The Vardyvles are a bloodline of clan Ventrue. Spies, actors, and something more sinister in between, the Doppelgängers are a young bloodline, but one with great ambitions. All who become Vardyvle are dreamers: each has a quiet yearning to be something more or different than what the Embrace made them. Their victims are those who can help them live out their dreams vicariously — or, better yet, directly. The Doppelgängers are expert shapeshifters, and with a special Devotion they can alter their appearances to match those of their vessels, living out their thwarted desires in the flesh. Yet they also risk losing their identities in act, deluding themselves into believing they really are what they pretend to be. Even their name has shifted with the years, always appended to a myth or legend greater than themselves.
Most Vardylves are Acolytes or members of the First Estate. The Invictus attracts them for the chance to play at spy games, and the pleasures of climbing social ladders through trickery. The Mother's Army offers whole cults to imitate, and many build themselves up as protean deities. The Doppelgängers can be found in the other covenants as well, but their mercurial attitude sometimes makes it difficult to stick to one outlook.
History[]
Unlike many Lords, the Vardyvles have rather ignoble beginnings, although they try to mask them with over-the-top names (the most recent being a reference to an odd variety of Scandinavian spirit). In one telling, they were scions of an unloved second son, who murdered his father and took his identity to torment his brother. Another rumor states their first member was a renowned Ventrue thief, one who was never satisfied with who she was, but could play any part her job required. An older legend, one few in the bloodline even know, states the first of their line usurped the abilities of a lost clan of Kindred, servants of the Strix who still bear a violent grudge.
Bane[]
The Vardyvle suffer the Covetous Curse. Whenever a Doppelgänger feeds from a victim who exemplifies her personal envy, she runs the risk of gaining false memories of the vessel's life, treating them as her own. In rare cases, she even becomes addicted to the victim's blood.
Shapeshifting[]
The Vardyvle use a proprietary Devotion to live out their fantasies.
- Shapeshifting (Obfuscate 1, Protean 2) - The vampire can spend Vitae to transform her features to match those of a human victim they've fed upon, whose blood they still have in their system. These alterations last the rest of the night.
References[]
- VTR: Night Horrors: Spilled Blood, p. 45-49
Vampire: The Requiem - Bloodlines of the Ventrue clan |
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