food all over themselves.
  • Blood Magic: Both the Acolytes and the Sanctified are users of this, though Theban Sorcery depends on other reagents, and CrĂșac is pure Blood Magic.
  • Bloody Murder: Vampires can do a lot of stuff with their blood, but the Sakti Pata Discipline is the closest to this trope.
  • Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Subverted with Belial's Brood: The Forsworn are anarchists, and they do throw bombs, but their sourcebook shows that they actually don't view chaos as an end in and of itself-it's actually part of their Pursuit, the philosophic journey towards the platonic ideal of "the Beast".
  • But Not Too Foreign: A plot point introduced in Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners. The half-Japanese character Emily Eupraxus Washington was inducted into the ancient Roman Eupraxus bloodline, who are treated as the figureheads of the Invictus Covenant. The plot is that the elder Invictus are largely racist feudal Europeans, but they dare not act against their crown jewel. The younger Invictus, on the other hand, love Emily because her combined lineage and bloodline show that the Invictus is capable of adapting to the modern world.
  • Came Back Wrong:
    • The Nosferatu. Some are The Grotesque, but most simply have something about them — eyes that are an unnatural color, an odor, the way they move, or even an aura about them — that is just not right.
    • The expanded rules on draugr give us larvae: Kindred who, whether by curse or accident, are brought into the Requiem at Humanity 0.
    • Then you've got the Hollow Mekhet. Rather than being Embraced on the cusp of death, they were Embraced several days after. However, this has given them time for their ka to depart, which means they cast no shadow, don't reflect in mirrors or resolve on any film medium, can't be heard over a phone or tape recorder... oh, and their ka is still pinned to this mortal coil, can do all these things, and will make the Mekhet's nights living hell if it's not placated with the right rituals.
  • Canis Latinicus: "Lancea Sanctum." Changed to the actually correct "Lancea et Sanctum" in 2e.
  • Cannibal Clan: The Oberloch bloodline seem to be based on the Cannibal Clan types you see in horror movies like the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but are actually derived from the redneck thing. A truer cannibal clan would be the Noctuku, who feed on other vampires exclusively, or the Macellarius, who do that occasionally, but really emphasize the family unit.
  • Cannibalism Superpower:
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Belial's Brood is fully aware that they are evil by human standards, and they could not care less.
  • Cast from Sanity: The game has a few of the most powerful Theban Sorcery spells cost Willpower Points; once cast, the stat itself goes down. Characters can spend XP to buy it back up to the previous level, but until then they're essentially less able to expend mental and emotional energy. Interestingly, creating a new vampire requires the exact same expenditure on part of the vampire's sire. The setting details some sires who mass embrace too many, too quickly, and become emotional wrecks unable to hold themselves together.
  • Chest Burster: The extinct Pijavica rose into undeath by bursting out of their own corpses in a Blob Monster form. They were still unalive, obviously, but still, that could not have been a pleasant sensation for them.
  • Chinese Vampire: This would be the Jiang Shi variant of vampire. They even make use of the genderswap power legends speak of, but is often forgotten in modern portrayals. In 2e, the Jiang Shi in the research triangle of North Carolina are in the process of becoming a true Kindred clan.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Zig-zagged, depending on splatbook. For example; in World of Darkness: Chicago, it's played straight with Richard Tabor.
  • City of Adventure: New Orleans is cited to possess the best aesthetic for any Vampire campaign that doesn't have the capacity to purely homebrew a Vampire city. Los Angeles is also a noted city for a Vampire campaign, given its connections to Kindred history.
  • Classical Movie Vampire: One of the three elder vampires claiming to be Dracula is a fellow nicknamed "Hollywood Drac." He's described as looking like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, and is pictured wearing the traditional white-tie evening clothes, black cape, and pendant.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Invictus from Florence has a formal dress code that includes the use of of differently colored sashes for each clan, the Daeva use red and gold, the Gangrel use red and brown, the Mekhet use indigo and silver, the Nosferatu use black and green and the Ventrue use purple and gold.
  • Combo Platter Powers: Though vampires can learn all of the "common" Disciplines, at least potentially, they are by nature inclined towards mastery of a few, based on their Clan and, potentially, their Bloodline. The precise combination of Disciplines can be rather surprising. For example, the Daeva (whose niche is Vampires Are Sex Gods) have access to not only the Majesty Discipline, but also the Celerity and Vigour Disciplines as well.
  • Cosplay: People who play in the LARP version of the game, Mind's Eye Theater, often dress-up as their characters or major NPCs. The actual rulebook for the LARP even uses pictures of some players cosplaying as New Orleans mainstays Pearl Chastain and Baron Cimetiere, who himself is cosplaying Baron Samedi.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: The Moroi bloodline are a group of uber-predators kept as assassins by the Ordo Dracul. They boast strength and toughness beyond even undead norm, they have both Obfuscate (vampiric stealth) and Animalism (animal control), and they're an option for both Gangrel and Nosferatu, meaning that they have relatively easy access to Protean (shapeshifting) and Nightmare (inflicting fear), though they're no longer in-clan. They also have murderous urges even more powerful than other vampires that take up most of their concentration, and while they're not precisely deformed, they have yellowish skin and their air of menace allows even oblivious humans to understand there's something wrong with them. They also effectively have the clan weaknesses of both the Gangrel and the Nosferatu So yeah, good if you want to fight, sneak, or assassinate, bad if you want to, say, carry on a normal conversation, or do more than basic math. Notes for the Bloodline flat-out state that they're exceptional in combat, nearly useless for just about anything else, and actually provides some tips for approaching the Crippling Overspecialization trope in-story.
  • Crossover: It doesn't involve metaplot since it doesn't exist in this iteration of the CoD, but it's still worth pointing out:
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Lancea Sanctum, a group of vampires that follow the teachings of Longinus, the legionnaire that they believe stabbed the actual Jesus from the Bible with his spear, as some kind of dark vampire messiah.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Ghouls tend to see themselves as this: They are cursed to be necrophages for eternity in return for their dark sorcery as mortals... at the age they were cursed... with Functional Magic intact... Charm Person... and the complete lack of anything resembling the Beast. It's at that point that the silver lining gets so thick you can't see the cloud.
  • Darker and Edgier: Unlike in Masquerade, it isn't actually possible to embrace your new power without giving into the Beast, at least partially — which means it's impossible to remain a moral individual and have something resembling power in vampiric society. And that's the least bad thing that will happen to you. Yeah, Blessed with Suck doesn't begin to describe Kindred.
  • Darkest Africa: Requiem for Rome has a section detailing how a game set in sub-Saharan Africa might be like. It's described like this trope, but it may be justified, since this is Africa during the time of the Roman Empire.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • Or rather, less evil. The Mekhet hate fire and sunlight even more than other vampires, and the Nosferatu are literally impossible to like. They're also the clans whose Beasts affect their minds in the least obvious ways, so it appears easier for them to be good... which isn't saying much.
    • The Gangrel are a close second. They're just not very cerebral, although they don't have to indulge their dark sides or go crazy. But they can. Oh, how they can...
    • A more appropriate version of Dark Is Not Evil can be found with the Khaibit. Their bloodline power is Obtenebration, granting power over shadows and increased ability to operate in the dark... and they specialize as demon-hunters and bodyguards.
  • The Dark Side — Quite a few:
    • The Gangrel get the Red Surrender, which allows them to yield more power from going into Frenzy. Problem is, it also makes it harder to succeed at non-bestial skills... oh, and it's addictive.
