Kindred (VTR)

Kindred is the collective name by which the vampires of Vampire: The Requiem refer to themselves. (VTR: VTR: Vampire: The Requiem Rulebook )

Creation

Vampires are created through the Embrace; during the Embrace, a vampire drains a candidate of all their blood and replaces it with a small amount (generally a single drop) of their own. This causes the corpse to rise as a new vampire, usually instantly. The vampire who initiates the Embrace is the Sire; the new vampire is the Sire's Childe.

Feeding

Blood is usually replaced by sucking it out of humans. While vampires can feed on animals, they do not enjoy the taste of it and older vampires will acquire no sustenance from it. The process of taking blood is euphemistically called the Kiss or feeding. Vampires do not have to completely drain a victim, although frenzying vampires are likely to do so. Vampires can hide the puncture marks of feeding by licking the wounds, making the process fairly subtle.

The Feeding process is highly pleasurable (arguably the only pleasure) for vampires, and is also extremely pleasurable for victims. Vessels who are drained regularly can become addicted to the Kiss.

Physiology

Vampires change considerably after the Embrace. When a vampire is Embraced, their internal organs wither away, and almost all their body fluids are replaced by blood. Vampires use blood (also called Vitae) for a variety of purposes; blood replaces most bodily fluids, so vampires will sweat blood and cry blood under certain circumstances. Blood is also used to get up and move; every night, vampires expend a certain amount of blood to rise.

In addition, vampires can use blood to enhance their physical attributes and use supernatural powers called Disciplines. Blood is used to Embrace, as noted above, and also to create Ghouls. Finally, vampires can use blood to heal damage to their bodies.

Once Embraced, vampires become immortal and are locked into a form of stasis. Apart from wounds, vampires are restored to their condition at the time of Embrace every time they rise up for the night. This physical condition eventually extends to their mindsets as well; old vampires find it very hard to learn new things.

They are incapable of eating food, vomiting it up almost instantly. As a result of these processes, the vampire is paler and generally thinner than they were before the Embrace. Certain clans have more extreme physical changes.

Psychology

In addition to the physical changes, vampires experience extreme intellectual and emotional changes. The vampire is now a predator, and has a raging inner monster called the Beast. The Beast reacts to a variety of stimuli, notably hunger, anger, fear. The Beast continuously assaults the character, and if the Beast's demands exceed the character's own capacity to control it, will react in a Frenzy or Rötschreck. Vampires can permanently lose control to the Beast, entering Wassail, a state of permanent Frenzy. In this condition, all humanity is lost and the vampire becomes a draugr, a mindless killing machine.

They have no need or interest in sex, as the act of feeding replaces all physical urges. Although, they can imitate the physical reactions if needed.

Vulnerabilities

Vampires are highly vulnerable to a some physical threats, most importantly sunlight and fire. Vampires burn easily, and will burn up almost instantly in sunlight. However, outside of these, vampires are very hard to kill - bullets do not cause much damage, and their superior strength and speed make them hard to hit, let alone damage in combat.

When wounded, vampires can pass into a deathlike stasis called Torpor, which allows them to heal more extreme damage. Torpor can last for centuries depending on the circumstances, and as a vampire gets older, Torpor becomes a more attractive option. Some vampires have been in Torpor for millennia.

Clans

Main article: Clan (VTR)

There are five clans in VTR, as well as a number of related sub-clans, known as bloodlines. A vampire's clan is determined by the clan of his sire.

• Daeva: Vampires as seductive predators (Interview with the Vampire).
• Gangrel: Vampires as animalistic wanderers (Near Dark).
• Mekhet: Vampires as shadowy, skulking hunters (Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story).
• Nosferatu: Vampires as deformed monsters (Nosferatu).
• Ventrue: Vampires as deranged overlords (Dracula).

Each clan covers a broad range of vampiric archetypes. The Daeva, for instance, are both seductive and predatorial, evoking the image of vampires who glide through society as debonair hunters, much like Lestat in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. The Gangrel encompass the theme of the lone, savage and brutal hunters, much like the vampires of the Blade series. The Mekhet are conspiratorial occultists, vampires who hide in the shadows gathering lore and knowledge while manipulating others from afar. Nosferatu vampires are the alienated or disfigured monsters of legend (such as Count Orlok of their movie namesake), while the Ventrue represent vampires possessed of an aristocratic, lords of the night sensibility, like Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Covenants

Main article: Covenant

There are five major political factions, or covenants, in VTR:

• Carthian Movement: Vampires who seek a progressive government for their own kind.
• Circle of the Crone: Pagan blood-sorcerers bound in worship of their goddess(es).
• Invictus: Neo-feudalists hungry for power and money as well as blood.
• Lancea Sanctum: Judeo-Christian vampires who believe that God put them on Earth to be monsters.
• Ordo Dracul: A group of vampires dedicated to transcending their condition and becoming more than undead.

There are also a series of smaller covenants.

Antagonists

A vampire has many enemies, most from within their own clans and covenants. There are some that stand out as being opposed to Vampire society as a whole, and some of the most prominent of these are vampires themselves:

• Belial's Brood
• VII

Powers and Abilities (Disciplines)

Main article: Discipline (VTR)

Vampiric powers and capabilities which have often given rise to old wives' tales of superhuman speed, strength and endurance possessed by the Damned, along with their piercing gaze, their hypnotic and seductive voices and the unholy power to vanish into shadows and shapeshift into bats, wolves and mist. (VTR: Vampire: The Requiem Rulebook , p 114)

Kindred (the word vampires use for themselves) can use a variety of supernatural powers called Disciplines. These are special abilities associated with their curse which, like their undead bodies, are "fed" in a way by the living blood they take from mortals. Many of the Disciplines provide Kindred with preternatural means of ensuring their continued existence, or of easing the process of hunting and stealing blood from mortals.

Disciplines are generally recognized as common (common place among the Kindred and more than one clan has an innate knack for them), unique (the proprietary abilities of each of the five clans), covenant (possessed only by a specific covenant and never shared with outsiders), and bloodline (known only to the members of a particular bloodline within a clan).

Powers that combine aspects of two or more Disciplines are called Devotions.