Character and Traits

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Concepts

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Domesticated Snake
 

You are a darling of your city’s Camarilla. Always entertaining to be around. You always have a useful tidbit of knowledge or service that you are only too happy to give your fellow Kindred. Elysium is always so boring without you. A master of self-deprecating humor and delightfully secular, you make endless jokes at the expense of your kooky, religious cousins. Serpents? Oh, goodness no. You’ve never shown as much as a scale or slitted eye. You are acknowledged by the Prince, obey all of the Traditions, and never cause any problems. You look the Nosferatu in the eye without flinching, appreciate the most refined points of Ventrue etiquette, and have fascinating conversation with the Toreador on the nature of passion and beauty. After the laughs, gossip, and deals, the other Licks walk away thinking maybe the Setites aren’t so bad. Maybe all of those things they heard were just vicious propaganda. 

 

Girl (or Guy) With the Serpent Tattoo
 

A descendent of Valdís Hel-Blár, the Children of Loki sent you to North America. You recruit from the biker gangs that dabble at Norse worship, forming a roving road cult. Initiates are marked with your special ink. When they reach the deepest mysteries, you tattoo their souls.

The wild nights. The primal rites. You drink the drugs from their veins. They taste your Jötunn-blessed blood. Travel is treacherous for your kind, but you baptize yourself in the razor-wire uncertainty of the road. The danger of the road cuts you and your followers off from the influence and traps of the Aeons. The road is the World Serpent, and you ride its black, twisted spine.

 

Haunted Tour Guide
 

There are many haunted tours in New Orleans, but yours is a favorite. You show up after sunset, in top hat and coattails, holding a charmingly archaic lantern. You show the tourists all the spots: the haunted houses and pubs, the voodoo sites, the famous graves. You spin ghost stories and share fascinating bits of bizarre history with the enthusiasm of someone who was actually there.

 

A few tourists always ask for something more. They want to see the real shit. You nod, and when the other tourists depart, you take the chosen few to the secret places. You call down the loa. You show your guests the dark miracles of the Serpents of the Light.

 

Humanitarian Doctor
 

A child of poor immigrants, you worked twice as hard as everyone else did in medical school. You did well for yourself. You went back to Mexico, giving medical care and humanitarian aid. Your work took you to dangerous places. One danger too many left you bleeding out in a ditch. That is when your sire came to you, in the form of a jaguar. He made you a Tlacique, a reflection of the Smoking Mirror.

 

Your sire is ancient and powerful, but defers to your knowledge of modern technology. You connect him with the modern age. He teaches you blood magic. You approach occultism with the pragmatic eye of a medical doctor. There are infections that need to be cut out of the cosmos, like the Sabbat who decimated your sire’s people and turned your home country into a howling nightmare.

 

The blood your scalpel spills keeps the sun in motion. You once worried your medical skills gave you a god complex. Now, you are a god.

 

Raggedy Magus
 

One part conman, one part occultist, all bastard. You were always in over your head, but with the luck of a scoundrel, you always found a way out. Except that one time you tangled with this Typhonic cult. But hey, any death you can walk away from, right?

 

You’ve never been busier. Your new masters made you a deal. You continue on harassing demons, Aeons, death cults, and the Baali. You turn their wicked games in on themselves. You’re still in over your head, but in a more profound way. You get to continue playing your favorite part as amoral hero, while getting your fix of adrenaline and esoteric secrets. Your masters get to ruin a lot of competition using an asset they don’t mind losing. Your sire and his chums have a Final Death pool going on you. You’ve got all of eternity to figure an angle on how to screw them over. 

 

Sin Eater
 

In a Hell-on-Earth neighborhood, there is an abandoned church haunted by bats and urban myth. Inside is a worm-chewed confessional booth. You are the invisible voice of the booth. The street people know to come to the confessional. When you speak, they know yours is the only voice that can absolve them. Sometimes, you drink the sin right out of them. Sometimes, if their sins are good, they get to taste divine communion. Once, a sinner was brave enough to open the other confessional compartment, but no one was there — or he ran away screaming — depending on who tells the story.

 

More and more of the vermiculated souls come to the abandoned church. Sometimes they go right back out and sin, just so they can confess again. Sometimes, they confess the sins of others and accept reconciliation by proxy. You know the worst secrets of everyone for miles.

