Remove ads

White Wolf's World of Darkness

Reader mode
The Laurent said:
Fall of the Camarilla is actually a pretty good adventure book. Even her character isn't bad. It's just... that picture, dear God.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh, I love Fall of the Camarilla. I tried to run it for @Omicron and @EarthScorpion but didn't have the IRL time, and I still owe them that game some time in the future. It's a fantastic campaign. My only piece of criticism is that "Camarilla" isn't a valid Latin noun and that really hurts me deeply.
 
ManusDomini said:
Oh, I love Fall of the Camarilla. I tried to run it for @Omicron and @EarthScorpion but didn't have the IRL time, and I still owe them that game some time in the future. It's a fantastic campaign. My only piece of criticism is that "Camarilla" isn't a valid Latin noun and that really hurts me deeply.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

But yeah, it was a very interesting read, a few awkward art choices aside. Damnation City was great (well, some of the in-between story was a bit ehh), I have a love affair with Mystagogue and Silver Ladder, I remember Intruders (that's the Abyss one, right?) being amazing...

Though, I'll note, my "reading the in-between story" count is very spotty. I basically do try to read them, unless I have trouble reading them, in which case I don't.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Uh. In Vampire: the Masquerade, Adam was the first man, Lilith the first woman, Eve the second woman, and Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel. When Abel was murdered by Cain, Cain was cursed by God to be the first vampire.

Rejecting that Masquerade is mired in this kind of biblical apocrypha is... really odd, given how heavily Masquerade hammers it in. God exists; God cursed Cain; in the end, all the power struggles and treachery and cruelty of the Kindred will earn them nothing but damnation.

Requiem is the one where the existence of God is a matter of doubt and faith. In Masquerade, there's no such doubt at the OOC level.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean, Revelations of the Dark Mother suggests The One created many beings and "God" was just one of them.

I haven't read as much as many others but I've been reading up on this ever since i became a fan of WoD and the lore buffs I've read say the canon is a bit vague but there are all sorts of possibilities that begin and end with God being an absentee landlord. God is dead, God just fucked off to nowhere and cares nothing about anything (hence why the Demons were allowed to escape), God is the Wyld or God died and broke up into the Triat....

But at no time in any book I've read or any lore I've heard has it been suggested God is an active participant in the World of Darkness. At most he was some type of being that did some stuff a long time ago and nothing since. He's certainly not the supreme arbiter of fate that Kindred need to cower in fear of. They have way more to fear from the Antediluvians.
 
Nikkolas said:
But at no time in any book I've read or any lore I've heard has it been suggested God is an active participant in the World of Darkness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
god doesn't need to be presently miraculously intervening to make deliberately taking on his curse and damnation a stupid idea
(though he does in the only gehenna scenario worth anything, full on passover-ing all vampires except the few who truly repent)
you're taking single statements or other gamelines - like demon, the least relevant of all of the owod's multi-book lines - to try and reject a core theme of vampire:

being a vampire means you are fucked

temporally, in that higher-generations are always at the mercy of their elders and their own hungers and elders are always watching for diablerie, morally, because sustaining your existence is ethically dubious at the best of times, and, ultimately, for those vampires sitting at the top and unconcerned by morals, spiritually, because you are under the curse of god.
choosing to be a vampire makes you a moron
 
Last edited:
NonSequtur said:
god doesn't need to be presently miraculously intervening to make deliberately taking on his curse and damnation a stupid idea
(though he does in the only gehenna scenario worth anything, full on passover-ing all vampires except the few who truly repent)
you're taking single statements or other gamelines - like demon, the least relevant of all of the owod's multi-book lines - to try and reject a core theme of vampire:

being a vampire means you are fucked

temporally, in that higher-generations are always at the mercy of their elders and their own hungers and elders are always watching for diablerie, morally, because sustaining your existence is ethically dubious at the best of times, and, ultimately, for those vampires sitting at the top and unconcerned by morals, spiritually, because you are under the curse of god.
choosing to be a vampire makes you a moron
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Demon is the only source with anything substantive to say about God. You're basing all your views off vampirie superstition and hearsay from people who have no idea about anything, who are at best hundreds of years removed from God's only interaction with vamprekind. And even then, that doesn't stablish anything about what happens to a Kindred after Final Death.

You're literally the first person I've ever encountered so hung up on this 'God damns their souls to Hell" idea. It's not in the canon anywhere nor do any players or storytellers I've talked to endorse it.