    • Belial's Brood get Investments, demonstrations of their symbiotic relationship with the Beast and their understanding of vampiric nature. If things like tearing off your hands to serve as puppets or climbing up walls with your fingers weren't obviously creepy enough, they get easier to buy the lower your Karma Meter goes.
  • Day of the Jackboot: While the Carthians are generally presented as having philosophies rooted in modern democratic and republican ideals, they also count fascists and communists among their number. And sometimes, those Carthians manage to take control of a city...
  • Deader than Dead: Since vampires are the walking dead to begin with, and pretty hard to kill, they can only be truly destroyed usually by fire or sunlight.
  • Deaf Composer: Any vampire cooks, by virtue of having normal food taste utterly rancid. For that matter, virtually any vampire artist of any sort lacks any emotional insight or expression, regardless of how many dots the player puts into Expression and Manipulation, because vampires are, not to put too fine a point on it, dead inside.
  • Death Before Dishonor: The bushido-themed Sotoha bloodline are bound to a strict My Master, Right or Wrong code of honour. However, a Sotoha can commit public Seppuku in protest against their lord (being vampires, this only leaves them comatose) to be freed from their oath if they survive, or commit Suicide by Sunlight to free all their lord's other vassals.
  • Democracy Is Bad: The Invictus don't believe in democracy, as it's easy to subvert with their psychic Disciplines. The Invictus Emperor story is actually a Space Whale Aesop about this.
  • Depending on the Artist: As different artists are commissioned to work on the same characters, this trope is in full effect.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • The core book informs the curious just what would probably happen if one of the Kindred found themselves at the bottom of a deep-sea trench or in outer space, with parentheticals asking just what kind of chronicle you're playing for this to come up.
    • Ghouls has detailed mechanics for conception and gestation... in the context of breeding humans as blood slaves. The author even directly states that having a player character use these rules is an (his words) exercise in cruelty.
  • Dhampyr: Covered in "Wicked Dead", they are the result of dark rituals and an unnatural obsession for a vampire to procreate. So long as the parents are one mortal and one vampire, normal gender requirements are void. The female partner can even impregnate the male partnernaturally, this is very likely to result in death for a mortal man. Dhampyrs themselves are pretty much Blessed with Suck; they can deactivate Disciplines without even realising it and vampires that drink their blood have to regurgitate it before they can use their powers, but at the same time a vampire that drinks a same-clan dhampyr's blood goes nuts, often becoming obsessed with the dhampyr to boot.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: The "Sexualized" merit lets characters use this to their advantage, at the cost of dealing with the fallout from the occasional Stupid Sexy Flanders moments they inflict on people around them.
  • Double-Edged Buff: Frenzy gives vampires several bonuses (or in 2e, a scaling buff to everything) but hands over their free will to their Beast.
  • Downer Ending: This is the default ending for most chronicles (personal horror game, remember?). The authors make it a point to remind the readers every now and then. The best case scenarios tend to involve the characters involved not thinking like a human anymore.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Enforced by the Predator's Taint rule. Basically, vampires are meant to be solitary hunters, and thus the Beast tries to go into either a rage or a fear frenzy upon running across another vampire for the first time (the type of frenzy depending on whether the triggering vampire is of lower or higher Blood Potency, respectively). A roll is made to avoid this, but if it fails, well... It can be also be bypassed entirely if both possess the second level of Obfuscate.
  • Empty Shell: Subverted with the Empty Liars—they're called that because they have false memories of being a human and don't have blood, only eldritch secrets they've picked up. But personality-wise, they're indistinguishable from normal people, even to the point of having a Morality score.
  • Enemy Within:
    • All vampires suffer from The Beast, an animalistic, id-like force with a hint of supernatural malice, that attempts to compel them into immediately satisfying their instinctive urges, such as craving for blood, fear of sunlight or anger at the slightest provocation, no matter the circumstances. Its motives can be summarised as "Hunt. Kill. Feed. Sleep. Repeat."
    • There's also "The Other," from the Storyteller's Guide, which can optionally replace the Beast, and is a bit like the Toxic Friend Influence within.
  • Enemy Without: The Hollow Mekhet lose their reflection and part of their soul during their Embrace. Those bits become autonomous spirit-like entities that can only subsist on carrion and stagnant water, and generally don't like their hosts.
  • Enlightenment Superpowers: The Ordo Dracul study the vampiric condition with the goal of transcending it. Members learn the Coils of the Dragon in this manner, transforming their bodies and souls through willpower alone to remove elements of their vampiric weaknesses.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Members of the "Romanist" belief (the theory that the first vampires arose spontaneously from certain members of the Julio-Claudian Caesars) sometimes wonder if Nero might have been the first Daeva... they invariably go back to speculating that the Daeva's founder was either his mother, Agrippina, or his aunt-in-law, Messalina. The reason is that general consensus is, simply: Nero was far too much of a jerk to have become the founder of the Succubus clan. Such a petty, preening poseur is nowhere near charismatic or attractive enough to be the founder of the Succubus clan, who, for all their glitz, only an idiot mistakes for vapid fools.
    • The Melissidae are a Ventrue bloodline descended from a woman who tried to encourage humans to forsake their humanity and instead become a literal hive, forsaking individual thought for the good of the hive — a philosophy that would have been "hideously wrong" even without having an unnatural, undead thing at the center of the hive, as the book notes. They are such psychotic, abusive, soulless monsters that the other vampires actually organised en masse to wipe them out.
    • Draugr (vampires who have hit the rock bottom of the Karma Meter and become utterly inhuman) aren't appreciated by vampires at the best of times. The kicker is, they tend to be driven solely by their Vice, and come in two levels of intelligence, one that can vaguely pass for human(ish), the other utterly primal. Whenever a bestial draugr driven by Lust comes into being, the local vampires invariably band together to destroy it. As Wicked Dead notes, it's not often that vampires get to feel like heroes — but destroying draugr of this stripe is one of those times.
  • Evil Feels Good: Humanity is lost by not showing remorse for misdeeds. And the Red Surrender, a Gangrel-only mindset that gives the beast a little more free rein, feels really good.
  • Evil Minions: The Staff merit grants a variaty of non combatant characters (maids, gardeners, etc.) However they may not be evil per se.
  • Evil Tastes Good: Feeding causes a vampire to have something somewhere between an adrenaline rush/orgasm.
  • Evil Twin: The Hollow Mekhet are haunted by their Ka (the reflection/shadow from Egyptian mythology). It doesn't want to kill them (because that would kill it too); it wants to make them suffer...
  • Evilutionary Biologist:
    • The modus operandi of the Ordo Dracul, thanks to the Coils of the Dragon. Subverted in that most of the changes are done to oneself, intentionally... although there's always a need for more test subjects.
    • Also, the origin of the Azerkatil bloodline, which was created through experimentation with bloodline "genetics" and rampant diablerie. This alone would be a good reason to fear the Azerkatil, even if they weren't a bloodline specifically created to hunt other vampires.
  • Evil Versus Evil:
    • In a game where you are a Villain by Default in a society based on The Social Darwinist trope and the game's system tries to make it really hard to play The Atoner, you get this.
    • Ventrue has a running narrative about a dead girl who's trying to protect herself from the Strix by performing a lot of really creepy ritual killings around places full of negative feelings. She claims the rituals are from the only ones that can fight the Strix, the equally mysterious "Perfecti."
  • Evil Virtues: Part of what makes Belial's Brood such an effective organization is True Companions. This is in contrast to every other Kindred in existence.
