Vampires and Ghouls

Rajani Ravindra

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Dalit
Clan: Ventrue
Bloodline: Pishacha
Embrace: 1857
Apparent Age: 28

Virtue: Temperance Rajani is always cautious of transgressing some unseen boundary, and in so doing reaping a whirlwind of vengeance.
Vice: Greed She has a miserly streak in her, collection power, gold, information, all against some end that will never come.

Background: Rajani Ravindra was born Chane Nakhasi in Punjab, in 1830. Her family were clothiers, dressmakers for generations stretching back into antiquity -- to this day, Rajani knows rather more about clothing than may be expected -- but they had higher hopes for their daughter. Chane was pretty, she was quiet, and she was attentive, so it was determined that she could enter the service of the local border-prince, and thus secure both the prince's favor and, one hoped, a favorable marriage. Chane, being a quiet and practical girl and not given to causing a fuss, agreed, and so it was done.

Her family's hopes were justified. Chane was married in 1848 to an old soldier who was part of the border-princes personal bodyguard, and she had three children over the following decade, only one of whom would survive to maturity. In many ways, Chane's life seemed set. She was well-to-do by the standards of her caste, well-married and respectable, and her position in the border-prince's retinue allowed her to indulge her own hobbies. She listened to local folk-stories, and managed by dint of connections to learn to read a little. She had some hopes, in the very back of her mind, of writing a collection of tales of Kashmir.

Two matters interrupted Chane's modest, domestic idyll. First was that not all of the border-prince's ancestors had been duly sent on to their next life. On the contrary, the border-prince's great-grandfather remained in the castle, and this was, at least among the servants, something of an open secret. One did not walk the corridors beyond a certain hour on certain nights, nor did one question of the Raja's Ghost fed upon your veins. The other matter was that the border-prince made the thoroughly unfortunate decision to join the Great Rebellion. Sometimes called the Sepoy Mutiny or the Indian Revolt of 1857, the Great Rebellion was a subcontinent-spanning conflagration of startling violence. Entire British garrisons were slaughtered by the rebellious Sepoys (Indian soldiers serving the then-dominant British East India Company) man, woman, and child, and when the British responded, their retaliation was so vicious that they were called the 'Devil Wind' that swept through India, executing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands.

It was thus, in early 1858, that the border prince and other rebels met the British regiments in open battle, and they were slaughtered. Chane's quiet, orderly life was torn asunder, her lord dead, her husband likely as well. More than that, the British were coming, and there was little reason to expect their mercy. Others might have broken in these circumstances, but Chane had ever prided herself on a practical outlook, and so armed with a torch, her husband's sword, and a collection of folk-tales, she sought out the Raja's Ghost in his crypt. She made her offer, and the Raja's Ghost -- threatened, or amused, or impressed, it is impossible to say -- Embraced her that night.

Chane made her plans then. She took her young son and such money as she could steal, and fled Punjab. Over the following years, the deathless mother and her young boy were refugees across much of the subcontinent. The Indian Kindred were torn apart in those years, and so it is was some time before Chane settled in Gujarat, and saw her son firmly ensconced with a local family. Over the following decades, she would see him mature, and flourish, and marry, and watch her blood live once more.

This was not to say that Chane was accepted. Kindred society in India, even after the Great Rebellion, was organized along caste lines, and try as she might, Chane was neither Brahmin nor Kshatriya, could never pass for a scholar or warrior. To find acceptance and support, the young Kindred, ever practical, turned to the Dalit, who were delighted to have her. It was in those years of the late 19th century that Chane took on the name Rajani -- Wife of the Raja -- as an ironic tribute to her Embrace. Chane stayed in Gujarat until the turn of the century, until came the time to bury her one son. She stayed a little longer, to make certain that his family was well cared for, and then she departed, to travel the world and indulge her curiosity. She has done it ever since.

She presently lives in a crypt in the Abney Park cemetery.

Covenant:

The Untouchables or outcast of the Indian Kindred, Ravindra is of the Dalit by virtue of her bloodline. The Dalit, unnoticed and spurned, find it simpler to slip away into mortal society, and may purchase the Contacts, Haven, Herd, and Retainer merit at half the normal experience cost

Dalit
Clan: Ventrue
Bloodline:

A cannibalistic bloodline from the Indian sub-continent. Bloodline Discipline – Memento Mori. Bloodline Weakness – Must devour at least a pound of flesh per night, or begin to starve (-1 to all mental and social rolls per week ‘unfed’, and +1 success required for hunger frenzies at the same rate). They are able to keep it down.

Pishacha

PMental Attributes: Intelligence 5, Wits 3, Resolve 5
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3
SSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 4

PMental Skills: Academics 4, Crafts (Fashion) 2, Investigation 3, Medicine (Memento Mori) 4, Occult (Tantrism, Sufism) 4
TPhysical Skills: Stealth 1, Survival 4
SSocial Skills: Expression 2, Intimidation (Bloody-Handed Goddess) 4, Persuasion 2, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Contacts (Local Ghosts) 1, Herd (Graveyard) 2, Languages (Tibetan, English, Arabic, Urdu; Native is Hindi) 4, Resources 4, Retainer (Apsaras x3) 4 each, Striking Looks 2
Lair: Mausoleum; Size 1, Secrecy 4, Library (Tantrism) 1

Willpower: 9
Humanity: 4
Banes: Hunger’s Visage (Mild),

Lunar Illumination

Glowing Eyes (Mild), Mortal Before God (Severe), Offered Blood (Severe)

Initiative: 5
Defense: 2
Health: 8
Speed: 9

Blood Potency: 4
Disciplines:

Abjurism

Nihilistics ●●●●●, Auspex ●, Dominate ●●●, Memento Mori ●●●●●, Resilience ●●
Devotions: Indomitable Aura
Vitae: 13/2

Attacks...........................Damage............................Dice Pool.....Special
Necrosis……..................... 5(L)................................. 15................Minus Stamina, 1WP

Apsaras
Celestial Maidens

Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 4, Resistance 3
Willpower: 7
Essence: 1d10 (10 max)
Initiative: 7
Defense: 4
Speed: 18
Size: 5
Corpus: 8

Virtue: Charity
Vice: Lust

Numina:

Spend 1E and roll Power+Finesse, dealing (success) lethal damage; the attack takes the form of a blast of mist and cold air

Blast,

Spend 1E and roll Power+Finesse versus Composure+Supernatural Resistance; as the Majesty power of the same name

Entrance,

Spend 1E and roll Power+Finesse; everyone within (finesse) yards must roll Stamina+Resolve+Supernatural Resistance or take (successes) bashing damage.

Freeze,

Spend 3 essence and roll Power+Finesse, the Apsara is able to transform itself into matter and take physical form for (successes) hours.

Materialize

Alistair Niall
The High Sheriff of London (Former), Scholar of the Rarefied Pain and Sworn of the Mysteries (Former)

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Lancea et Sanctum (formerly Ordo Dracul)
Clan: Mekhet
Bloodline: Mnemosyne
Embrace: 1879
Apparent Age: Early 50s

Virtue: Fortitude Crimean cannon balls, Limehouse torturers, and Kindred politics couldn't send Niall running. Paranoid, obsessive, mad, but no one can doubt that he's got endurance.
Vice: Gluttony Niall's a glutton for secrets. It doesn't really matter what it is, he's got to know it. He covers it up, but it's an addiction.

Background: In life, he judged crimes against the public. After, he gathers information but judges no one. Before his Embrace, the worst thing that had happened to him was a physical imprisonment, coupled with physical torture. As one of the Kindred, his suffering and durance are all psychological.

It all comes back to Niall’s Embrace, really. That was the moment it all got disjointed. Before that, he was an atheist and free-thinking skeptic with a chokehold grasp of legal subtleties and a reputation for riding the jury, from either side of the bench. Then, in the course of one night, it was all turned upside down. Vampires, curses, life after death — if all that, which he knew was untrue and in fact could never be true, was true — what then? What other preposterous beliefs might actually be the truth? Werewolves? Theosophy? God?

Born into a wealthy, upper-class family, Alistair Niall purchased a naval officer’s commission and fought with distinction in the Crimean War against Russia, in the Second Opium War against Manchu China, and in the Indian Mutiny against the rebelling princely states. After this last, in 1858, at the age of thirty, Niall retired from the British Navy with full honors as a Lieutenant Commander. He studied law at Oxford, and soon entered the legal profession as a barrister. He married, and soon saw his two daughters married off to prominent London families.

He became a judge in a singularly gruesome fashion. A criminal society banded together to abduct and torture the man who had sent them away. For six hideous days, Niall was a captive in a basement somewhere in the East End, before he was rescued by Scotland Yard. To this day, Niall still experiences pain from his torments. Niall rode the sympathy and fame of his captivity all the way to judge’s robes. After ten years on the bench, Niall had the temerity to have a Ventrue’s ghoul hanged for murder, and for that he was given the Embrace. That’s how Niall tells it, at any rate.

The Embrace brought on a crisis of faith to a man who thought he understood the way the world worked. From the start, Niall needed to know what was going on. He had to know the shape of the world into which he’d been dropped unwilling and unknowing. Niall recruited spies, learned black magic, burrowed into the very heart of London and stared into men’s souls till his heart ached. He learned a great deal, but it was never enough. Paranoid and obsessed, perhaps at some level, he realizes that his pursuit of greater power, greater knowledge and greater influence is futile. No matter how much he learns, his knowledge will never outweigh his ignorance, and learning the darkest about the supernatural world isn’t going to relieve his fear in any event. But that part of Niall is very quiet and abstract, while the desperate and furtive part is loud and immediate, always clamoring for another chain around another pawn, and the desperate part only rests when sated with bad news. Even then, that part only rests until that food can grow that part further.

Niall has served the Kindred Court since his Embrace, first as a Hound, then as a Sheriff, and finally as High Sheriff of all London. He’s a clever, insightful man with a knack for finding out information, while at the same time his embrace has instilled him with a feverish terror for social prominence or any kind of limelight. He is perhaps the one Kindred the Lady of London can trust will never, ever seek to take her throne for himself. For his first decades of unlife, Niall was also a member of the Ordo Dracul, a solid fit for who remains a rationalist at heart. In the 1980s, he was Solomon Birch’s most high-profile convert, attracted to Solomon’s absolute certainty. In so much as two such old vampires can be friends, they are friends.

Niall is a stoutly built, broad-shouldered man of average height, with dark hair that falls into his eyes and a luxuriant mustache. He seems fatherly, and strangely old, moving slowly as if in constant pain. All the fingernails are missing from his right hand, a fact he sometimes conceals by wearing gloves. He has pale, grey eyes, like water flowing over a stone.

