#cappadocian clan

[priapocalypse]

Vampire: the Masquerade Musings:

The Hecata Curse

I find it interesting that the formation of the Hecata in V5 saw the Giovanni curse spread to the other clans of death (I know it didn't do this with every member, but still). The painful bite bane is not Cappadocian - it was inflicted on Augustus Giovanni by Lamia as he diablerized her. I'm omitting lore on who these people are, but I can go into detail if anyone wants it.

So... how did the other clans of death develop this bane? The antediluvian Cappadocius was the originator of the entire bloodline, so each clan except for the Giovanni and Nagaraja (who were Euthanatos mages that created themselves without Capp's specific blood) had a variation of their founder's curse that gave them the appearance of a corpse. What changed?

Well, in lore, it's strongly implied that Cappadocius was not actually diablerized, but instead became a power wraith in the Shadowlands, where he could further his quest to diablerize God (#goals), and that during the 6th Great Maelstrom in 1999, he was finally destroyed (there's a bit in one of the wraith books about a "captain doshus" or something). That's also the time when Augustus disappeared and the Harbingers broke free of their prison in Kaymakli.

Skip forward to the V5 timeline. Augustus is supposedly dead, and Lamia *may* have been resurrected. Why did Augustus' specific curse appear in all the clans who formed the Hecata? Did Uncle Auggie really die, or did he finally succeed in diablerizing Cappi and become head of the bloodline? Or did Lamia inflict her curse anew, spreading to all clans of the Hecata, even the Nagaraja? Ooor, is Lamia the actual founder of the bloodline? So many interesting questions. I have theories, but I'd love to hear what others think!

[kruk-art]

January Day 5 - Cappadocian

[crownedinmarigolds]

Hello gorgeous friends - if we do the Hecata family portrait for Halloween... would we want them in costumes or would we want them in normal fancy portrait wear?

[stimisce]

clan cappadocian for @fakegothpansy

x | x | x x | x | x x | x | x

[00meat-shake00]

Cappadocian character from my saga 🦴

[faneth]

every once in a while i get hit with 'giovanni SUCK' thought that makes me angry for no reason whatsoever

[stabknives]

Honestly the neurodivergent craving to categorize things is probably why putting characters in h+rry p+tter houses has been so popular for so long. Lol. That being said fuck that Rowling bitch! No excuses. Assign your special guys a pokemon type instead or perhaps if you're an edgy little binch you could 👉👈 you could pick a vtm clan for them…

[meatcrimes]

Bone priestess. New vampire oc maybe?

[esteemedbastard]

I feel so bad and I need to scream into the void.

I'm in a Vampire: the Masquerade game on Sunday evenings; it takes place in the year 2230/1 where vampires and other supernatural creatures are known and mingle with the human world. Our coterie is currently investigating a substance called Mars Dust which turns people into genetically-engineered vampires.

Our group has been getting squirrely in session; we've been making jokes and memeing during serious moments, we've been talking over each other and interrupting one another, people are arriving late, leaving early, or even no call-no showing, and explaining things in lore/mechanics when our Storyteller Abby has homebrewed it for us or is using an older/different edition.

So last week, Abby had to put a moratorium on all of this for the health of the campaign because she's planned this to be a long campaign. And while I'm pretty good at telling her if I'll be there or if I'll be late, I'm definitely guilty of memeing, loredumping, and talking over people. After Abby's announcement came out, I was determined to take steps and fix my behavior for the health of the game.

And then we come to last night's game.

I went to a Beltane event in Chicago, and I told Abby in advance that I would be out for a majority of the session. Though I might come back and spectate near the end, for all intents and purposes, I would be missing last night's session.

I did spectate, and I made a comment that my Cappadocian Fiammetta, who is very gothy and witchy, was also at a Beltane celebration that night. Near the end of the session, the coterie was splitting up; some people were leaving the party where the bulk of the session took place, some people were staying at the party to do different things, etc. Abby took stock of where everyone was going and what they were doing and made a list of it to post in the game's text channel. At the bottom of the list was "Beltane: Fiammetta."

I was really happy about that, because even if I couldn't be there, I was still being included! I thought it was very thoughtful! I posted a gif in the text channel of women dancing around a bonfire in response, and then I deleted it because I didn't want to clutter up the text channel in the middle of the game.

But I didn't delete the gif. I accidentally deleted Abby's list of what what we were doing.

