Send the Eighth Plague
This is one of the most destructive powers among any of the Disciplines. An ancient Gangrel called Valentinian demonstrated its immense potential for ruination shortly after the Fourth Crusade. Angry with Italian Cainites intruding upon his lands, he called upon his mastery of Animalism and brought starvation down on an entire trading town. Send the Eighth Plague can lay waste to villages, towns and entire baronies, for it calls upon rats, mice, locusts and other pests to gather and plague a target of the wielder's choosing. In the Dark Medieval, where every harvest is a gamble, the mere threat of this power can intimidate Cainite princes and lords, who would rather not see their source of blood starve to death.
In the modern world, international transportation has rendered small localized famines less of a threat to vampires in their large cities. However, vermin infestations can still be exceptionally troublesome in the hands of a creative user: What opera house will remain open if it cannot keep cockroaches and rats out of the aisles?
System: The character must sit in quiet meditation somewhere in the area she wishes to Plague for at least half an hour. Then, the character slashes her hands open and bleeds into the soil while the player pends ten blood points and rolls Charisma + Animal Ken (difficulty 6). The number of successes must be divided between time and areas of effect, as shown below:
| Successes | Area | Time of Effect |
| 1 success | A Single Field (about 1 acre) | 24 hours |
| 2 | 2 adjacent fields | 3 days |
| 3 | All the fields of a village (about 1 square mile) | 1 week |
| 4 | All the fields of several villages (several square miles/a downtown core) | One Month |
| 5 | All the fields of a large swath of land (100 square miles/a major city) | 1 season |
The vermin eat anything they can find, gnawing their way into larders and stripping fields of crops. While a duration of 24 hours is tolerable and three days is survivable, anything beyond that is a catastrophe; dedicated extermination is required to save stored food and crops.