Covenant: Lancea et Sanctum
Clan: Mekhet
Bloodline: Mnemosyne

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 5, Resolve 4
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
PSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 4

PMental Skills: Academics (Law, Research) 4, Investigation 4, Occult 3, Politics 4, Science 2
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 1, Firearms 2, Larceny 3, Stealth 4
SSocial Skills: Empathy 3, Expression 3, Intimidation (Innuendo) 3, Persuasion 3, Socialize 1, Streetwise 2, Subterfuge (Spot Lies, The Eye of Shiva) 4

Merits: Contacts 4, Languages (Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, French, Russian; Native is English) 4, Resources 4, Status (City; Former High Sheriff) 2, Status (Lancea et Sanctum; Lay Elder) 3,
Lair: Secret Basement at the National Archives at Kew; Size 2, Library (Kindred Personnel Files, Blackmail Material) 2, Secrecy 4

Willpower: 8
Humanity: 3
Derangements: Phobia (The Unknown) (Mild), Paranoia (Severe), Obsessive Compulsion (Severe)
Banes: Blood Tithe to Midnight (Mild), Haunting (Severe)
Flaws: Deformity (Fingernail-less hand)

Initiative: 7
Defense: 3
Health: 7
Speed: 11

Blood Potency: 4
Disciplines: Auspex ●●●●, Coils of the Dragon ●●●, Dominate ●●, Meminisse ●●●●●, Obfuscate ●●●, Theban Sorcery ●●,
Theban Sorcery Rituals: 1st :

Speak with Jinn, see spirits in Twilight and communicate with them

Speak with Angels,

Once per story, receive a +3 to a single roll

Blessed Medallion,

Store Vitae in an object indefinitely

Vitae Reliquary; 2nd:

By activating this ritual, the sorcerer grants himself, or a subject who can hear the sound of his voice, a renewed attempt to resist any Discipline power resisted with a contested action that is currently affecting the subject or his immediate surroundings, whether he initially resisted the Discipline or not. The original dice pool for the Discipline to be resisted should not be re-rolled. The subject is pitted against the successes rolled on the initial use of the power being resisted.

Resistance of Discipline,

Penalized by higher of Resolve or Composure, beetles fall from the target’s mouth if he speaks a knowing lie. Scene-duration.

Liar’s Plague,

Grant a +2 to Academics, Empathy, Intimidation, Occult, or Persuasion rolls in an area for (successes+2) hours.

Sanctity
Coils of the Dragon: Coil of the Beast ●, Coil of Flesh ●, Coil of the Soul ●
Devotions: Cleansing Impression, Eye of Shiva, Restoration of Things Lost
Vitae: 13/2

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Colt Peacemaker.................... 3(L).......... 8……….....Range 20/40/80, Clip 6
Colt Light Rifle….................... 4(L).......... 9……….....Range 200/400/800, Clip 4, 9-again
Eye of Shiva..........................N/A............12............Minus Composure, Stuns for Successes

Emily Wescote
Seneschal of London

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Circle of the Crone
Clan: Ventrue
Embrace: 1914
Apparent Age: Mid-twenties (actually 32)

Virtue: Fortitude There are steam locomotives with more give in them than Emily.
Vice: Wrath Emily does not suffer fools gladly – or quietly.

Background: Emily Wescote was born a child of privilege during the height of the British Empire, and grew of age in the twilight of Queen Victoria’s reign. Though the Wescotes were not as rich or as respectable as they might have been (an alarming tendency towards manifesting violent black sheep marked the family), Emily and her three sisters were taught first by Irish governesses and then by French tutors. Their father, Sir John Wescote, was by the standards of the time an open-minded man, and he hoped for his four daughters to marry well, even as Henry, their brother, would carry on the family name. He was probably not open-minded enough to accept Emily’s hobbies, however.

The farmers around Wescote House had always had more than their fair share of hair-raising ghost stories and dark talk of curses, but Emily’s interest in the supernatural began when a passing spiritualist came through the county when she was just twelve. At the séance, he raised the dead, whispered secrets that he could not have known, and thoroughly captivated the young girl’s imagination. This was significantly more interesting than learning how to crochet.

Even then, Emily’s defining characteristic had always been an absolute refusal to bow to adversity – or to reality, on occasion – and she set about learning everything about the occult. She began to conduct interviews with local farmers to track down local legends and ghost stories – under the guise of ‘recording oral culture’ – and corresponded with figures in London and as far away as Paris and New York. By the age of fifteen, Emily had seen her first ghost, a drowned maiden in a local pond, and by the age of eighteen, she had managed her first summoning, a man of brambles-and-shadows called upon Walpurgisnacht.

In other ways Emily’s life progressed according to plan, as she was betrothed and then married to a certain wealthy American – he got a title, the Wescotes got money, Emily and her husband got to ignore one another utterly. She moved to New York then, entering Gilded Age society there, summering in Newport, attending balls, and hobnobbing – at a suitable remove – with the American industrial aristocracy.

Then, in 1907, disaster struck. Her brother, Henry, was struck down with what others called madness and what Emily suspected was the Wescote Curse. The young woman rushed back to Wescote House, only to discover that her father had had Henry committed to Moorgate Asylum, until his ‘fit of nerves’ was over and done with.

What followed was a thoroughly magnificent row. Emily was an unstoppable force, Sir John (from whom she had inherited her steel spine) an immovable object. They screamed at one another. They argued. There were frigid silences, threats of scandals, thrown objects, and in short, absolute terror for all involved. When her sisters tried to intervene, the two shouted them down. When Emily’s husband tried to take her home to America, she hexed him. Wescote House became utterly unlivable for a month, and then Emily packed her bags and departed for London. She had correspondents there, specialists in the occult. They could save Henry, couldn’t they? And if not, then Emily could get lawyers to at least get him out of Moorgate.

She took up residence in the Charing Cross Hotel and began a furious and swift acquaintance with the leading occult lights of London. She was for a time involved with men and women such as Aleister Crowley, Harry Price the infamous ghost hunter, Margaret Murray of anthropological fame, A. E. Waite of the Golden Dawn and Austin Osman Spare, the occult artist. Most significantly, she struck up a friendship with the head of housekeeping at the Charing Cross Hotel, a soft-spoken but brilliantly intelligent Scotswoman named Elizabeth Sheridan.

For the next eight years, Emily threw herself into the occult, her lawyers fending off those of her father and husband, both of whom eventually gave up on making her come home. Her husband largely thought he was well rid of her, though he never filed for divorce. In the meantime, Emily made no fewer than three separate attempts to break the Wescote Curse – though she was found and ejected from Wescote House on one of the occasions, on the other two she succeeded in summoning beings from other worlds, spirits or demons or other such horrors – but each time she was unsuccessful. Her efforts to see Henry freed from Moorgate were similarly thwarted, in no small part due to Emily’s own increasingly dubious reputation (as if the occult was not enough, Emily was also a noted suffragette).

Finally, in the winter of 1914, as the Great War raged, Sheridan suggested a new course of action to Emily. She knew a way, she hinted, for Henry to at least have freedom, and for Emily to have more time to break the curse. Emily Wescote, close to her wits end, agreed. And so it came to pass that she was Embraced by Elizabeth Sheridan, passing from one life to the next. Now, this was long before Sheridan was the Lady of London, nor even the High Sheriff. At the time, she was a respectable but not dominating Invictus Elder, and over the next few months, she took Emily in hand. Rescuing Henry did not take magic or lawyers. It merely took bloody, unnatural strength.

Sir John’s lawyers were immediately suspicious of Emily, of course, but with Sheridan’s help she hid Henry and waited for the attention to pass. When it did, the two siblings turned to face eternity together. Henry learned, by way of bitter experience, the limits of his curse, while Emily returned into her little home in the twilight world of occult London. In 1918, she divorced her husband, and lived out a seemingly normal, albeit highly eccentric, life until the late 1940s, when she faked her death and more fully joined Kindred society.

For a time, Emily and Sheridan drifted apart, Wescote concerned primarily with the Wescote Curse, her Sire focused more upon political affairs. After her emancipation, Emily joined the Acolytes, continuing to develop her sanguine witchery as a student of the Lady Abonde. She created new human identities so as to continue to engage with the mortal occultists of London, though after her near-Final Death at the hands of Catholic Inquisitors in 1959, Emily has kept a low profile. She Embraced another into the Kindred in 1972, and again in 1984.

Then in 1986, Sheridan became the Lady of London, and suddenly Emily Wescote’s sire was the most powerful Kindred in London. With that ascent came a new offer. Sheridan would make Emily her strong right hand, and in exchange, Emily would have Sheridan’s not-insignificant support for her occult research. Once more, Emily agreed.

In modern nights, Emily Wescote is the Seneschal of London. She is Sheridan’s lieutenant in all matters to do with the governance of the city, and her influence and authority are without bounds. Unlike her Sire, Emily is not some serpent given to secrets and diplomatic intrigue. Instead, she is a steam locomotive, bulling through all obstacles and battering them down with the strength of her will. Essentially, the way Kindred politics breaks down is that Sheridan, with the advice of the Primogen, determines what should happen, and then Emily makes certain that it does happen, the Herald tells everyone that it did happen, and the High Sheriff sniffs out and punishes any violations. More than the High Sheriff even, Emily serves as Sheridan’s iron fist.

Emily is also fairly high ranking in the Circle of the Crone, though since her becoming Sheridan’s Seneschal her rise has hit a glass ceiling, to Emily’s distinct frustration. Simply put, the Acolytes consider her too politically unreliable to advance any further.

To carry out her duties, Emily has several powerful tools. First and foremost, she is assumed to be working with the full backing and authority of Sheridan and the Primogen Council. This assumption holds even when it is not, strictly, true, but Emily is scrupulously careful not to abuse this particular power. Emily also has access to a great deal of monetary wealth, both her own (she divorced well), Sheridan’s, and that of the Court of London as a whole, serving as Master of the Exchequer for the city’s Kindred. She maintains a large number of lawyers on retainer – after her endless legal troubles with her own father, Emily speaks their language. And finally, she has a goodly amount of Acolyte blood-magic, in particular a talent for knowing what will happen right before it happens.

In her private life, Emily maintains a large house in Ealing, which she privately refers to as Wescote House, where she lives with her brother. Large, grand, and elegant, Wescote House is a rambling old pile of a house that serves as haven to Emily and her brother, and to Emily’s hobbies. The greenhouse attached to the house is filled with rare and exotic plants (many toxic), while the west wing indulges Emily’s love of rare insect collection, filled with all of the accoutrements of the trade; bell jars, tiny pins and needles, shadow boxes filled with hundreds of minuscule, transfixed creatures. She sometimes holds formal meetings in the shadow of her insect collection or her greenhouse.

Minor gentry from the English countryside, Emily appears as a self-assured, comfortable young woman. In contrast to her forbidding reputation, she is a friendly person, if not garrulous or outgoing by any definition. Emily is very warm and caring, although she does her best to avoid seeming matronly; she is willing to take the initiative to help anyone whom she thinks needs assistance. Despite her better intentions, she is a little overprotective of her brother, who is utterly embarrassed by this. She has a good sense of humor and is usually easygoing and pleasant, though her emotions run deep, and she can get very touchy if provoked. Unlike her brother, she is less optimistic about worldly affairs, often playing the pragmatist to her brother's idealism.

Which goes a bit deeper than that - calling her less optimistic is a complete understatement. For a woman of such cheer and good humor, she is surprisingly and amazingly pessimistic. Unlike many, she does not characterize herself by exclaiming proclamations of doom aloud - it is simply that Emily always assumes things will turn out for the worst. As such, she is always quick to try and take damage controlling measures. As a woman of great generosity, she will often take it upon herself to do this to help others out, even at cost to herself. Decades of undeath have taken their toll on her humanity, and the madness of the Ventrue blood brews in her veins, but Emily soldiers on regardless, refusing to bow to the horror of her existence.

This is in fact something of a theme for her. Emily is exceedingly self-reliant and bull-headedly stubborn, sometimes in the face of reality. This comes through clearest in how she has spent one hundred years trying to break the Wescote Curse, without much success, but it came through as well in her relationship with her father and husband, and in modern nights in how she carries out her duties as Seneschal. Though she can be subtle and obscure when she chooses to be, Emily’s preference, when confronted with a problem is to apply overwhelming force, enough so that no degree of finesse or skill can withstand it. Someone coming to the Seneschal’s professional attentions is liable to feel like a mouse avoiding an elephant.