 

Social Media Consultant
 

You did not invent the Internet; you just made it better. For decades, you’ve been the one they ask for, companies large and small. You appear, whispering suggestions. You came up with the concept of receiving notification when a recipient has read one’s sent email. You dreamed up that little eraser icon that informs someone that an Instant Messenger friend has just erased something they typed. Has humanity ever known a larger collective outbreak of anxiety? 

You are the hierophant of a new spirit world, as abstract as any other is. Mortals make sacrifices of their own lives, as edited sagas, nailed to intangible walls. They infect each other with envy and insecurity. Anonymity is the most degrading drug ever ingested by humanity. They invent new ways to debauch without even touching. They are all alone together. Social media is the purgatory the living consign their souls to before even dying. You make its spiraling labyrinth deeper and darker.

 

Tomb Raider
 

Let the theologians stay in their libraries. You want to go to the secret places. You want to see the sites where the gods touched the earth. You want to hold ancient artifacts in your hand. Your faith is tactile and you want to touch mythology. So your Clan sends you to the tombs and ruins. You’ve been to every occulted corner of this dark world. 

 

Sometimes you raid, but sometimes you protect. You are a guardian of the hidden places. Sometimes you must raid the mortal museums. The kine do not always understand what they’ve gotten a hold of. The blathering curators prattle on half-truths to the bored visitors as they stare at mummies sleeping behind glass. You know which ones will wake up if fed blood.

 

Tortured Typhonist
 

You have a horrible secret. You do not fully embrace the Path as you pretend — your heart was too soft to form the mental discipline — but you absolutely believe in its ultimate goals. You do things; terrible things that need doing, to warp the perceptions of the lost souls of the world, and free them from the grip of the Aeons. You work with enthusiastic zeal, because you know you are helping people, even if you have to do profane things to them. You hate it. Every. Second. Of. It. 

How did you make it so far into the mysteries of your cult? Do the others know? Every action tears away your naked humanity with angry fishhooks. Yet you keep going. You cannot keep this up for long. Your own innocence is your sacrifice. If you can stay sane one more night, you might free another soul. Just one more night. Always one more. 

 

Underground Brawler
 

“The first rule of —” They always start to say that. That’s when you throat punch them. You can always tell if someone is cult material two seconds after a throat punch. You can practically read the braille of someone’s soul with your fist in their throat. It starts with underground boxing and acts of petty anarchy. Then it goes deeper. Then it goes underworld. All the self-tortures and tearing down of the walls and flesh. You really have to batter and hack yourself up to find the deity coiled in your chest. 

 

The Dark God was a fighter. You bring the Warrior Setite ideal from the ancient river of death to the bleeding edge of now. The Dark God was a corrupter. You defile all those things your converts used to think were important, all the poisons the Aeons pumped into them to make them weak, stupid, and complacent. The mortal zeitgeist is on your side. Thanks to recent books, movies, and media, a whole generation is aching for your bloody-knuckle revelations.

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Merits and Flaws
 

Drug Resistance (2pt. Merit)
The Setite religion is one fraught with vices, both to  compromise enemies and to enlighten initiates. Cultists tend to build up a tolerance to the substances they take directly (if human or ghoul) or through the blood of prey (if Kindred). You are unusually resistant to alcohol, narcotics, and similar addictive substances. You can pretend to be far more under the influence than you are in order to take advantage of an opponent. All rolls to resist the effects of such substances are at -2 difficulty. 

 

Addictive Blood (3pt. Merit)
You don’t just peddle narcotics; through the blessings of the Dark God, you are the perfect drug. Your blood is especially delicious to others, Kindred or kine. Whoever tastes your blood must, during any subsequent scenes that they meet you, drink again or spend a Willpower point to avoid the pangs of craving. These cravings add +2 difficulty to any Mental or Social rolls. Setites with this Merit find it much easier to blood bond an opponent, as once they have tasted the tainted vitae, they will do almost anything to drink it again.

