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In Short

Most of these Bloodlines are, however, very playable which is a strong mark in favor of this product. Additionally, their histories and the bits of fiction and rumor associated with them are all very well done. While it is a small number of Bloodlines, each one is given enough attention that they feel very cohesive and escape some of the vagueness often found in other Vampire products. The biggest reason to avoid this product, really, is just that some of the Bloodlines may not be to your taste. Read on and find out!

The Physical Thing

This product has no index, but has a table of contents that makes finding the Bloodlines a snap. This product contains no ads.

The Ideas

Under the Cover

Bron - Ventrue based.

Many of the Bloodlines have multiple origin stories, and the Bron have the two most detailed. Either the Bron are descended from a guardian of the Cup of Christ who drank Christ’s blood in an attempt to cure his vampirism or they are descended from Welsh and Irish soldiers returned to life by Bran the Blessed using a magical cauldron. Either way, this Bloodline has been cursed with a powerful wanderlust (their Weakness) that prevents them from staying in one place for too long. Whenever they try to settle down, their special Bloodline Weakness turns the local land and peoples in it against them – forcing them to move on or perish.

Members of the group can vary quite a bit. They have little organization, due to their wandering, and rarely find themselves able to ally with a Covenant. They’re all looking for something. A few hope to find the Holy Grail, based on fragments of prophecy that it will heal their wanderlust and restore them to life. Others believe they’ve been empowered by the Devil or some sort of malign force, and seek our religious artifacts in order to destroy them. In either instance, this is a focused Bloodline but perfectly playable. A wandering Kindred Holy Grail seeker will no doubt appeal to many players.

Crochan

The special Discipline of the Bron gives them greater control over the healing properties of vampiric Vitae. They can heal themselves more quickly, restore limbs, heal others, and turn their enemy’s healing powers against them. Bitter Humours, the third rank of this Discipline, allows the vampire to change an enemy’s act of healing into an act of harm – instead of their opponent healing damage the blood bursts through wounds and aggravates the condition.

The Carnival - Daeva based.

This Bloodline began when a deformed young woman was raped, tortured, and made into a pricey sideshow attraction of a traveling circus. A young vampire observed her one evening, and took pity on her. He Embraced her and, in short order, the two of them seized control of the carnival and turned it to their own ends. Some other circus freaks were also Embraced, and eventually the carnival became a traveling blood circus that took far more than money from the people that went to watch.

This whole section does an extremely good job of driving home the carnival life to the reader. It’s enough to make you want to run a game similar to the HBO series Carnivale, a circus based campaign dealing with strange and dark powers. Carnival lifestyles, how members organize themselves, how money is handled, and what the vampires of the group do in order to secure their Vitae are all topics discussed at some length. The major Weakness of members of this Bloodline is that they all have a freakish disability – they acquire the Nosferatu Weakness in addition to the Daeva one (all Bloodlines retain the original Weakness in this product) and have to come up with some sort of appropriate deformity such as reptile skin, missing limbs, missing lower jaw, and other such things.

The Show

The unique Discipline of The Carnival, The Show allows for a variety of strange carnival abilities to be performed. It starts out allowing the vampire to ignore wound penalties (Geek Trick), then allows for contortion, spider crawling, rubber skin (sort of an increased contortion), and finally Siamese twin (absorbing another vampire into the body). The powers are all very thematic and tie in neatly with the sorts of performances a carnival member would want to put on. Since carnies gain status by having weird and spectacular performances, this Discipline will be a *lot* more useful in a game focused on the circus than a mixed Chronicle.

Children of Judas - Daeva based.

This Bloodline is descended from a suicide turned vampire, and all members lust for despair and self destruction. The Children can only occupy a city in very small numbers, as too many of them leads to an increase in the suicide rate so high it threatens the Masquerade. Indeed, their special Weakness is that they lose Willpower whenever they pass up an opportunity to explore another’s pain. The Children surround themselves with the wretched, delving into their life stories and feasting upon their grief.

In addition to presenting a very flavorful Bloodline, this section goes into detail discussing suicide and its causes. A moderate amount of this discussion is serious and useful to the Vampire Storyteller, but the best parts delve into supernatural causes of suicide and make the reader imagine all sorts of interesting mystery stories that could focus around this strange group of vampires.

