#i decided to make this one single post so nobody missed bits like the Toreador one

[mekanikaltrifle]

Unlife: once more, with feeling

Clan Brujah headcanon: their rage is alien. 

This is not to say that their anger is explicitly the work of outer beings or extraterrestrials (that has gone down badly in VtM lore before. Just check out the removed lore for Vicissitude and find that one out).

No, their rage is alien in that it is truly the works of inhumanity; this fury is as like that of a god, and something they could never have known in mortal life. It’s nothing like human anger, or even that of other vampires. Borderline uncontrollable, but seemingly bottomless, there is no way a mortal could know rage like this-- it would rip their muscles from the bone to ever attempt to live through it. Alien in that it has no source, at least not one an individual Brujah can really pinpoint with any degree of accuracy; it’s likely the Beast, and definitely the Curse of their blood, but beyond that? Even staring into it is enough to blind you. And it need not always be in the throes of Frenzy, though Frenzy they do. The rage is impossible to define because it does not feel like mortal anger, but the only framework they have is that of their former life. To an outsider, that is the only reference they can append to this unknowable deathly force. And it is always there even outside of Frenzy.

Consider delving deeper into the rage, the feeling. All Brujah feel, far deeper, far sharper than any other Kindred. Each of them may think they know feeling: melancholy, for instance, runs so deep in Kindred existence one could be forgiven for thinking it is what they are meant for, and the Brujah are no different. The image of the rough-and-ready street warrior is a perfect cover to obfuscate the misery, and the elation, the sheer staggering valley of raw emotion every Brujah has howling in the depths of their cracked-open soul. How could the other Kindred ever know how it feels to live an unlife with no protection from your own self? And this feeling, these raw emotions, they lie to you. 

Every memory of feeling from before the Embrace falls flat below the Curse-- gaslit by your own Beast-- and you steadily lose the ability to understand ‘moderation’ or how you could ever have felt so calm. Sure, you can act a certain way, you can mask what you’re feeling, but sooner or later it will rear its head again, it will demand you feel, at all costs and what a cost that will be.

The Malkavian Embrace is supposedly a mind-shattering experience that renders every single Malk irrevocably mad… and could the same not be true of the Brujah?

An Embrace so overpowering, so damning and paradoxically alive with emotion, fear, as well as bewilderment, the vertigo of having your life turned upside down and inside out… nobody could feel that and live. So, you die. And you come back an entity of feeling more embattled on all sides than anyone could ever know, because to feel so deep it kills… that’s a lonely way to exist. A heart that lies still under your cold ribs cannot break from the stress. And what is dead may never die. So they survive it, even when they shouldn’t. 

So the Brujah, they come up with causes and stories and political battles to direct this rage; what else can they do, under the weight of it all? Better to fight out the energy than to let it fester, or you’ll rot away from the inside-- forever, and ever, without end. 

The other Kindred, they hate you because they do not understand… even if they act like they do. You’re a street punk, one of the rabble. Reckless and meat-headed and vulgar so unlike the graceful, emotion-stunted beings of ages long passed. And so many of them have seen from the outside what a Frenzied Brujah looks like, and completely missed the true horror of it. To be so overwhelmed, never able to surface for more than a few days, in an endless sea of what the living enjoy so easily, so broadly, proudly even.

Poor lost souls.