Editing Vampire: The Masquerade (section)

==The Curse==
[[Image:Blackdog.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Typical V:tM players.]]
For ''Vampire: the Masquerade'', the flair is that Vampires come not only with amazing powers, but also with a capital "C" Curse. Eternal life and powers come with a price: The Beast. This "Beast", is, depending who you ask, either some dark thing possessing them, a dark part of their own soul, or the ''only remaining'' part of their soul: Freud's description of "Id" comes closest. Point is, it kinda has a mind of its own, and it's fucking stupid, like animal-level stupid. If a vampire is hurt or insulted or threatened or starved the Beast can take over control of his body and start ripping and tearing (which is called Frenzy), and if the Vampire is facing fire, or sunlight or some other extremely dangerous supernatural shit (like the True Faith) it similarly can take over control and run for the hills, often murdering its way through any obstacles (which is called Rötschreck). Suffice to say both cases are a really '''bad news''' in the society that values secrecy and tries to hide itself from humans and other supernaturals, and up to 90% of troubles players in ''V:tM'' run into are caused by either players themselves or other vampires flying into a Frenzy or Rötschreck and breaking the Masquerade. 

Which brings us to Morality.

One of the best planned (but not well executed) part of World of Darkness was '''Morality'''. The game isn't about playing the most badass motherfucker on the block: it is personal horror combined with existential crisis of simply being a bloodsucking monstrosity a week after having a barbeque with family or kissing a loved one. Great, you are now a vampire, and you have your Id inside you howling to tear apart the world. How will you deal with it? Humans and many Vampires have their morality gauge set to Humanity for starters. In World of Darkness, morality rules have Ten Commandments of their own, each having a value of importance. Lightest crimes had 10, worst ones 1. As the smallest infraction is done again and again, morality rating fell to the lower value of the corresponding crime. Manslaughter for example, has a rating of 5. Which means regularly doing said crime will set you to 4, but won't go lower unless you commit intentional murder, which has a rate of 4, reducing you to 3, and so on. 

As a Vampire breaks his morality code the Beast could attempt to gain more control over him, and as most vampires follow basic human morality (called the Path of Humanity) it's really easy for them to lose their Humanity at record speed, all with a murderous spirit hijacking their bodies from time to time, and murder being quite an immoral thing. Losing one's Humanity is always the bad thing, as it lowers vampire's ability to interact with mortals, makes his vampiric traits more apparent (pale skin, fangs, corpse-like appearance, even corpse smell at later stages), and at lower morality stages can cause mental derangements and even partial loss of control over his own actions (as GM can hijack low-Humanity vampire at any point). If the vampire manages to lose '''all''' of his Humanity (which is actually quite hard, as at low levels mundane sins no longer trigger the Beast) he devolves into purely bestial mindless monster called a Wight. The good news is that the beast being a fucking dumb animal have no concept of indirect actions, so it does not use, say, an orchestrated murder pulled through puppets as a possible alley of attack on vampire's Humanity, and any Disciplines that needs a semblance of intelligent action is no longer usable by the brute. The bad news are that they are extremely good fighters, and that the Elders know this and use it with younger vampires serving as ''their'' puppets. Have fun with that.

In case you're wondering how Sabbat manage to be... well... Sabbat, everyone that survives for more than a year follows alternative morality systems called Paths, most of which are weird and kinda crazy if you think through them, but they work at keeping the Beast in check, so who the fuck cares. That being said actually embracing the Path is a rather difficult thing to do, as the aspirant first have to lose almost all of its Humanity and then perform some Olympic-level mental gymnastics with a price of failing being losing itself to the Beast completely (and likely being hunted down by fellow Kindred if they fuck up). Aside from being hard and dangerous to embrace, Paths also have a number of disadvantages tied to the lack of ties to Humanity: those who follow the Paths cannot hide their undeath by spending blood, cannot act ''at all'' during the day (Kiss your ass goodbye when the hunter finds your haven following the trail of horror you left behind) and often have harder time resisting the Beast, but can actually control it to a certain extent once it takes over. Not all Paths are Sabbat-exclusive though...Path of Harmony for example celebrates natural balance, keeps humans in high regard(not as high as themselves but as part of nature and not something to be tormented) and accepts the Beast as part of their being.

In theory, many of these paths are quite logical and creative since the character can no longer feel equal to humanity and has to make changes, particularly cool ones practiced by Ventrue Sabbat such as "Path of Honorable Accord". This path for example, still forbids senseless murder of innocents, but allows killing for honor and defending Sabbat. Path of Caine, a very old path predating Sabbat itself orders its followers to adopt Caine's outlook on life, and diablerizing (murderfuckrapeabsorb) other vampires that don't agree with the player's morality (it should be noted that the Path of Caine is basically one of the most condoned by the Sabbat, who see themselves as the agents of Caine). Still it also ordered avoiding killing humans, rationalizing it as "If possible, leave the children of Seth alone and coexist with them". Emphasis on ''if possible'', letting the player be a badass killer without devolving into a Sonic the Hedgehog-level Coldsteel [[edge]]lord. Of course, paths who are utterly evil still wanted to explain killing, such as Path of Death and Soul, rationalizing murder into "battlefield research". Bottom line, each "path" dealt with the question: "What niche does The Beast have in me?" Some appease it with observing killing, Honorable Accord suppresses it with conviction. Path of Evil Revelations, or Path of Orion/Harmony for example, "rides the Beast", letting it flow but direct its blind rage to suitable targets when it hits. 

In ''theory''.

In practice, well... many Sabbat players (weedy skinny goth kids) make it an excuse of torturing, raping and killing mortals to impress the BDSM-curious landwhale who joined the game. Or explain your Giger fetishes with using the Vicissitude Discipline sexually. Needless to say, a Storyteller may not be popular when he summons Society of Leopold's finest hunters or the Technocracy when the players go on a blind rampage to justify being Sabbat. The Sword of Caine may fall where it pleases, but there will be consequences if it falls in the wrong place.

And for players who want to go all the way about their personal tragedy, there are two endgame possibilities for the self: Ashur and [[Golconda]].

Golconda is one very obscure way of blocking the Beast and the Curse to the point to a mild itch on the nose: Named after the diamond-rich village in India, it is the place where Saulot and maybe Caine found a way to transcend vampirism with meditation, atonement and self-awareness. It's a very hard path and storytellers are encouraged to make it hard, often culminating in atonement for all murders and pain committed under vampirism versus innocent, and focusing on the self until the vampire breaks free. Result means no frenzy at all and ''extremely'' reduced blood use per sleep, as well as near-immunity to sunlight. Some optional rules also give the vamp full power over all Disciplines, like Caine himself has. However, you only have ''one'' shot at achieving Golconda, and if you fail, at best you'll never be able to reach that state. At worst, you'll suffer the Wassail and become a mindless Wight for the rest of your short-lived existence.

Ashur is...on the other hand, complicated. It is a state of being where the vampire ''literally'' becomes the Discipline's locus, focal point of being, able to survive diablerization but abandoning Humanity as well. Malkav survived his diablerie by becoming the Ashur of Dementation, melting into the Malkavian Madness Network. Lasombra is obviously the Ashur of Obtenebration, being one with the Abyss, and Tzimisce became Vicissitude itself around 2000, as well as Ennoia becoming the Ashur of Protean.