  • Fan Disservice: The cover of The Wicked Dead has a Lesbian Vampire blood orgy. It's not sexy. In the slightest.
  • Fanservice: Justified since it's explained that the art for the books is often commissioned before the written material is finished, so the pictures will sometimes not match the text! The end result is that we get illustrations of sexy vampire girls (and guys!) for no appreciable reason.
  • Fantastic Drug:
  • Fantastic Fragility: The allure of Bloodlines is they give their members a fourth discipline (sometimes unique) at in-clan cost, making it much easier to gain terrifying new powers. The downside? A whole new weakness to bog you down, ranging from being egomaniacs (Asnam) to the not having fangs or the kiss (Norvegi).
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • The clanbooks bring up the idea that the Daeva and Ventrue are the top of vampire society, while the Mekhet are looked down upon. The Gangrel are equated with dogs, and Nosferatu? Worms.
  • The Deucalion bloodline of the Ventrue is all about this. They believe the Ventrue are truly superior to other clans, and their response to this ranges from "help the other clans get over their weaknesses" to "lord over them like the wastes of blood they are." Their bloodline-exclusive Discipline relies on inflicting exaggerated versions of the clan weaknesses on other vampires... but the book mentions that no one in the line has unlocked the fifth level, centered around the Ventrue tendency towards madness, because that would require admitting the Ventrue are flawed.
  • Food Chain of Evil:
    • Once they hit Blood Potency 6, vampires can only survive off of the blood of other vampires.
    • Some ghouls go rogue, hunting vampires like prey rather than submit to slavery beneath them. The Mythologies splatbook features a ghoul strain called the Phanariot which is dedicated to doing this.
    • Vampires can feed on other supernatural races, of course. In second edition, the Unnatural Affinity merit allows BP6+ vampires to use one or more kinds of supernatural as an acceptable substitute for vampires when it comes to feeding.
    • The Ragged-Man (Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead) is a parasite that gestates inside of vampires.
  • Foreign Fanservice: Requiem for Rome portrays the Daeva as sexy Middle Easterners.
  • For Science!: The stated motive behind many of the more horrible things the Ordo Dracul do. For example, "Following the Dragon's Tail," which involves murdering a frequently randomly selected innocent, just to observe the effect of the murder on the victim's friends and family, as a lesson in the unpredictability of the consequences of one's actions. An expanded version, called "Counting the Dragon's Scales," involves a number of vampires and coordinated mass slaughter, and is intended to allow the study of what happens when an entire city collectively craps itself in terror. They also entertain ideas about Embracing people completely unprepared for vampirism (suicides, the disabled) for the reason of seeing whether or not the Beast's survival urge can overcome their mentality.
  • For the Evulz:
    • One of the most deranged things introduced in the game is a ghoul family called the Crassus. Unlike most ghoul families, these guys are pretty awesome. They're a 6,000 member family with tons of cash, connections, fame, and Kindred disciplines. They're called the Caesars, and sometimes the royalty of America. They have their hand in everything from insurance to Mob wars. But there's a catch: see, this family was created when a Ventrue dude named Lysander agreed to paying a Roman gambler's debt, but in return everyone in his family is now a toy for Invictus members. Only a few individuals in the family know this. And by "toy," we mean the Invictus can beat and rape the hell out of them whenever they want to vent out some of their frustration (or the lulz), only to return the poor Crassus member to their normal life as if nothing has happened. The Crassus are noted for being incredibly resistant to the thought of anything supernatural, even their own powers, so they always always rationalize this regular degradation as some "evil uncle paying a visit." The fluff actually encourages this behavior: the Crassus are consistently portrayed as vain and snot-nosed rich kids that "need to be taken down a peg or three"! But wait, it gets better! All Crassus ghouls can have their choice of either the Ventrue or Daeva weakness. Clearly, being part of a rich family sucks in this world.
    • Then we have the Strix, who being The Unfettered now, primarily prosecute vampires for this reason. A Strix in the opening of the Strix chapter of Wicked Dead speaks of his decaying possessions, and how he/she doesn't know who he really is anymore, or why he does all these terrible things. "... and I wouldn't have it any other way."
  • Fully-Embraced Fiend: Belial's Brood is composed of vampires who have collectively decided "screw humanity" and become the best monsters they can be.
  • Grand Theft Me: Members of the En bloodline have a semi-sentient Beast that encourages them to commit diablerie, and indeed grants additional benefits at higher Blood Potency. As a result, however, an En that reaches Humanity 0 doesn't become a draugr — instead, they're possessed by their Beast and become a victim of this trope.
  • Gratuitous French: Licencieux's power titles are all in French.
  • Half-Human Hybrid:
    • Averted with the Ghouls, who are never anything but alive or fundamentally human. That doesn't stop the Cainite Heresy from Hunter calling them Half-Vampires, though.
    • Played straight in Wicked Dead, with the introduction of the Dhampyr. Thing is, each and every Dhampyr is a walking curse incarnate, designed to utterly shatter a vampire's unlife... and thanks to the nature of their powers, the Dhampyr are often utterly oblivious to the effects they have on the vampires around them. Most aren't even aware vampires exist.
  • Healing Factor: Vampires can regenerate damage on the fly by spending Vitae (consumed blood) to do so. The rules for this are slightly changed between first and second editions.
  • Heaven's Devils: The Lancea Sanctum believe themselves this. They're a group of vampires who believe that though they are damned and possessed by the demon-like Beast which drives them to evil acts, they are meant by God to scare and punish humanity through their depredations so they remain virtuous. This is, to say the least, hotly contested since it functionally pushes them to seek ways to harm humanity actively, albeit with more focus on the wrongdoing. Their mythology even tells of visitations by disapproving Angels when vampires fail to live "up" to their role.
  • Hindu Mythology: The Indian Kindred claim the myths came from mortals' experiences with vampires.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: Well, there's Longinus and Dracula. Additionally, the Mekhet claim the one who created their clan was none other than the mad witch-pharaoh... Akhenaten?!
  • Horror Hunger:
    • Vampires and blood, among whom the Noctuku Bloodline take it to new levels. They're not only blood drinking monsters, but addicted to cannibalism. That's right, they need to eat the flesh of the living (animals, humans, and vampires) or suffer crippling hunger pains and worsening social and mental abilities. Worse, they still can't digest, so it all comes right back up.
    • According to the "Mythologies" sourcebook for Requiem, any powerful vampire has a reason to be tempted to eat human livers. If they can keep it down overday, then they'll "dilute" their blood, allowing them to drink less powerful blood (so a Blood Potency 7+ liver-eater no longer needs to feed on other vampires) for a time. Of course, it only lasts about a fortnight to a month, and then they need to eat another liver...
  • Hot-Blooded: The Tianpian Xiao, who share the weakness that they must periodically use their bloodline discipline to release excess emotion into the people around them. If they fail to do so, the emotional buildup eventually renders them useless.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Empty Liars, who appear to be perfectly normal to all senses, and even think they're mortals... except to Aura Sight, which shows them to completely lack an aura (protip-everything sapient, even monsters who were never human, has an aura), have and induce false memories of their entire "life story", and when exposed to Blood Magic, quickly drop all pretense and observe. More importantly for blood sorcerers, they're walking lexicons of all the spells they've seen-drinking their blood is like digesting an entire Tome of Eldritch Lore at once.
