Corpse ?

Claudia wrote:

Prom Night is a ritual to allow a Thaumaturge to create permanent hair style, nail length and polish, make up, and change one's eye color...
There is also one ritual about growing breasts ;-)

Seriously!

So it was a Tremere who put the money cheat into bloodlines?

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I will not go there

I must add in another little subtle difference between Bloodlines and the Pen and Paper Game : the Fangs !

In Bloodlines, all Kindred have fangs, and they are visible, all the time.

In Pen and Paper, this is considered a flaw (as well as not having a reflexion, having to sleep in a coffin, not being able to cross running water, fearing crosses and garlic). So, the fangs respond to the Kindred's will (and the Beast's as well), they grow and retract for some situations. The obvious one is feeding, of course ! But also when the Beast pokes in here and there, when one get angry, when one wants to intimidate (without minding the Masquerade).. Ever seen Buffy ? Well, vampires in Buffy bear their fangs like Kindred do in Masquerade.. kind of

Claudia wrote:

I will not go there

I must add in another little subtle difference between Bloodlines and the Pen and Paper Game : the Fangs !

In Bloodlines, all Kindred have fangs, and they are visible, all the time.

In Pen and Paper, this is considered a flaw (as well as not having a reflexion, having to sleep in a coffin, not being able to cross running water, fearing crosses and garlic). So, the fangs respond to the Kindred's will (and the Beast's as well), they grow and retract for some situations. The obvious one is feeding, of course ! But also when the Beast pokes in here and there, when one get angry, when one wants to intimidate (without minding the Masquerade).. Ever seen Buffy ? Well, vampires in Buffy bear their fangs like Kindred do in Masquerade.. kind of

This is one problem I have with most Tv series, movies, books, etc, that involve Vampires. The lore either says that they don't have them at all(and thus their teeth are sharper than that of a humans - even if they don't look it), or they are rarely shown, either for feeding, or intimidation(with or without a snarl). Some of them might even go as far as to make it clear that Vampires do have fangs, though they 'hide' them most of the time. Not a problem, but it helps that, if this is the case, they aren't seen or mentioned so little that you'd think they don't have fangs at all.

On a slightly different, but hopefully still related topic: Eyes. I don't know exactly if it's so pronounced in Vampire as it is in other media, but with any given clan, is there is specific design that the eyes would appear as(either normally, or when feeding/enraged)? It might be more if a personal thing, meaning that either it blends with a certain design, plus that of the eyes you had as a human, or it simply stays as is - such as if you had blue eyes before, you still have them now.

In pen and paper, the eyes are identical to the ones they had as humans. I think there is a flaw about having monster like eyes (all red and stuff)... They only change if you are Gangrel and enter frenzy (each frenzy giving a permanent animalistic trait). Disciplines can give a special look to the eyes but it's temporal only (protean, serpentis...). I have never read anything about eyes changing while in frenzy, unlike the fangs.

I think the confusion comes from movies such as Underworld, where the vampires develop odd-looking blue eyes when they get angry, show their fangs, etc. In a weird coincidence, they did the same thing on that old TV show "Kindred: The Embraced" -- when the Beast was near the surface, and they showed their fangs, their eyes turned a sort of ice blue. Of course, colored contacts are a cheap special effect, so it's not surprising that a lot of movie vampires have weird eyes. [Judging by recent movies, body glitter must be cheap too; but we'll let that one slide.]

In the very few drawings from Vampire: The Masquerade that show vampires in frenzy, their eyes are kind of bugging out in a crazed look, but the eyes don't look monstrous or anything. (Please don't ask me to provide book and page number... I don't feel like searching through my entire VtM library.)

However, the fangs do look larger in frenzy, almost as if the jaw itself is slightly bigger. This is feasible, since Kindred in VtM can make their fangs grow and retract at will. As Claudia said, the Beast is a factor, so maybe in frenzy the Beast is trying to make one more terrifying. This would fit the books, where they talk about how one can 'see the Beast' close to the surface in another Kindred's face. Perhaps it's more than just an angry look... maybe subtle facial changes are involved. Naturally, this is just conjecture on my part.