Slender and leggy, Emily is an amply proportioned, pretty young lady (she was thirty-two when she died, and the Wescote family tended to age very well). She has slate-grey eyes and curly blonde hair which is usually coiffed and drawn back. Her jaw is a bit too strong to be fashionable, and it would be exaggerating for her to be called gorgeous, but her confident air and gracious smile has turned more than its fair share of heads. She is taller than most women, though her tendency to wear short heels evens this out somewhat. She usually wears pragmatic, comfortable clothing, sleek, solid black dresses with gloves and often a hat. Outside of her home, she almost always wears an enchanted black cloak as well. Though a radical feminist by early 20th century standards, to this day she tends to sniff a little at women wearing pants. She usually wears silver jewelry and has a flower pinned somewhere to her person, either on a hat or as corsage.

Covenant: Circle of the Crone
Clan: Ventrue

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 5
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3
PSocial Attributes: Presence 5, Manipulation 3, Composure 2

SMental Skills: Academics 3, Crafts (Gardening) 2, Investigation 3, Medicine 1, Occult (Crúac, Witchcraft) 4, Politics (Kindred) 3
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 2, Stealth 1, Survival 2
PSocial Skills: Animal Ken 2, Empathy 3, Expression 2, Intimidation (Overwhelming) 4, Persuasion (Negotiation) 4, Socialize 2, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Legal) 4, Languages (Greek, Latin, French; Native is English) 3, Resources 5, Status (City; Seneschal) 4, Status (Circle of the Crone) 3
Lair: Wescote House; Size 4, Security 3, Library (Botany, Witchcraft, Theology, Demonology) 4, Ritual Area (Crúac) 3, Workshop (Gardening) 1

Willpower: 7
Humanity: 5
Derangements: Irrationality (Mild)
Banes: Crossroads (Mild), Deadly Birthrights (Severe)

Initiative: 4
Defense: 2
Health: 8
Speed: 10 or 8+15D (Flying)

Blood Potency: 3
Disciplines:

May speak with plants, and may command them to grow in a certain way at x3 speed; -1 to regular Animalism uses

Animalism ●●●, Crúac ●●●●, Dominate ●●●
Crúac Rituals:
1st:

, Prophetic vision to answer a question, gain +2 to all rolls to investigate the image (research, say)

Drops of Destiny,

Tapas, +2 to Academics rolls for a scene, or +3 for rolls involving history or time

Call to Janus,

Tapas, +2 to Politics rolls for a scene, or +3 for rolls involving conquest or military planning

Call to Athena,

Penalized by Resolve; learn one piece of information while feeding that the target thinks is important

Taste of Knowledge,

Penalized by Size; causes all plants in an area to bloom, granting a +1 (+2 on an ES) to suitable social rolls (to seduce or impress, or even intimidate)

Nightflower;
2nd:

Penalized by Composure, ‘hijack’ the victim’s senses whenever the sorcerer wills, for (successes) nights.

Cheval,

Allows a spirit to materialize, even if it is not able to do so normally

Imperious Call,

Enter into a 2-hour long creative trance, and create some strange art-work that foresees the future. May reroll one failed dice roll during the remainder of the night

Wisdom of the Soul.

Penalized by Size, successes are added to all rolls made to tend plants for the rest of the night

Garden of Delight,

Summons a thick blanket of fog, with an area of (successes x20) square yards and a speed of (successes x10) yards per turn. Perception and ranged attacks suffer a -2 penalty inside the fog bank.

Imer’s Breath;
3rd:

May cause, or clear up, up to -4 worth of environmental penalties

Rain,

Swallow an object with a future course of action, get a Good Idea/Bad Idea response; when the course of action comes to pass, the sorceress immediately regains the first three willpower points spent on actions that do not result in a success or an exceptional success.

Taste of Destiny,

Offers a bounty of (successes) Essence to the first spirit that completes a specific task; spirits will usually carry out the task but it is highly unlikely (though not impossible) that they will risk destruction

Servant from the Hidden Realms,

Must be cast on open soil, creating a patch of soft ground with a radius of (4 yards, may increase at the rate of 1-yard for a -1 penalty to the casting roll). Any creature that steps onto the ground stars to sink at a speed equal to (successes) feet per turn, to a depth equal to the spell’s radius. A target may try and escape with a Strength+Athletics roll at a penalty equal to (Successes).

Yggdrasil’s Feast,

receive a +4 bonus on all Stealth, perception, and Athletics (movement related only) rolls for one hour.

Diana's Blessing,

Penalized by Composure; the target’s Wits and Composures are penalized by (Successes) when used in social rolls for the next four hours or until dawn, whichever comes first

Kiss of the Succubi;
4th:

Penalized by active concealing enchantments, see a vision of the person you most need to confront, without deception and showing the most important faces. Once the antagonist is finally confronted, gain 8-again on all rolls against him.

Eye of the Norns,

Requires 1WP and a tree, creates a treant for the rest of the scene with the following statistics: Power 4, Finesse (Successes), Resistance 4, Size (determined by the tree), with a damage bonus dependent on the type of tree (from 1 for a sapling to 5 for a large oak). Only a single treant may be created at a time. It is about as intelligent as an especially smart dog, and will obey simple commands and notice obvious threats to the sorceress or to itself.

Hands of the Forest,

May enchant an object of reasonable size (carpet, cloak, broom, but not a spoon) to grant the sorceress the ability to fly. The object may fly at a speed of (8+Successes) and remains enchanted for four nights.

Witch’s Broom
Vitae: 12/1

Louis ibn Haroud
Louis Ouassi, The Sheik of Edgeware Road, Louis de Montagne, Louis-Sifal Feraoun, Tariq Louis Zidane

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Invictus (formerly Al-Amin)
Clan: Gangrel
Bloodline: Taifa
Embrace: 1972 (Enthralled in 1959)
Apparent Age: Late 20s

Virtue: Prudence Having seen the dangers of action first-hand, Louis prefers to talk around every problem for hours.
Vice: Gluttony From culture to luxury to decadence is an easy road, and it's one Louis follows unabashedly and enthusiastically.

Background: Londoners often call the southern end of Edgeware Road, the part that starts at Marble Arch, just north of Hyde Park, "Little Cairo" or "Little Beirut" for its high concentration of Middle Eastern restaurants and shisha cafes. Louis ibn Haroud likes to think of himself as its Kindred Mayor.

Louis showed up in London in the early-1990s, part of a wave of Algerian immigration sparked by the civil war in that country. Most of the immigrants wanted only to escape the bloody conflict brewing between the one-party socialist government on the one hand and the Islamist insurgents on the other. Louis claimed to be no different. He was a man of culture and elegance, and there was little room for either in the increasingly bloody world of North Africa. London was a respectable place, where a Kindred such as Louis ibn Haroud could settle in peace, growing fat on the blood of prosperity. Louis pledged his loyalty to the Lady of London, and in a surprisingly short period of time he became just one more face in the London scene, an Invictus stooge, all talk and no action.

There were certainly a few... rumors. Not terribly consistent rumors, one had to admit, but some claimed to remember a Louis-Sifal Feraoun, a French informant and torturer who made a great many enemies during the late 1950s. Others talked about Tariq Louis Zidane, a FLN bomber responsible for the Petit-Palais massacre in eastern Algeria, when a dozen died in a cafe bombing aimed at the local chief of police. Certainly no one knows his sire -- his name, ibn Haroud, means that according to the traditions of Maghrebi Kindred, he was sired by a vampire by the name of Haroud. But no one knows who that is. If asked, Louis just laughs off the rumors with an easy smile and an offer of a drink and a song. It helps that Louis spread most of them himself.

The truth is this. Haroud ibn Khalil was an elder of the Taifa, a Gangrel bloodline that stretched well into antiquity. They prided themselves on their refinement and their culture, on being bastions of civilization amidst the savagery of the Beast. They were also great believers in blood and lineage as signs of worth. And so when, towards the beginning of the Algerian War, Louis Ouassi, the great-great-great-to-the-umpteenth-power grand-nephew of Haroud ibn Khalil displayed the beginnings of a poetic talent, Haroud turned him first into a ghoul, and then some years later, into a vampire. Such talent had to be preserved, after all, through war and conflict.

Not that anyone Louis was asked what he thought about this. Three-quarters Kabyle Berber and one-quarter French, Louis was set for the exciting and glamorous life of a junior postal official for the French colonial government before civil strife and then Haroud ibn Khalil intervened. His forays into poetry had been modest, juvenile attempts to impress certain very pretty girls in the neighborhood.

No matter. Over the next decades Louis received training that would not have gone out of place in the most rigorous of finishing schools. He learned to play several instruments, compose poetry and song in a dozen styles, and became a passable calligraphist. He also committed to memory the bloodlines of dozens of prominent Kindred, as well as the history of the Taifa. He served as Haroud’s amanuensis, his secretary and protégé at the courtly affairs of the Al-Amin, ‘the Faithful’ or ‘the Trustworthy’, the dominant covenant in most Islamic lands. Louis learned and waited and watched old, gnarled monsters with centuries of blood on their hands play at civilization.

But all good things come to an end, and so did Louis’s long apprenticeship. It came about during the Algerian Civil War, when in 1993 an Islamist terrorist organization blew up a small hotel in Algeria… and crushed Haroud ibn Khalil under twenty tons of rubble as he slept in his haven. Louis, luckier, merely had the terrifying and traumatic experience of being buried alive for six days, on the verge of slipping into torpor, before allies managed to uncover him.

This was the last straw. Algeria had become entirely too dangerous, and Louis was, for the first time in his Requiem, free. He took such of Haroud’s treasures and finances as he could, then hired a freighter and set sail for somewhere far, far away. London sounded nice.

Since arriving in London, Louis’s worked hard to establish himself as the Kindred that everyone likes and that no one wants to maim, murder, or enslave. Louis is a lover and a scholar, not a fighter. He’s loyal to Sheridan because Sheridan is the most dangerous Kindred in the area, and is otherwise generally seen as a fop and dandy by the elders, while his careful rumors keep younger Kindred from trying their luck. Left to his own devices, Louis would avoid other vampires in general, operating on the not-wholly-unreasonable premise that other vampires are terrifying and powerful, while Louis’s most dangerous ability is his talent for delivering flowery insults (also clawing people, but this is of limited utility against Solomon Birch or Royston Montjoy). But his Taifa blood rebels at the idea of isolation, and so Louis finds himself drawn again and again to Elysium, where at the very least Kindred cannot harm one another.

He’s also focused on becoming the absolute master of Edgeware Road, establishing himself a power-base to protect himself. He has money invested in dozens of small bars and shisha cafes, has community leaders eating out of his hands, and has a lovely estate just off the road, built in the style of a Venetian palazzo, with a courtyard of its very own – ever since his sire’s demise, Louis’s had an acute sense of claustrophobia. He tends to sleep in the courtyard, as a matter of fact. Meanwhile, Haroud ibn Khalil’s library, with its genealogical records stretching back to the dates of Il-Andalus, has been opened to the use of occult scholars and researchers, with Louis’s eventual goal being to have his large estate declared an Elysium. Louis himself is only an indifferent scholar, though his training under Haroud ibn Khalil means he’s frightfully well-read.

In person, Louis is smooth, eloquent, and handsome. He’s a little under average height, just five and a half feet tall, but surprisingly muscular for all his stockiness. He has curly black hair and sports a small mustache and half-beard, and he has a boyish grin that gives him an infectious sort of charm. His mixed-race heritage and bronzed skin gives him an exotic appeal wherever he is, and he uses it to his advantage, supported by generous doses of Majesty. He can dress in a three-piece suit with an elegant cigarette-holder, or in the thobe, bisht and kaffiyeh of traditional Berber tribesmen, as the situation calls for it. Louis acts every inch the decadent Kindred courtier, a patron of the arts and a fixture of Elysiums. He speaks fluent English and French, as well as Arabic and Berber, and can sing or declaim poetry in all of them. And if he has a faint under-current of danger about him, all the better and more enticing. When using the Claws of the Beast, Louis’s hands turn into the talons of a lion, capable of rending and tearing flesh with unexpected ferocity.