  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Considering the Embrace doesn't need to be consensual, it's not surprising that a number of vampires are less than fond of their sires. Add on to this the fact that many vampires become jaded, inhuman and extremely manipulative, and you have a decent chance of having a permanent, mystical tie to someone you really wish would take a long walk at sunrise.
  • I Love the Dead: One way the Sangiovanni bloodline weakness can manifest, though it's considered impolite to bring up such topics when the bloodline meets formally.
  • I'm a Humanitarian:
    • The Noctuku, a bloodline of the Nosferatu whose members have a taste for the flesh of other vampires. They regulary have to consume another vampire's flesh (even though they can't keep it down and don't gain any nourishment from it) or risk going into a hunger frenzy. What makes the Noctuku really fit that trope is that they actually don't need vampire flesh; pork and lamb will do just fine, but no, they just prefer other vampires.
    • There's also the Macellarius, a Ventrue bloodline of Villainous Gluttons whose extra weakness is they bloat to obesity shortly after joining the bloodline and keep going year after year. While they gorge themselves on just about everything, they also eat their victims alive instead of just drinking their blood, as their unique powers allow them to convert raw flesh into extra nutrition. Considering that Vampires cannot digest anything other than vitae, and must eventually vomit up anything else they eat as a bloody slurry, the ends to Macellarius dinner parties tend to be messy, to say the very least.
  • Immune to Bullets: Technically; because vampires are dead, and thusly have lower capacities to feel pain, don't bleed the way humans do, and don't need organs the way humans do, they convert gunshots from lethal damage to bashing damage, meaning shooting at a vampire is about as effective as punching one in the face. They literally need to be ripped to shreds by gunfire before they will start noticing it.
  • In the Blood:
    • This is actually the premise of the Shadows of Mexico setting. It even points out that racism, of all things, is somehow rooted into the land and is considered a valid mental derangement along with obsessive compulsive disorder.
    • A potential Prince for Mexico is Malintzinita, a daughter of Cortez and La Malinche. She's torn between her native roots and Spanish culture. She created a bloodline that emphasizes this.
    • The Ventrue clan in Mexico is viewed as perpetrators of the Spanish conquest. Their nicknames are tiranos (tyrants) and invasors (invaders).
    • The Lancea Sanctum branches in Mexico are generally more accepting of those who worship the pagan gods of the region. This is because those gods are potentially their precursors.
    • In the Invictus, your vampiric ancestry (grand-sires and above) determines how easily you can be accepted. This applies to all Invictus domains, not just in Mexico.
    • A good many bloodlines are, quite frankly, Cursed with Suck and the core book makes it clear that if a vampire has a sire or grandsire in said bloodline, they may "reflexively" join despite not wanting to. Some kindred will often go to great lengths trying to avoid this by running away or joining a (they think/hope) less sucky bloodline. The Melissidae bloodline are known to not do anything if their childer run away. They just assume that the blood will take care of itself. So far, it always has.
  • Knight Templar: A fair amount of Lancea Sanctum vampires are like this. The rest usually try to be heroic (or, at least, anti-heroic) vampires who punish evil humans, but some still fall into evil.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Viciously averted.
    • Disciplines that focus on the physical - Celerity, Vigor, and Resilience - offer their respective physical stats (Defense, Strength, Stamina) a major boost that helps lategame, and are often necessary pre-requisites for Devotions which offer powerful defensive utilities, such as Juggernaut's Gait - which requires you have 5 Resilience Dots and at least 3 Vigor Dots before you attain it.
    • The most powerful of the physical Disciplines is one that's the signature Discipline for the Gangrel - Protean. Protean has a bit of "wizardry" to it, but is mostly an ability that augments the physical attributes of a Kindred for a period of time.
    • While Dominate is a mental Discipline that is quite useful and potent early on, opposition towards the mid and late stages of a campaign are liable to having basic Merits that help resist against Dominate (such as Iron-Willed, or Indomitable), or deploy specific Kindred-based Merits (such as Oath of the True Knight) or various tricks which can either silence Dominate or make them resistant to Dominate. The same is also true of Majesty, Nightmare, and other mental Disciplines, to a lesser extent.
    • Blood Sorceries (CrĂșac, Theban Sorcery), unlike Disciplines, cannot be lowered in the XP/dot price based on any clan or covenant builds. Aside from free Rituals, you also have to spend a lot more XP/dot to reap any benefits from high-end Blood Sorcery Rituals, and those often come with a steep price that makes them more trouble than their worth. Most early Rituals are usually fairly gimmicky, while late Rituals tend to require reagents that make them hard to cast outright, or have deleterious effects alongside being powerful.
    • Coils of the Dragon vary by which Mystery you're pursuing; most have good lategame bonuses, but should only be pursued if you're also boosting corresponding skills, attributes, and other goods that make them a major investment not too far off from CrĂșac or Theban Sorcery.
  • Living Doll Collector: Although not technically living, the Sangiovanni like to create animated puppets out of corpses. With high enough levels of Malvolio, their bloodline discipline, these zombies can remain indefinitely without decomposing, and they can even gain a semblance of intelligence, to serve their undead masters better.
  • Malevolent Masked Men: Many Nosferatu like to wear masks, either to conceal their disfigurement or just to creep people out. "Unyielding Mask" is a purchaseable Nosferatu Merit, a mask permanently affixed to the wearer's face that protects him from mental control by other vampires and grants him a bonus to the social skill of his choice. How a vampire with a mask permanently stuck to his face is physically able to feed is left unaddressed.
  • Masking the Deformity: Nosferatu can gain the Merit "Unyielding Mask", a Mask of Power that bonds permanently with their face. Some use it to hide their facial deformities; others to look more intimidating.
  • Masquerade: The Tradition of Secrecy requires all vampires to hide their existence from the mortal world, disguise themselves as human in front of mortals, and dispose of anyone who learns too much. The Invictus are especially dedicated to enforcing the Masquerade and have a vast network of agents to suppress any evidence of vampires.
  • Mega Manning: Diablerie can result in this, as the transgressor gains a single point in any skill or Discipline that his victim knows more about than he does, which can include Disciplines that aren't natural to the diablerist's clan. Repeat-diablerists can acquire the Disciplines of several different clans if they so please.
  • Mesopotamian Monstrosity: The Edimmu of Sumerian myth, originally a type of Vengeful Ghost or demon, is a powerful sevenfold spirit that can devour a vampire's soul and possess its body. Blood witches created the first to assassinate a Babylonian God-Emperor vampire, then learned to their horror that each of the Edimmu's victims spawns seven more skeins of seven spirits. Millennia later, the legend terrifies vampires.
  • Metaplot: Not nearly as much as the last game, but increasing references to the Strix (and the possibility that they have had a prominent effect on shaping the Kindred) as well as hints of their imminent return (culminating in them being given stats and details in Wicked Dead) might just about qualify.
  • Mighty Whitey: An extremely egregious example is given in Circle of the Crone. The Japanese faction, the Amanotsukai, were once led by a Dutch girl during the early days of Japan's collapsed isolation. She was made leader after the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu protected her from burning to death by the sun.
  • Mind Hive: Edimmu, collections of seven spirits in the corpses of now-dead vampires meant to serve as an anti-Kindred Super-Soldier by their Babylonian creators. They reproduce by tricking diablerists into devouring them, at which point the spirits eat the vamp from the inside out and burst into seven larval Edimmu which seek more vampires to Claim. No word on what happens if they befriend a hunter, apart from Oh, Crap! all around.