Despond

The signature Discipline of the Children of Judas, Despond creates doubt, doom, and generally suicidal feelings in its target. At the lower end it results in the target losing actions or suffering a penalty to all actions, which could be a powerful tool both in a straight up fight or in the politically charged environment of Elysium. As they grow in power they can create powerful melancholy that makes the target unable to act, and create temporary derangements. At Despond rank five the vampire can Embrace anyone who has committed suicide since the last sunrise.

Galloi - Nosferatu based.

This Bloodline of monsters turned beauties is strongly associated with the Circle of the Crone, which is no surprise given their practice of bathing in tubs filled with their own blood. Their origin story differs from group to group, but generally involves worshippers of the beauty goddess Cybele who were granted the gift of covering themselves with their own blood in order to enjoy a strange and terrible beauty. Their features become androgynous, their skin like white porcelain, and those who gaze upon them know that something is wrong. Instead of overcoming the Nosferatu curse, it’s simply changed into a disturbing sort of beauty. Additionally, (Weakness) if this Bloodline does not regularly bathe in their own blood they become even more horrific than a standard Nosferatu.

The group is interesting since they tend to run strange bathhouses in hidden parts of the big city. At these houses they can effectively sell beauty to anyone willing to pay their price, and the whole idea of a group of vampires selling beauty is exactly the sort of interesting low-key supernatural activity that keeps me coming back to White Wolf products.

Taurobolium

The unique Discipline of the Galloi allows a member to apply their blood to themselves or another in order to give supernatural beauty. Like Vigor and other Disciplines that don’t have differing abilities by rank, Taurobolium gives more beauty at a greater cost the higher the Discipline is taken. From one to five bonus dice to all Presence and Manipulation dice pools, depending on the Discipline’s level. This is an incredibly powerful advantage, and a member of this Bloodline could easily become the true power behind any throne.

Most of the Bloodlines in this product have several Devotions, including the Galloi who have four. The most notable is a Devotion that allows them to obscure a mortal from electronic surveillance and photographs, much like a vampire, or to make a vampire completely and clearly visible to these devices. This is an incredibly powerful ability that would likely result in vampires the world over seeking the Galloi out.

Gulikan - Daeva based.

The result of strange alchemy, the Gulikan Bloodline is both blessed and cursed with an incredible olfactory sense. I know, a super sense of smell sounds silly, but it’s a very well done Bloodline. Their big Weakness is that they become obsessed with certain scents, and suffer penalties when they don’t pursue those scents. This creates a very easy plot hook for the Storyteller, as an awareness role to pick up a new scent is made at the start of every session (unless they’re currently obsessed). On the plus side, they have the general benefit of an incredible sense of smell. This is another great way for the Storyteller to provide interesting and flavorful information to the group. Apart from that, however, their organization and abilities are very cool.

Members of this Bloodline are always perfumers, learning the secret mystical alchemy from their master. Over time they grow in skill and, eventually, become masters themselves and find a city to call their home. Once there, a Gulikan is a powerful influence in Kindred politics. Not only are their perfumes, tobaccos, and other items exotic and the subject of much social attention for the vampires able to afford their prices, the Gulikan Discipline is insidious and extremely powerful for the clever vampire.

Ortam

The unique Discipline of the Gulikan, Ortam is a general ability that has two major effects. First, their special scents can cause those who smell them to move one step towards a Vinculum with the creator. This is a powerful ability that gives the vampire some sway over his clients. Second, the vampire can buy Devotions to put OTHER Disciplines into the scents. A cigar could have a scent that produces Nightmare, or a Perfume that produces Majesty. Very neat, very flavorful powers. The only downside here is that the ranks don’t mean so much in this Discipline – some players might just take one rank. A simple house rule can resolve this, however.

Kuufukuki - Mekhet based.

The World of Darkness has a surprising number of vampires, werewolves, and others derived from ancient Japan, so when I was confronted with another group of Japanese vampires I was at first turned off. However, the Kuufukuki are very well done. The Bloodline is based around an old martial arts instructor who was turned into a vampire. He only drank the bare minimum he required to stay alive, and practiced blood starvation and control of the Beast. Over the centuries he has trained many, many vampire martial artists to control their Beast and only take what sustenance they need. In many ways this Bloodline fills the “disciplined wandering martial artist” niche, and it does so well.

