Mara (VTR)

The Mara are a bloodline of the Gangrel Clan of vampires. Primary aquatic, the Mara rever an entity they refer to as the Sunken Mother and usually stay away from the Danse Macabre on dry land.

They are usually aligned with the Circle of the Crone.

Overview
The exact origin of the Mara is nearly impossible to recall. The myths of the Mara speak of the Sunken Mother, who was part of a dualistic pair of lovers with the Sun God. They say she loved and cared for all her countless children, laying them upon the earth and showing them how to spawn a multitude of creatures so that they need never dwell empty and alone. Her attention was so devoted, so focused upon them, that her lover burned with violent jealousy. Eventually, unable to accept that the waters could be more important to the Mother than he was, he took up her body, searing her flesh, and flung her into the depths where she drowned. Shamed by the part they played in her death and hungry for justice, the waters took the lessons of the Sunken Mother and created the Mara as her Kindred grandchildren so that they might wreak bloody vengeance on the God of the Day and his worshippers. The first time the Mara were actually observed was by a Sanctified monk on the coast of England. The meeting ended with hostilities and the Sanctified was forced to retreat. At other times, they were seen at the Elysium of Copenhagen, near the domains of the American South and other coastal areas around the Atlantic.

The Mara are an isolationistic lot, preferring to be let alone by the land-dwelling Kindred. Circles of the Mara are usually relatively small, and so their function is much more informal than most. Over the centuries, Mara Acolytes have developed a complex language of hums and clicks that they often use to communicate under the surface. One of the first things each member of the line learns is how to understand and speak as his fellow Mara do, so as to enable participation in the holy rites of the line. Their rites are strange even for the standards of the Acolytes, involving themes of drowning, resurrection and insurrection against the Sun. Witnesses to their eerie, slow dances and the mingling of their tangled hair or bone-pale flesh with waterborne blood is enough for most to assume the Mara are, and can only be, thoroughly monstrous beings.

Weakness
The Mara can only gain substenance from a vessel when they and/or their victim is submerged head to toe in liquid. In fact, the blood drained in a "dry feeding" is mystically transformed to water in the vampire's throat, and is vomited back up immediately. Since there is no way to prevent this transformation, members of the bloodline must be very careful to avoid hunger frenzy when they are not in a body of water.