Of course, underneath the façade of brown-nosing Invictus courtier is a poet that doesn’t take anything seriously, least of all himself. He tends to think of himself as much weaker than he is, and he treats everything like it’s all an amusing game, and you win if you’re alive. So far, Louis’s been winning.

Covenant: Invictus (formerly Al-Amin)
Clan: Gangrel
Bloodline:

Refined and sophisticated Gangrel from Islamic North Africa, whom prize art, scholarship, and culture. Bloodline Discipline – Majesty. Bloodline Weakness – When not in the company of other vampires, suffer a -2 penalty to all actions.

Taifa

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3
PSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 4, Composure 4

SMental Skills: Academics (Geneology) 4, Investigation 2, Occult 1, Politics 3
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl (Claws) 4, Survival 2
PSocial Skills: Expression (Calligraphy, Poetry) 4, Empathy 2, Intimidation

2+Protean

5, Persuasion 4, Socialize 3, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Edgeware Road, ‘Little Cairo’) 4, Languages (French, English, Berber, Turkish; Native is Arabic) 4, Resources 5, Status (Invictus) 2, Striking Looks 2
Lair: Venetian Palazzo; Size 4, Security 3, Library (Geneology, Poetry, Islam) 3

Willpower: 7
Humanity: 6
Derangements: Hysteria (Claustrophobia) (Severe)
Banes:

The vampire is compelled to count grains of rice, mustard seeds, salt, beads or other such tiny objects if they are spilled or scattered in front of her. The player can spend a point of Willpower to avoid this compulsion, but unless the character cleans up the mess or leaves the area, the compulsion lingers. The player must spend a point of Willpower each minute that the material remains visible to the vampire, and during this time the player applies a -1 modifier to all rolls for the character due to the distraction.

Counting Compulsion (Mild),

The touch of the pure of heart sears the vampire’s flesh. Casual contact with a human being of Morality 8+ causes one point of lethal damage per turn. This damage manifests as searing, scorching burns

Burning Purity (Severe)

Initiative: 6
Defense: 2
Armor: 1/2B (Bulletproof Clothing)
Health: 8 (11 w/ Resilience)
Speed: 11

Blood Potency: 2
Disciplines: Majesty ●●●,

May merge with soil

Protean ●●●, Resilience ●●●, Vigor ●
Devotions: Objet d'Art
Vitae: 11/2

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Lion claws............................1A..............10/11........

Anna Darlington
Madam Anna Darlington, Baroness of Soho and Dame Knight, Anna Markovna Dragunsky

Type: Vampire
Covenant:Invictus
Clan: Mekhet
Embrace: 1924
Apparent Age: Late 20s

Virtue: Faith God has a plan, and there is a role in that plan for everyone, even Anna Darlington.
Vice: Envy Others have so much more than Anna, for so much less effort. Is this just? Is this God's plan? Or perhaps it is up to Anna to make it just.

Background: Anna Darlington was born at the turn of the century in the Russian Empire, to a Russian Jewish family in the Pale of Settlement. Her early life was unexceptional, though characterized by a foreshadowing of her later mysticism. When the First World War came, Anna saw much of the menfolk march off to war, few of them to ever return. Then came the Revolution, and then came the Civil War, and Anna had a vision. It was a confused welter of sights and sounds, that came to her in her dreams, but Anna took the message clearly enough. She had to leave Russia.

And so she did. To the west was still a war zone, and so Anna walked east. And she kept walking, for the next three years. She walked alongside the Czech Legion, across all of Russia, the entirety of Siberia, surviving in any way she knew how. She stole. She begged. On one notable occasion, she killed a deserter with unpleasant designs. She learned to fire a gun and she scavenged bullets, and learned to hide. She learned a smattering of Czech. And somehow, she reached the Pacific Ocean.

Anna stole away from Russia on board a British ship, and thus found herself, a pretty, hard-bitten girl of twenty, in London. With that same quiet certainty, Anna anglicized her name, found a job in a factory, then as her English improved, as a shopkeeper's assistant. Sometimes she told stories of her journey, and it was when one such story reached the Kindred of London that she was Embraced. Surely, her Sire reasoned, such a woman would make a magnificent bodyguard.

Anna took the Embrace with the same quiet faith she took everything else. For the next decade, she served her Sire, and then when she was emancipated, joined the Invictus, became one of the City's Hounds. Her interest in faith and God shifted slowly into mysticism, and it was through one of those that she met with Vincent Moon. She became a follower of his philosophy, and would remain such for a long time to come, though Moon's recent disappearance has fractured Anna's ties to the rest of the Golden Room.

Anna is a member of the Invictus in large part due to her belief in old-fashioned courtesy, and because her Sire was a member. She is one of the more mystical members of the covenant, and it is perhaps only a matter of time, now that the Golden Room does not occupy her, before she moves on into the Lancea et Sanctum. Birch has certainly marked her out as a possible convert.

Covenant Invictus
Clan Mekhet

PMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 5, Resolve 4
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4(8), Stamina 3
SSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 4

SMental Skills: Academics (Judaism) 3, Crafts 1, Investigation 4, Occult (Kabbalism) 3, Politics 1, Science 1
PPhysical Skills: Athletics (Running) 3, Brawl 1, Drive 2, Firearms (SMGs) 4, Larceny 3, Stealth 4, Survival 2, Weaponry 2
TSocial Skills: Empathy 4, Expression 2, Subterfuge (Oasis of Calm) 2

Merits: Fast Reflexes 2, Fighting Finesse (Saber) 2, Herd (Patrons of Die Katakombe) 4, Languages (English, Yiddish, Czech; Native is Russian) 3, Quick Draw (Firearms, Melee) 2, Resources 5, Status (Invictus; Knight) 3, Status (City; Hound) 1, Striking Looks 2
Lair: Die Katakombe; Size 4, Library (Kabbalah, Theosophy) 2, Location 3, Security 3,

Willpower: 8
Humanity: 4
Derangements: Memory Obsession (Mild), Magical Ideation (Mild)
Banes: Day of Rest -- Jewish Sabbath (Mild), Deadly Birthrights (Severe)

Initiative: 10 (14 w/ Celerity, 13 w/ Eye of the Beast, 17 w/ Both)
Defense: 4(5)
Health: 8 (10)
Speed: 12 (60 w/ Celerity)

Blood Potency: 4
Disciplines: Auspex ●●●, Celerity ●●●●, Majesty ●, Obfuscate ●●●, Resilience ●●
Devotions: Eye of the Beast, Hair Trigger, Quicken Sight,
Vitae: 13/2

Attacks..........................Damage.....Dice Pool.........Range.........Capacity..........Special
Thompson SMG.......... 3(L)............12/16.....................25/50/100....100..................Tracer (+0/+0/+2/+5), Full Autofire 2 (2/3/3), Drum Magazine (100)
Saber..............................3L..............9/13...............................................................

David Ivenistky
Master David Ivenistky, Childe of Anna Darlington

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Invictus
Clan: Mekhet
Embrace: 1943
Apparent Age: Early 20s

Virtue: Justice David has seen evil. He knows what it looks like. And opposing it is always worthwhile.
Vice: Greed Never having any growing up, David has an almost childlike fascination with money. The way it can open doors, change minds, make things better or worse... One can do so much with money.

“I was born in Poznan, in Poland, and I never saw my life as that strange. This was between the wars, you see, but I suppose, looking back, it must have been very strange. I grew up when Pilsudski had made his new country, and this was the first time Poland had lived for… oh… over a hundred years. A long time even as the dead measure things.”

“Everyone was Poland this, and Poland that, and my family was somewhat left out by it. My parents had come over before the Great War, back in ’03 or ’04, I can’t even recall now, from somewhere by the Black Sea. So we weren’t even proper Poles, which made things… difficult.”

“We were poor, though we didn’t expect to be. My father was a clockmaker, actually, and a rather good one. He taught us something of his trade, though I think I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever learned of it. My brothers and I were a pack of hellions, at any rate, so I don’t think being outcast was wholly unwarranted. We didn’t know any different, really, so we were just boys.”

“It didn’t get to be truly bad till the war. The starvation did more than the Germans ever did personally. I was always the healthy one, the physical one. It’s probably why I lived longest, when the supplies were running out. Not a happy period of history. I was the last one, when Anna came. I think it’s why I took her up on her offer. That was something interesting. You know, I’d never met her before she made the offer.”

“To be honest, I think I was hallucinating at the time. Or I thought I was. Old ghosts buzzing about. I was desperate, and I think just a bit cracked in the head. Then there was this woman sitting on the little balcony of the flat I used to share with the others. And we talked. I can’t quite recall what it was about… sunlight, I think. Very philosophical.”

“She asked if I wanted to live forever with her. I said yes, and she kissed me. And everything from there was a bit intense... The next evening we set out for London. Anna had connections, you see, to some very powerful people. They arranged things, even if that arrangement consisted of a rowboat and tying myself to an anchor when the sun came up. It was a rather thorough debunking of the myth of the seductive vampire when one has to avoid being nibbled by crabs during the day.”

“But Anna was there, and reached the city. I won’t say there hasn’t been excitement since. Learning her world, her people and ways… but the worst was over. It’s hard to fall farther. Which is why I love her and love this city and everyone in it.”

Covenant Invictus
Clan Mekhet

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 4
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4
PSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 4, Composure 2

TMental Skills: Academics 2, Computer 1, Investigation 1, Occult 2, Politics 4,
SPhysical Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 1, Drive 2, Firearms 4, Larceny (Pickpocket) 4
PSocial Skills: Empathy 2, Expression 3, Intimidation 3, Persuasion (Facade of Reason, Seduction) 4, Socialize 4, Streetwise (Vice) 3, Subterfuge (Misdirection) 2

Merits: Contacts (Nightclubs, Police, Local Politicians, Drug Smugglers) 4, Friend (Bo Kyungban) 3, Language (English, Yiddish; Native is Polish) 2, Status (Invictus; Childe of Anna Darlington) 2, Striking Looks 2
Shared Haven: Die Katakombe; Size 3, Library (Kabbalah) 1, Location 3, Security 2

Willpower: 6
Humanity: 4
Derangements: None
Banes: Bells (Mild), Can't Cross Running Water (Severe)

Initiative: 5
Defense: 3
Health: 9 (11 w/ Resilience)
Speed: 11

Blood Potency: 2
Disciplines: Auspex ●●, Celerity ●, Majesty ●●●, Obfuscate ●, Resilience ●●
Devotions: The Knight's Example, Quicken Sight
Vitae: 11/1

Attacks..........................Damage.....Dice Pool.........Range.........Capacity..........Special
CZ Skorpion................ 1(L)............8.....................15/30/60........20...................Tracer, Size 1/J, Full Autofire 1 (2/3/4)

Solomon Birch

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Lancea et Sanctum
Clan: Daeva
Bloodline: Toreador
Embrace: 1896
Apparent Age: Early 40s

Virtue: Faith Is Solomon’s faith in God, or is his faith in himself as an agent of God?
Vice: Pride Solomon’s way is the perfect way. Birch believes his wisdom is flawless, or near to it.

