V20 Clanbook (Joshua Alan Doetsch) 11,500 words

The Tzimisce
"Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can't be
stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble
what you've dreamed you are.”
- Agrado, Todo Sobre Mi Madre

Horror in the Clay

Awaken, Usurper.
Awaken.
No need for that. It is already over. You are a joy to work with. Watch as I caress your
ribcage…it gapes open like a nocturnal flower aching for the pollinator bat. Watch as I pollinate.
Awaken, Usurper.
Awaken.
Even the dead can faint, it seems. That is a physiological impossibility, but you and I are so far
from beyond impossible.
No need to struggle. Your bones have already been removed. No structure or ego to resist the
humiliation of gravity and plasticity. I find the sensation like a dull nostalgia, the ghost memory of
some distant mollusk ancestor—dreams of gills and tentacles floating in the womb.
Do not flinch from the lamprey mouths. Their kisses will cleanse.
I know, I know. The elders of your chantry admonish you to commit suicide rather than fall into
the clutches of Fiends. But the time for screams has surceased. Allow me too—there. Better.
You have the loveliest whistle—happy and sad—sounding a little like “hello” and a lot like
“goodbye”—a ruby whistle.

These muscles…no longer necessary. Your eyes and ears remain. You must see. You
must witness. Next comes education. I will teach you what it means to be Tzimisce. We are
the wisdom of the dark earth, and we do such things! We travel to the furthest regions of
experience, to a place more than demonic, more than divine. We slough off our humanity to
achieve something wondrous. We alone among the dead can achieve significant change. We
can become yesterday, now, and tomorrow.
Let me put you upright. You look so fitting, hung upon the wall. Within every Usurper is
something that belongs to us. This face—I shall smooth it over. Let me liberate you from
identity, like looking into a mirror so long your face becomes a stranger, like repeating a word
until it is an alien thing crawling on the tongue.
Awaken, Usurper.
Awaken.
You are not alone. See? I have grafted you to your fellows—other sets of eyes and mouths—
you may recognize some of them. To each of you, I teach interlocking fragments of our lore. Do
you see? I weave a historical tapestry. When complete, it will sing the layered chronicle back to
me as I walk down the hall.
I will share with you the deeper secrets. I will illumine the Way of All Flesh. I will show you fear
in a handful of clay.
O, my dear Usurper. Still afraid to die? By blood, by sky, by the hungry soil, I promise that so
long as you are within my walls, you will never, ever die.
Ah! What sweet whistling you make.

Weaving History (3,000 words)

Awaken, Usurper.
Awaken.
Such fine vellum. I have moisturized and conditioned you with vitae. Does this tickle? I scrawl
names upon your flesh, and the letters rise in bas-relief. See? I recite the old names:
YORAK
BYELOBOG
GALLOD
DEMDEMEH
TRIGLAV THE THREE-HEADED
KARTARIRYA
THE DRACON
What? You have forgotten your name? That is because I took it. I ate it. You have no need of
it anymore. You are the Tapestry. I’ve woven you into the whole. Now, I will teach you your
vertical slice of history. I write these words: “The Primordial Nights.”

The Primordial Nights

His name. Her name. Its name. Lost. Names are as useful to it as tombstones are to the dead.
The names are only for our benefit. We call it the Eldest. We call it the Shaper.
Some say our history begins in the Carpathians. The misty glens. The pine-shrouded crags.
That is not the history you are designated to absorb.
Focus on the sun-blasted south—between the harlot legs of the Tigris and the Euphrates. There
the Eldest dwelt as a mortal. It was a seer and dream interpreter of some repute. In the realm
of lucid dreams, the Eldest first learned to shape itself and the world, first gained the title of
Shaper.
Ynosh the Lawgiver, first childe of Caine, desired to rid himself of the chaotic impurities that
fettered him to the Beast. Ynosh called for this mortal oneiromancer, who had interpreted the
dreams of kings, to be his vessel. Ynosh focused the most protean and primordial seeds of
his flesh and spat them into the Shaper. The first great experiment. Ynosh had planned to
immediately destroy his creation, but, on further inspection, saw nothing outwardly monstrous.
The Shaper was no more debased than any of its undead siblings. The Shaper had been
internally fluid, and now found its flesh too ran like hot wax. From the Beast, it took the gifts of
intuition, whim, expression, imagination, and growth.
The Shaper was welcomed, but kept apart from its siblings. It saw that they were static.
Doomed. It had a vision, saw that mortals, though weak, could grow, would eventually overtake
these so called demigods, this stagnant afterbirth of Caine. It also foresaw how its hunger
would worsen. Animals, humans, Cainites—eventually nothing would sate it. This disturbed the
Shaper. It must unshackle itself from the Hunger.
The Eldest wandered the earth, spent a mortal age in meditated seclusion, flying through
shapes both fantastic and terrifying. It developed the transhuman philosophy of Metamorphosis.
It embraced childer, not out of loneliness—in itself it had all the company it needed—but to
create more eyes to witness the mysteries of creation. It invested itself in its progeny. It became
legion.
Eventually, the Shaper came to the Land Beyond the Forest. It embraced Yorak, who was not
the first childe of the Eldest, but who was first among Fiends in the Carpathians. We wove our
spells among the early Phyriges, Illyrians, Thracians, Avars, Wends, and other inhabitants of the
Baltics, the Balkans, and Russia. The Slavs worshiped us.
What happened next? Sweet Usurper, that is for another slice of the Tapestry to know. For now,
focus on the name Kupala.

The Deluge
Others of the blood will say the Eldest hid up in the mountain crags during the
Flood. They're wrong. What did the Eldest have to fear of water? It went right in.
Its mind changed. Its body changed. It learned to glide through the blackness,
adapted to survive the crushing depths that strangle out the sun. It learned to
catch prey, to summon the creatures it could not catch, and commune with the
creatures it could not kill. It discovered whole new mysteries of Metamorphosis
from the things that live at the bottom of the abyss. In that fathomless womb it
gestated, and it came out changed. It's true! I saw it. I saw it all in dreams.

Kupala
Kupala is the name, and the name has a thousand mouths, and the mouths jabber blasphemies
and secrets in the soil. The Eldest favored the lands of Yorak, but it did not know why.
Something whispered to it. Something caressed its dreams, tickled its atrophied gifts as a seer.
The shaper practiced its old mortal oneiromancy and learned to talk back to the spirit of the
mountains, the great beast known as Kupala.
There are legends that gods, or perhaps the shapeshifting wolves, did battle with the demon,
folded the very earth over it. The Carpathians form the gargantuan sarcophagus that contains
Kupala. The demon taught the Eldest sorcery, and the Eldest taught its childer, and so rose
the kolduns. And whether that magic was used to bind or free Kupala is still a point of vicious
contention in our clan.

