Hello again. You've come back. It's nice and dark tonight, but you can hear the Anarch
gangs on their motorcycles. Occasionally there's wildlife that
skitters past and you always have to wonder is that a Nosferatu commanding a
rat? Is it a Gangrel commanding a dog or a
wolf? These are the risks you must take. This is a populated world and it is very
rare that a domain holds but a single Cainite,
including this one, small as it may be. Something we need to discuss, something I
am told that you do not yet understand, is the nature of being a vampire.
What is a Kindred, a Cainite, a vampire? What is a blood sucking leech but a
walking parasite? Surely there is more to it than that.
After all, we could not have existed for thousands of years if all we were were
base predators. Surely, surely there's more to it. It is a problem that has
vexed many philosophers among out kind. Many Cainites have tormented themselves,
twisted their Beasts into tatters, wondering "is there more to it than the
nightly grind of having to feed?" And we have to hope that there is. What is a
vampire? A vampire is Hunger incarnate. It would be all too simple to say that we
hunger just for the blood, but let us focus on the blood first. No doubt you
have sampled your first, your second, probably your third taste. Sometimes you
may have felt like you could not control that Hunger. That is natural. That will
always be there with you. When a vampire claims they have mastered their Hunger I
say they have merely found another crutch. They have found another way of
venting that Beast, that animal instinct inside that
compels them to do something torturous and sinful. No. All vampires suffer the
Hunger. Every action you take, especially when you are called to rouse your vitae
and compel it into some kind of action. For instance, you of your clan it is
likely that at some point or other you would have tried to sway the emotions of
a mortal, maybe to make them come back with you to a suitable place for feeding,
or to pick their pockets a little easily, maybe you just wanted to borrow some cash,
and so you got in their head, you made them feel like you were their best
friend. When you did that there was a stirring, a quaking, a quivering inside
you, the kind of which you would feel back when you are alive, when you were
going for some intense job interview, maybe on your wedding day, maybe the
first time you made love. That in-built fear. Maybe it was the fear you felt when
you saw your dad, your father, patriarch who used to hit you for reasons you never
understood as a child, but you would go to him when he was an old man, a
degenerate, a decrepit husk in a wheelchair, and yet you still feel that
shiver of fear inside, something so innate, something so tied to the soul. That
is our Hunger. We cannot truly suppress it, we can only sate it. And so whenever
we are compelled to do something, whenever we force our vitae into some
grand action, we feel the need to feed. We can suppress that need to feed at great cost
or we can indulge it at the earliest possible opportunity. That has caught
many vampires out, but it can also make a prince of a vampire.
It can make a noble of a vampire. A vampire that is respected with an
Elysium. The vampire who can control his Hunger at least to a limited degree
is like the vampire that can control its Beast, because it is more likely that
vampire can hold title, can hold position, can garner respect and not be prone to
flying off into frenzy, into compulsion as defined by their clan. Let us talk of
compulsions briefly. All clans have them. We all belong to different clans,
different bloodlines, and all of these sets of vampires, we all fear a different
stirring, a different compulsion to act in a certain way when we suppress what
is base and innate and desirable. That is when the Antediluvian takes over our
body and forces us into action. This is not the same as our clan banes. We all
suffer them, we all suffer curses, and if you believe some rumours they were curses
levied upon us by our Antediluvians. If you believe others they were
levied upon us by Caine. Some, some believe that it was God that cursed us each with
a weakness, but of course you would have to be of a certain religion and a
certain faithful bent to believe that. What is definitely the case is we all
suffer our own frailty. Some clans like to style it as a strength. The Ventrue
for instance like to say that their refined taste is, well, a strength. They
will not feed off a peasants blood. They will not feed off diseased blood. They will
only feed off this blood, no matter that this Ventrue only feeds from this type
of vessel, in this event or only feeds from that. They claim that is because they
have refinement. To the rest of us, we say no, it is because you are too weak.