What about the vampires who become wraiths? What about he ones the Giovanni call back to torture?
 
Last edited:
Nikkolas said:
Demon is the only source with anything substantive to say about God. You're basing all your views off vampirie superstition and hearsay from people who have no idea about anything, who are at best hundreds of years removed from God's only interaction with vamprekind. And even then, that doesn't stablish anything about what happens to a Kindred after True Death.

You're literally the first person I've ever encountered so hung up on this 'God damns their souls to Hell" idea. It's not in the canon anywhere nor do any players or storytellers I've talked to endorse it.

What about the vampires who become wraiths? What about he ones the Giovanni call back to torture?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Stop moving goalposts around. You literally just cited vampire superstition (Revelations of the Dark Mother) as evidence yourself lol. And it is absolutely in the canon, it is in Gehenna and many other books and has been cited as such several times. You are the one using anecdotal evidence.
 
ManusDomini said:
Stop moving goalposts around. You literally just cited vampire superstition (Revelations of the Dark Mother) as evidence yourself lol. And it is absolutely in the canon, it is in Gehenna and many other books and has been cited as such several times. You are the one using anecdotal evidence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

He literally hasn't cited anything except a non-canon scenario in the Gehenna book. I will gladly concede if you or he can provide ONE canon source confirming Kindred spirits go to Hell. Confirm, mind you. Not some unreliable narrator saying they think this is what happens, I'd like a story showing an average Kindred going to Hell after Final Death.


And yes, I cited one account of God's existence in Vampire in an overall argument disussing many theories about WoD God to show that God's existence is entirely debatable. There are multiple conflicting accounts and thus there's no reason to believe the one he's citing any more than the one in the Dark Mother book.

And if you want a source on my end, It's literally dev canon that vampires can come back as Wraiths if you wish it.
 
Last edited:
I mean, this is all kinda pointless in that, even if God doesn't Damn them, they've damned themselves and the Tremere, from what I can tell, are a terrible clan to be from that oppresses most of their members.
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, this is all kinda pointless in that, even if God doesn't Damn them, they've damned themselves and the Tremere, from what I can tell, are a terrible clan to be from that oppresses most of their members.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's a matter of perspective. Some Kindred enjoy their Unlife more than others.

You're playing Requiem, right? The most interesting thing about VtR for me was the Testament of Longinus. Got that back when I got into all things Darkness. Some vampires view their existence as a holy mission, even in oWoD.
 
Nikkolas said:
That's a matter of perspective. Some Kindred enjoy their Unlife more than others.

You're playing Requiem, right? The most interesting thing about VtR for me was the Testament of Longinus. Got that back when I got into all things Darkness. Some vampires view their existence as a holy mission, even in oWoD.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, but we're talking about the Tremere, where they have a hierarchy full of blood bonds and so on? Which doesn't seem like a particularly happy version of Vampire Unlife, even by the standards of oVamps.
 
Nikkolas said:
He literally hasn't cited anything except a non-canon scenario in the Gehenna book. I will gladly concede if you or he can provide ONE canon source confirming Kindred spirits go to Hell. Confirm, mind you. Not some unreliable narrator saying they think this is what happens, I'd like a story showing an average Kindred going to Hell after Final Death.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
nonsequtur has never said that god damns vampires to hell

you made that up

lol
 
Also, Secrets of the Covenants (V:TR 2e, if you're curious) is honestly better than I thought? It has its flaws, and its duds both in merits and storybeats, but it keeps your interest and some of the merits are really nifty. Has anyone else checked it out?
 
ManusDomini said:
hey shut up

wraith is the most optimistic gameline
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Only because you, like @NonSequtur, believe longing for the sweet embrace of oblivion is the most optimistic dream of all.

Nikkolas said:
Gehenna is a group of very powerful vampires rising up and killing the rest of them. So vampirekind isn't doomed, just a lot of them.

And even that is iffy. The Elders can be stopped.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I recall that in the Week of Nightmares, the Technocracy, not the Camarilla or the Sabbat, got that Antediluvian kill.

In other words, even in a fairly Vampire-primary book, mages still have a better track record than Kindred society in fighting Antediluvians. The only difference between Mage-primary and Vampire-primary canon on this issue is that in Vampire-primary canon, the Technocracy blew its load killing Zapathustra which is why they don't matter in Gehenna, and in Mage-primary canon, the Technocracy thought something like this was an issue but not that much of an issue outside of the problem of the Avatar Storm fucking with extraterrestrial assets.