Split With the Old Clan

At an indeterminate point in our history, prodigals among the ancient line rejected the way of
Metamorphosis. They called themselves the “Pure Clan” or the “Old Clan,” depending on the
translation. They avoided all use of the fleshcrafting arts.
One story says that they discovered the discipline of mutable flesh was itself a sentient disease,
a demonic, possessing force from some incomprehensible dimension. Nonsense. Tripe.
The story I believe—that is to say, the story I believe they believe—is that these prodigals
discovered that the Way All Flesh was not secret taught to us by the Eldest, but was the Eldest
itself. We are the flesh of its flesh. It placed its seed in us, could reap the knowledge gained
from any of us, could devour us from on far. This is not a loss, say the Metamorphosists, but a
blessing, to return to the gestalt of One Flesh. To use the art was to commune with the Shaper
and receive its wisdom. And whosoever of the Fiends should attain a new breakthrough in the
understanding of our existence, might cause the Eldest to rise within and take form.
That is why the Old Clan tiptoes away from the mutable art. They felt something staring
from behind their eyes. They startled at the phantom tingle and rogue twitches in their limbs.
Fearfully, they avoid triggering the enlightenment that would stir a sleeping Antediluvian within
their breast.
My apologies, Usurper. I laugh. I laugh! You do not comprehend. Within our history, we know
that the Tremere took their first vitae from the Tzimisce. If the Old Clan’s fears are true, then the
Eldest swims beneath your skin to. It will eat you. Eat you all up.

Immaculate Conception and the Holy Ghost

I pray to you, O Dracon, the First Childe, the Holy Ghost.
The third mouth of Azhi Dahaka whispers to me the Dream of Constantinople. I
have read the books of the Library of the Forgotten and fear the Keeper of the
Faith and her Watchers. I keep the idols of the Akoimetai.
Holy Ghost, ignite my blood, inspire my soul—my flesh, your flesh—my tongue,
your tongue—as I speak the story of the Immaculate Conception. Samiel,
childe of Saulot, of the warrior line, did declare holy war upon all black magic
and demon-kind. In his hubris, he mistook our Progenitor as something merely
infernal. They did battle. Samiel slaughtered the Eldest with flaming sword, and
the Eldest tore Samiel’s skull from his head. Both perished.
The Shaper did not fall into torpor, did not fake its demise; these are the words
of unbelievers. For the one who walks the Way of All Flesh, there is no death.
The progenitor survives in the seed implanted in its progeny. The Dracon was
chosen, first among childer, and on Cyprus he felt the Eldest awaken and grow
within his belly. After birthing it, the Dracon nurtured the fetal Antediluvian and
 smuggled it back to the Carpathians. He placed it in the care of the Methuselah
Yorak, who wrapped the babe in swaddling viscera, deep within the bowels of the
mountains.
The torpid embryo slept and grew in the befouled soil, and the demon Kupala
whispered in the Edlest’s ear. Centuries of that poison whisper. And our wayward
clan siblings’ mastery of koldunic ways became stronger. That is why the
Children of Dracon do not touch the fetid magics of Kupala. They are not a gift of
the Shaper.
Holy Ghost, ignite my blood and show me the Divinity Within. Holy Ghost, inspire
my hands to mold Heaven on Earth. O flesh everlasting, O flesh ever-changing,
confirm me, for the Dracon. Amen.

The Dark Ages

Yorak brought about the game changer. The wise Metamorphosist realized that politics and
kingly matters lay outside his expertise. The other Cainite clans intruded upon the Land Beyond
the Forest with their own mortal catspaws, but rather than stemming the tide of the incursion,
Yorak and the koldun chose to Embrace the influential members of regional tribes and tasked
them with the duties that did not interest them.
Yorak understood that the wandering Hun, Slavic, and Goth tribes would eventually become the
new landholders. He had seen the pattern play out in ages past. He embraced Shaagra, and
she heralded the Tzimisce practice of claiming stock from nobel families and tribal leaders. She
was the first of the new breed, Fiends like Radu, Wladymir Rustovitch, and Dracula. Fiends who
played the game of crown and scepter better than their sires. The other clans came expecting
cackling sorcerers and incomprehensible Metamorphosists, but we had shattered that mold.
The Dark Ages fell upon the rise of the Tzimisce golden age. Rome crumbled. We stalked the
shadowed wreckage openly. We sat in our castles unafraid and proud, lords and ladies of the
night. Our experiments reached new heights. We bred revenant families, and our influence
waxed even in the midday sun.
Imagine us then, Usurper, striding boldly over the land. The kine hung garlic, made wards, said
their prayers. All useless to us. Imagine us. Princes and monsters. Majestic. Terrible. The kine
sent us blood offerings. Imagine those nights, the heady nights, the nights of plenty, when all of
our bellies were distended. We had to bleed ourselves to make more room! But just as adversity
can sharpen, prosperousness can dull. Complacency was the doom of our elders.
The elders spawned too many childer to take care of the tasks deemed mundane. Brood
clashed with brood. Domain was violated—one of the few transgressions we bother to call a sin.
When the elders went to war, they sent the young, chained by the blood bond.
Then came your ash-sucking bloodline, Usurper. Covetous of our blood, envious of the magic
humming in our land, the Tremere stole immortality and power. The elder Fiends foamed. The
Elders sent the young.
Enemies came from all sides. Ventrue from the West. Mongols and Gangrel from the East.
Assamites and Turks from the South. Teutonic Knights from the North, who brought the burning
faith that inspired the kine to renounce the old gods.
Again and again, the Elders threw more of their progeny at a problem until it was solved. They
cowered in their castles while we fought. They gorged on blood while we spilled vitae. In their
decadence, they abused kine until even their cowed, mortal thoughts turned to fire. In their
neglect, they stretched the blood bonds that held us until they strained.
Slowly, our resentment built. The elders anchored loyalty with many hooks, and freedom took a
long time in the planning.