  • Mind Rape:
    • High level Dominate qualifies. While altering memories or even possessing someone might be done for the greater good, using Dominate to condition someone is always a sin against high-to-mid level Humanity, no matter how well intentioned you might be in doing it.
    • The Duchange bloodline's La Touche Illusoire power lets a Kindred launch a psychic pattern of touches, prods, and caresses on some victim. On an exceptional success, you can LITERALLY rape someone with your mind! Higher levels allow you to hit someone with intense pain (or... the exact opposite) and completely recolor their emotional perceptions, to the point of having someone adore you as you advance on them with a chainsaw.
  • Missing Reflection: Zig-zagged. Vampires typically leave blurry images in mirrors, photos, and films though they can usually make the image look normal by focusing their will. The Hollow Mekhet can't be recorded and don't show up in mirrors at all, because their reflections are off somewhere making trouble.
  • Monstrous Cannibalism:
    • Vampires can devour each other to increase their strength, an act called diablerie.
    • The Noctuku Bloodline has an irresistible craving for the flesh and blood of other vampires.
    • The En Bloodline considers it their divine right to eat other vampires.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Solomon Birch is Chicago's resident LS leader with a Dark and Troubled Past who insists on not wearing shirts. He has a lot of scars due to self-flagellation and is portrayed as The Woobie.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Both individually and as a "species":
    • Going into torpor is a traumatic experience at the best of times, and even when it's done voluntarily a vampire tends to experience terrible nightmares during the course of the long sleep. It's not uncommon for a vampire to develop total amnesia when he awakens, and while this is the worst case scenario, even if your memories do survive mostly intact, they're often distorted and confused. It's easy for a vampire to become convinced they lived a life very different to the one they actually led.
    • And because there are no vampires from ancient times with wholly reliable memories, the clans each have multiple legends about where they came from and who created them. This also sets the stage for the storyteller to bring story elements completely from left field if they so choose, as there isn't any one canon origin story.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: If a powerful and amoral blood sorcerer dies, there's a chance his Beast will anchor itself to his ash remains, which if undisturbed, will form a bizzare, ghost-like entity called an Ash That Devours. If it eats enough vampires, it will transform itself back into the original blood sorcerer, and he's likely to be pissed.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling: The Chronicles of Darkness in general is fond of the notion that when something big happens, even people who don't believe in the supernatural feel it. From the Chicago sourcebook, when discussing the prospect of an elder moving to a new city:
    Elders rarely move to Chicago, because elders rarely move, because Kindred who move rarely survive to become elders. Thus, when one shows up, people notice. It’s not just the Harpies, not just the courtiers, not just the hooked-up Invictus Ventrue political hacks. Any Kindred who talks to any other Kindred is likely to hear rumors, no matter how half-baked or illogical. No matter how faded the truth may be from cycling through Chinese Whispers, every Kindred with even the faintest fear of his own kind will hear: something big is coming.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • In Vampire: The Masquerade, Mekhet was the name of a mysterious being who may or may not be a secret Antediluvian with epic conspiracy theories. The clan of the same name keeps the mystery alive, to the point that it may be their new hat.
    • The first example Ventrue in their clanbook is an upstart, arrogant entitled brat with the surname LaCroix and unorthodox methods that ruffle his superiors. An expy Sebastian LaCroix, really.
    • A derangement from the same clanbook called "Preferential Obsession" causes the Ventrue believe that only blood from individuals of a certain category will sate them. Basically, the derangement's a self-inflicted mental version of their former clan weakness in Vampire: The Masquerade.
    • In Kindred of the East, Malaysia was a lawless, dangerous place ruled by the Golden Court of the Penangallan Queens. In this game, they're exactly the same, even down to the title. The only difference is they now work for the largely European Invictus. Another reference to the Kuei-jin is the elevation of larvae. Awfully similar to what that game did for chih-mei.
    • The Lancea et Sanctum section of Secrets of the Covenants turns the often overlooked easter egg of the missing verses from the Testament of Longinus book into a conspiracy with some very interesting implications for the setting as a whole .
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The California Xiao's founder, once awoken from torpor and told of the Apostates who had left the cult, launched a crusade to either drag the Apostates back into his fold or eradicate them. The end result? The California Xiao were wiped off of the eastern seaboard, most of the Apostates survived, and the rate of defectors from the cult increased due to members being driven out by their leader's fanaticism.
  • Neo-Paganism: Many newly-founded cults of the Circle of the Crone tend to take their cues from neo-pagan ideas, assuming they're not directly drawing from an older pagan religion.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Here's a hint-if a Prince seems too stupid to actually control a domain, but he or she has done so anyway for a long time, it's probably because he or she isn't. Mexican Prince Malintzinita, for example, seems to be a dumb, apathetic party girl... who is actually a Properly Paranoid Iron Lady who uses said parties primarily to eavesdrop on her endless roster of would-be assassins.
  • Ominous Owl: The basic form of the Strix is an owl made of shadow and ash.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: There are two very different creatures to bear the designation "ghoul": ghouls and ghĂ»ls. The former are the drinkers of vampire blood or vitae, while the latter are effectively vampires by a different name. It's insinuated that ghouls are named after ghĂ»ls, but for what reason is yet to be shared.
    • As per Ghouls, ghouls are living beings who drink vitae, thereby gaining some of the powers of a vampire and some of the weaknesses. For instance, one perk is that the aging process stops, but only as long as a ghoul drinks vitae regularly. Would their supply stop, they revert to their true age, which is deadly for a ghoul past their natural lifespan. Another example exclusive to animal ghouls is that they grow beyond their species usual size, which also reverts without vitae. Most ghouls exist as carefully selected and devoted servants of the vampires that nourish them, whether those vampires are good masters or not, but there are also self-made ghouls who hunt vampires for their vitae like vampires do humans for blood. Plants are not immune to vitae addiction and ghouls created from them are called mandragora. They are rare, and so are born ghouls. The chances for conception and birth when one of the parents is a ghoul are slim and only marginally better odds are achieved when both parents are ghouls. Nonetheless, some ghoul families exist, mostly in the branch of Ordo Dracul. Born ghouls that don't partake in vitae age, but slower than humans do and they possess stronger bodies and the like, but they're also inherently more servile to vampires than made ghouls.
    • As per ''Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead', ghĂ»ls are a living equivalent to vampires that hail from the Middle East. They are cursed beings that come into existence in some cases when a human commits an act of evil without a hint of remorse. Though powerful, ghouls suffer ever-lasting insomnia and need to consume human flesh, be that fresh or rotting, to sustain themselves.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Explicitly called out upon in the corebook. The Kindred share a number of traits with pop-culture "gothick" vampires and with mythological ones, but they're different enough that anyone relying on pop-culture is most likely to end up dead if they try hunting one. They can't stand sunlight (though the ones with a stronger grasp on their Humanity can handle it better than the more monstrous ones, in 2e), they hate fire (though, again, 2e Kindred with Resilience can actually downgrade this, too), but garlic, running water and religious symbols all mean diddly squat to them. For the most part. They have a vast variety of supernatural powers, and though they can technically learn all of them given time, they normally start with only a small selection — Super-Strength, Super-Speed and Charm Person, for example. They have euphoric bites and can transform humans into love-addled, mind-controlled slaves called "ghouls" by feeding people their blood. Also, the older they are, the more stringent their dietary restrictions.
  • Parental Incest: The Ghoul splatbook has a vampire that keeps her Ghoul in check by a combination of sex and denial of blood. Y'know, typical vampire stuff. But by the end we find out that the Ghoul is her own father, who took this state upon himself so that he could forever watch over his daughter.
