Icelus

The Icelus (sometimes known as The Icelus Foundation) are a bloodline of clans Mekhet and Ventrue. Seemingly a young lineage in the All Night Society, the Auditors operate mental health/sleep therapy clinics around the world, using a patented technique called Psychognosis. However, in reality, this "Foundation" is a front for a parasitic cult. Psychognosis is actually a supernatural method of harvesting dreams, whether for blackmail, research, or to increase the utility of Disciplines. Just by disrupting human sleep cycles, the Auditors have built their Foundation into a vast network of temporal and mystical power.

The Auditors are largely loyal to the Ordo Dracul, and this allegiance is mutual. The Dragons believe the Icelus are on the cusp of a unique transcendence, and even members of the bloodline in other covenants hold some sway in Defiant affairs. Otherwise, the Icelus can be found in the other covenants to varying degrees. Some act as Carthian secret police, while others try to wake the Crone with mortal nightmares. A handful build pyramid schemes and business opportunities for the Invictus, and in the Church they separate the worthy from the unworthy with psychological predestination.

History[]

Some Icelus claim to be the product of an accidental melding of Lord and Shadow Vitae, a cultic fraud that drew on the clans' obsessions with power and secrets. Through an unknown catalyst, their quack sleep therapy jargon started working. Others say they're the result of Cold War research into psychic warfare, one that still may be collecting data. A few recall a much older story of a restless emperor and his loyal servant girl, and the spirit of Death Itself, but this is the most obscure of the bloodline's assertions.

Bane[]

The Icelus suffer the Hypnotic Curse. Skimming the collective unconscious as they do, an Auditor's day sleep is haunted by disorienting dreams and confusing visions. This tires the Beast, which will retreat into a strange hypnotic state if the vampire commits any transgressions against Humanity.

Psychognosis[]

Using special hypnotic techniques, Icelus vampires put mortal victims into a dreamless sleep, siphoning off the visions they would normally experience and turning them into a kind of super fuel for their Disciplines; specifically, their parent clans' proprietary powers, Auspex and Dominate. Icelus also gain the Mekhet ability of Dream Visions on induction into the bloodline, including Ventrue members.

Represented by a Merit, the techniques of Psychognosis are as follows:

Hypnotic Precognition – The vampire uses Dominate to channel prophetic omens.
Diagnostic Dreaming – The vampire enhances the clarity of her basic Auspex visions.
Waking Prescience – The vampire enhances the psychometric abilities of Auspex.
Morphean Blackmail – The vampire's Dominate becomes almost impossible to resist.
Shared Minds – The vampire can read a victim's mind to access their other senses.