Immediately I was mortified, and naturally Abby was really mad at me because she needs that list! Even her husband Josh was like "yeah she's mad." It led to Abby putting a ban on memeing in the game's text channel and redirected us to the server's meme channel proper. Naturally I apologized and Abby accepted my apology, but in the moment I was the problem player in a campaign where our Storyteller was already having problems wrangling us. Hi it's me, I'm the problem it's me.

[trupowieszcz-moved]

i think more bloodlines than just clan nosferatu should change the fledgling's physical features upon embrace, even if not to such an obvious degree. like i think most people subconsciously assume that a toreador embrace makes you more beautiful somehow, and that can be cool too, especially if the beauty is really offputting, too perfect, or it gets rid of something that the embraced person actually liked about themselves but is considered unattractive on a wider scale, like a crooked broken nose or something. similarly a malkavian embrace may not *actually* change anything, not to other people's perception, but the freshly embraced malkavian might find themselves struggle with depersonalization and feel like their body is no longer theirs much more harshly than any other clan. gangrels get noticably hairier, and if they shaved their body hair, it regrows and they're stuck with them forever. i dont have ideas for every clan but im also gonna give an honorary mention to cappadocians who were absolutely fucking nerfed in that regard in v5 by merging them into hecata and removing their curse

[gorbalsvampire]

What are your top 3 favorite clans? Either to make a character for or to use as a Storyteller? :3

Oooooooh, thanks for asking! I'll do these in reverse order, build up to the best.

Number three: Malkavian

My original faves, and a clan about whom I have some sTRoNg oPiNIoNs. See, the thing with Malkavians is that for years and years and years it felt like nobody thought for two minutes about how the rules for Derangements work. Too many Malks were played as hapless victims of their insanity, driven to ooky-kooky comic relief bullshit behaviour or dark tormented scary deep mental anguish all the time - and that's not how it works. The Malkavian Derangement was incurable, as in it would never be removed - it was not insurmountable!

Derangements could be overcome through the expenditure of Willpower, scene by scene. Willpower could be recycled through a careful choice of Nature and Demeanour to indulge. Malkavians were about powering through, being a dangerous and cogent master of the mind whammy, surfing your own mind's wild tides with gritted teeth and every now and then, when it didn't matter so much, when you had the luxury of rest, unclenching your jaw and letting the madness take you.

Therese Voerman is my poster girl for what a Malkavian should be: she's competent, ruthless, and clearly has problems that she's keeping under control through sheer cognitive heft/letting Jeanette out to play when it's all too much.

Anyway. Malks. Love the Disciplines, love the Network, love the visions, love the savagery of a well done, targeted prank. V5 moving them away from "a specific instance of mental illness with oversimplified game rules" and toward "chronic mental overstimulation which manifests as a consistent game rules penalty" is a subtle change but a good one. None of my games feel complete without at least one Malkavian.

Number two: Lasombra

Elegant, classical, lordly, and aggressive. None of the subtlety and resilience of their Ventrue arch rivals: the Lasombra will break you in body (Potence) mind (Dominate), or both (Oblivion), and if you're mortal and you impress them, they will make you rise again.

I love the existential, spatial, cosmic horror of Obtenebration; I love their connection with the ocean and their warring against themselves over and over (and yet with an oversight body that transcends the lines of conflict); I love the hubris that swears they destroyed their Antediluvian and how that's come back to haunt them in V5.

They make great antagonists - I've always felt that in OG Masquerade especially, the Sabbat pillar clans' Disciplines were designed to enable cool boss fights, and being thrown around by a shadow monster or enveloped and consumed by a roiling tide of darkness... mmmm... sorry, I was supposed to be talking about tactical challenge, but then I got to thinking about how sexy Lasombra are and... look, check my intro post, Ib from LABN nailed the archetype and frankly she could nail me too.

Number one: Hecata

Always and forever. The OGs. Every incarnation of them has delighted me. Necromancy and vampirism walk hand in hand for me (I was a Warhammer Undead guy before I was a Vampire: the Masquerade enby). The Cappadocians are patient, thoughtful, genteel court wizards who get done dirty (by their mediocre "here to go!" Clanbook as well as by the Giovanni) and come back SCARY/become something new in hiding. The Giovanni are delightfully loathsome literary-Gothic villains - seriously, they're rich decadent incestuous black-magic loving Italians? did Anne Radcliffe write for V:tM? - AND sassy East Coast gangsters with a sorcerous twist.