  • People Farms:
    • Shadows of the UK presents a vampire conspiracy involving hunting down recent immigrants to the UK and harvesting their blood repeatedly in stalls for use as easy food and fantasy-style healing potions.
    • Any vampire can keep a "Herd" of mortals that they regularly feed off of. Such vampires are typically not as abusive as this trope usually implies, but as cited above, they can be if they want to.
  • Picky People Eater:
    • Vampires can only feed by drinking the blood of living humans; young (or voluntarily weak, or magically tweaked) vampires can drink animal blood, but human blood is much tastier and there comes a point where animal blood isn't good enough. Also, it has to come from a living human. Corpse blood and medically stored blood is incredibly unsustaining for vampires.
    • The Mythologies splat introduces a Discipline that allows a vampire to feed on "human breath". A vampire who only fills up on stolen breath is noted as still feeling hungry, as it's not as physically satisfying as blood.
    • The same splat also introduces Liver-Eating, where vampires can learn to physically digest human livers to "thin their vitae" and allow them a wider option of food.
    • It's a fairly common weakness for Bloodlines that only the blood of certain kinds of humans will satisfy them.
      • Morbus vampires can only feed on diseased blood.
      • Anvari vampires need to drink blood laced with opiates.
      • The Brothers of Ypres need to spike their blood with poison, disease or radiation, though chemical pollutants taste nicest to them.
    • Vampires who get too potent can only feed on vampire blood or, in 2e, on the blood of any specific supernatural breed that they have spent Merit points "adjusting" to — so one vampire can only feed on Uratha or wolf-bloods, another can only feed on Mages, etc.
    • Vampires who overindulge in ectophagia can mutate so that they only get nourishment by eating ghosts, which usually forces them to migrate to the Underworld.
  • Plaguemaster:
    • The Morbus Bloodline, whose unique Discipline lets them create and manipulate diseases. Subverted in that they HAVE to spread illnesses because they can only feed from the diseased. Many Morbus try to avoid spreading illness unintentionally, however, by feeding only off of people with one specific illness. Otherwise, they present major threats to the Masquerade and someone may come along to shoot the plague dog.
    • The Anvari and Brothers of Ypres Bloodlines sit somewhere between here and Poisonous Person; both Bloodlines have Disciplines that allow them to taint peoples' blood (with opiates and a poison similar to mustard gas, respectively), and both have the same trait as the Morbus that they can only feed on blood that has been polluted. The Brothers are more diverse in their tastes, though; they tend to prefer chemical poisoning victims, but disease and radiation and other contaminants are all valid flavors for them.
  • Power Born of Madness:
    • The Malkavians of the WoD became a Ventrue bloodline called the Malkovians in the new CoD. The basic concept is mostly the same, though they don't have Dementation anymore, but a form of Domination that, if it backfires, causes the vampire to be consumed by madness again for a time.
    • In the Ventrue splatbook, Malkavia is now a disease that affects vampires causing madness and allowing access to Dementation. It's fitting because the whole Ventrue clan is now crazier than dropping acid in Disneyland.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: Vampires got a lot of buffing with the Blood & Smoke release. Downgrading all forms of Lethal damage to Bashing (it used to only apply to shooting attacks, meaning melee was better for killing vampires), making it easier for vampires to survive sunlight (higher Humanity and lower Blood Potency diminish its threat), altering the effects of higher Blood Potency to be more positive, allowing vampires in Mist Form to drink blood without having to change back...
  • Pre-Character Customization Gameplay: Character generation starts with a human and adds the vampire template, so the game suggests an optional "Prelude" chapter to play out how the character came to be Embraced.
  • Professor Guinea Pig: The Coils of the Dragon are induced by a vampire experimenting on themselves until they form a Chrysalis, which causes their bodies to "evolve." This goes double for Vlad Tepes and his Brides, since they're the ones who developed the Coils in the first place, not knowing if they would work.
  • Rage Against the Heavens:
    • The Rakshasa bloodline's ultimate goal is to destroy the gods Because Destiny Says So!
    • The - possibly apocryphal, possibly defunct - Tenth Choir covenant, seeing vampirism as a curse from God, decided to seek revenge on Him.
  • Red Right Hand:
    • All of vampire Clan Nosferatu, albeit less so than in Vampire: The Masquerade. Their Red Right Hand can manifest as either blatant inhuman traits, an unsightly deformity, or simply having something feel strangely wrong about them.
    • Those who partake in diablerie develop no physical tells, but when seen through Auspex, their auras display Tainted Veins that last for several years after the deed.
  • Reduced Resource Cost: The En Bloodline can learn to create new vampires by spending temporary Willpower points in place of permanent Willpower dots, courtesy of the demonic spirits that infect their souls.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Both averted and played straight numerous times. Many vampires have the power to change the world—but most don't, despite canonically having the means and desire. Vampires are beings locked in stasis, and they in fact don't do well with change. Longinus lampshades it in the Testament of Longinus's Book of Eschaton by highlighting the Kindred's tendency for self-sabotage:
    "I have learned that the Damned must not make our own salvation. Because we can only destroy what plans we make; because we are Damned.”
  • Reflective Teleportation: Red Jack offers exclusive access to the non-standard, mirror-themed Discipline of Ars Speculorum. Its capstone power lets the vampire step into one mirror and exit out another one in a matter of seconds — unless they roll a Critical Failure, in which case exiting isn't guaranteed.
  • Religion of Evil:
    • The Circle of the Crone has extremely strong shadings of this. How much so? Learning the Circle's associated Discipline permanently lowers the max Humanity of a vampire!
    • The Lancea et Sanctum tweaks the Abrahamic faiths to suit the vampire reality, preaching that vampires are "God's chosen monsters" with a duty of scaring humans back into the arms of the church. In 2e, it's the opposite of the Circle of the Crone, in that a vampire needs a high Humanity score to use its associated Discipline.
    • Played straightest with the optional cult of Mithraism, which exhorts the faithful to gain power by performing acts of evil and requires them to murder, slaughter, torment and destroy mortals as part of being initiated.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: An alternate creation mythology for vampires is that they are descended from the son (Lilu) or daughter (Lilit/Lilitu) of Eve and the Serpent of Eden. The suggestions for tweaking the game in manners implying that this could be true are: adding asps and pythons to the "default forms" (wolf and bat) for Shape of the Beast (or even replacing wolf and bat); making it easier to ghoul snakes; rendering vampires immune to snake venom (by core rules, it's one of the few natural toxins that do affect them); and letting vampires paralyze with their gaze as an innate, non-Discipline power.
  • Ridiculously Alive Undead: The "Blush of Life" ability temporarily removes the Uncanny Valley effect associated with walking corpses and lets the vampire pass for human, including a pulse, body heat, eating without vomiting, and sexual functions.
  • Role-Playing Endgame: The game proposes a few options for the legendary state of Golconda, where vampires become Ascended Demons and free themselves from their physical and spiritual weaknesses. Crapsack World that this is, it also suggests subverting this by asking And Then What? and letting the vampire struggle to maintain this state.
  • Rules Lawyer: Some Carthians try to find reforms for the Requiem that don't disrupt the Invictus-derived model of praxis, lest they get boots on their necks.
  • Scare 'Em Straight: This is essentially what the Lancea Sanctum's declared Divine Purpose for Vampires is. Vampires are Damned to not feel God's grace, but still remain in the shadows of His Creation to make sure those still blessed with His love (read: mortals) don't start to revel in sin and wander too long in the dark places of the world. If they do, well, Vampires have an arsenal of ways to make mortals high-tail it back to Church.