You must maintain a herd comprised entirely of that kind of vessel to feel
safe and secure and yes, they can feed off others, but they do not get nearly as
much nourishment, nearly as much satiation when they do so. The Brujah,
they have tendency to frenzy, to lose control, to rage like a werewolf because
perhaps they are more in tune with their Humanity, their Beast than any other clan.
The Brujah when they call it a strength they say it is because they still have
that spark of life within them. They say it is because they still know what it
was to be human. They still feel passion, they still feel love, they still feel
anger. They're not subdued walking corpses like some of us. We see it as a
liability. Is it any reason so many of them have gone Anarch? It is because the
Camarilla will not have them. And so it goes, all clans have their banes, all
clans have their weaknesses. Some consider themselves stronger for them,
but they are fooling themselves. We must manage them, we must handle them, but I talk of
frenzy and I talk of the Beast and that may be something with which you are
unfamiliar. When you were first created as one of us, when you were first
Embraced and you awoke to the night, did you not feel the need to just tear your
sire's throat out? And when you saw the thick heavy heady pulse of the first
mortal you came across in your new form, you just wanted to eat them alive,
rip their heart out, and squeeze it and make their end painful! "Bring a savage
end to that blood bag," that was your Beast talking, and your Beast can have
come in many forms. Your beast is a predator. It is the predator inside you.
Some are decadent, some are sadistic, some are pure savagery.
But we all have a Beast and we are all beholden to that Beast, and some of us
try and put that Beast on a chain. Some try to command it. You look to the
Sabbat, the Sabbat believe they have full control over their Beasts, but all I
have to do is point at the Sabbat and say "well, is that truly the case?" The
Sabbat are after all the sect to indulge in the most acts of blood sacrifice, they are
the sect that devours each other, that are prone to diablerie, they are the
sect that run loose on the mortal populace and tear them limb from limb for fun, and
they are the ones who control their Beast... They say they control their Beast
because they feed it when they choose to, whereas the Camarilla, they just try and
keep it bottled up, and we all know what happens when you bottle up all that
stress or anger. All that rage, eventually it spills out at an inopportune moment,
causes embarrassment. So long, Camarilla vampire. There are some Kindred who
believe themselves masters of the Beast, and I have known some, some who have
never frenzied, not for centuries. Some claim they have found a state called
Golconda. Golconda is a semi-mythical state I have heard many talk of. It's a
pilgrimage of sorts, a state of enlightenment where you are perfectly in
harmony with Beast and Hunger, where you may even be able to see the sun and
tolerate it for a little while without it scorching the skin from your bones.
They call this Golconda. That after great acts of sacrifice... Self-sacrifice... Of
great act of wisdom, of being in touch with one's inner Humanity, you could
finally find Golconda. Well that is a nice dream, and whether it
is true or not, let us assume that it is, because it is nice to have hope and some
of us pine for the time that we were mortal. Is Golconda truly a fine state? So
few of us can reach i,t but when we do reach it, is it true that you become an
enlightened, holy, pure individual? Or is it more the case that you become a shark?
No longer driven by a savage Beast, you are a fish or a reptile. You are cold-
blooded. You just do what you will. You still drink blood, you still manipulate
the kine, but now you have full faculties. You can't blame the Beast, you can't
blame the Hunger, you do it because you want to. Is Golconda utopia or is it true
sin? I am no scholar on these things. I'm a scholar on many things but Golconda
has always seemed a little too ephemeral for me. So I'm asked "what is a
vampire biologically?" Now, that is a subject I do know a little about. How do
we walk, how do we talk, how do we think? Our bodies are dead.