Kupala’s Night
It happened on a night of a swollen, pregnant moon. The sky was ready to burst. Conditions
were just right. The fire of the Inquisition burned. Tyler’s Anarch Revolt raged. News of
Gratiano’s diablerization of the Lasombra Antediluvian echoed like a chiropteran shriek.
Teutonic Knights had braved the Pripet Marshes, attacking and nearly killing the ancient
Byelobog. In that weakened state, the Methuselah fell to the fangs of Lugoj Blood-breaker, the
first voice of Tzimisce dissent. With all of these events aligned aright, and the maddeningly
potent heart’s blood boiling in his belly, Lugoj hatched a plot of maximum audacity.
It was a perfect night. Kupala’s Eve. Night of immemorial sanctity. Logoj and his ally Velya
the Flayer (later called Velya the Vivisectionist) summoned the clan’s youth to a festivity.
Their memories grown feeble, the elders could not recall the night’s full significance, and they
acquiesced.
We met in the Carpathians. There was a great bonfire. Scores of sacrifice stood bound, like
a writhing forest. We all wore our zulo form, camaraderie in the transcendental flesh. Lougoj
stood, with his back to the fire, and held aloft something precious. He said these words:
“This is Kupala’s sacred fire-flower, just as the legends say. The search was long and teeming
with perils, but the night has no peril as great as we. I found it. Deep amid a holy place of the
shapeshifters, I found it. Do you remember what the legends say of this flower?”
We remembered. On that night, of all nights, the sacred flower gave one the authority to bind
or free demons. We howled its name. Kupala! Kupala! We asked but for one favor. Freedom.
Bathed in blood, Lugoj leapt through the fire. We all followed after.
The Blood Bond shattered. Usurper, when it becomes necessary to utter four words, can you
even grasp their significance? The Blood Bound shattered. That was the first Auctoris Ritus.
Though the sect would not form for sometime thereafter, that was the night the soul of the
Sabbat was born.

Diablerie of the Eldest

Did I say audacity earlier? I invite you to consider true, elemental audacity—the act of reaching
out and eating one's own mythology. Imagine swallowing a star. What did it taste like, Lugoj? I
would like to ask that, but he lays in the sleep of ages somewhere.
A tome titled Librum Terram mentions an ancient monastery that lies far above the town of
Sernog, between two spurs of the eastern Carpathians. Cryptic passages mention a "great
beast" with "dreams made of flesh and flesh made of dreams." It was here, on the desecrated
grounds of the Sernog Monastery, that Lugoj Blood-breaker and his band of ravening anarchs
came hunting for the Eldest.
Down they went, through a trap door beneath the altar, below the monastery and into incarnate
nightmare. The shapes they must have seen. Servants wrought by the hands of the Eldest itself.
The battle was vicious, but in the end, Lugoj drank the heart's blood of the Eldest, childe of
Ynosh, childe of Caine.
I can only imagine the scene, I was not there. Lambach Ruthven was there. In point of fact,
he was there on Kupala's night. He was there for many things, many great moments. Yet he
rarely speaks of any of it. Ask Velya about the Anarch Revolt, and he will pontificate the night
away. Ask Lambach about it, and the craven stammers, shivers, and mutters, "I'm being a good
lad," as though his tongue might betray him. He travels the world, with no purpose, as though
chased. A mind decayed by time and turbulence. Historic moments wasted on a wretch.

Formation of the Sabbat

I must grudgingly admit that the Camarilla was affective in its earliest iteration. It is a surprise
they did not wipe us out in the first nights of our newly achieved freedom. We did it to ourselves.
We had hunted our elders too affectively, killing or driving away the most powerful members of
our clan. Enemies poured in to fill that vacuum.
Fortunately, another clan faced similar troubles. We met with the Lasombra on the island of
Mallorca. Ideology was discussed, plans made, and, in the end, the Sabbat was formed. Where
the Lasombra brought structure and cohesion, the Tzimisce gave the Sabbat its soul. We
shared our rites and developed new ones. We refined the Vaulderie and stitched this monstrous
sect together.
The Fiends learned from their earlier mistake and invited what elders remained into the new
sect. A few even joined. Others remained independent, buying off their privacy by giving their
revenant families to the Sabbat. We ceased hunting our own elders. We had so many other
targets after all.

The Clan in Modern Nights (4,000 words)

Lexicon
Aži Dahāka: Persian for the three-headed dragon of the demon Ahriman. To the Tzimisce, it is
the Metamorphosist’s Holy Grail, an enlightened and ultimate state of being, possibly brought on
by extensive use of Vicissitude.
bogatyri: “elder valiant champions,” or a reference to Tzimisce’s quest-knights.
boyars: nobles or nobility.
knezi: a lesser landowner than a Tzimisce voivode. Knezi supplied the main fighting force
against the clan’s elders during the Anarch Revolt. In the modern nights, it is a title for any
Tzimisce who makes claim to nobility. As such, it is no longer as respected as it once was.
koldun: Tzimisce spellcrafters who employ elemental and spirit magic.
manse: a Tzimisce aristocrat’s keep or place of power from which he rules. In modern parlance,
a manse may simply be an opulent (or especially morbid) haven.
szlachta: although the specific term means “gentry,” szlachta are soldiers, spies, bodyguards
and protectors of the Tzimisce. Modified to serve, these ghouls are tough, smart and deadly.
tirsa: land or domain.
voivode: typically, a Tzimisce landholder or lord, the term is strangely nebulous. Tzimisce of
any significant power or territorial holdings often use this title, though young clan members shy
away from such epitaphs.
vozhd: a fading practice among contemporary Tzimisce, vozhd are lobotomized amalgamations
of many lesser ghouls. Through Vicissitude and koldunic rituals, the ghouls become one entity
with the simple duty to maim and destroy whatever stands in its way.
zadruga: “joint family,” whereby all the relatives of the ruler live together under strict familial
bonds. Also, the ancient name for revenant families, still used tonight by elder Tzimisce.
zulo form: a Tzimisce’s monstrous form, brought on through an advanced understanding of
Vicissitude. The Fiends employ this shape in battle or to intimidate their enemies.

Aži Dahāka
As a rule, with a few notable exceptions, Tzimisce do not tend toward devoted piety. Why
worship some distant god when you can craft yourself into one? Yet there is something that
Fiends from nearly every faction revere. Not really a deity. Not really a dogma. Aži Dahāka is
the symbol, fetish, and focus of the philosophy of Metamorphosis.
From the Dracon to Illuyankas, Dracula to the Leviathan, dragons are woven deeply into our
mythology. What the kine fear, we aspire towards — not the literal, physical form, but what the
dragon represents as harbinger of transformation. We quest for the transcendental, walking the
sinuous spiral of Aži Dahāka’s coils, gazing into its many mouths and eyes. Where chaos and
forever meet in motion, that is where we will find the dragons’s beating heart, and we will drink
deep.

Metaphor made manifest. Riddle made flesh. Aži Dahāka s the chiropteran cherub of our
secular, alien spirituality

Why Native Soil?