Background: Birch was a meaningless child in an unloving family, father working Southwark’s brutal iron foundries, mother a seamstress, and six brothers and sisters dead from plague-type illnesses (tuberculosis, cholera, flu). Birch himself worked his small hands to the bone at a young age, plying leather and stitching canvas before eventually settling into an unsatisfying apprenticeship making false limbs (forever necessary in a city like London, where men lost limbs daily in the brutal workplaces of mill and factory).

It was this trade that earned him the attention of a murderous Daeva, the lunatic Jacob Wright. He sought an apprentice of sorts, someone who could help him further craft the posed displays of slaughtered victims, creating something both elegant and terrible. Birch, Wright decided in a moment of whimsy, was absolutely perfect. He’d kill. He’d take their limbs. And Birch would replace them with mockeries of life— false limbs made of hard wood or brittle twig, of rusted hook or kinked wire. Wright made Birch his thrall. Then he made Birch his childe.

Birch didn’t help him kill, as Wright didn’t like to share that particular joy. Wright kept him on a short leash, limiting his exposure to the nocturnal society of the Damned. It was an unstable situation, and it couldn’t last. To this day, Birch isn’t entirely certain what happened. Did something kill Wright? Or did the monster simply grow bored of Birch’s effots and abandoned him? It didn’t really matter. Birch found the other Kindred of London, only to realize that with no power, no status, and no Sire, none cared for him. Thus began Birch’s long period as an outcast.

His years in the wilderness came to a close in the early 1940s when, weakened by a fight with agents of the British Government, his haven bombed by MI-18 under the cover of a German bombing raid, he was rescued by members of the Lancea et Sanctum. They gave him a place to stay and tended to his many wounds. Expecting abuse, he instead was treated with respect and given the kind of support and advice his sire had never offered. Solomon suspected a trick for years, but when he converted, he did so with a vengeance. The role of a testing pestilence upon humanity made more sense of his Requiem than anything else ever had, and his zeal led to rapid advancement. In a mere 50 years, he has risen to the rank of Bishop, all while espousing interpretations of the Testament that are far stricter than most of his congregation. Doctrinal strictness has become the litmus test of the Sanctified, thanks mostly to Solomon’s skill at playing “holier than thou” with those who defy him.

Perhaps the fullest expression of his desire to strengthen humanity (albeit through a cruel winnowing process) is his relationship with the Brigman family. A longtime proponent of eugenics, Solomon felt the Brigmans were genetically superior to other London strains, and he has exercised his power through several generations to purify them. In the process, they have become completely dominated by the vampire who dwells in their basement: he chooses who they marry, when they bear children and which of them receive the “blessing” of ghoul status to serve him indefinitely. Though he rules them as a master rules his kennel, Solomon does truly believe that the Brigmans can, in time, become a superior strain that will lead humankind to a brighter future — one in which more humans are able to resist the lures and threats and snares of creatures like him.

He is breeding men worthy of God, and any who tamper with his project do so at great peril.

Solomon is also a great lover of gadgetry. He makes a tremendous effort to stay current with technology, an effort that his 19th century mindset often hinders. But more than one Kindred who expects the Bishop to be protected solely by occult sigils has been unpleasantly surprised by the fruits of Solomon’s fascination with 20th and 21st century instruments.

Above the eugenicist and above the technophile, is Solomon the priest, Solomon the fanatic. Birch, with his lean, ropy body lined with puffy scars (most of them inflicted by his own hand), doesn’t care what you think. Birch cares only what he thinks. Oh, he’ll listen to another person. He’ll let her speak, giving the illusion of respect and due diligence. And then he’ll take her words, casually fashion them into a razor, and slit her throat with her own argument. For the most part, he has a calm demeanor, but that hides a violent temper—though one that is sparked only when he’s pushed to the upper limits or otherwise made to suffer humiliations at the hands of the great unwashed. He doesn’t take well to such indignities, and even a small one (like being interrupted) can bring the Beast to the surface for just a moment, enough time to hopefully put the fear of God in he who would dare to make such an error.

Two things define London’s infamous Bishop: the courage of certainty and the certainty of cowardice. Bishop Solomon Birch walks a wavering line between the two. On the one hand, he recognizes that he is truly Sanctified in the literal meaning of the word: God has chosen him, and he is an acting agent of the divine among man and monster. His convictions are so intense that he is provided a great deal of profound courage. If everything he does is God’s demand, and every action is the righteous one, then he will gladly step into the lion’s mouth and tear the beast apart from the inside. On this, he has no fear. And yet, forever within him is a niggling question, a sharp and scratching hangnail that begs to be picked at, to be ripped and made bleed. The question is, put plainly, What if I’m wrong? For Birch, it’s the elephant in the room; he never acknowledges the question, never shines a light into that dark corner. Ignorance of it doesn’t make it go away, however. It seems only to amplify the fear he has, the cowardice that sits within him like a giant hungry mouth waiting to be fed. His cowardice, unexamined, is therefore forever a certainty, a grim trap into which he steps nightly.

It drives him, though. It is perhaps this dichotomy that keeps Birch on the edge, never staid or content, always pushing to confirm his divinely-inspired judgment.

Covenant: Lancea et Sanctum
Clan: Daeva
Bloodline:

Bloodline Discipline is Dominate; Weakness is that if Solomon encounters a specific style of art (his is handcrafted, pre-20th century machinery), he is enthralled until he succeeds at a Resolve roll or spends 1WP

Toreador

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 4
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 5 (9), Dexterity 3, Stamina 4
PSocial Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 4, Composure 2

SMental Skills: Academics (Theban Sorcery) 2, Computer 2, Crafts 4, Occult 2, Politics 3, Science 1
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl (Punch) 5, Firearms 3, Stealth 1, Weaponry (Staking) 3
PSocial Skills: Empathy 2, Expression (Sermons) 4, Intimidation (Mantle of the Divine) 4, Persuasion 2, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Brigman Family) 5,Heavy Hands 3, Fast Reflexes 2, Quick-Draw (Firearms, Melee) 1, Relic (

This ceremonial golden mask is attached to the head by two leather straps, and is quite heavy, necessitate Strength 3 to wear. One may then spend 1 Vitae as the blood seeps out of the face and into the mask. For the following scene, the wearer doubles all Social bonuses derived from Status, though this obviously only works on those who are part of one’s own Covenant, or the Court of London

The Mask of the Man) 3, Resources 5, Status (City; Sanctified Primogen) 4, Status (Lancea et Sanctum; Bishop) 4
Lair: Brigman House; Size 3, Security 2, Library (Genealogy, Theology) 2, Workshop (Simple Machines) 1

Willpower: 6+11D (Icarian Vessel)
Humanity: 4
Derangements: Narcissism (Mild)
Banes: Weakened by Symbols (Christian) (Mild), Mortal Before God (Severe)

Initiative: 7 (11 w/ Celerity)
Defense: 3; Celerity, Indomitable Aura
Armor: 1/2B (Kevlar) + 2/2 (Destructive Might)
Health: 9 (12 w/ Resilience)
Speed: 13 (17 w/ Vigor, 65 w/ Celerity, 85 w/ both)

Blood Potency: 4
Disciplines: Celerity ●●●●, Dominate ●●●, Theban Sorcery ●●●, Resilience ●●●, Vigor ●●●●
Theban Sorcery Rituals: 1st :

Once per story, receive a +3 to a single roll

Blessed Medallion,

Invest up to (size) Vitae in armor to a person. Vitae absorbs damage at the rate of 2B, 1L, or 1/5A per point.

Hauberk of Blood,

Store Vitae in an object indefinitely

Vitae Reliquary; 2nd:

By activating this ritual, the sorcerer grants himself, or a subject who can hear the sound of his voice, a renewed attempt to resist any Discipline power resisted with a contested action that is currently affecting the subject or his immediate surroundings, whether he initially resisted the Discipline or not. The original dice pool for the Discipline to be resisted should not be re-rolled. The subject is pitted against the successes rolled on the initial use of the power being resisted.

Resistance of Discipline,

The caster gains TS as a bonus to all Presence rolls for the scene, and suffers a -3 to all social rolls involving subtlety or finesse, or to stealth rolls; the caster becomes truly inhuman seeming.

Damned Radiance,

Penalized by higher of Resolve or Composure, beetles fall from the target’s mouth if he speaks a knowing lie. Scene-duration.

Liar’s Plague,

Grant a +3 to Academics, Empathy, Intimidation, Occult, or Persuasion rolls in an area for (successes+2) hours.

Sanctity; 3rd:

No one that sees the target may look at, touch, or approach within 9 paces of the caster. Someone affected by the spell may roll Presence+Resolve, spending 1WP per roll, until he equals the caster’s successes

Pharaoh’s Paces,

, subtracts 3 from up to (successes) supernatural attacks (any spell other than Theban Sorcery). Lasts until sunrise.

Shield of Righteousness,

Store up to (successes) willpower points in a small, crystalline object, which can be withdrawn with an instant action and a free hand.

Icarian Vessel
Devotions: Husk,

Presence+Intimidation+Dominate

Indomitable Aura,

Costs 1V and is Reflexive

Destructive Might
Vitae: 13/2

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.................Special
Destructive Blow.................. 1(A).......... 12/16..................AP 2
Morningstar........................ 3(L).......... 10/14................
Dagger……....……................. 1(L).......... 8/12................
Stake to the Heart.....…………1(L)……… 4/8..................on 3 successes, insta-Torpor on a vampiric target
CZ Skorpion……………........ 1(L).......... 7.......................Range 15/30/60, Clip 20, Full Autofire 1 (2/3/4)

Margery Brigman

Type: Ghoul-Blooded Mortal
Born: 1988

Virtue: Fortitude Margery might bend, but she won't break, no matter what.
Vice: Pride All her life, Margery's been told that she's special and superior, and even if she disagrees with the idea consciously, it's still embedded deep in her psyche.

Background: For as long as Margery's been alive, she's been held up as an example to her peers. She's highly intelligent, clever, and insightful, finishing up a dual-major at Oxford in structural engineering and anthropology. She's vigorous and athletic, an active player in both the track team and women's football team. She's attractive, the sight of her golden ponytail enchanting people wherever she goes. She'd been part of student government. And if her family isn't quite oil-sultan wealthy, the Brigman construction business is nothing to sneer at. And that's just what people know -- Margery doesn't really advertise that she's also been doing combat training with live ammunition since she was thirteen. So people tend to be a little jealous of her.

Which really, she finds kind of darkly hilarious, since she knows the price. The Brigmans are the private eugenics project of the Black Bishop of London, Solomon Birch. Fascinated with the promise of eugenics even when he was a mortal man, the Brigmans were deemed more 'evolved' by Birch back before the Great War, and the vampire's been guiding them ever since. Birch decides who the Brigmans marry, who they have their children with, and who among the family is given the gift of immortal life. He lives in the basement of the Brigman house in Shepherd's Bush, driving the Brigmans forward to excel.

Margery's known Mr. Solomon -- the family's name for him -- as long as she's been alive. She learned he was a vampire when she was eleven. She lived in a house that contained five generations of Brigmans, from Great-Great-Grandmother Elena, still as pretty and bright as she was in the 20s, down to her parents and herself. Margery met her second vampire, Alistair Niall, when she was fourteen, and by the time she entered the university she served at Lancea et Sanctum functions.

It would be wrong to call the Brigman household thoroughly miserable, but Margery was always keenly aware that it was wrong. The push to be the best, to demonstrate the superiority of her lineage, was constant. And Birch made certain that the Brigmans had the very best, private tutors, athletics coaches, he himself taught the Brigmans to fight. But as Margery grew up, she watched the cycle of need and addiction, the way her family begged Birch for his blood (subtly, but it was begging all the same), they way they quivered when the old vampire fed on them. When he fed on her -- it was never forced, but the pressure of one's entire family is hard to resist.

