
Bellium University is a prestigious and selective university in Manila where the children of the Philippines’ elite learn everything they need to step into privilege and power, influencing trade, government, and the highest cultural echelons. More importantly, they learn to support and uphold the status quo, which — mostly inadvertently — favors the bloodsucking monsters at the heart of the system. And also the vampires.[1]
A network of vampires uses Bellium and its global sister schools as hunting grounds, income streams, and sanctuaries. While most of Bellium’s staff and students are none the wiser, a rarefied few receive personal mentoring and even a precious sip of undead blood in exchange for their service and loyalty. Those personal connections are the least of the vampires’ influence, however. The alumni network is powerful, extensive, and passionate about preserving their alma mater just as they remember it.
History[]
Bellium came to Manila with Catholicism, and it’s proved just as enduring. From humble beginnings as a Catholic convent in the Intramuros, it grew to one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country, watching unchanged as war, revolution, and unrest swept through the city beyond its walls.
It’s a venerable pedigree, to be sure, but the university’s still not as old as the beings who founded it. A trio of Spanish vampires came east to the farthest holding of the Spanish crown and built the convent around themselves. Nobody would look for monsters in the heart of the church. The nuns, unaware of the true nature of the three silent, eremite sisters secluded in their cells, set about missionary work, educating the children of the Spanish colonizers and the locals who cooperated with them. There’s still a hint of those origins in Bellium’s modern curriculum. Students supplement their highly competitive academic curriculum with rigorous courses on etiquette, personal grooming, and upper-class cultural rituals.
Although it’s fully co-ed now, the convent’s transition into an educational institution began as a private Catholic boarding school for the daughters of Spanish officials and nobility. By day, Bellium encouraged its students to be versed in the arts and in academic pursuits while providing them with all the necessary tutelage on how to become proper wives or ideal ladies of high society. By controlling men in power, Bellium ladies advanced their school’s interests from the shadows. They applied themselves to raising generation after generation of perfect daughters, mistresses, or wives. After all, the greatest events in history were rarely a result of discussions at a negotiating table or a bloody victory on the battlefield.
Bellium takes power wherever it can. The school provided quiet support for supernatural refugees from Europe in exchange for assistance against the beings native to the Philippines. Of course, supposed allies who were too dangerous or proved uncontrollable were viciously weeded out to the best of Bellium’s abilities. This further entrenched the school within the Philippines, playing the dangerous game of being everyone’s friend, gaining secrets from one side to secretly sell to another, then feigning innocence whenever they were caught — or covering up their mistakes through cunning or brute force.
This approach has paid off across the centuries, weathering political upheaval, strife, and war. By the 20th century, Bellium was viewed as a grand old institution catering to whoever had money or those desperately wanting to be in the rooms where history happened. Excellent social engineering let the school ride on the sacrifices of a few of their alumni who distinguished themselves — mostly by dying gloriously — during World War II, raising their esteem in the eyes of Filipinos. The Board used a similar playbook during the Martial Law of the 1970s–80s, all while selling secrets both to cronies of the dictator Marcos and to rebels hiding in and beyond the metropolis.
As Manila changed around them, the vampires maintained connections with Europe and with like-minded undead who spread to other distant shores on the tides of colonization. Those bonds are strong, and in the 21st century, they manifest as a formal contract that turns Bellium and six other elite global universities into the Seven Stars.
Over time, the three vampire founders of Bellium created more of their kind, choosing victims from among the gifted students and professors around them. When revolution came to the Philippines in the late 19th century, it came to Bellium, too. These ungrateful, undead children slew their creators and took Bellium for themselves.[1]
Operations[]
At present, Bellium is one of the Big Five universities in the Philippines. Its main campus is in the capital, and it has satellite campuses in Benguet, Laguna, Cebu, and Davao provinces. Bellium also bankrolls multiple private schools with the intent of using them as feeders for future students. The university has distinguished liberal arts, social sciences, and law programs. Its main edge over other Philippine academic institutions is its membership of the Pleiades. Even graduates of the Philippines’ finest universities face systemic racism and bigotry when they attempt to enroll in institutions abroad or seek employment in other countries. Pleiades universities, however, offer co-curriculum structures, fully funded supplementary courses and language competency tests, exchange student programs, and validate course credits for transferees or fresh enrollees. They’re an internationally recognized, influential educational brand.
The majority of Bellium’s students come from affluent families; middle income students are rare and often struggle with integrating into Bellium’s student culture. However, the university has recently started offering scholarships to less privileged entrants and is implementing a 10-year plan with the goal of increasing scholarship students to at least 20 percent of their undergraduate student body. The move is strictly a matter of optics. It suits Bellium to be seen as progressive — they feel it’s part of ensuring Bellium persists — but they’re only paying lip service to ideals of equality and meritocracy. In truth, middle income and scholarship students will always be on the fringes of campus culture and locked out of subsequent success unless they make themselves useful to the elite families Bellium supports. They make a useful pool of easy prey for the vampires, with nobody powerful to miss them.