PGM1961 wrote:

I think the confusion comes from movies such as Underworld, where the vampires develop odd-looking blue eyes when they get angry, show their fangs, etc. In a weird coincidence, they did the same thing on that old TV show "Kindred: The Embraced" -- when the Beast was near the surface, and they showed their fangs, their eyes turned a sort of ice blue. Of course, colored contacts are a cheap special effect, so it's not surprising that a lot of movie vampires have weird eyes. [Judging by recent movies, body glitter must be cheap too; but we'll let that one slide.]

Oddly enough, both are actually based on VTM.. Maybe they have asked the same author(s) for the aesthetics, and they got the same answer. Anyhow, looks good enough !

The Frenzy look is rather vague, and I bet it was done so on purpose. After all, it's still a narrative game. The idea is that all Kindred know and recognize another Kindred having trouble with her Beast, it's visible and instinctive

Claudia wrote:

... The idea is that all Kindred know and recognize another Kindred having trouble with her Beast, it's visible and instinctive

Well, if you're constantly fighting your own Beast, it's probably easy to recognize the symptoms in someone else.

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Well, not exactly, being sick doesn't make you a capable doctor
It's more an instinctive reaction than a rational, thinking and analysis process

Coming late to the discussion, sorry. But I seem to recall (I can't look it up, as my books are somewhere in Narnia at this point) that the basic books explained some of the Vampires regenerative powers by saying that when you slept during the day, your body returned to the state it was in when you were Embraced, unless you spent willpower to maintain your present appearance- wounds would heal (provided you had the blood required), hair regrew, and any wounds/injuries you had when embraced would return, unless they had been mended with vicissitude- which is where the flaw addressing that issue comes from. Also things like tattoos, dye jobs and piercings would be 'rejected' by the body as not part of its natural state, which is why the books and novels often mention that the tattoos worn by many young Kindred (especially Anarchs and other riffraff) were actually drawn on nightly with a Sharpie if they weren't there from their breathing days.

So, hypothetically, if you were a mortal or ghoul Embraced during the Middle Ages, after falling and nearly dieing in a fearsome battle (as happens a few times in the novels), you would awaken every evening with horrific wounds, and probably long hair and a beard if you were from one of the Orders. They would just be your run of the mill cuts to a Cainite- spend a bit of blood and get on with the night- but theoretically, you would have to do this every night.

We always played that way, since the '90s- my character was Embraced when in a Military Order, and had to shave and cut his hair nightly in order to keep from looking like a well dressed hobo in the modern nights. We had a Nossie in our group who had to heal a gunshot wound nightly, and at one point a British Brujah who had since mellowed a bit shaved his head nightly because he'd been Embraced in the '80s- 'nuff said.

The novels also mention a few times (the specific example I can think of is in DA: Ventrue) that when an individual is Embraced, it's not uncommon for their eyes to change color slightly to reflect the change (maybe to show the change in their soul?). When Jürgen Embraces a young Swordbrother in Livonia, they can all see his eyes go from normal, muddy brown to a mahogany red color. There's are also a couple other instances where it's mentioned that characters eyes aren't the same color they were during their mortal lives.

Earlier in this tread, there is a talk about about explaining fantasy phenomenon and fantastic element with rational explanation.

Am I the only one that had trouble with the idea that the Force in Star War was coming from a little friendly bateria call the Meticlorian...? To my opinion, they should have keep a little mystery around the Force. lol

There's a great skit on Robot Chicken about that- after saying he's Luke's father, Darth Vader then goes on to give away all the 'secret's revealed in the prequels as Luke gets more and more fed up at how preposterous and unnecessary they are and finally kills him.

I think I might've heard this somewhere before, but I find myself unsure. If a Vampire would begin the Embrace(i.e, draining the body of blood), and then, rather than using their own blood, they feed the dying human the blood of another Vampire, they would be the childe of the Vampire whose blood they drank, rather than the one who drained them?

I'd guess the answer might be that such a thing can work, though I can't be sure.

Embracing means giving your blood to a fresh corpse (the body has to be "still warm")
Draining is not obligatory.

Yes, the victim would be the childe of the vampire whose blood was given to him. It does work if the conditions are optimum

What Claudia said, except that White Wolf has stated in a few places that the blood has to be fresh for the Embrace; i.e. the sire has to be right there. Even magically preserved blood is not good enough. So you can't keep a phial of someone's vitae, and then pour it down some dead guy's throat to get them in trouble for unlawful Embrace. Sorry, Tremere.