And so Margery hates her family's regnant, hates him deeply, and strongly, and pits her will against his in every way that she can. A thousand little clashes, most of which she loses, but she fights all the same. She refuses to break, will not ask for the Kiss or the blood, and rebels in every way that she can.

Margery Brigman stepped lightly across the dust-strewn floor. She didn’t want a wayward creak to give her away.

“I hear you, Margery,” came a cooing, taunting voice. “I can smell you. Delicious.” She didn’t let it get to her. An old trick. A psych-out. She was way beyond that.

The gun in her hand was a Colt Delta Elite. Solomon had given it to her, describing it as ‘the Cadillac of semiautomatics,’ on her 16th birthday. Now she was trying to shoot him with it.

Something stirred behind her and she spun in time to see him charging, hands hooked like claws, and she snapped off two shots toward his chest. He flung himself to the side, rolling into a passageway. She stepped quickly after him, though she knew that if he was moving at top speed she wouldn’t catch up. No human would. She maintained a safe space from uncontrolled tactical areas and she held her gun alertly, ready to fire. Like a well-trained cop, she ducked in and out, checking the corridor.

“One hit, one miss,” came his chuckling voice. “Not bad, but you’ll need to do much better to put down one of the Kindred. Let’s escalate, shall we?”

The pair was on the fifth floor of what had once been a thriving office building, long closed and decaying before finding a bizarre second life as a maze for paintball enthusiasts. Solomon had rented out the entire facility and permitted Margery to hunt him with live rounds.

It wasn’t the first time. She’d had her first game of “cat and mouse” when she was 13, prepared for it by her father and grandfather taking her to a shooting range and regaling her with stories of their ‘training’ exploits with Solomon in Scotlands’ wildlife preserves. All her life, Margery had been told that she was special and superior — that others would envy her gifts and that she might need to save herself, possibly with force.

She’d been a terrible disappointment the first time. She’d cried and hadn’t been able to shoot at him until he was inches away, screaming at her to do it, telling her he’d kill her if she didn’t pull the trigger, and when even that hadn’t worked, he’d slapped her and she’d fired. Now she was more motivated.

Carefully stepping from the outsides of her feet inward to transfer her weight smoothly and quietly, she came to a staircase. There was dust in the air and paint spatters everywhere from more frivolous contests. She knew the terrain, and besides could tell from the density of color that this was a good choke-point. She was staying away from action zones, but she was confident that Solomon was smart enough to do the same.

Can you really smell me? Smell this then, she thought, stepping out of her shoes. She peeled down one sock and dropped it down the stairwell. If he thought she was a few floors lower, good. If not, well, she could walk without a sock.

She heard a door creak behind her and decided instantly. She bolted down a few steps, rejecting stealth for speed, and then vaulted the rail at the turn to clatter farther downward. Her plan was to get below him and shoot up through the floor, or maybe catch him on the stairs. She was five feet into the corridor of the fourth floor when Solomon’s hand smashed through the ceiling above her. He started tearing a hole and she raised the gun and started shooting. The hand zipped back and she saw a little blood dripping through the hole. A little, but not much.

Did he retreat or go to the stairs? Even with a silencer, the gun was loud enough to deafen her, or at least to
keep her from picking up footsteps and stair-creaks. Instinctively, she’d been counting bullets and knew she had one left in the chamber. She pulled a fresh clip from her left back pocket, and crouched to eject the empty so that it would fall in her lap and not clatter on the floor.

In a rush, he exploded down the hallway. He must have gone to another stairway. So fast, and without her hearing, he was coming at her like a freight train. When she pulled the trigger nothing happened, because the clip wasn’t all the way in. She slammed it and raised it and felt it click home. She pushed the gun up and forward even as his hands closed on it from either side, bracketing her own. The muzzle was an inch from his face, his grinning face. It was pointed between his eyes.

“Very good,” he said. “When fighting Kindred, keep your cool and aim for the head. But you should have fired sooner.”

His eyes were locked on hers and he saw it. He couldn’t read her mind, but he’d known her since infancy and he’d fought a lot and when her pupils dilated, he instantly knew that she was going to shoot him and that he didn’t have time to command her (even if he could). For all his strength, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to shove the gun away before it went off. All these factors flashed across his mind in an instant and he responded even before Margery realized she was going to pull the trigger.

He reached out with the cursed part of himself, blood called to blood and the pistol melted away in her hands, turning crimson. Her eyes widened as the blood did not drip, but crawled, crawled to Solomon. The fine veins in his wrists opened, like tiny lips drinking. She saw the blood flow into him and she was left holding the full clip. It was dry. Her hands were dry, too. The pistol was gone.

“Sorry, my dear,” he said. “But for a moment there I thought you were going to do something foolish.” He was still holding her hands and she pulled them away.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Not every Kindred can,” he responded. “And I’ll admit it, the gun was prepared beforehand.”

“What do you mean, prepared…?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You played the game well, as well as any mortal. You are a credit to your lineage. Would you like to go get ice cream?”

“No,” she said, drawing away from him. “I want to go home.”

For a moment she thought he almost looked hurt, but then her mind was too busy wondering what had happened to her gun, how and why, and had she really been about to blow his brains out? Would that have worked? She wondered. She didn’t know, didn’t know anyone to ask. She didn’t know anyone who had killed a vampire.

Outside of home -- and Margery spends as much time out and about as possible -- she's a quiet, and not entirely normal young woman. There's a touch of gloom that threads its way through her, a bitter raging against the world that comes out as an unwillingness to submit to any kind of unjust authority and an utter lack of fear towards anything less deadly than an elder vampire. In a more general sense, Margery's rebelliousness also manifests as a sharp competitiveness, a desire to win and to excel at whatever challenge is put before her. If she can't beat Birch, she can at least beat other people, and maybe some day she will defeat her family's monster. It's something to work towards, anyway.

Otherwise, Margery tends to be withdrawn around 'normal' people, always careful about what she says so as not to break the Masquerade or let her real feelings shine. Actually, between deceiving all of her mortal friends and acquaintances, and concealing her true feelings at home, Margery is an extremely accomplished liar. It's not a skill she's proud of, but she's very, very good at it. She's been doing it for a long time, after all. She'd unwind a little more around supernatural friends, if she got any, though her busy schedule and general distrust of the supernatural (and specific distrust of vampires) makes that tricky.

Despite what one might think, Margery is neither a ghoul nor under a Vinculum. In the case of the former, Birch believes that too early an Enthrallment can stunt one's biological and mental development, and prefers to wait till one's late twenties. In the case of the latter, the Bishop disdains so brute-force an approach to control (to an extent, he rather enjoys Margery's defiance, taking it as a sign of a will strong enough to perhaps break free of Damned monsters such as himself) and not wanting to taint his precious Brigmans with that kind of emotion-warping effect. Even with his ghouls, Birch prefers to use reliquaries. This isn't to say that Birch doesn't use every trick in the book to break his pet mortals, but he sticks to emotional blackmail (he threatened to let Margery's great-aunt Hortense's enthrallment and her to die unless Margery let him feed), considering magic to be cheating.

Having finished her education at Oxford, Margery is now working on a master's degree in engineering at the London School of Economics, again in structural engineering -- the family's plan (well, Birch's plan) is that she'll join the military for a few years when she finishes, to get some combat experience. She also works as Birch's unwilling "humanity-guide," explaining how to use Facebook, what reality TV is all about, and who David Beckham is. Combined with her continued training, this keeps Margery busy, though she takes advantage of Birch's religious approach to the Sabbath to sneak away on Sundays. She's heard about some place called the Cat's Cradle...

Physically, Margery has the beauty that comes with being a young, healthy, athletic woman. She's a little taller than average for a woman, standing at about 5'8'', and has the hard-muscled body of someone who's been doing football, track, and swimming since she was a girl. She has blue-grey eyes, rather like slate or an overcast sky, and shoulder-length golden hair that is usually kept in a short ponytail.

Abonde

Type: Vampire
Covenant: Circle of the Crone
Clan: Mekhet
Bloodline: Kiasyd
Embrace: 1555
Apparent Age: Mid-30s

Virtue: Temperance Never let yourself be consumed with passion. That way lies destruction.
Vice: Envy Others are the favored children. Others are the beloved leaders. Abonde waits in the darkness, and resents.

Background: Eerie, elegant, and inhuman, Abonde has been a vampire for so long she has all but forgotten her mortal roots. She was once a woman in the city of York, sometime towards the end of the medieval period. She remembers washing and carding wool, and suspects she was a weaver. She remembers dark nights beneath a full moon, the feel of a knife in her hands and blood flowing through her fingers, and listening for sounds of wolves in the woods. She thinks she was a witch, or some manner of wolf-blooded lackey or demoniacal cultist, but the truth of it is that Abonde doesn’t remember.

But it was for her talents with the occult – talents that have carried over quite well to the realm of blood sorcery – that Abonde was Embraced. Her sire, the Methuselah and ancient known as Gaius Bassianus Numidiens, desired an apprentice, but one with a more methodical approach than his current apprentice, the being who would one day be known as Vincent Moon. Theirs was an incestuous little family, steeped in sorcery and prophecy, isolated from the outside world. Sometime in the early 18th century, it finally broke apart, and Abonde went her own way. She spent much of the 19th century in Torpor, awakening in 1881. Since then, Abonde has dwelled in the crypt of St. Alcuin’s, with the priest there – Father Giles Hayworth – as her adoring ghoul and manservant.

The occult, particularly its place in vampire spirituality, is Abonde’s primary fascination and the focal point of her Requiem. She has sought out complex and exotic Disciplines to improve her own understanding of magic. Her knowledge of Crúac rituals is thought to be second to none in London, and several of the rituals she knows are of her own devising. To maximize her own usefulness, she has explored other types of magic as well. She has made several subtle overtures to members of the Lancea Sanctum and the Ordo Dracul, seeking to learn their forms of blood-sorcery. In response, both covenants threatened to summarily execute (or place into permanent torpor) any Kindred who taught her even the fundamentals of Theban Sorcery or the Coils of the Dragon. Such is her understanding and quick mastery of blood magic that these covenants fear she might learn their own sorcery better than they, and in half the time.

With Moon and Gaius Bassianus Numidiens gone, Abonde is perhaps the single most powerful sorceress in the Kindred world of southern England. In addition to being the Hierophant of the Circle of the Crone, Abonde is a Mekhet elder, with all the shadowy prowess entailed thereby. When she chooses to be, she is among the Lady of London’s most important advisers on occult matters. All these facets have combined to make Abonde a powerful figure in London’s political landscape, though not nearly the operator she could be if she paid more attention to politics.

Which, of course, is something of the problem. Though her occult power is incredible, the same cannot be said of her social skills. Abonde is odd and off-putting at the best of times, much like her sibling, albeit her manner is more disconcertingly mysterious than irritatingly enthusiastic. The result is that Abonde is not the uncontested master of the Circle of the Crone in London. She has their respect. She does not have their loyalty or adoration. Furthermore, that respect has its limitations as well. As the only Kindred in London with access to the highest holy rituals of the Circle, any use of those rites is likely to turn curious eyes in Abonde’s direction.

Formally, Abonde is the high priestess of The Three. Most of London’s Acolytes worship or at least acknowledge The Three: The Crone (called Lilith by some), the Horned King, and the Great Beast. Other deities may be called upon as circumstances dictate, but for most of London's Acolytes, worship of The Three (by whatever names the Acolyte prefers) constitutes the orthodoxy. Peripheral cults within the Circle may not revere The Three at all, but some other symbolic pagan god altogether.