They aren't perfect - the Family Reunion creaks with artifice, the Nagaraja shouldn't exist be there, there is no WAY a skyscraper in the middle of Venice is acceptable world building, the Nayson San An are one of those early WW concepts that's always going to be stained by racism, and what's been done to Necromancy over the years, from a rules bloat/design standpoint, is a bloody shambles.

I think a lot of what I love about them comes from me rather than from the developers. I've put a nonzero amount of thought into who ended up where vis. Reunion, Chamber, Council, into the history of Venice and its involvement with the Fourth Crusade and the collapse of Constantinople's Dream, into reinvigorating the gangster stereotype and into the history of Scottish banking and slave trading... but! but! no other clan has ever inspired me to do so many deep dives, to commit to such bits as "how do you make a Giovanni who can just hang out with any old coterie and you'd barely even know he was a Giovanni?"

The bottom line is that I like concepts with flaws, because flaws inspire creative fanwork. I yearn to work a problem, and the Hecata are raddled with problems. Marbled with them, like a tasty steak - they just need proper preparation to be served.

[redratt]

women be scheming

some sketches -- Sylvie the Lamia taking her oath of service in 1993 before being embraced into the fold (in my setting / headcanon, the Cappadocians have been alive the whole time, a few of them managing to feign death and slowly build up a secret clan presence. In v5 stuff, she's a Lamia, and as such is in the Hecata, but ... uh lol. Lmao, even. Old grudges die hard, especially when you're raised to believe that your purpose is putting other vampires to the sword to even out blood spilled over the centuries). she's warm, bubbly, and works as a librarian.

the second one is of Kadi (left) and Tex (right), a pair of Thinbloods (Caitiff and Lasombra respectively). Tex's embrace was a deliberate insult to the Tremere who she worked under, an elder by name of Ruxandra; turning her favorite ghoul into a Thinblooded Lasombra spin-off was a petty slap after centuries of feuding between Ruxandra and Bianca (a Lasombra, old as hell, just a cunning little jackass on Death and the Soul).

Kadi, meanwhile, was embraced because the guy who killed her felt really bad about killing a human when he ate. So he turned her as an act of mercy! Or at least he thought it was an act of mercy but you know how it goes sometimes on this bitch of an earth.

They're friends!

The guy they killed in that picture is a ghoul who kept sexually harassing Tex, so they chopped him up and all that good stuff. Again, you know how it is.

These are both based, pose wise, off of Artemisia Gentileschi paintings.

[y-rhywbeth2]

My trip to Baldur's Gate: Vampire the Masquerade AUs has haunted me all day.

-

The Dead Three aren't going to translate neatly and should probably be split into different characters covering different aspects of the originals. The Clan of Death is the neatest fit for them overall, but they don't all fit. The Giovanni fit Bhaal best (the Endless Night is basically his ideal, then there's the family money, the fucked up family shit). The scholarly bent of the Cappadocians with the aesthetic of the Harbingers of Skull is Myrkul and followers. Myrkul and Bhaal are too tied to death and undeath, if you take them out of here you lose something. Bane, frankly, is Ventrue with a splash of Lasombra; which does take us out of the box and the succession thing. Luckily their antediluvian is dead as hell as far as anyone can tell, so that's free real estate.

Withers is a fragment of Cappadocius; 'retired' and his one church/clan split in three (they might be pawns though god knows who of); mostly forgotten in the modern nights; seems benign on the surface and then you look closer and he's the world's least trustworthy motherfucker. Jergal has never schemed to eat Ao's soul as far as I know, but I sure wouldn't put anything past him.

Failing that he's the Capuchin... assuming those two are so unrelated, although I'm pretty sure the Capuchin is Lazarus.

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Haarlep is hosting the succubus club. I will overlook how much it annoys be that 5e stopped the succubus being strictly tanar'ri for the bit.

-

Durge: Extremely low generation Giovanni neonate... or Baali, if you want to go ultimate edgelord. Enjoys the principle of Taboo in their necromancy work too much.

Gale: Has an Oblivion-tainted chunk of Mr 'I Can Totally Eat God's Soul and Replace Him' in his chest, so Cappadocian, I guess. Formerly awakened, but he ignored his avatar when it warned him not to touch The Thing and here we are.