 

Setite Initiate (5pt. Merit)
You were Embraced into a Clan other than the Followers of Set. However, you have accepted the Setite religion, undergone the vetting process and rites, and have been formally inducted into the cult. You have access to Serpentis and Setite Blood Sorcery (though you pay out-of-Clan costs to learn them). You may even study one of their Paths of Enlightenment. It is important to note that “Setites” from other Clans or bloodlines are not treated as second-class citizens. You are no longer a dupe they can string along. Once you are in, you are a sibling of faith, which is a much more important distinction than blood. An outsider accepting the Dark God is a joyous event, even to the most conservative elder. There are even rumors of non-Kindred supernatural beings joining the cult. 

 

Scales (1-3pt. Flaw)
Set blessed you upon your Embrace, and you bear his mark. A portion of your skin is covered in scales. As a one-point Flaw, a small, easily hidden area of skin is covered. As a two-point Flaw, a whole limb is covered, while having a scaled, lipless face is a three-point Flaw. Kine are frightened and disturbed by the obviously unnatural scales, and Kindred have their own prejudices against the Setites. All social rolls receive a +2 difficulty when the scales are visible. This penalty does not apply to social interactions with other Setites. 

 

Venomous Bite (2pt. Flaw)
You have developed venom glands in the roof of your mouth. The venom is a virulent neurotoxin, fatal to mortals, although Kindred and other supernatural creatures are unaffected by it. You, of course, are immune. The problem is you have no control over your poison glands. When you bite, you always inject this venom, usually killing your human victims. You must learn to feed in other ways, perhaps drawing the blood you need with a syringe or razor, if you do not wish to kill every time you feed. 

 

Forked Tongue (2pt. Flaw)
Your tongue is forked, flickering, and inhumanly reptilian. Upholding the Masquerade becomes difficult for you. Note that this tongue does not inflict aggravated damage, nor draw blood. 

 

Heartless (4pt. Flaw)
You have lost your heart. Either you removed it via The Heart of Darkness (see V20, p. 210), or an elder did it to you, but either way you no longer have easy access to it. The heart might be in the possession of a foe, or simply missing. If it turns out that a Cainite possesses the heart (say a Setite elder, or your sire) you must obey their every command. If it’s merely missing, the anxiety and obsession to find it interferes with your nightly existence, and may increase the difficulty of Willpower rolls by +1 at Storyteller discretion.

 

Aura of the Typhon (5pt. Flaw)
Something slithers beneath your skin, coiled in your very essence — something that causes the Lupines to stalk you for some dread purpose you do not understand. Their howls follow in your wake. You catch glimpses of blurred motion and the gleam of eyes and teeth in the dark. They get closer every night. What do they want from you? 

 

Discipline Powers

 

Confusion of the Eye (Obfuscate ••••• •)
This power extends the effect of Mask of 1,000 Faces (see V20, p. 185) to another person in a specialized way. While under the influence of this power, the victim perceives one other person of the vampire’s choosing as someone else. For instance, the victim might see and hear the city’s Sabbat Archbishop as a mortal janitor, or a despised Anarch as a Primogen whose favor the victim desires. The victim hears whatever the “masked” person says, but unconsciously explains away any inconsistencies in the person’s responses. If the “masked” person directly tries to persuade the victim of his true identity, the victim will prove hard to convince and may become angry. System: This power costs one Willpower point to use. The vampire’s player makes a Willpower roll (difficulty of the target’s current Willpower). If the roll succeeds, the victim sees one person of the character’s choosing as one other person, also of the character’s choosing. The effect lasts up to 24 hours. The victim will rationalize or ignore most evidence that the “masked” person is not who he believes. If the “masked” person tries to convince the victim of her true identity, the “masked” person makes a Charisma + Subterfuge roll, while the victim makes a Willpower roll (both difficulty 7). If the victim gets more successes than the “masked” person does, she is convinced. Otherwise, she isn’t, and must make a Self-Control roll to keep her calm. 