  • Scenery Dissonance: A Type 1 version is deliberately invoked in the sourcebook Chronicler's Guide. It suggested that whenever the characters had a confrontation with The Devil, the scene should always be a nice, comfortable surrounding, like a children's playground or a perfumed and clean restroom.
  • Secret Room: Characters can add hidden chambers to their Home Base by purchasing the "Tomb" Merit. They can only be found with careful investigation and can be sealed against intruders for extra security, but, once breached, their Security bonus is permanently nullified.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: Mentioned in the Requiem Chronicler's Guide, one way to interpret each of the clans is that they are symbolic of one of the seven deadly sins. Daeva represent Lust, Gangrel represent Wrath, Mekhet represent Envy, Nosferatu represent Sloth, Ventrue represent Pride, Julii represent Gluttony, and Seven represent Greed.
  • She Is the King: The ruler of a domain is most commonly called a Prince, regardless of gender. Occasionally you'll see King or Queen, but it's generally considered bad luck to assume either of these titles.
  • Shirtless Scene: Common in the splatbook art, particularly for Solomon Birch and Duce Carter.
  • Shoot the Dog: A common ending for draugr, plague dogs and diablerists, along with anyone else who becomes too great of a threat to the Masquerade.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Signature Move: Each of the five Clans have one exclusive Discipline that they are very good at. This also applies to some Bloodlines, specially if the fourth Discipline gained is a unique one.
  • Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness:
    • It's just barely on the middle-ish area. A really determined Kindred could potentially go their entire Requiem without killing... but just about every "biological" and social factor is against them. Feeding requirements only get tougher with age, the Beast means every emotional stimulus can potentially lead to murder, the Danse causes most neonates to get callous, fast. And all their powers make it so very easy to get corrupted.
    • Ironically, the Ordo Dracul, the covenant with the most tools to minimize the curse that makes the above so slanted to unfriendly, are also one of the likeliest covenants to turn a member into an amoral creature that cares nothing for humans or morality.
  • Space Whale Aesop: The point of the Invictus Emperor story, as well as why the Invictus doesn't like democracy, seems to be the aesop that Kindred magic makes it easy to subvert democracy and support Social Darwinism, so why even bother?
  • Spiritual Successor: The game tries to capture the vital essence of "Vampire: The Masquerade" while still being its own, independent entity. In fact, a common complaint against Requiem is that it's too much like Masquerade, existing in a bizarre overlap between They Changed It, Now It Sucks! and It's the Same, Now It Sucks!. Requiem 2E does a better job of establishing itself as its own entity.
  • Splat: Splats are often considered a defining feature of White Wolf games, though being an NWoD game, this one is a bit more complex about it than its predecessors.
  • Stages of Monster Grief: Varies, but the Circle of the Crone and Lancea Sanctum are particularly devoted to promoting their dark sides, while the Ordo Dracul wants to transcend it (whatever that may involve). Belial's Brood just want to have fun and paint the town O positive.
  • State Sec: The Sworn of the Ordo Dracul are like this. They have their own branches with their own spheres of influence that overlap and override with non-Sworn members. In the event that the Prince is an unSworn Dragon, the Sworn can use him as a puppet and the Prince will pretty much let them.
  • Status Quo Is God: The Lancea Sanctum and the Circle of the Crone accuse each other of being the Religion of Evil, the Carthians think the Invictus is The Empire, the Invictus thinks that the Carthians are Dirty Communists, and the Ordo Dracul thinks that everyone else is Too Dumb to Live. However, it's not like those factions are ever at war or anything. They just do politics...
  • Stepford Smiler:
    • The Melissidea bloodline. They often have beehive hairdos. With actual bees. Their Animalism stops working so well on mammals, works better on bugs, and they take advantage of the fact that their insides are unused to act as colonies for insects. Oh, and they can make a Vitae based honey that turns those who eat it into part of their Hive Mind. They were supposedly wiped out because of the danger they posed to Kindred society.
    • Specific example: Frances Black, the focus character of Shadows in the Dark: Mekhet. Outwardly, she seems like a cheerful, friendly, and kind person. Inwardly? Literally a quarter of the book focuses on her wandering around in a haze after her Embrace sent her hurdling over the Despair Event Horizon, even to the point where she has a brief psychotic break and develops a delusion about being a normal, happy woman. She knows it too-her Arc Words are "death makes you shallow."
  • Stepping Out to React: Vampires are prone to Frenzy when they're angry, scared, or hungry. The Sotoha have developed a unique Discipline power, "The Fitting Moment", that gives them just enough time to get to a discreet location before they go berserk, specifically to avoid the embarrassment of losing their cool in public.
  • Straw Nihilist: Forsworn who bother explaining themselves tend to come off like this, what with the obsession with "the lies of society" and such. As far as vampires go, they're probably right.
  • Strawman Political:
    • The various Covenants aren't particularly given to fair characterizations of each other, but it gets especially bad when the Carthians and the Invictus are talking about each other.
    • Interestingly, Carthian beliefs range the entire modern political spectrum, covering everything from anarchism to communism to libertarianism to fascism, and everything in-between or beyond. However, because the Movement emphasizes personal rights and freedoms, which are primarily post-Enlightenment values, they are all considered to the left of the Invictus, which still operates on a feudal model of government.
  • Superpowered Evil Side:
    • Each Vampire's mind and soul are also home to a Beast, which consists of nothing but mindless impulses of rage, hunger, and just enough self-preservation to hide from the sun. Falling into a frenzy means that this Beast takes control, granting extra strength and some resistance to mental control, but at the cost of being controlled by hunger/anger/fear for the duration. A Vampire can attempt to "Ride the Wave" of the Frenzy, allowing him a small measure of control, but it's by no means a sure thing. In Blood and Smoke, it provides a dice bonus in Blood Potency to everything, so long as the actions are in line with what awoke the Beast. And there's ways to make it even deadlier.
    • There's also the Red Surrender which Gangrel can perform, which allows them access to the talents of the Beast for extended periods of time, at a cost of some control over their actions and addiction to the way it feels.
    • The Invictus Covenant book introduced the Sotoha, a bloodline of not-quite samurai (they prefer the term "Outsider") who gain all the benefits, but few of the flaws, of going into frenzy. Control over direction, the ability to reason... but things still gotta die, and they can become a little... focused... on that. Don't forget they're Ventrue, so there's extra crazy! Which is unfortunate, because some of them remain in this state for years...
    • One of the books presents an optional alternate version called The Other, which is much more intelligent and is actually a voice in the vampire's head trying to take control. When he goes into Frenzy, the vampire is much more calm and collected now because the Other is in control, although a lot of the mechanical results come out much the same.
  • Super-Toughness:
    • Since vampires are more or less undead consciousnesses shackled to their blood and driving around a shell of meat & bone, vampires don't take damage quite the same way humans do. In 1e, this means shooting attacks only do Bashing damage, rather than Lethal. In 2e, realizing that this didn't make more sense, vampires instead downgrade all forms of damage one step towards Bashing, unless it comes from "Baneful" sources (supernatural attacks, fire or sunlight, curse-induced vulnerabilities).
    • The Resilience Discipline further augments a vampire's ability to tank damage. In 2e, it even protects a vampire from fire and any Bane damage with the exception of sunlight.