The history and background stories for the Kuufukuki were especially flavorful and remain some of the most entertaining the book has to offer. Just imagining a vampire martial arts master dueling another vampire in a rice field to save his village presses all sorts of “cool” and “neat” buttons for me. The variant history information, including a group of prostitutes who are an alternate version of this group, is particularly neat.

Shihai

The signature Discipline of the Kuufukuki, Shihai allows a vampire to starve herself and resist Wassail (low vitae frenzy). At the lower end the Discipline allows the vampire to gain large bonuses and then automatic resistance to Wassail. As the Discipline improves the vampire may automatically resist any frenzy at the cost of three lethal damage, and eventually she can remove frenzy from another vampire at the cost of five lethal damage. Not a bad person to have around in any Coterie, especially at social functions.

Macellarius - Ventrue based.

This Bloodline of extremely obese vampires traces its origins back to Roman feasts and orgies. At some point in the distant past a truly obese and gluttonous human was Embraced. He carried his gluttony into his life as a vampire, however, gorging himself on blood soaked bread and, eventually, human flesh. Through will and feasting his blood changed, creating the Macellarius. These vampires enjoy eating, they enjoy being fine hosts to blood tasting parties and other events, but above all they enjoy delicacies. In many instances this means they enjoy the rare blood of the living and the dead, and in some cases the flesh of the living.

Their major Weakness is that they are incredibly obese, often starting out at 400lbs or more. Upon being Embraced into this Bloodline a vampire gains 100-150 pounds over just three nights. This results in 10 again not applying and 1s subtracting from all successes on Dexterity based rolls. Despite their unpleasant appearance, the Macellarius tend to be very refined in their tastes and go out of their way to create pleasant social events.

Gustus

Gustus, the unique Discipline of the Macellarius, allows them to feast on many things. At the lower end they can eat the flesh of humans, vampires, werewolves, and perhaps some other things and receive sustenance (Vitae) from it. As they continue they may spend more blood points in a single round, poison food, vomic acidic blood, and eventually bite chunks out of their adversaries and gain their skills and Disciplines. It’s a very flavorful, if disturbing, Discipline and it offers quite a few nice abilities.

Melissidae - Ventrue based.

A young woman fascinated by bees sought to create her own unique society where she was the Queen and other people were Workers. The society failed while she was alive, but after her Embrace she tried it again. This time something changed, her will overwrought her blood, and she found the people following her doing exactly what she wanted. They became an extension of her will, her Workers, and at that time she became the founder of the Melissidae. The Bloodline Weakness, here, is that the Queen begins suffering severe penalties when she is away from the Workers for too long.

This Bloodline is extremely rare, and it’s very unlikely two members would locate in the same geographic area. Members (female only) often create some sort of business, such as an S&M club, where they can put their Workers to, well, work and easily recruit more folk. A homeless shelter would be another good example of a Melissidae hive, and the section does a great job of evoking creepy business ideas. It also has some wonderfully creepy urban legends for the group.

Melissid Animalism

The group’s special power is that, instead of the normal Animalism rules, they gain a total +2 bonus to affect insects and a -1 penalty to affect anything else with Animalism. They also have access to several (seven) interesting Devotions, including one that allows them to use a bee as a spy.

Players - Mekhet based.

This humorous addition is a little out of place, but I’m sure they have urban legends surrounding them. Much like one of Dan Davenport’s puns, however, those legends are only going to elicit a groan. You see, the Player’s are a Bloodline of celebrity wannabes. These vampires want to be Lestat, Angel, Spike, or Wesley Snipes. They dress in glitzy clothes and drive fine cars when they can, they hang out at ritzy clubs and rub elbows with the stars. They receive death threats from Princes who are terrified they’ll Embrace celebrities. In general, they’re posers.

Despite the silliness of the group, the section does a good job of fleshing them out. Different types of Players are discussed, what motivates them, how other vampires deal with them, and similar information is all presented. I think it would be really fun to play one, actually.

Various Abilities

The Players gain access to Majesty as a Clan Discipline. Additionally, they have access to several (ok, two) Devotions. They also have the most amazing Devotion I’ve ever read. Faking It, a Majesty/Obfuscate Devotion, allows them to pretend to be good at something they’re not. One example use is called “I Know Kung Fu” wherein the Player makes a bunch of kung fu motions and onlookers see them as the graceful maneuvers of a martial arts master.

My Take

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