Lilith is the ruling principle, who represents spiritual testing and judgment, the balance of light and darkness, and the power of blood, fertility and sacrifice, life arising from death. The Horned King is the lord of shadows, death and winter, and the master of the wild hunt. The Great Beast is primordial chaos, hunger and madness, the seed of frenzied rage that resides within each Acolyte’s unbeating heart.

Abonde is a willowy sylph, small and lithesome. All the color has left her — her skin features only a hint of pink, and her eyes and hair are both white. The only color is usually the smear of red around her mouth from feeding. She always has a silver torc (bracelet) around her one wrist, ending in gilded thistle. Abonde believes this torc is the center of her power, though she has little idea why she believes this.

Clan: Mekhet (Hollow)
Bloodline: Kiasyd
Covenant: Circle of the Crone

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 6, Wits 4, Resolve 5
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4
PSocial Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation 3, Composure 5

PMental Skills: Academic 4, Crafts (Weaving) 3, Investigation (Riddles) 4, Medicine 2, Occult (Crúac, Divination, Faerie) 7
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 1, Stealth (Obfuscation) 4, Survival 2, Weaponry (Axe) 4
SSocial Skills: Animal Ken 2, Empathy 1, Expression 3, Intimidation (Eldritch Horror) 4, Persuasion 1, Socialize 1, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Blood Cult) 4, Eidetic Memory 2, Language (First Tongue, Greek, Gaelic, Hebrew, Latin; Native is English) 5, Quick-Draw (Melee) 1, Status (City; Primogen) 4, Status (Circle of the Crone; Hierophant) 4, Status (

Free Occult Specialty; Occult costs New Dots x2 XP; +4 Haven Dots

The Hawthorne Circle) 5
Haven St. Alcuin's; Size 3, Ritual Area (Crúac) 3, Library (Dreams, Prophecy, Witchcraft)

2+Hawthorne Circle

3, Security

2+Hawthorne Circle

4, Secrecy

2+Hawthorne Circle

3

Willpower: 10+2 (Soul's Work)
Humanity: 2
Derangements: Power Fetish Obsession (Mild); Divination Obsession (Severe), Waking Nightmare (Severe)
Banes: Counting Compulsion (Mild), Repulsion (Garlic) (Mild),

-5 to all rolls instead of -2

Uninvited (Severe), Cannot Cross Running Water (Severe), Cannot Set Foot on Holy Ground (Severe)

Initiative: 9 (19 w/ Celerity & Eye of the Beast)
Defense: 4
Armor: 5/5B (Spider-Silk Gown)
Mental Shield: 5 (Mirrored Tears)
Magic Shield: 5 (Hide of the Great Beast -- lasts 21D uses)
Health: 9
Speed: 13 (78 w/ Celerity)

Blood Potency: 7
Disciplines: Animalism ●●, Auspex ●●●●, Celerity ●●●●●, Crúac ●●●●●, Dominate ●●●, Insomnium ●●, Mytherceria ●●●●, Obfuscate ●●●●●, Vigor ●●●●
Crúac Rituals:
1st:

Tapas, +2 to Expression rolls for a scene

Call to Lilith,

Tapas, +2 to Survival rolls for a scene, or +3 for rolls involving hunting

Call to the Horned King,

Tapas, +2 to Brawl rolls involving claws or teeth for a scene

Call to the Great Beast,

Grants a +5 bonus to the next Crafts or Expression roll to make a work of art

Fires of Inspiration,

, Prophetic vision to answer a question, gain +2 to all rolls to investigate the image (research, say)

Drops of Destiny,

This ritual is central to many Cruac magics, because it allows the Acolyte to ignore up to (Cruac) in environmental penalties – including those that come from later weather-rituals.

Walk in the Storm,

Penalized by Size; causes all plants in an area to bloom, granting a +1 (+2 on an ES) to suitable social rolls (to seduce or impress, or even intimidate)

Nightflower,

Enchants a bladed weapon, so that every point of lethal damage the blade inflicts feeds the Sorcerer a point of Vitae, as though they were feeding directly. The effect only works if the sorceress is using the weapon; the effect lasts for one night. Note that the blood has all the usual effects, so using this against another vampire is a good way to get yourself under a Vinculum.

Biting Blade,

View the last thing a person saw before they died. By touching a corpse and casting this ritual, the caster can see the last 10 minutes of life as if through the dead one’s eyes. Extra successes beyond the one needed can extend that time period, adding an extra 10 minutes for each extra success. The vision is in real-time; if the caster is disturbed while viewing (roll Composure + Resolve if the caster wishes to try and maintain concentration), the remainder of the vision is lost and the ritual must be cast again. This ritual is not contested unless the corpse belongs to a ghost—in which case, the ghost may make a Resistance (Composure + Resolve) roll, if they wish.

Corpse Sight;
2nd:

The Hand of Glory is a mummified hand used by the Acolyte to anesthetize a home’s residents and, thereby, allow him free rein to do what he will in the residence. To create one, the Acolyte wraps the severed hand of a condemned murderer in a shroud, draws it tight to squeeze out any remaining blood, and preserves the hand in an earthenware jar with salt, saltpeter, and long peppers. After a fortnight, the vampire removes the hand and dries it in an oven with vervain and fern. At the end of this process, if the roll to activate the ritual garners any successes, the creation is viable. To use the Hand of Glory, the vampire first coats the fingertips of the mummified hand with a flammable substance derived from the fat of a hanged man and sets the fingers alight. The Acolyte then recites the phrase, “Let all those who are asleep be asleep, and let those who are awake be awake.” All mortals within a household who are affected fall into a deep sleep and cannot be roused (the hand has no effect on supernatural creatures). For each unaffected occupant of a home, one finger of the hand will refuse to light. The hand may be extinguished at any time by the necromancer who created it. Anyone else wishing to douse the hand must use milk to do so — nothing else works. Effects last for one scene.

The Hand of Glory,

Penalized by Stamina; Requires a beeswax effigy of the target. Upon success, a swarm of insects burst forth from the effigy, inflicting a poison with a Toxicity equal to (Successes).

Hundred Needles,

A wind gusts around the target, whispering of betrayals and sins—both real and imagined. The victim becomes terrified, and easily cowed by those who know to play on his fears—especially the caster. The target suffers a -2 to Resolve and Composure rolls. When dealing with the caster, he suffers a -3 to all Resolve or Composure-based rolls. The curse lasts for one night per success. The target resists reflexively by rolling Resolve + Blood Potency.

Winds of Guilt,

The subject holds still for ten minutes, while spiders spin him a temporary suit of clothing. The clothing can be of any sort that the sorceress can imagine, so long as it can be made out of silk, does not have pictures or writing upon it, and is colorless (though these restrictions can be gotten around if the vampire provides proper materials). The clothing, made of spider-silk, is quite tough and counts as 5/5B armor. The clothing lasts for one month.

Conscripting the Weavers,

Stores 1 WP (2 on an ES) in an object

Soul's Work,

Penalized by Composure, ‘hijack’ the victim’s senses whenever the sorcerer wills, for (successes) nights.

Cheval,

Allows a spirit to materialize, even if it is not able to do so normally

Imperious Call,

Imer's Breath, Summons a thick blanket of fog, with an area of (successes x20) square yards and a speed of (successes x10) yards per turn. Perception and ranged attacks suffer a -2 penalty inside the fog bank.

The Horned King's Breath,

Thick rope-like vines burst from the ground and wrap around the subject, sprouting long, wicked thorns that pierce the subject’s flesh as the vines constrict. Treat the vines as a creature making a Grapple action with a Strength equal to the sorcerer's Blood Potency (7) and Brawl equal to the spell's successes.

Thorned Snare,

Acolytes needing spies in places they can’t physically go, or when Stealth is required, sometimes use this rite to summon a suitable agent. The ritualist bleeds out the Vitae used as the sacrifice, mixes it with a little soil, and then drinks it again. She does not gain any Vitae from the re-ingestion, but at rite’s end, a swelling appears on her body, rapidly growing until it reaches the size of a large egg just under the skin. When the skin finally splits, a monstrous, foot-long centipede crawls out. The ritualist constantly sees what the spy sees, in an oddly wide field of vision, and may direct it mentally by concentrating and motioning as though controlling the strings of a puppet. Dealing with her senses and those of the spy at the same time is confusing, so a ritualist will often go to a safe place, close her eyes, and concentrate, trying to blot out distractions. By and large, the spy has the same attributes and skills as the Ritualist, though it has effectively no Strength and a Stamina of 1. The spy is quiet and low to the ground, receiving a four-dice bonus on Stealth rolls, but is only Size 1, so it is both small and possesses only two health dots. The spy has a venomous bite with a Toxicity equal to (Successes). If the ritualist attempts to perform any action other than to control the spy, or is interrupted while doing so, the sorceress must succeed at a reflexive Wits + Composure roll or the character loses control of the spy for a turn.

Creeping Spy,

Gora Mukhi, gain a fearsome visage, lose the ability to use Socialize or Persuasion for the rest of the night, but gain +5 to Intimidation, and all enemies take a -5 to initiative. For a further 1 vitae, grow 1L antlers.

Horn of the Wild Hunt;
3rd:

Cloud the Watcher's Eye, Grants Magic Shield equal to Cruac (5) for the next (Successes) supernatural attacks; lasts until sunrise.

Hide of the Great Beast,

A defense against sites sacred to the Crone being found by mortals, this rite ensures that intruders don’t live long after their visit. The ritualist wades into a body of still water—a pond or lake ideally, a puddle if nothing else suffices —and cuts her feet, allowing Vitae to spill out into the water. If the rite succeeds, a thick mist gathers around her, blanketing an area with a radius of up to 50-yards per dot of Cruac. The ritualist then spends successes into either days of duration or points of lethal damage per day (minimum of 1 each). To vampires and other supernatural beings that don’t need to breath, the mist provides cover but has no other effects. Mortal victims who breathe in the vapor, however, suffer an agonizing death unless they can survive long enough for the rite’s duration to end. The mist is full of contagion, inflicting lethal damage every day until the Duration ends. A successful Stamina + Resolve roll can allow a victim to “skip” one interval of damage, but it must be rolled for each day. When the rite’s Duration ends, the diseases vanish from the victim’s system.

Miasma,

Diana's Blessing, receive a +5 bonus on all Stealth, perception, and Athletics (movement related only) rolls for one hour.

The Horned King's Blessing,

Servant from the Hidden Realms, Offers a bounty of (successes) Essence to the first spirit that completes a specific task; spirits will usually carry out the task but it is highly unlikely (though not impossible) that they will risk destruction

Summon the Child of Lilith,

Yggdrasil’s Feast, Must be cast on open soil, creating a patch of soft ground with a radius of (5 yards, may increase at the rate of 1-yard for a -1 penalty to the casting roll). Any creature that steps onto the ground stars to sink at a speed equal to (successes) feet per turn, to a depth equal to the spell’s radius. A target may try and escape with a Strength+Athletics roll at a penalty equal to (Successes).

Sacrifice to the Great Beast,

Rain, May cause, or clear up, up to -5 worth of environmental penalties

Gather the Storm,

This ritual may be cast either on a person, or on a location (no more than the caster's Cruac dots in diameter). For the rest of the night, any ghost, spirit, or demon suffers a (Cruac) penalty to any roll to affet the person or location in question.

Blood Ward;
4th:

Penalized by Composure, drink someone’s blood and take their shape. Works on supernaturals and animals, but transforms only the appearance of the body, not equipment or attributes. Can only be used in the same night as the feeding.)