    • Masters of the Sakti Pata Discipline can actually escape their bodies if they are destroyed by reverting to the form of a mass of animate blood. This mass can then sink into a fresh corpse and assimilate it, allowing the vampire to resurrect itself again. Needless to say, this makes killing a vampire with this Discipline very, very challenging.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Julii Clan of the Camarilla and the Ventrue Clan of the modern era are so similar to each other — the only difference being Julii vampires are more likely to lose their Humanity and Ventrue vampires are more likely to be driven insane by their sins — that this trope is actually observed In-Universe, with most believing that the Ventrue are "heirs" to the Julii. Most likely a Bloodline that supplanted their progenitors.
  • Terminal Transformation: One CrĂșac rite transforms the vampire's blood to poison as protection from other blood-drinkers. Ghouls can also learn it, but, not being undead, they react as most humans do to having their veins filled with poison.
  • Test of Pain: In the Bushido-inspired Sotoha bloodline, a vassal can free themself from their oath of fealty by committing ritual Seppuku in denunciation of their Lord. If they can go through with it and survive the resultant torpor, their oath is honorably discharged.
  • Third Party Dealbreaker: In the Bushido-inspired Sotoha bloodline, a vassal can commit ritual Suicide by Sunlight in denunciation of their Lord to free all the Lord's other vassals from their oaths of fealty.
  • Total Party Kill: This can happen very easily early on if several members of a coterie blow their Predator's Taint roll when first being introduced to their covenant members. This was patched in later editions, making Predator's Taint an optional roll that can be made at the storyteller's discretion.
  • Tranquil Fury:
    • Each clan seems to have a different variation of Frenzy, but a number of comments in the Mekhet clanbook hint that theirs veers towards "broken Terminator."
    • Then there are the Sotoha, whose bloodline-exclusive Discipline allows them to master their own Frenzies without "losing face." It's possible for one of them to spend decades in Frenzy while looking to all the world like a perfectly poised vampire.
  • Uncanny Valley:
    • A vampire whose Humanity falls too low falls into this, via combination of subtle physical degeneration (bloodless skin, mostly) and a distinctive lack of subconscious tics like movement, blinking, breathing, etc, that makes it increasingly clear to a human observer that this is a walking corpse.
    • Whilst Nosferatu are more known for being conventionally deformed, it is mentioned in the corebook that some instead manifest their curse by way of this, including by being so inhumanly perfect looking that their beauty becomes unnatural and alarming. In fact, there's an entire Nosferatu bloodline, the Galloi, whose curse is that they can either look like this due to being inhumanly beautiful androgynous hermaphrodites, or they can skip their Blood Bathing rituals and wind up looking like monstrous corpses (the phrase "skeletons swathed in decaying gravewrappings" is used).
  • Undead Child: It's entirely possible to Embrace children, although modern Kindred are reluctant to do so. One reason for that is the Children's Crusade, introduced in Blood and Smoke. The Crusade was active between the 12th and 18th centuries, a covenant of child-Kindred granted sole right to Embrace children. As it turned out, the Crusade became twisted in ways the adult Kindred could not fully understand - which included making deals with the Strix. The Crusade was hunted down and wiped out... but as so often happens, some slipped through the cracks, and still slumber today.
  • Underground City:
    • If enough Nosferatu live in a city and have enough pull to influence water and subway design, they can create one from unused and self-dug areas.
    • Damnation City, a sourcebook about creating cities and their cultures for Requiem, offers the rule of thumb that "a city extends as far below the surface as it does above," and advises Storytellers not to neglect all the subeterranean infrastructure required to keep the city running smoothly.
  • Unequal Rites: Every vampire breed secretly despises the others, with their stereotypes highlighting other clans' flaws while downplaying their own.
  • The Unfettered: The Strix seem to have stuck around after the Julii died, and not having a purpose anymore, now do whatever they please. Being what they are, this is not a good thing.
  • Vampire Variety Pack:
    • All Kindred share the same common weaknesses, but each clan has a unique new weakness and each Bloodline (a sub-group of a clan) has an extra one. Some are more traditional than others; the Zelani, an offshoot of the Daeva, can't enter homes uninvited (mainly due to the horrible crimes inflicted on their progenitor by her sire during a home invasion).
    • Wicked Dead offers up a number of non-Kindred vampires ranging from the Mnemovores, who feed on memories, to the Jiang Shi, the fabled "hopping corpses" of China, to the various breeds of Aswang and the Penanggalan (a female "vampire" who exists as a normal woman in the day, but whose head and entrails fly away at night to suck blood, favoring pregnant women and small children for its victims).
    • And the Ordo Dracul are working on making themselves more different, getting rid of or lessening those certain weaknesses in particular.
    • Chronicler's Guide, a book written to give suggestions and ideas to Game Masters to create games, is the embodiment of this trope: There is a section that deals with making the vampires clanless, with suggestions of how to create new vampiric features and weaknesses. Another section suggests making the Beast into the calculative, manipulative Other and discusses the possible implications for the chronicle. Last but not least, there's a section dedicated to revamp the whole system to make vampires the utter debased monsters they are.
    • Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead introduces Larvae, Kindred who were only partially Embraced (Embracing vampire spent a Willpower Point instead of a Willpower Dot), resulting in a feral, mindless creature that is more a blood-drinking zombie than a vampire. They can become true vampires in turn, however.
    • In 2e, Kindred can be Embraced post-humously (if they had Vitae in their bodies when they died as humans) or even spontaneously if a vampire simply drinks a human dry (or if a ghoul dies). The former become normal Kindred, the latter become creatures called Revenants, which are weaker, more feral vampires who cannot Blood Bond, Embrace or Ghoul unless they manage to become true Kindred.
  • Vague Stat Values: In 1st Edition, vampires can sense whether another vampire's Blood Potency score is higher or lower than theirs based on whether their instinct is to flee or attack. That urge was dropped from 2nd Edition, but vampires can still recognize each other on sight.
  • Villain by Default: Belial's Brood. They were added to the setting only to serve as Obviously Evil straighforward antagonists with little characterization or information about how their society works. Averted with their splat, which makes them a full-fledged Covenant.
  • Villainous Glutton: The Macellarius and Nelapsi bloodlines are both like this, though different takes. They even share the in-universe nickname of "Gluttons". Macellarius are a Ventrue bloodline who grow repulsively fat and are addicted to eating just about everything they can; their unique Discipline, Gustus, lets them actually digest and take power from eating human flesh. Their manners are notoriously disgusting; a Macellarius feast is a Roman orgy of bloated vampires gorging themselves on exotic blood, raw meat, human flesh and human foodstuffs, the diners gobbling noisly, belching rotten gouts of gas, and vomiting bloody slurry when their vampire natures reject the indigestibles they have glutted themselves upon. Nelapsi, meanwhile, are a Daeva bloodline with almost insatiable appetites; they physically need far more blood than almost any other sort of vampirenote , and so they are always hunting, always hungry.
  • Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: A feature of the Spina bloodline, a line of courtly and refined duelists and knights. One power of their bloodline Discipline, Courtoise, allows them to insult their target so badly they take damage.
  • Wolf Man: Gangrel, kinda. Only one bloodline in Shadows of Mexico can actually go half wolf/half man.
  • You Are Worth Hell: Some people join their Kindred lovers in undeath, fully understanding the horrible existence to come, under the impression that their love is indeed worth hell. In the case of the Lancea et Sanctum, their main creed actually does believe that hell awaits! But they Embrace out of love anyway.

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