We are the Tzimisce. We are the deathless lords of man and beast. Spirits tremble at our
evocation. And yet, we pay fealty to the dirt. How did this happen?
Noddists cite myths in which Caine curses our entire line. Koldun believe it is a debt owed to
the spirits of the land. Proud Fiends insist this is neither curse, weakness, nor indebtedness, but
a symbol of their connection to the homeland. But which homeland? The world spins and now
every patch of soil calls out to one clanmate or another.
I have another theory. We travel the far vistas of sensation and thought. We leave behind all
things familiar — the sun, palpitation, human morality, even our identifies and forms. Perhaps
the soil is our concession, our one allowed anchor when we sail out into the Dead Water and
explore the outer regions of contemplation. Perhaps the Eldest was wise in imposing this rule
on his children, as he sent them off to the terrible, alien stratospheres. What would our inward
journey cost us without this precaution? Maybe the Malkavians merely forgot to take their two
handfuls with them.

Factions Among Fiends

The Old Clan
Do these oddities know something we do not? What do they think they know? Are they a rare
breed holding on to some ancient ideal, or a senile branch of paranoid radicals? Their kolduns
are as potent as any, so they do not fear the influence of Kupala. They reject Metamorphosis
and all of the arts of Vicissitude. They refuse the Vaulderie for fear of impurities swimming in
the blood. Yet, they are family, and the Sabbat has a tense alliance with these old Fiends of
Eastern Europe. They are selfish, isolated monsters, but it would be too much trouble to root
out such entrenched ancients or force them to change their behavior to better fit the modern
Sect's ideals. Better they act as monster to our foolish enemies who step into their demesnes.
I have a tattered, mortal memory of coaxing insects into spider webs as a child. Ah, there are
joys of such uncompromised purity that they are only ever found in the minds of children and
sociopaths. But I digress.
In manner, the self-titled Old Clan are like the Fiends of the Dark Ages, post Shaagra's
embrace. The voivodes. The night princes. Scions of a monstrous nobility and cold, vicious
honor. They rule in the medieval fashion, each domain containing a single vampire nobel and
her brood. Rumor says they can play the strings of the Blood Bond like a harp, manipulating
the subtle emotional effects it brings out in their childer and servants. Their traditions are a
throwback to a glorious age, but their time is over. They know it. Yet some are not content to
go quietly into history. They embrace young childer, fresh minds, and send them out of the
ancestral homes in the Land Beyond the Forest, and into the wider world. Are they trying to
make contact with the future? Are they even flexible enough to succeed. Or do they enact a
more mysterious agenda?

Children of the Dracon

Metamorphosis takes on many odd forms, none so strange as when seen through the stained
glass window of piety. The Children of the Dracon are a monastic order of Fiends, tracing their
roots to Constantinople and claiming descent from the first childe of Tzimisce. Flesh is their
prayer, sculpting their sacrament, and they seek to find the divinity hidden within themselves
and others. Heaven on Earth is just a nip and a tuck away.
The Children of the Dracon reject the influence of Kupala, even refuse to take part in any ritae
they believe has ties to koldunic practices. Yet they joined the Sabbat. The knightly order exists
to atone for some past sin of the Tzimisce. Politically, they act contrary to nearly every major
decision of the clan proper, always sitting as angels or demons upon our shoulders. Their elders
prefer the Children to remain active in the sect, rather than cloistering themselves. The order
produces many templars.
Children of the Dracon often come from the Obertus revenant family. The training is rigorous
and begins while they are still mortal. They travel the globe, learning the "12 legacies" of the
order, returning to their monastery of origin for the Embrace. If the initiate is an Akoimetai, the
scholarly wing of the order, he is entrusted with one volume from the Library of the Forgotten.
If a knight, he must carry a letter he is forbidden to open, sealed by the mark of the Dracon
himself, or some other elder Fiend. Monasteries dot the globe, and often serve as the haven for
the local Children.

The Romanian Legacy Foundation

Somewhere, there is a girl scarred with an Anglicized name. She grows with a trace of our blood
coursing through her veins. She is talented, intelligent, a prodigy. She is disturbed, prone to
bouts of depression and fits of rage. Neighbors find the mutilated bodies of local pets. She had
tried to carve something out of them, something she cannot name.
Despite her haunted life, she grows into a natural leader, a fiery brilliance. Yet she is unfulfilled,
still cannot find the nameless thing she sought in the flesh of all those dogs and cats. She finds
the right classified advertisement or internet site—a nonprofit genealogical organization. After
submitting her family tree, she is selected to attend a convention, which leads to a private party
at the estate of a distant relative. The scene is a bloody bacchanalia—much of the decadent,
much of the terrible. She is unafraid. This is what she sought. Before dawn, when the ceilings
drip with gore, she is Embraced. The next night, she is assigned a sponsor and introduced to
the society of the Damned.
That is the work of the Romanian Legacy Foundation. Its board of trustees include names such
as Bratovitch, Obertus, Grimaldi, and Zantosa and is composed of Cainites who came from our
revenant houses. The Foundation keeps the families in touch, hosts gatherings, and welcoming
revenants into undeath. Such chosen are given something more than a spade to the head
and a shallow grave. Not everyone who carries our blood knows it. The Foundation scours the
globe for our wayward babes. Globalization has spread the seed of our clan far, and this new
millennium has revealed an exciting harvest of such delicious fruit.

Neofeudalist
Behold the fiendish Don Quixote. A broken anachronism to some, a folk hero to others. Most
likely, a bit of both. Not a faction, in the strictest sense, but an ideal, an attitude that can
bleed into the other factions. It creates strange camaraderies. The Old Clan Fiend and the
Metamorphosist, normally at each others’ throat, find grudging respect and native pride, when
they acknowledge their mutual neofeudalist leanings.
The neofeudalists seek a return to the nights of kings and serfs. They claim vast domains, sire
large broods, are the most gracious hosts, but demoniacal to any who trespass uninvited. As
a point of honor, they are self-sufficient from the Sabbat, whom they are at odds with nearly as
often as the Camarilla.
On the cutting edge of today, few espouse this ideal. Fewer still actually live it. And even fewer
survive it for long. Seeing such an exemplar causes something resembling admiration to squirm
in our wormy hearts. However, nostalgia, even for something so majestic, is still a pathetic,
atrophied organ of humanity. Kiss the vestigial hand growing out of your cousin’s head, if you
must, but know when to break it off.