Even in the vampire-primary focus of the mainstream gameline, giving up being a mage to become a vampire is not a great trade.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Given that being a Wraith is an even more miserable experience than being a Vampire, this doesn't actually contradict the idea that vampires are damned.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's fine.

I'm taking issue with the idea Kindred have a set fate or absolute end because it completely ruins the setting. Like, the book I quoted mentioned Golconda. What use is Golconda if all vampires are damned?
 
Nikkolas said:
That's fine.

I'm taking issue with the idea Kindred have a set fate or absolute end because it completely ruins the setting. Like, the book I quoted mentioned Golconda. What use is Golconda if all vampires are damned?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

i made the dumb decision of digging out my Masquerade pdfs for this argument and then made the dumber decision to back up my files so i'm down to one USB port for the next hour or so but like
i'm not saying every vampire without exception is damned
the christian elements of masquerade mean grace is always possible
golconda, the gehenna scenarios etc. have some vampires survive, often becoming humans in the process

but it basically always requires a massive effort to avoid humanity loss and repent and reject vampirism (or at least vampirism as lived - unlived? - by most vampires) and it's very rare and very difficult
and dont forget this argument started with the tremere, who deliberately became vampires to live forever and then dove headfirst into abusing its worst power structures
which is the opposite of the kind of vampire who escapes the curse and condition

the tremere might try and solve the issue with magic or secret ways or power, convinced they can reach golconda or some higher existence from vampirism with their knowledge - or maybe they think vampirism is the higher existence, because they're powerful and do not age
and that's the stupidity
 
Last edited:
The Laurent said:
I mean, this is all kinda pointless in that, even if God doesn't Damn them, they've damned themselves and the Tremere, from what I can tell, are a terrible clan to be from that oppresses most of their members.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Also, being a blood magician actively makes you a worse person than "not practising a blood-expensive art that means that using a few spells can easily cost a week or more of 'just surviving' levels of blood consumption".

So, you know. If you're trying to be a harm-minimising vampire, don't use the magic defined by being blood-expensive.
 
Random thought: while Longinus is often depicted in pop culture as either a sadist tormenting the already-doomed Messiah, or a supreme asshole stabbing Jesus to prove his mortality, it's apparently much more likely that Longinus' act would have been an attempt to lessen Jesus' suffering. Crucifixion causes death by exhaustion and asphyxia, often over the course of multiple days; by comparison, being stabbed with a spear would kill within a matter of hours, especially when compounded by the intense pain and stress of crucifixion.

How would the Lancea Sanctum try to recontextualize their dogma to fit this interpretation of Longinus' act, if they were somehow forced to do so?
 
Well, the intent with Longinus stabbing Jesus was to test whether he was dead. The story as it goes in Christian exegesis is that the Romans wanted to well, break Jesus' legs (this was not an uncommon punishment and is called crurifragium in Latin), so Longinus stabbed him to ensure that he was dead. So the idea that he was attempting to ensure that he was dead or ease his suffering, wouldn't be too far from the exegetical tradition. Interestingly, there was a significant tradition in the medieval period that reinterpreted Longinus as a blind or dim-sighted soldier who, upon stabbing Jesus, had the blood splatter upon his eyes, thus curing his eyesight.
 
I'm actually currently reading the Longinus' text that they put out, since I thought it'd be pretty important to know.

(Also, speaking of Lancea-related matters, the War-Crow did everything wrong, @ManusDomini. (I'm saying it to you because you actually will know who the War-Crow is without me having to do big time spoilers.)
 
Last edited:
Sydonai said:
IIRC I recall them kill-stealing from the Kuei-Jin that seemed to be doing an okay job of it, killing the Kuei-Jin in the process, and something about them nuking a city them blaming it on a hurricane?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Kuei-Jin were most certainly not doing a good job killing it, given this is the reaction of one of them after the Technocracy blasted it.

Time of Thin Blood said:
A vaguely human figure staggered toward Tieh Ju through the rain. She guessed it might be male but could not be sure. Flakes of black ash covered the remains of its naked, shriveled body. One arm hung as a stump of tattered meat. Hallucinations of pain radiated from it, like the vibrating, inner light of migraine. It had survived the wrath of three Bodhisattvas and a bath of nuclear fire. Tieh Ju knew that, even weakened as it was, she could not fight it. If she tried, it would replenish its strength on her chi.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top