Path of Asakku

Name:	Path of Asakku
Nickname:	Corrupted
Bearing:	Otherworldly
Virtues:	Conviction, Instinct

The Path of Asakku is less an ideology than a state of being prompted by the obsessive study of Vicissitude and communion with the dark intelligences behind it. As members of an intuitive Path, the Corrupted only use common terminology after working together for some time, though advanced followers often display a strange synchronicity. They may call the presence they summon forth a "shadow within" or a "Watcher", or identify with one of the Qlippothonic demons associated with Vicissitude.

Adherents are called Corrupted.

Ethics

• You are not a vampire. You are a Discipline personified: an emanation of a Watcher or a shadow within your Beast.
• You are no more an individual than a raptor's feather on a wing or a single memory locked in a mind with a million memories.
• Master Vicissitude and it will unlock the secrets of the Ancients.
• Non-Asakku who inherit Vicissitude from a Clan or bloodline usurp power. Convert or destroy them.
• The voice within you cries for a presence on Earth. Share your power, blood, and Path to host it.
• Hide your nature from enemies. Prepare a place to dwell in advance of your ultimate transformation.

Hierarchy of Sins

Path of Asakku
Rating	Moral Guideline	Rationale
10	Using or answering to your former name.	You are not a vampire. You are one strand in a web of power.
9	Refusing to use Vicissitude at every opportunity.	Become your power.
8	Failing to increase your command of Vicissitude to the greatest extent possible.	You must apply all your efforts to identifying the Watcher within.
7	Failing to commit Amaranth or convert a member of the Clan that practices Vicissitude.	Take back the power they have stolen.
6	Refusing to teach Vicissitude.	Let the Watcher see through a thousand eyes.
5	Allowing enemies to discover your true haven.	Your lair belongs to the Watcher.
4	Betraying another of the Corrupted.	We emanate from the same darkness and must claw our way into the world together.
3	Allowing enemies to discover your true nature.	Let Caine's bastards forget the origins of their gifts until we are ready to reclaim them openly.
2	Refusing to convert those under the blood bond to the Path.	The Watcher requires followers to manifest more powerfully.
1	Failing to use Vicissitude nightly, unless in torpor.	The murmuring shadow within must speak.

Transmutations

As a vampire on the Path of the Asakku increasingly surrenders to her Vicissitude she gains special abilities. These Transmutations represent the Discipline's will expanding into other Cainites and living things, and its ability to take firmer hold of the vampire's consciousness. A follower of the Path gains Sinister Mastery at the first dot of the Path, and another Transmutation of the player's choice at every even numbered dot thereafter. She can gain and lose power depending on her degree of harmony with the Discipline's ruling entity. Once a Transmutation is selected, it is set – when the character returns from a Path rating drop and re-qualifies, she regains the prior Transmutation.

• Sinister Mastery - This ability (possessed by all Asakku) reduces the Vicissitude experience cost multiplier by 1. Combination Disciplines featuring Vicissitude are purchased at half cost, rounded up.

• Blood Infection - The Asakku drains a vampire of all of her blood and fills half of her blood pool with the Asakku's own. The Vampire becomes a Asakku and is converted to the Path of Asakku at a one dot rating, and trades one dot of her weakest Discipline for a dot of Vicissitude if she doesn't have any dots. One she reaches four dots in Vicissitude she can advance further up the Path of Asakku. Blood Infection counts as two steps towards the blood bond.

• Inner Babble - The Asakku's mind is filled with sounds and images, and her aura shows random emotions. Telepathy attempts and attempts to read the Asakku's aura fail.

• Occultation - The Asakku's increasingly alien nature becomes something the very Earth seeks to abjure. Fate erases the Corrupted's footsteps. Freak events erase records of her presence. This Transmutation may be selected multiple times.

• Potentiation - The Asakku Vicissitude rating can exceed her Generational maximum by one dot. The power can be taken up to three times, but cannot exceed nine dots.

• Seeding the Garden - The Asakku infects the soil of an area with their vitae. Any animal who eats the plants or drinks water from this area becomes the Asakku's ghoul after a month. If the animal is eaten, the predator becomes the Asakku's ghoul.

• Soul Whispers - Any creatures who have drunk the blood, had Vicissitude used on them by the Asakku, or had the Sinister Obsession derangement can have the Asakku use their senses, use the Auspex, Animalism, Dominate, and Vicissitude Disciplines through this connection as if they were touching them, and relay emotions and instincts, such as the sense that someone the target sees is an enemy (though not information explaining why this is so). If the target possesses at least a dot in Vicissitude, the Corrupted may utilize any rank of Vicissitude through the target, using it as a proxy.

References

• V20: The Black Hand: A Guide to the Tal'Mahe'Ra, p. 115-118