Mask of Blood,

This rite protects the subject against the use of mental Disciplines such as Dominate or Majesty, as well as other mental sorceries, foiling the plans of any vampire attempting to use her as a puppet. Following the magical principle that the eyes are the windows to the soul, the ritualist anoints her eyelids with vitreous humor harvested from the eyeballs of sentient beings. If the rite is successful, any attempt to read or control the subject’s mind is confused and partially deflected by the ointment. Mind-controlling powers suffer a dice penalty equal to the ritualist's Cruac; The rite lasts until the next sunrise

Mirrored Tears,

Eye of the Norns, Penalized by active concealing enchantments, see a vision of the person you most need to confront, without deception and showing the most important faces. Once the antagonist is finally confronted, gain 8-again on all rolls against him.

Eye of Lilith,

Eternal Guardian of the Dark Moon; Lasts for one month, grants an attendant spirit three powers. First, it may fetter to the vampire; secondly, it may materialize in the physical world even without that numina, by spending one of the vampire's Vitae; third, every time the vampire spends Vitae, the spirit, provided it is within the physical world and within 5 yards, and if it succeeds on a reflexive Power+Finesse roll. If the vampire spends multiple Vitae, the spirit gains one Essence per success, up to the number of Vitae spent by the vampire

Bid the Huntsman Attend,

Renders the sorcerer immune to Vinculums for the rest of the night

Willful Vitae,

Cheating Fate, The Circle of the Crone survives anything the other covenants throw at it, thanks to its primal, ever-evolving nature and the use of magic such as this rite. Cheating Fate permits an Acolyte to examine the future, allowing the covenant to plan ahead and direct its members to avoid a looming disaster. The ritualist prepares a sacrificial victim—preferably a human, but an animal will do—as a representative of the doom the covenant needs to avoid. If a rival covenant is involved, one of its servants might be used, or someone dressed in a rough imitation of its ritual garb. If an individual is the source of doom, the sacrifice will be dressed as him. Once everything is ready, the ritualist kills the sacrifice and opens its gut, running her hands through the entrails. If the rite is successful, she states the nature of the doom and receives a vision of how the covenant should act to avoid it. The players of any of the ritual’s participants (the sorceress, plus up to five co-ritualists) then receive bonus dice equal to (Successes) on rolls that contribute to following the vision’s instructions.

Haruspicy;
5th:

Penalized by Stamina, requires a sympathetic connection and a human sacrifice; living targets take (successes) lethal damage, vampires lose (successes) vitae instead and may Frenzy -- this spell has unlimited range.

Heart's Curse,

Penalized by Stamina, living targets take (successes) lethal damage, vampires lose (successes) vitae instead and may Frenzy

Blood Blight,

Ianus's Blessing; Can raise or lower Blood Potency by (Resolve) for the rest of the night. This change is genuine in all respects (max vitae, vitae-per-turn, feeding restrictions, etc). If excess vitae remains in the body when the ritual runs out, take 1A damage

Lilith's Blessing,

Penalized by Size, curses an area until the next sunrise. The ritual's successes may be used in one of five different ways, decided upon by the sorcerer: 1. They can be used as a penalty to any rolls undertaken by or in the vicinity of the target. Not even the sorcerer herself is exempt. 2. They can be used as a bonus to all actions or events that might harm the target or anything in its vicinity. 3. Any actions that would benefit the target or anything in its vicinity but fail become Dramatic Failures. 4. Any actions that would harm the target or anything in its vicinity become extraordinary successes if they succeed at all (i.e. they count as five successes minimum, or more if more successes were actually scored). 5. If used against structures, its Durability or armour is reduced by the number of successes. This ritual can be used to weaken bridges so they are shaken apart by storms, to allow the storming of a castle by strengthening the attackers, to cause a massive accident on a motorway, or to cause all operations in a hospital to go horribly wrong.

Threefold Malediction
Devotions: Arcane Sight, Cleansing Impression, Eyes of the Beast,

(Auspex •, Mytherceria •) The most useful power of the Kiasyd is the most frightening to them and the most dangerous to the Strix and other spirits. Vampires already see better in the dark than mortals; night sight allows the Albinos to see clearly with almost no illumination at all. Even in complete darkness, the vampire can distinguish the many shades of black from each other, ebony from jet from sable. While using Night Sight, the vampire's eyes fill with an inky, swirling blackness. Cost: 1 Vitae Dice Pool: This power requires no roll. Action: Reflexive The vampire suffers no penalty for acting in darkness, and can see through any non-solid obstruction, such as fog. In light, the vampire can see the shadows of spirits as if they were solid beings; in darkness, the otherworldly creatures glow an eerie, dif-fuse white, like the ghosts of an earlier Creation. This power costs five experience points to learn.

Black Eyes, Preemptive Reflex, Riddle Phantastique, Stone Cling, The Ritual of Nourishment
Vitae: 20/5

Attacks...............................Damage........................Dice Pool.............Special
Great Axe...........................5L...................................14/18...................9-Again, Biting Blade, Blood Buff
Thorned Snare....................N/A...............................7+Successes..........As a grapple with Strength 7 and Brawl (Successes)
Hundred Needles.................N/A............................... 16......................Minus Stamina, no damage but (Successes) Toxicity venom
Blood Blight..........................5L.................................16..................... ..Minus Stamina, vampires lose (Successes) Vitae instead.

Type Reflection

Attributes: Power 8, Finesse 6, Resistance 7
Willpower: 8

Initiative: 15
Defense: 2
Armor: 6
Speed: 19
Corpus: 12

Morality: 1

Essence: 20/20
Numina:

The Reflection can choose who sees it when it manifests. It manifests in a mirror, screen or picture as normal, but only the people the Reflection wishes to perceive it can do so without effort. Anyone else trying to find it (perhaps trying to catch a glimpse of what frightened another person in the room so much) must make a Wits + Composure roll with a -2 penalty. The Reflection can never hide from its vampire, who can always see it without needing to make a roll.

Selective Manifestation,

Spend 1E, roll Power+Finesse (17) versus Composure+Supernatural Tolerance; target is forced to flee for (successes difference) turns

Terrify,

The ghost is able to exert its will over a living person, commanding him to perform actions like a puppet. Spend one Essence point and roll Power + Finesse (17) in a contested roll versus the victim's Resolve + Composure. If the ghost fails or ties the roll (or the mortal wins), the victim is unaffected. If the ghost wins the roll, it seizes control of the victim and can command him to perform any acts the spirit desires, within the victim's capabilities. The victim can attempt to throw off the ghost's control each successive turn with another contested roll. Use the victim's own dice pools to determine the outcome of his actions. The ghost can compel a number of victims simultaneously (so long as it has sufficient Essence) equal to its Finesse trait.

Compulsion,

The ghost has the power to create illusory images. Spend one Essence point and roll Power + Finesse (17). A negative modifier may be applied to the roll depending on the size and complexity of the illusion. Mimicking a person's voice alone or creating a distinctive smell (like perfume) doesn't incur any negative modifiers, but creating the illusion of a person might be subject to a -1 penalty. Creating the illusion of a specific person (down to patterns of speech and mannerisms) that a witness knows might call for a -2 penalty. Creating a complex illusion that seems to have physical substance (the witness is convinced that he can "touch" the illusion and it feels solid) incurs a -3 or more severe penalty. Small, subtle illusions are generally much more effective than large, overt ones. This power can work on only one victim at a time. Other mortals in the subject's vicinity do not see what he does. When a subject witnesses an illusion, roll Wits + Composure (or the Storyteller may allow Composure to be replaced by Occult if your character is aware of ghostly activity). If the roll generates as many or more successes than were achieved in the phantasm roll, the victim recognizes that the image can't be real. If the phantasm roll wins, the subject believes the illusion is genuine, but another Wits + Composure (or Occult) roll is made for him in each successive turn to attempt to see through the power. A ghost can maintain only one illusion at a time, and each illusion remains for the duration of the scene unless dispelled.

Phantasm, Savant (Terrify), Savant (Compulsion), Savant (Phantasm)

Rev. Giles Hayworth

Type: Ghoul
Regnant's Clan: Mekhet
Regnant's Covenant: Circle of the Crone
Enthralled: 1881
Apparent Age: Mid-50s

Virtue: Fortitude: Giles Hayworth is a past master at making do. No matter what the world throws at him, Giles copes with it and milks every bit of advantage he can from it.
Vice: Lust: Being the charismatic leader of a blood cult has perks, one might say.

Abonde's Ghoul-Friday aide, Father Giles is a handsome man in his later years, utterly overflowing with charm, tact, and a deep and abiding cynicism. In exchange for functional immortality, so long as he gets a monthly fix of Vitae from Abonde, the atheist priest handles his mistress's financial accounts, runs the day-to-day activities of her blood cult, and makes sure that such little things as property taxes are paid on the Church of St. Alcuin. Having hunted tigers and elephants while a young man in India, he is also quite capable of protecting his mistress.

For a ghoul, Father Giles is relatively content with his lot in life. He has more freedom than most, Abonde caring precious little about mundane affairs, and so as long Giles avoids any tremendous mistakes involving blood or money, he can run things as he sees fit. With wealth, influence, a loyal cult of followers, and effective immortality as his 'perks', it is a very sweet deal.

He is, one may say, imperfectly loyal.

Regnant’s Clan: Mekhet

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 4
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
PSocial Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 3, Composure 3

SMental Skills: Academics 4, Occult 2, Politics 3
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 1, Firearms (Rifles) 4, Larceny 2, Survival (Hunting) 3
PSocial Skills: Animal Ken 1, Empathy 3, Expression (Sermons) 3, Persuasion (Seduction) 4, Socialize 3, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge (Lies) 4

Merits: Allies (Abonde's Blood Cult) 4, Allies (Community Organizations) 4, Allies (Police) 2, Contacts (~North Hillingdon~) 5, Languages (Latin, Hindu; Native is English) 2, Resources 2, Status (Clerical Standing) 3, Striking Looks 2
Lair: St. Alcuin's Rectory; Size 3, Library (Theology) 1
Lair: Backup Hideout; Size 1, Security 1, Secrecy 5

Willpower: 7
Morality: 4
Derangements: Insomnia (mild)

Initiative: 5
Defense: 2
Armor 1/0 (Heavy Vestments)
Health: 8
Speed: 10

Disciplines: Animalism ●, Auspex ●●, Celerity ●●, Majesty ●,
Vitae: 3/1

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Winchester Model 70..........5(L).................12..............Must be braced properly

Rufus and Brutus

Species: Canine Ghouls
Regnant's Clan: Mekhet
Regnant's Covenant: Unaligned
Enthralled: 1930s

A pair of English Mastiffs the size of small ponies, Rufus and Brutus are Abonde's guards, a rather low-tech but very efficient alternative to private security teams or what-not. With Vitae-augmented senses, they're also harder to fool than most security systems. Rufus has a somewhat more ruddy coat and is generally more suspicious of strangers. Brutus is friendlier and has a torn ear.

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 2, Stamina 4
Social Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation --, Composure 2

Skills: Athletics (Running) 3, Brawl (Bite) 5, Expression 2, Intimidation 5, Investigation 2, Survival (Tracking) 5

Merits: Fast Reflexes 2, Fleet of Foot 3, Iron Stamina 3, Natural Immunity 1

Willpower: 5
Initiative: 6 (9 w/ Celerity)
Defense: 3
Health: 8
Size: 4
Speed: 16 (base 7)

Disciplines: Celerity 3
Vitae: 4/1

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Bite................................. 2(L).......... 12