 

Mental Maze (Obfuscate ••••• •)
This power removes a victim’s sense of direction, forcing him to move in circles and binding him to an area of the vampire’s choosing. The vampire can trap a person in his own home. To the victim’s point of view, the house folds back on itself, and all the exits lead back inside. System: The vampire’s player must make a Charisma + Intimidation roll (difficulty of the target’s current Willpower). The difficulty increases by 2 if the character cannot speak to her chosen victims, telling them they cannot escape. For each success, the character may affect one victim. The effects last a full scene. Normally, the power is used in a multi-room structure such as a house, or an outside area about the same size. A much larger area (anything from an office tower to a neighborhood) reduces the difficulty by 1 and increases the duration to a full day. If the vampire wants to trap a victim within a single room, the character must expend a point of blood. A character must also expend a Willpower point to use the Mental Maze upon supernatural victims such as werewolves, mages, other vampires, or ghouls. 

 

Temptation (Presence ••••• •)
This power lets a Setite tempt the victim into some action that she normally wouldn’t do. This is usually some sinful action, but Temptation works just as well to provoke unwanted generosity as greed, or chastity as well as lust. The Setite must talk to the victim for at least a minute and allude to the action she wants the victim to perform. System: To goad the victim, the character must make a successful Manipulation + Leadership roll (difficulty of the target’s Humanity or Path of Enlightenment rating). A simple success results in a change to the victim’s personality and goals for a scene. If the number of successes exceeds the victim’s Conscience or Conviction rating, the change lasts indefinitely (although the victim may overcome it with time and expenditure of Willpower, like a Derangement). The Setites have created many variations on this power. The player chooses which variation at the time of purchasing this power. Sample variations include: Obsession: The victim suffers an overpowering lust for a certain substance, action, or condition. She may fly into a rage (the victim receives a frenzy check) if she cannot possess or experience the object of her desire before her next sleep. True Will: This persuades the victim, for a time, to act on any passing desire, or according to his Nature, without self-restraint.

 

Phobia (Presence ••••• ••)
By talking to her victim, the Setite can instill an irrational fear of a certain object, substance, person, or condition. The object of the phobia can be broad (cars) or very specific (pink ‘79 Fords), although the victim must be able to recognize and distinguish what the vampire wants him to fear. The latter example, for instance, would not work on a person who was colorblind. System: Implanting the Phobia requires success on a Manipulation + Intimidation roll (difficulty of the target’s Courage + 3). A simple success confers a Phobia that lasts a single scene. Rolling more successes than the victim’s Courage results in a Phobia that lasts indefinitely, although the victim may overcome the Phobia as if it were a Derangement. 

 

The Decaying Orbit (Presence ••••• •••)
This terrible power enables a Setite to break down the mental barriers between the target’s Beast and libido. As a result, the victim becomes addicted to sadism as he takes pleasure in rage and aggression. The Setite can also reverse the connection, so that pleasure might rouse the Beast to frenzy. These two effects produce a spiral of desire, the decaying orbit to madness. Once started, the decay cannot be stopped. The Inconnu might know how to remove a Corruption, as might a member of the Cult of Ra or Isis. The esoteric knowledge might be found in the writings of a dead Child of Osiris. However, killing the Setite in question certainly will. System: To corrupt a victim, the player must pit the vampire’s Manipulation + Empathy vs. the victim’s Humanity (or Path of Enlightenment) in an extended roll. If the vampire can accumulate net successes equal to the victim’s Humanity or Path rating, the victim suffers the Decaying Orbit effect. A character with a Humanity greater than 3 will automatically lose a point of Humanity for using this power. A corrupted victim must receive a frenzy check for anything that gives her pleasure, from sex to her favorite food. Like a frenzying vampire seeking blood, the victim will try to indulge her lust in the most brutal and immediate way. Conversely, a frenzying vampire might seek out more than blood in her rage. This may result in bizarre situations such as a maddened vampire smashing into a record store to hear his favorite music and killing anyone who tries to stop him. The victim cannot overcome this Corruption by expending Willpower (unlike most Presence powers – see V20, p. 193). The Decaying Orbit is no mere induced derangement, but a fundamental alteration to the Curse of Caine. Killing the Setite who laid the Corruption will immediately end its effects. The Setite who laid the Corruption could remove it at will, but the Setites would probably urge the victim to view the Corruption as an opportunity for self-discovery. 