Exanguinists
The Eldest explored the terrible vistas of possibility, stared into the transcendentaly grotesque,
and the only thing that disturbed it was the Hunger. Immortality is relative, and if we truly want
to dance with eternity, the Hunger must be conquered. The Exsanguinists understand this. They
know that feeding the Hunger only deepens it, only erodes and widens the ravenous well inside
us, until all that we are is nothing.
Unlike other blood cults who gorge on gore, the Exanguinists practice feeding abstinence. This
Metamorphosist offshoot has developed ignoblis ritae to avoid drinking blood for as long as
possible. They teach meditative techniques. They throw themselves into distraction. If they
can increase the length of time between each feeding, perhaps they can unlock the secret to
transcend the curse.
They are perpetually on the edge of frenzy. I would not recommend them as pleasant company.

Tzimisce Antitribu
Semantics make for a tedious game, but the Tzimisce, by and large, do not bother with terms
like “antitribu.” Though our personal visions, and even our symmetries, may differ, a Fiend is still
a Fiend. Most belong to the Sabbat. The rest, particularly the elders, are apolitical.
Not even the Oradea League bandies about the word “antitribu.” They are an alliance of ancient
Tzimisce, powerful fiends who survived the Anarch Revolt. They maintain their feudal lands
around the Romanian city of Oradea. A pledge of unity ensures that an outside force attacking
one these puissant monsters will face them all. The League has refused to submit to either the
Camarilla or Sabbat.
There may be some few individual Tzimisce who have joined the Camarilla. But in a clan
of monsters of such individuality, this notion does not aggravate our vanity as it does the
Lasombra. Likely, the motivations of a Fiend walking in the Ivory Tower would be very personal,
specific, and temporary, to make them stomach the company of the Warlocks. Perhaps there
are Fiends there in hiding. Perhaps they wear faces that are not their own.

Example Concepts
The Barker
“Step right up!”
You used to travel from town to town, a peddler of the bizarre and grotesque. Ever the
showman, your macabre charm brought in the audiences to gaze upon your freak show
attractions. Occasionally, you took their blood. Sometimes you kept an audience member and
added them to the menagerie. These days, you lead a more stationary life. You’ve opened a
House of Oddities in the city. Your creations hide in plane sight. This modern world celebrates
the grotesque. The gawkers come to you. Why just last week, a small band of thieves tried
break into your place. The look on their faces, when the pickled punks leapt out of the jar to
defend you, well that was just priceless.
“Safe home, dear friends, and come again!”

The Shabby Voivode

You are the land. You claimed a particularly opulent mausoleum in the city cemetery as your
manor. You took in the homeless as your subjects. Democracy had used and discarded them,
and you gave them something more pure. To the few exceptional transients, you gave the
sacrament of your blood, from your bent chalice, making them your personal bogatyri. You
control city park, where you hold court, but your demesne grows alley by alley, shelter by
shelter.
The gangs know where not to tread. The urban birds and beasts are your eyes and ears.
Your subjects receive your special mark. Those who trespass upon your domain or upon your
subjects receive a more grotesque mark. Your loving subjects made you a crown of barbed-
steel thorns. You live the neofeudalist ideal better than your fellow Cainites, who hide in
penthouses or skulk in sewers. They laugh at you, but it must be from jealousy.

Walking Urban Legend

The Eldest found transcendence in dreams, and you seek inspiration in the dark dreams of
others. You travel the country, collecting urban and rural myths--stories passed from mouth
to ear--stories that live and crawl and evolve with each telling. You change with the stories
too, fashioning yourself into the monsters. You are a hook-handed killer. You are the bleeding
woman who appears in the darkened mirror. You are the chupacabra. You enact the gory
legends, enriching the dead water soil in the nightmares of the kine.

Sometimes you focus on one legend, refining the minutia of its image as you travel. You find
Metamorphosis through the nuanced regional differences you discover from town to town,
forced evolution along the road.
Scary stories are fun when you're dead!

The Weaver
You wield your bone shears with the gentle grace of an artist. The miracles you can work with
human leather. The osseous jewelry. The bioluminescent gown. The still-living great coat, kept
alive with vitae, covered in eyes that still blink. The flesh and bone coffin you designed for the
Archbishop herself, that lovingly opens for her, every dawn, with the deliberation of a Venus fly
trap.
For all the Sabbat's talk of transcending human customs, they still preen like demon peacocks
when they gather. Shock and awe. You give that to them. You are in high demand. You give
them post human fashion—post mundane. Not just garments, you give them designer ghouls
and designer selves. The packs strive to be monsters, reach for freakishness, but many
do not have the skill to truly transform. The poor dears. Why should the Fiends be the only
ones to experience Metamorphosis? Your clanmates are so self-centered. You were always
extraverted. You want to share. You want to give.

Lost in the Ivory Tower

The Camarilla took the city. Everyone was destroyed, all of your packmates. Only you remain.
Desperate, you took on the face of one of the Ivory Tower Kindred who died in the battle. You
tasted his heart's blood and touched just enough of his memories. Somehow, in the chaotic
aftermath, the ruse worked.
But what now? All you know is the city. Outside are the Lupines and death. But how long can
this insane farce continue? You fall deeper and deeper into this stolen identity and sect and
clan. Every night, the whisper of the Vinculum grows fainter. This was only supposed to be a
temporary solution.

Conspiracy Fiend
You've read the writings of an ancient of the Old Clan. An Obertus monk preached to you
about the Dracon's immaculate conception. You once talked to a guy who talked with Lambach
Ruthven. You've put it together. You know what's going on. But now, it knows that you know. It
began in small ways. You woke to find your your clothing torn, things in your haven rearranged,
a knife in one hand and fingers missing from the other. One dusk, you found the words "BE A
GOOD LAD" flesh-scrawled into your chest. It's in there, watching you now, isn't it?
Now you spend all your time in the lab. You've missed several auctoritas ritae. The others
are beginning to talk. Who can you trust? You experiment until you collapse with the sun.
You write your findings in the dark, so it won't see. You tried to exsanguinate all of your
vitae. You removed your own limbs. It does no good. No going back. You scream from the
hyperawareness of something the size of a planet greasily slithering between your dead cells.
You try to warn the other Fiends, but no one listens. They say you are insane. Really? Do they
think so? Oh…how glorious that would be if it were true.