Astarion: World's Worst Tremere Wants Dark Thaumaturgy. So he doesn't have to actually study hermetic mysticism to get the rewards of blood sorcery. And also to be free of the pyramid. Cazador should not be a regent, but alas, he won his certamen against Velioth. And also diablerised him. And made a pact with an Archduke of Hell.

Shadowheart: Setite by faith, Lasombra Abyss Mystic by lineage. Is actually kinfolk to the Children of Gaia, but she neither knows that nor would it help her to know that in any way.

Karlach: Abandoned Gangrel fledgling is taken in by Kind Older Vampire who is Going to Show Her the Ropes and Definitely Not Scheming; This is heart-warming and definitely not going to be tragic. (The horns and tail are permanent frenzy mutations).

Wyll: I got Toreador vibes over here. He's got an insanely high humanity rating, but Mizora's a diabolist and Wyll's caught in the net. Haven't decided whether Mizora or, if I stretch, Ulder is his sire. It's probably Mizora.

Lae'zel: Still thinking on that one, but I do get Sabbat crusader vibes. Ventrue antitribu? I think that fits. She's had heavy modification from a deceased Tzimisce pack mate.

[nevertrustanoracle]

Stitching this has got me wondering about who did it for Roger’s actual robes. Did he do it himself, or got someone else to do it for him? Currently leaning towards the idea that, at least post the extermination of the Cappadocians, he’s done the embroidery himself. That it’s a way for him to keep the old clan culture alive.

[porcelainseashore]

7 and 27 for Kai please👀

Haiiii!! Nice to see you pop by too 😁 Looks like Kai is in popular demand tonight!

7. How did their sire treat them?

Their relationship has been surprisingly well-adjusted, compared to all the other relationships Kai has had in their life tbh. I would even go as far as to say their conductor, Miles, treated them far worse than their sire, Elena. Elena has a thing for ruthlessness and ambition, and is unimpressed with the current lot of fledglings who have been sired into her clan, whom she believes are weak and unwilling to get their hands dirty. She senses in Kai an insatiable drive to get what they want, even though they are a little rough around the edges, but an iron fist is an iron fist. So, she mentored them to the best of her abilities, and nudged them in the directions she thought would make both of them look best under public scrutiny. In a way, Elena sees Kai as her trophy childe—one to place impossible expectations on, so that she can boast to her inner circle. Failure is never an option.

27. Do they have a clan they don’t particularly like?

It's beginning to be Hecata, thanks to their Cappadocian coterie mate, Albert, who not only has been collecting body parts and performing Oblivion ceremonies in front of Kai (which they are actually creeped out by, but have enough resolve not to show it), but also going on long, rambling expositions about wraiths, leaving everyone bored and confused. Oh, and the worst thing Albert has done is to lecture Kai, a Ventrue, about the importance of etiquette (excuse me???) and mocked the Camarilla on several occasions. So, that's not leaving the best impression on them, I must say.

[the-art-block]

I think your Moonrise Nation stuff is very interesting, and I was wondering how the Tremere and Giovanni/Hecata fit into it, being that they were usurper clans from Europe.

G'aaw thank you so much!! I'm glad so many people like the Moonrise Nation!

While the Tremere and Hecata clans didn't make contact in large numbers with the North American Continent until the setter periods, the Moonrise Nation's mythos still contextualizes them retroactively in the perspectives of the indigenous. (The same does of course go for the Banu Haqim, Lasombra, and the Setites. I'm not convinced there were no Cappadocians on the continent pre-colonies tho.)

Think of it in the same way that most European Christianized Vampires have some version of the Biblical "Cain" present in their cultural context, even though Cain would have by all accounts been an ancient man from the middle east and not a European. He is translated into their cultural understanding of their condition via Catholicism (Which itself was once a minor cult in the Roman Empire) and the stories it tells.

It would have been the same with indigenous vamps incorporating foreign concepts into their own mythos to keep things making sense to them.

Additionally, Blood Sorcery and Oblivion were present already on turtle island through the development of Caitiffs, and so these two clans in particular would be defined by their relation to the tribes interpretations of these Disciplines, rather than as "indigi-fied" clan identities themselves. It's more like they were equated with indigenous analogs that already existed prior to colonialism.

[Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that Caine was the very first vampire, I like that more as a parable in-setting rather than it being the authentic truth of vampiric origins. This game wants to be very Christian, and I've put in a lot of work to build up the Moonrise lore in a way that encapsulates the vibes without overtly including the Christo-European influences.]