PGM1961 wrote:

What Claudia said, except that White Wolf has stated in a few places that the blood has to be fresh for the Embrace; i.e. the sire has to be right there. Even magically preserved blood is not good enough. So you can't keep a phial of someone's vitae, and then pour it down some dead guy's throat to get them in trouble for unlawful Embrace. Sorry, Tremere.

So, if the actual Sire's blood has been left unused for too long, then it wouldn't work? What about if the blood was taken maybe an hour or less before it is used for the embrace?

The exact definition of 'fresh' is up to the storyteller; but my definition would be minutes, not hours... with the chances of a successful Embrace going down every minute the Sire's vitae is out of his body. If magical preservation won't work, why should blood that's been sitting around in a goblet for hours be any better? In the game I ran, the only way to pretty much guarantee that the Embrace works is to drain the blood directly from the Sire's body (wrist, etc.) into the fledgling's mouth. Any attempts to get fancy or clever introduces the possibility of failure. The same goes for dead bodies... they may still be 'warm', but every minute their heart is not beating is a larger chance that it won't work.

If you really want someone to be your childe, you're not going to dilly-dally and wait around-- you're going to put your blood in their mouth as soon as their heart stops beating. It's not a scientific experiment. Whether it's a spur of the moment decision because you can't bear to see them die, or you've groomed them for years to be your progeny, you probably aren't going to throw away their life out of idle curiosity.

Only someone like Dr. Douglas Netchurch (noted Malkavian scientist) would experiment with how long you can wait before the Embrace doesn't work... and that kind of research is going to result in a lot of dead bodies.

That might be Generation-related too. Cappadocius sent a vial of his blood to Constancia and Japeth to Embrace Augustus Giovanni. Not exectly the brightest idea of second millenium. But unfortunately for old Cappadocius it worked. Too bad for his Clan. So was it because of his mastery of Mortis? him beaing an Antediluvian, so of low Generation? I think I have read canon material that mentioned Embrace through vial of blood in the Dark Ages.Another example of delayed embrace would be corpses in Baali Pit-Embraces. Though for them some other forces may interfere to smooth the process *shudders*

Shut up it's Magic ! >_>
It suits the story, so rules get thrown overboard

So your best bet would probably be to stake the Vampire you want to frame for illegal siring, get the vitae directly into your "fresh corpse", and then declare you "caught them in the act."

Another question about this. Claudia, you said, draining isn't necessary. Wouldn't that make a ghoul? A dead one probably.

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

So your best bet would probably be to stake the Vampire you want to frame for illegal siring, get the vitae directly into your "fresh corpse", and then declare you "caught them in the act."

Another question about this. Claudia, you said, draining isn't necessary. Wouldn't that make a ghoul? A dead one probably.

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Exactly !

No, you just need the guy to be dead. The future Childe can have died of about anything (an accident, a drowning, being shot, a heart attack, a broken neck, an infection...). Usually, draining is the easiest way (and it doesn't hurt !), since the Sire then has lots of blood in the system to feed enough back, but it's not necessary

Odd that it is yet another question that I have. Maybe I should look into buying some of these game books...

Beyond torpor, is it possible for Vampires to sleep normally? Such as falling asleep watching television, reading a book, etc. Or would that still be considered torpor? Also, I'd imagine that since they don't breathe, there is no motion in the body, no matter where they might be "sleeping", be it a coffin, bed or otherwise? Or is it that they wouldn't just fall asleep?

Nop, they don't fall asleep, because they don't have the chimestry anymore

Claudia wrote:

No, you just need the guy to be dead. The future Childe can have died of about anything (an accident, a drowning, being shot, a heart attack, a broken neck, an infection...). Usually, draining is the easiest way (and it doesn't hurt !), since the Sire then has lots of blood in the system to feed enough back, but it's not necessary

What if the Childe to be has some injury when being fed the vampire blood? Like say, that broken neck. Will it just heal before they wake up, or will the Childe forever walk around with that broken neck?

Natch, actually that's how permanent wounds are created !
So, if you embrace a guy who got shot or with a broken neck, you have to feed him lots of vitae to heal the wounds during the embrace. If you don't feed enough, the wound will never heal.

That can't be pleasant......
Forever walking around with a big gaping hole in your stomach with the remainders of your organs dangling down from it.....