Postmodern Prometheus
You don't remember who you were before the Embrace; none of you do. You are your sire's
most recent experiment. The memories are fragmented—the naked organs, flesh, and liquified
bone of a dozen people tossed into a vat. The reaction to spilled vitae was extreme. The viscera
awoke and hungered. You pieced yourself together and ate the rest.
You are the patchwork vampire, a visceral gestalt and stew of memories. So many voices speak
in your head. Though you could barely muster the consensus to form the coordination to walk
your first few steps, when awareness cursed your minds, you all agreed on one unanimous
point. You would have revenge on your creator.
Foundation Recruiter
The blood of the revenant families has spread so far and so thin. The right talent and genes
can surface almost anywhere in the world. The Romanian Legacy Foundation sends you out to
find the descendants of the revenant houses who are now far beyond the ancestral lands. You
maintain a Foundation website. You give presentations in hotel convention rooms. You follow
emails, birth certificates, genealogy studies—the nearly invisible trail of Tzimisce blood that
spans the globe. You conduct interviews. When you find the worthy, you bring them in, saving
them from the fate of dying as exceptionally talented mortals.

Scholar of the Akoimetai

You grew up among the Obertus. You learned the 12 Legacies and were embraced a Child
of the Dracon. You travel the world, in study and pious contemplation. You search for the
Divinity Within. You attempt to sculpt Heaven on Earth in the flesh. Your hands are not an
artist's hands, but when inspired by the Holy Ghost, you can find godhead in the crude meat.
You tap into something bigger than yourself and are able to shape symmetry you could never
have imagined, forms that existed before dreams. Sometimes you show mortals this primeval
iconography. When you show them your celestial face, when they scream and sweat blood,
then you are reminded of why angels always must preface their visitations with, "Be not afraid."

Old Clan New

You are of the Old Clan, the recent embrace of an ancient sire. You were chosen because
you were born in the homeland. You grew up on the old ways, but you left to further your
education abroad. The Oradea League realized that history had passed them by, and so they
embraced you. They are so much older than you, but you are given a measure of respect for
your knowledge of modern technology and culture. Walking between the world of the archaic
and the cutting edge, you are something new. You are their experiment.
And now you are sent out again, away from your Romanian home. You are to help the Old Clan
make contact with the wider, contemporary world. Distinctions like Camarilla and Sabbat hold
little meaning to you. Perhaps there is something to learn from both.

Character and Traits (4,000 words)

Something gestates inside the Tzimisce, whether it is the chaotic seed of Ynosh, the sentient
germ of their Antediluvian, or something stranger still. What this ultimately means, who can say,
but strange things bubble and writhe in the petri dish of their flesh and souls. Between their
strange habits and ability of Vicissitude, the Fiends develop aggressively unique traits.

Merits
Bioluminescence (1pt Merit)
Perhaps through biological expertise, or perhaps by unlocking something primordial within, you
have accessed the secrets of bioluminescence. Using the Vicissitude, you may grant yourself
(Malleable Visage) or others (Fleshcraft) the ability to emit a soft glow. With muscle control and
practice, you can control the color and pattern of the illumination. This can be used to create a
soft light in the dark, create beautiful displays, or even a primal form of communication. Some
Fiends grant their ghouls or childer bioluminescence, developing a eerily nuanced and wordless
language with their thralls and broods. Only characters with at least one dot of Vicissitude may
purchase this Merit.

Pain Tolerance (2pt Merit)

Maybe you are a badass or shut off your nerves through Vicissitude. Maybe your sire put you
through so many intricate hells that it would be tough for anyone else to compete. Maybe it just
turns you on. Regardless, you ignore one-dice wound penalties. At Hurt or Injured, you suffer no
wound penalties, though you still suffer full penalties at Wounded and below. You must have a
Conviction or Courage rating of 3 or more to take this Merit.

Dracon’s Temperament (3pt Merit)

You emulate the ideal of Aži Dahāka within and without, to levels visceral and abstract.
Your psyche flows with the permutable nature of change. Like the protean Dracon, you are
a whirlwind of temperaments. This is not multiple personalities. You are one identity shown
through the prism of ever-shifting Natures. Your sense of self is fettered by no anchor. You can
be any you. At the start of each story, you may choose one Personality Archetype to function as
your Nature, spending the rest of the story perceiving the world through that perspective. You
also regain Willpower according to your new Nature and may be affected by other effects or
Discipline powers as per your new Nature as well.

Haven Affinity (3pt Merit)

You are the land. The land is you. The home soil calls to you. You give to it, and it gives to you.
Your connection to the earth of your prime haven grants you an extra die to all dice pools when
operating there. It also acts as a mystic beacon, allowing you to home in on its location with a
standard Perception + Survival roll (difficulty 6), +1 difficulty when a state or country separates
you; +2 if you’re halfway across the globe. This applies only to your prime haven.

Revenant Disciplines (3pt Merit)

The blood of your revenant family runs deep, deeper than the Embrace. The Disciplines that
were innate to you as a ghoul have remained so as a Cainite. At character creation, select the
ghoul family from which you hail. Instead of the Tzimisce’s standard complement of Animalism,
Auspex and Vicissitude, you draw from your three family Disciplines for your starting allocation
(though you may buy other Disciplines with freebies, as normal). Also, you learn your family
Disciplines at the cost of a clan Discipline. It’s either or, however, meaning you cannot buy
both the Tzimisce and family powers at clan cost unless they both share a particular ability like
Vicissitude.

Promethean Clay (5pt. Merit)

Your flesh ripples and molds itself to your preternatural will, almost before you consciously
invoke the change. The difficulty to use any Vicissitude power on yourself is 2 less than normal,
and you may activate Vicissitude powers reflexively at your full dice pool while taking other
actions. Powers that require multiple turns to activate still require the usual duration — the
change simply occurs without conscious direction. As a final benefit, you need no physical
sculpting to use the first three levels of Vicissitude on yourself, as your flesh undulates and
extrudes to its desired shape. Only characters with at least one dot of Vicissitude may purchase
this Merit.

Flaws
Unblinking (1pt Flaw)
Your eyes do not close. Ever. Perhaps you have left your humanity too far behind to upkeep
such habits, or perhaps you fleshcrafted some form of transparent eye-scale or nictitating
membrane. Your quirk probably makes astute observers uncomfortable (+1 to the difficulty of
friendly social interactions with anyone whose makes a successful Perception + Alertness roll at
difficulty 8 to notice).

Faceless (3pt Flaw)

You have escaped the tyranny physical self-identity. Call no face your own. Every sunset, you
awaken to a new visage, an amalgam pieced together from memory and dream. Your features,
ethnicity, even gender become fluid things while you sleep.
You can use Malleable Visage and a mirror to reconstruct your true face from memory, but this
requires at least three successes at difficulty 8 to make you recognizable and five successes
for a flawless copy. Characters must have at least one dot of Vicissitude to purchase this
Trait. While this Trait exemplifies the extreme ideals of Aži Dahāka (and should impress
most Metamorphosists) it can cause complications for vampire concerned with maintaining
recognition, reputation, or a mortal alias.