Philippine academia half-jokingly calls Bellium the grand dame of the elite schools, charming for an old school, in a “please forgive your elders for their dated beliefs” sort of way. Critics scorn Bellium for being a hybrid between a credible academic institution and a finishing school, even going so far as to accuse the university of being colonialist apologists catering to the elite of the country. Well-bred Bellanites, however, ignore the judgment with their signature elegance. Nothing anyone can say or do can truly challenge their power. Besides, given how deeply embedded Bellium is in the fabric of Philippine society and how adept it is at playing both sides of a conflict, the esteemed heroes of Bellium’s worst critics have been secretly eating from the university’s hand all this time.
Bellium Quartet[]

Top row, from second on the left to second on the right: Dominique Rodriguez, Macario de Ayala, Julian Tiu, Isabella Cojuangco
Nestled in the heart of Bellium University is a coterie of vampires who use the university as both sanctuary and playground. Most of them aren’t remotely interested in the academic caliber of the institution, except that it attracts students with enough familial power and privilege to keep their good old alma mater safe and stable — and of course well-funded. They create a self-reinforcing bastion of privilege that’s as useful to humans as it is to themselves.
The quartet doesn’t run the university directly. It would be a waste of their time and talents, and arranging meetings after dark would raise a few suspicions. They operate through a network of trusted mortal servants, each dependent on one of the quartet’s blood. These people are professors and administrators, admissions officers, and occasionally support staff. They make up a fraction of the university’s staff, but they’re carefully placed to ensure the quartet’s will is effectively law. Other staff who don’t fall in line are cut out of key decisions and quickly leave the university’s employment. And who can they complain to? Badmouthing one’s employer, especially one as prestigious as Bellium, never enhances future career prospects.
The vampires present themselves as wealthy donors when they make themselves visible at all. They appear at the Founders Ball each year, and at carefully chosen events throughout the winter and spring semesters. They never attend all at once — finding everyone in power together, in the same place, is how they murdered their creators and inherited Bellium — and they regularly change their forenames (never surnames; perceived family connections are important), styles, and other details to discourage people from realizing they’ve been around for over a century.
Isabella Cojuangco[]
Isabella considers herself the leader of the quartet, or at least the member with the clearest head and greatest capacity for strategic planning. As well as steering the university’s strategy, keeping it modern and appealing, and overseeing admissions, Isabella’s also playing a generations-long game, running a couple of prominent Manila families like a rare species breeding program.
Isabella's competence in the Disciplines of Dominate and Presence, as well as her interest in lineage and maintaining power bases, implies that she is of clan Ventrue.
Macario Zobel de Ayala[]
Macario leads two existences. Long periods of boredom, disappointment at the persistent loneliness of his undead condition, broken by periods of intense passion directed at unfortunate students around him, he builds an obsessive, dangerous infatuation.
Macario's use of Auspex and Presence, as well as his mercurial fits of passion, implies that he is of clan Toreador.
Dominique Rodriguez[]
Dominique largely ignores the student body of Bellium, but more of the teaching staff knows her than any other member of the quartet. She spends a great deal of time in the library, and when she’s not in her own private basement, she’s on nodding terms with many of the academic staff conducting their own research. She’s a diminutive, habitually polite woman and most of the staff who encounter her find her entirely non-threatening.
Dominique's use of Oblivion to commune with the spirits of the dead implies that she is of clan Hecata.
Julian Tiu[]
Julian is not the man he was when he and his associates took Bellium by force. He finds the only thing that quickens his mind is the hunt. When he’s not pursuing prey, he has little interest in anything around him. He spends his nights unmoving and unthinking until the urge to feed drives him out to the nature reserve or another wild place where his kills can remain undiscovered. His shape is the most human thing about him; he has the alertness, the thought patterns, and the innate sense for vulnerability of a bestial apex predator.
Julian's use of Fortitude and Protean to transform into a crocodile, as well as his preference for inhabiting wild spaces, implies that he is of clan Gangrel.
Campus Locations[]
- The Convent of the Sisters of Saint Hildegard von Bingen
- Bellium Manor
- Student residences
- Nature reserve
- Bellium Library and Observatory
- Hildegard's Rest
Campus Staff[]
- Elena Cojuangco: VP of University Services and Finances and an indirect descendant (and ghoul) of Isabella Cojuangco.
- Luis Davina: General counsel attorney and ghoul of Macario de Ayala.
- Rafal Manaro: Social Sciences professor and ghoul of Dominique Rodriguez.
- Annika d'Souza: Descriptive Linguistics professor and ghoul of Isabella Cojuangco.
- Allan Merrera: Chaplain
Campus Students[]
- Cristina Bayani
- Maia Cojuangco
- Marco Flores
- VJ Guinto
- Sonny Ong
- Vivienne del Rosario
- Anamaria Salazar
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 HTR: Alma Maters, p. 89-106