blood oaths and disciplines
DYNASTIC MERITS
Those Kindred participating in cyclical dynasties often find that the system has benefits far beyond the simple Status boost they expected. Beyond the basic fact of estate protection, the heightened trust and intimacy of a cyclical dynasty often conveys other advantages to those willing to enter such an arrangement. The following Merits represent some of those advantages.
House Membership (• or •••)
Prerequisite: Vampire or ghoul
Effect: This Merit measures your character’s involvement in a cyclical House. This Merit reflects his commitment to, and influence with, the other members of the House and is a prerequisite for all other Dynastic Merits. Each level of this Merit represents a different relationship to the character’s House.
Trusted (•): Your character, whether Kindred or ghoul, is trusted by the members of the dynasty, possibly being groomed for eventual participation. For all purposes of House law, your character is a participant in the House. Your character can purchase some other Dynastic Merits and enjoy minor benefits of membership, but he does not have access to the House’s full assets and is not yet honored or protected by a successor. This level of the Merit confers a +1 bonus to Social dice pools involving members of the same House, similar to Status.
Successor (•••): As above, except your character is a full (though perhaps not equal) participant in the dynasty. This level of the Merit confers a +3 bonus to Social dice pools involving members of the same House, similar to Status.
Torpor Connection (• to •••••)
Prerequisite: Vampire, Presence ••, House Membership •
Effect: The connection between the vampires of a dynastic House allows torpid members to perceive the trusted and familiar voice of fellow House Kindred, even through the rush of frightening visions and memories that come with torpor, like drowned-out shouts through a waterfall of blood. Torpid Kindred are not truly aware of the vague communication they participate in through this connection — the words they hear are swallowed by the shadows of cursed sleep — but they may respond by “talking in their sleep” all the same. Only the voice of a character with this Merit can penetrate the dead ears of a torpid vampire; witnesses to the consultation go unheard by the subject.
A character who purchases this Merit is presumed to have a torpor connection with another vampire, but the connection is one-sided. For a shared connection, both vampires must purchase this Merit. Two-sided torpor connections do not have to be balanced.
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Without this Merit, speaking to a torpid vampire has little reliable effect. With it, your character may consult with his trusted, slumbering kin to gain advice, facts and other bits of information. In many cases, this consultation is awkward and imprecise, but straightforward questions may be heard and answered without an action, at the Storyteller’s discretion. Generally speaking, the more dots in the Torpor Connection, the clearer the messages whispered by the torpid vampire.
If it becomes necessary to gauge this connection mechanically, the questioning character should make a Presence + Empathy roll. This dice pool suffers a –5 penalty due to the fog of torpor, but each dot the character has in his Torpor Connection reduces the penalty by one. Each success on this roll allows the character to receive the answer to one question asked of his torpid ally.
A character with this Merit also has a chance to rouse a partner in involuntary torpor without donating Vitae of the correct potency. To do so, the character must feed two Vitae of vampire blood to the torpid subject and attempt a Presence + Empathy roll. This dice pool gains a +2 bonus if the character and his subject share a blood bond. If the result is an exceptional success, the torpid vampire can choose to awaken or remain in his dead sleep. Anything less than an exceptional success merely invokes the benefits described above.
This Merit may be purchased multiple times to gain a connection with other Kindred, one per purchase.
STORYTELLER’S OPTION:
REPLACEMENT CHARACTERS
Some Storytellers might let a new player take the House Membership Merit free as a means of providing “insurance” in case her first character meets a premature end. When the player’s first character is destroyed, her successor awakens to take her place and avenge her. Because this replacement character is of the same House as the initial Invictus character, she can be assumed to have similar allegiances and be easily inserted into an existing coterie. Successor characters may have more or fewer experience points than the initial character, at the Storyteller’s discretion.
When using this option, the House Membership Merit can only be exercised once — the replacement character must pay for the Merit herself if she wants to enjoy its effects as well. Even then, the Storyteller should limit the size of the dynasty to prevent players from casually sacrificing one character to decant another.
Speaker for the Eclipsed (• to •••••)
Prerequisite: Vampire, Torpor Connection •••
Effect: The connection between members of a House may become so strong that verbal communication is the
least of the benefits they enjoy. At times, the link between House members is so strong that torpid Kindred can passively project their feelings or wishes onto others of their House. This ability would certainly be invoked if something happened to catastrophically impact the House’s holdings or if the waking participant wanted to take another talented Kindred into the House.
The effects of this Merit can only be felt by a character with a Torpor Connection to a vampire that is currently torpid. By spending one Willpower and making a successful Wits + Empathy roll, the character briefly connects with his torpid fellow and becomes aware of his instinctual, emotional reactions to things knowingly perceived by the character. The range of this ability is five miles per dot purchased.
Will of the Dynasty (•••)
Prerequisite: Vampire, House Membership •••
Effect: This Merit reflects the degree to which identities begin to merge when Kindred become part of a cyclical dynasty. Telling (or forcing) the Kindred to do anything that would harm or betray a member of his House is tantamount to asking him to perform that same action against himself. Telling him to kill a member of his House is equivalent to telling him to commit suicide, for example. All rolls to compel the Kindred to take an action that threatens or endangers his House allies (through Skills, Disciplines, magic or any other means) are automatically modified as though the character had spent a Willpower point. That is, either the character’s dice pool to resist such compulsions gets a +3 bonus or the character’s Resistance Trait is temporarily increased by 2. Likewise, the character gains these bonuses when a member of his House attempts to betray, mislead or lie to him.
Virtue’s Twin (•••)
Prerequisite: Vampire, House Membership •••
Effect: All members of a House must purchase this Merit for it to be effective. For purposes of determining torpor duration, all vampires of the House are considered to share the Humanity rating of the Kindred with the highest Humanity. If, for example, the vampires of the Tremalions have Humanity ratings of 4, 5 and 7, all of them are considered to have Humanity 7 for the purposes of determining the length of a voluntary or involuntary torpor.
If the highest Humanity of the participants drops while one member is torpid, the length of that torpor must be recalculated using the new highest Humanity in the House. Determine the torpid vampire’s new torpor duration and subtract the time already spent in torpor; that is the Kindred’s rough remaining time to spend in torpor.
Tap the Torpid Mind (• to •••••)
Prerequisites: Vampire, House Membership •••,
Speaker for the Eclipsed •
188 blood oaths and disciplines