Ancestral Soil Dependence (2pt Flaw)

Your flesh yearns for a homeland you have never seen. The voice of Kupala punishes your
day sleep if this yearning is not met. The soil from a place important to you as a mortal will not
suffice. You require two handfuls of the tainted Eastern European soil of the ancestral Tzimisce
homeland. This Trait mostly commonly manifests in the childer of koldun and the branch of the
clan thought to be descended from Yorak. In can even manifest in childer sired generations
after their ancestors relocated. Characters Embraced in Eastern Europe can’t take this Flaw
(they’re already dependent on the local soil).

Privacy Obsession (3pt Flaw)

Perhaps it is a trait carried in the blood. Perhaps your strict sire carved this lesson into your
mind and flesh. Either way, you carry the Tzimisce respect for privacy to extremes. You must
make a Willpower roll (difficulty 6) to enter another being’s dwelling without being invited
(though you will go to fiendishly clever lengths to garner an unwitting invitation). When disturbed
in your haven by an uninvited guest, you must make a Self-Control or Instincts roll (difficulty 7)
to avoid frenzy.
Revenant Weakness (3pt Flaw)
You were once part of a revenant family. Following the Embrace, you suffered both your
clan’s weakness and your revenant family’s limitation. The Storyteller might let you manifest a
weakness from a lost or destroyed revenant line. This could add mystery to your background
and allow for a bit of genealogical detective work, certainly making you a curiosity to the
Romanian Legacy Foundation.

Consumption (5pt Flaw)

There is something hungry inside of you. But what is it? Portions of the Antediluvian? Your
Vicissitude gone horribly wrong? Whatever it is, it is active, acting like a cancer, devouring
you from the inside out. Your very blood is wrought with a corrosive, flesheating bacteria. At
the beginning of each evening, you suffer one health level of bashing damage that cannot be
soaked nor healed with blood. The only way to counteract the effect is by ingesting one-tenth
of your body-weight in flesh to supplement your depleted carcass. Whether you kill and devour
the skin from humans or raid the biohazard containers of liposuction clinics for siphoned fat,
you need your ration of human flesh in order to survive. If you try and ingest this macabre meal
before damage is done, you’ll simply vomit it out like any other food — this does not impart the
benefits of the Eat Food Merit.

Combo Powers
Ears of the Bat
Prerequisites: Auspex ● and Vicissitude ●
The vampire grows long, pointed ears and achieves echolocation, much like a bat. She can
“see” in pitch darkness and that sense extends 360° around her, leaving no blind spots for
would-be ambushers to exploit.
System: The player must spend a blood point and roll Intelligence + Medicine (difficulty 7).
While manifesting the Ears, the character suffers a +1 difficulty to all Social rolls with mortals
unless she takes steps to hide her ears.
This combination power costs 8 experience points to learn.

Flaying Touch
Prerequisites: Potence ●● and Vicissitude ●●
With this cruel power, a Tzimisce can tear away a victim's skin as easily as removing a robe,
all without disturbing the muscles and other tissue beneath. The Fiend simply grabs a handful
of skin and pulls it away or surgically slices it with the artful caress of a fingertip. Regardless of
the method used, the target suffers excruciating pain and begins bleeding profusely from the
exposed flesh. Even if a target somehow survives the blood loss, the area of skinless flesh soon
becomes infected. Cainites have less to fear from the power, though they too suffer blood loss
until they can regenerate the missing tissue.
System: This power requires the same roll as a conventional use of Fleshcraft, though the
difficulty is always one higher than normal (maximum difficulty 9). The vampire need not restrain
the victim as long as he strikes exposed skin (requiring a Dexterity + Brawl roll as usual), in
which case the activation roll is reflexive. Each success inflicts one level of lethal damage,
which may be soaked (if the victim can soak such damage) at difficulty 8 . If the damage
exceeds the victim's Stamina, she can only writhe and scream in pain for the rest of the turn.
Victims continue bleeding profusely from their exposed skin. Mortals suffer a number of levels
of bashing damage each minute equal to the initial damage, while vampires apply any damage
after soak as a loss of blood points. Once any of the original damage is healed or the wound
is stanched (Dexterity + Medicine, difficulty 9), the bleeding slows to one level of damage per
hour. Only when the original injury is completely healed does the bleeding stop.
This power costs 14 experience points to learn.

The False Drink

Prerequisites: Auspex ● and Vicissitude ●●●●●
Some independent elder Fiends, who pay lip service to the Sabbat, developed this trick. Using
a heightened self-awareness and vitae control, the Tzimisce is able to divert imbibed blood to a
discrete cavity within her body. The compartmentalized blood is not absorbed into the vampire’s
system, and thus, the Blood Bond and the Vinculum can be secretly avoided. The vampire can
then vomit up the unwanted blood at her leisure.
System: Upon drinking the blood, the player must roll Intelligence + Medicine (difficulty 8).
Failure means the vampire accidentally absorbs the imbibed blood as normal, affecting any
Blood Bond or Vinculum as per normal. Botching the roll causes the vampire to vomit the
imbibed blood, along with half of her own Blood Pool, in a messy spray.
This power costs 16 experience points to learn.

Soul Decoration
Prerequisites: Auspex ●●, Obfuscate ●●, and Vicissitude ●●●
In the Metamorphosist philosophy, the body and soul are linked. Outer change brings inner
change (and vice versa). The body’s experiences can be summed up in the aura, but this
phenomenon is the product of physical forces. By fleshcrafting certain locations on the body—
chakras, joints, erogenous zones—a Tzimisce with this power can “paint” whatever aura he
chooses. Auras summarize the individual, revealing mood, the stain of diablerie and the Curse
of Caine. When under the gaze of perceptive eyes, sometimes it’s better to conceal such things.
System: After spending three Willpower points, the player rolls her character’s Perception +
Empathy. The difficulty of this roll is equal to the subject’s Willpower—stronger personalities
resist alteration. The number of successes indicates how completely the aura can be changed
to the Tzimisce’s specifications.
[PRODUCTION: TABLE START]
1 success Can alter shades (pale or bright)
2 successes Can alter the main color
3 successes Can alter psychological state (frenzied, psychotic, etc.)
4 successes Can conceal or falsify diablerie and magic use
5 successes Can conceal or falsify natural condition (vampire, shapeshifter, ghost, etc.)
[TABLE END]
The deception lasts one night per success. During this time, the aura doesn’t change to reflect
new conditions in its owner. This power changes only the aura, not the subject herself. At the
Storyteller’s discretion, the subject may feel token emotions to match her new colors. She might
feel somewhat distrustful if her aura was painted light green, for instance.
This power costs 20 experience points.