 

Combination Disciplines

 

True Love’s Face (Obfuscate •••, Presence •••)
Through a perfect combination of Mask of 1,000 Faces and Entrancement, the Setite can appear to another person as someone he already loves. If she does not know of such a person, she can let the victim define his own “true love” and let the power do the rest. In that case, however, the Setite will have to use her wits to discover who the victim thinks she is. System: The vampire receives a roll of Charisma + Empathy (difficulty 6). Success means that the chosen victim sees the vampire as a loved one for as long as the vampire remains in her presence. This power costs 18 experience points to learn. 

 

Typhonic Beast (Potence •••, Serpentis ••••)
The Setite calls upon the primordial chaos of the Duat, expressing it through his own flesh. The vampire takes on the form of the mysterious Typhonic animal.System: This power requires the expenditure of three blood points; the transformation takes three turns to complete. The transformed vampire gains one dot each of Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina, as well as the benefits of Potence. The Typhonic form gains the soak benefits of Skin of the Adder (see V20, p. 210): dropping the soak difficulty to 5; and the vampire can use her Stamina to soak aggravated damage from claws and fangs, but not from fire, sunlight, or magic. The Setite also gains the venomous bite of Form of the Cobra, doubles her running speed, and gains +2 dice on all Perception rolls related to smell or hearing. The vampire remains in bestial form until the next sunrise, or until she voluntarily changes back. Clothing and other small personal items transform along with the vampire. This power costs 21 experience points to learn. 

 

Weigh the Heart (Auspex •••, Serpentis •••••)
The ancient Egyptians believed that conscience and judgment resided in the heart. In the afterlife, the gods weighed a person’s heart, the record of his deeds, against the feather of truth. A Setite who has learned The Heart of Darkness (see V20, p. 210) not only can remove a vampire’s heart to keep it safe, he gains a potential insight into the consciences of others. He can develop that potential through Auspex. Like the god Anubis, a vampire with this power can “weigh” another person’s heart to read his character and sins. Such knowledge of another person’s character makes tempting, corrupting, or teaching him much easier. System: This power does not require the removal of the target’s heart, but it does call for a Perception + Empathy roll (difficulty 8). Each success reveals one truth about the target’s character, with particular emphasis on the person’s weaknesses, passions, and guilts. The first truth is always the target’s Nature. Subsequent truths might include any Derangements or mental Flaws, strong passions, or deep-laid fears and guilts (although never specific details about specific crimes). This power costs 24 experience points to learn. 

 

The Path of Ecstasy
 

Nickname: Ecstatics (sometimes known as Maenads orcollectively as the Thiasus)
Virtues: Conscience and Self-Control
Bearing: Rapture. Ecstatics know how to use earthly sensations and passions to transcend the mundane. 

 

Their bearing modifier affects rolls to excite extreme AlternativeChildren ofDamballah To better facilitate their mystical senses and dealings with the spirits, the Children of Damballah (and the Serpents of the Light, who are their offshoot) may take this alternative Discipline spread: Auspex, Presence, and Serpentis. They also gain the following Weakness: The Children of Damballah have dealings with the spirit world, and such contact requires nightly offerings to avoid offending the spirits. The offering requires a ten-minute ritual and a Charisma + Occult roll (difficulty 8). Should the player fail the roll or refuse to make the offering, the character suffers from the Haunted Flaw (see V20, p. 495) for the rest of the evening. and transformative emotional responses in themselves and others.

 

Basic Beliefs: Conventional morality is a rigged game set by the Aeons. All those rules, taboos, and obligations shackling all the world’s souls. Shame is a thorny chain. To escape, the Ecstatics grease the spiritual fetters and writhe and writhe. For initiates on the Path of Ecstasy, the act of reveling is holy. They seek elation beyond mortal limits — bacchanalian euphoria — pleasure so pure and passion so dire, the gods above quake. Ecstatics glut the beast with sensation until it is sluggish and pliable. Although this Path shares certain precepts and mythology with the Path of Typhon, its practitioners reject the base cruelties of the Theophidians. Corruption is incidental. The pleasure’s the thing. For these serpents of mania, the pleasure has a higher function. In a world hopelessly ensnared in materialism, the Ecstatics push that materialism to such extremes that they crash through the other side into a religious experience. Ecstatics reserve a special contempt for secular sensualists. Hedonism without a spiritual dimension is one of the few profanities they recognize.