If you cut us, we do not bleed. We do not leak blood. We of course
suffer the same harm to flame and
corrosive material and the like that a mortal would, but many instruments of
harm: Bullets, blades, hammers... they barely leave
a dent on our dead skin. How does the biology work? How do you make it make
sense if we are anything other than supernatural? For centuries I have
studied the existence, the place in the natural cycle of
vampires. Are we a natural element on this Earth, or are we entirely
supernatural? Which part of our bodies are still living to compel us? I have
vivisected my share of vampires to find out what works and what doesn't, and I am
sure the Second Inquisition have done the same thing, and we all come to the
same horrifying conclusion: We are dead bodies. While the heart clearly contains
some great spiritual power because putting a stake through it does paralyse
us, it does not kill us. Yes, if you decapitate a vampire you will render the
body to ash. The skull may survive in some strange circumstances, but somehow
the severing of the head is enough to kill, so what is it about the head? What
is it about the brain? I have cracked open a vampire's skull to see whether
the brain is active and the rest is not. The brain is inactive like every other
organ in the vampire's body. It is withered, it is a husk, it is
deprived of moisture. Another question: Where does the vitae go when we drink?
Does it just sit in our empty stomach until we have cause to use it? Do we
absorb it holistically, like a sponge? Does it sit stagnant in our veins? Or
is it like so many other things: Supernatural, ephemeral, it appears when
we call to it, it disappears when we do not. That is a great question. Something I
would long for a true answer to and something I feel we will never find. I
have seen vampires bloated like ticks, abdomen swollen after feeding in a
reverie. I have seen vampires fully fed who look exactly the same as they
did before. It is a great mystery, our kind, and the
biology thereof, but I enjoy studying it, I enjoy seeking mysteries, I enjoy seeking their
answers, and if you find any of those answers do tell me. What is our place in
this universe? It is a great question and many philosophers have stumbled over it.
Do we have a role? Did God put us here to test the kine? If you believe in such
things, or are — to go back to my original point — we just parasites designed to
ride on the bellies of mortal civilisation, drink from them, pass on
when they die? I suppose the only way of finding out is being around long enough
to find out what our fate will be. Maybe when Gehenna comes and we meet our time
of judgement, we will find out what God, what the world has planned for us, but I
have a feeling, a fear it is significantly more mundane. When the world
ends, we will end. When we end, the mortals will not miss us. There will be no
mourning of our passing, because we hide. We do not exist according to most kine,
and perhaps it is better that way. Some Kindred like to claim that they are
immune to feelings of love, of passion, lust, but that is clearly not true. If a
vampire's capable of hatred, and a vampire is capable anger, and we clearly
are, of fear, of loathing, paranoia, why should we be denied those feelings so
often associated with positivity? We can feel loved. We can attach ourselves to
companions without the heady rush of vitae bonding us.
We can know love, but can love last as long as vampires last? Can we feel lust?
Of course we can feel lust. Just because we are dead, does not mean we still lack
the attractions that we gained in life. You could take it to its natural extreme
and look at obsession, and say vampires do not feel these healthy emotions, they
feel obsessed, fixated. It is a jaded and a cynical view of the way we act, but
there may be some truth to it. When I cast my mind back to my relationship
with my prince for so many years, was that loyalty? Was it love?
Was it obsession? Was he sneaking me vitae to guarantee my slavery? I cannot know.
All I know is that I diligently served and stood by his side until he had no
further use for me.
What is a vampire? There are many pithy responses to this.
The vampire is a human being with many grave and terrible flaws. With terrible
urges that we struggle to control. That some mortals would look upon and think we
should not be on this Earth, but this Earth is ours just as much as it is
theirs. Well, they will not come to know us; we
know them. While they will not feed from us, we will feed from them, because we
have every right to survive. We have just as much right to survive as they do.
Whether you believe we are cursed by God or blessed by Caine, that does not matter.
We exist and until some almighty omniescent figure strikes us all down we will
continue to exist and we will continue to prey on the weak,
as we are predators. What are you? You are a neonate with much to learn.
What am I? An elder with great experience. But in the end we are the same as we
were before we were Embraced, just with diabolical hungers sinful urges.
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