Body Armory
Prerequisites: Protean ●●● and Vicissitude ●●●
This power enables the vampire to form wicked weapons from her own body. The vampire may
create sword blades, axes, and even spiked mauls. These weapons do terrible damage to their
targets. Many Tzimisce make sword-arms and knife-bladed knuckles and the like, but more
dramatic implementations are possible.
System: This power costs two blood points per weapon Grafted (though larger weapons like
two-handed swords and great axes cost four), and the player must roll Dexterity + Medicine
(difficulty 7). Weapons created in this manner cause aggravated damage.
This power costs 21 experience points to learn.

Wound Sculpting
Prerequisites: Fortitude ●●● and Vicissitude ●●
A vampire with this power may vastly accelerate her healing by concentrating and willing flesh
to mold back to its original form.
System: The player spends one blood point and rolls Wits + Medicine (difficulty 8). Each
success heals one level of lethal or bashing damage. This power cannot heal more health levels
per turn than the vampire's generational limit for blood expenditure. Any healing beyond this
limit extends into subsequent turns until complete.
This power costs 21 experience points to learn.

Pater Szlachta
Prerequisites: Protean ●●●● and Vicissitude ●●●
Some Tzimisce combine the Protean power to turn into an animal with the possibilities of
Vicissitude. Forces of chaotic change surge through the Fiend’s body, forces he must direct
while experiencing bone-breaking pain. When the Tzimisce can bear the strain no longer, the
body settles into the Pater Szlachta or bogatyri form — so named by Tzimisce anarchs to insult
either their servants or the “elder valiant champions” who served the anarchs’ sires. In the
modern nights, this power is still known to a few Tzimisce, who sometimes use it in contests of
improvisational fleshcrafting.
System: Spend two blood points and roll Stamina + Medicine (difficulty 7). The change takes (5
- the number of successes) turns to complete, during which the Tzimisce can only howl, drool
vitae, and writhe. The character can rearrange his Physical Attributes (one dot per success),
but no Attribute can exceed the limit imposed by generation. The player can describe what sort
of alterations he wants to make, but the process is difficult to control. In the end, the Storyteller
is the final arbiter, choosing one physical state for the character in bogatyri form or certain
Vicissitude modifications such as bone spikes, spine-saws, etc. Botches earn whatever physical
Flaws the Storyteller chooses. The change lasts for one scene.
Example: The player of Csikos Thesz spends two blood points and earns four successes on
his Stamina + Medicine roll. Csikos Thesz spends one turn changing into the bogatyri form,
during which he struggles to rearrange his muscles and body fat to better absorb impacts; he
also concentrates on drawing forth bone mass to his knuckles, visualizing them coming to thick,
knobby studs. After the change, his player can rearrange four dots of Physical Attributes. Before
the change, Csikos had Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2. He moves a point from Strength and
two from Dexterity into Stamina and doesn’t use the fourth success, leaving him with Strength 2,
Dexterity 1, Stamina 5. Since four successes indicate an “exceptional success,” the Storyteller
decides that Csikos has grown bony nodules on his knuckles that inflict lethal damage.
This power costs 18 experience points.

Birth the Vozhd

Prerequisites: Vicissitude ●●●●● ● and Animalism ●●●●● ●)
While the creation of vozhd was once the sole province of koldunic ritual, Tzimisce who have
mastered both fleshcrafting and control of the Beast Within can build vozhd as well. The
ingredients: at least 15 ghouls (20 or more is preferable). First, the Tzimisce fleshcrafts the
ghouls together, forging the bodies into a single entity. The Fiend feeds the corporate mess a
concoction of the blood of the ghouls, creating something like a Vinculum among them. This
bond in place, the Fiend uses Animalism to coalesce the Beasts of the ghouls into one insane
and imperfect Beast that drives the vozhd to crush or devour everything in sight.
System: After the Tzimisce collects enough ghouls, roll her Intelligence + Body Craft (difficulty
10) to determine how quickly she constructs and “masters” the vozhd. With one success, the
process takes as long as a year; with five, it might only take a month. The Fiend can make
further Vicissitude modifications to his creation (raise the difficulties of such rolls by 2 to reflect
the size and complexity of the creature). Botches result in a nonviable biohazard or a frenzied,
uncontrollable vozhd. Also note that vozhd, driven by their flawed Beasts, are notoriously
difficult to control. Raise the difficulty of all Animalism rolls involving a vozhd by three.
This power costs 36 experience points.

Elder Disciplines
Ecstatic Agony (Vicissitude ●●●●● ●)
Pain is transformative. Pain awakens primal potential in the tortured flesh. A Fiend with this
ability delights in every slash of the blade and caress of bullet, transmogrifying agony into
physical prowess and incredible displays of Caine’s Gifts.
System: After spending two Willpower points, the character becomes empowered by pain.
Add his wound penalties to all non-reflexive actions involving a Physical Attribute or use of
a Discipline. As the character heals, this bonus wanes. Treat Incapacitated and Final Death
normally. This power lasts for one scene.

Eye of the Szlachta (Animalism ●●●●● ●)

Many Fiends can posses the lowly beasts of the wild, but some few can ride any ghoul who
shares their blood. By locking eyes with her ghoul, the Fiend can transfer he soul into the
creature. Although some Tzimisce consider such intimate contact with their servants distasteful,
sometimes it is necessary to calm a rampaging vozhd in a disposable vessel. More than one
Fiend has faked their death in the body of a cleverly fleshcrafted ghoul.
System: Use the system for the Animalism 4 power Subsume the Spirit (Vampire: the
Masquerade 20th, pp. 131-132).

Kraken’s Kiss (Vicissitude ●●●●● ●●)

The Fiend’s face erupts into a mass of tentacles, a foot in length and similar to that of a squid.
These tentacles can be used to grasp and constrict a foe. Moreover, in place of a squid's
suckers are rows and rows of fanged, drooling mouths, permitting incredibly rapid blood drain.
System: The vampire spends a Willpower point and rolls Stamina + Medicine (difficulty 8).
Success enables formation of the tentacles with no loss of sensory abilities. The tentacle mass
can be used in melee (difficulty 5; Strength + 2 damage). A successful hit indicates a grab.
Feeding begins on the same turn as the initial grab, and for each success scored on the attack
roll, one additional Blood Point can be drained from the victim each turn, as dozens of mouths
bite and suck. To break the grip, the victim must score three more successes than the vampire
in an extended contest of Strength.