The Corpse in the Monster
This path enhances the Cappadocian understanding of the unliving form and allows the user to fully experience the corpse, the gateway between life and death. The path lets the Cappadocian apply some of the corpse's traits to a vampire, and she can enhance or reduce these traits at various levels of the power.
1) Masque of Death:
The character with this ability can assume a visage of death or inflict that shape or another Cainite. The character's flesh becomes pallid and thin (if it is not already), and skin pulls tight against bone. This ability can be very useful, as it allows one to hide in plain sight in a tomb or crypt at any time (though the character remains as vulnerable to sunlight and fire as ever). When a Cainite uses this power on another Cainite, the victim gains the same corpselike demeanor. In this sense, the ability works as something of a minor curse.
System: The player spends one blood point for the character to gain the form described. Those afflicted with the Masque of Death lose two points of Dexterity and Appearance (minimum of 1 in Dexterity and 0 in Appearance) for the duration of the power. The player also gets two extra dice to his Intimidation dice pool, should he wish to terrify any onlookers. Also, if the character remains perfectly still, observers must roll five successes on a Perception + Medicine roll (difficulty 7) to distinguish the character from a standard corpse. The player need not roll anything to have the character stop moving - vampires have no autonomic functions.
If the user inflicts Masque of Death on another character, he must spend a blood point, touch the target and then make a Stamina + Medicine roll (difficulty of the target's Stamina + 3). The Masque of Death lasts for a full night and day, unless the character who created the masque wishes to extinguish its effects earlier.
2) Cold of the Grave:
The dead feel no pain, though, of course, most undead do. With this ability, the character can temporarily take on the unfeeling semblance of the dead, in order to protect herself from physical and emotional harm. When assuming the Cold of the Grave, the vampire's skin becomes unusually cold. When she speaks, her breath mists even in warm air - those with exceptional senses might even see a slight red tinge to the breath.
The power brings a sense of lethargy over the character, as a mortal might feel under the influence of a mildly unpleasant disease. It becomes difficulty to rouse oneself to action, and very little seems important enough to really worry about. The corpse has no worries after all.
System: The player spends one Willpower point. For the remainder of the scene, the character takes no wound penalties, and the player gains an additional die to all dice pools that involve resisting emotional manipulation, such as Intimidation or Empathy. However, the player also loses a die from dice pools to emotionally manipulate others. The character is something of a cold fish to those she interacts with, and they do not respond readily to her. The Cold of the Grave does not protect the character against the depredations of the Beast, though. She may be emotionally cold on the surface, but if others taunt and anger her sufficiently, she is still the subject to frenzy as normal.
3) Curse of Life:
The Curse of Life inflicts some of the undesirable traits of the living upon the undead, removing their corpselike nature and creating a false life to remind them of the worst things about being alive. Targets of this power regain only the unpleasant aspects of life, as culled from the memory of the Discipline's user.This may include mundane hunger and thirst, sweat and other excretions, the need to urinate and defecate, a decrease in sensory acuity and a particular vulnerability to attacks that the character might shrug off as a hunter of the night.
System: The player spends one Willpower and rolls Intelligence + Medicine (difficulty 8) to affect a target within line of sight and no farther than 20 yards from the character. If the roll succeeds, the target suffers the weaknesses of the living without gaining any benefit from that state. He does not become immune to sunlight or holy artifacts, for instance. However, he does become badly distracted by mundane need, to the net result of his player suffering a +2 difficulty penalty to all rolls. He can ignore these distractions at the cost of one Willpower point per scene. Additionally, the victim cannot use blood to raise his Physical Attributes while this power is in effect, and Willpower cannot eliminate this penalty. The power remains in effect until the next sunset.
4) Gift of the Corpse:
This power, one of the most potent on the Corpse in the Monster path, enables a Cainite to ignore most of her race's inherent weaknesses for a short time. A dead body is not particularly vulnerable to sunlight, holy artifacts, frenzy, or being staked through the heart, and so it is with a Cappadocian using the Gift of the Corpse. As with Cold of the Grave, above, the character using this power takes on an even more deathlike mien than the one typically associated with the Cappadocian clan: It lasts for less than a minute, typically, but that time may be enough to enable a character to charge through a burning building without fearing frenzy or instant death. Vampiric scholars believe that this ability entered the hands of the clan through some kind of bargain between an archangel and the Antediluvian Cappadocius. Just which archangel is unclear although Gabriel - the angel of death who is said to have cursed Caine with the blood of hunger - is a leading candidate.
System: The player spends one Willpower and rolls Stamina + Occult (difficulty 8). for every success, the character can spend one turn in a state in which he is more akin to an animated corpse than a vampire. Holy artifacts and sanctified ground have no effect, and the character is immune to frenzy and Rotschreck. Sunlight does only mild damage (bashing damage only, and then only if bare skin is exposed on a clear day). Being staked through the heart is only as much of a danger as getting stabbed through his dead spleen would be. Fire harms him only as it would a mortal - causing lethal damage instead of aggravated.
Should the character end the power's duration while exposed to any of the aforementioned harmful things, he immediately takes full effect. If he is staked, he become (sic) immobilized; if he is on or near fire, he begins to take the damage a Cainite should take, and he must immediately roll against Rotschreck.
Those who can see the character's halo during this power's duration may not a pulsating red tinge to it, and his appearangce changes as described previously. He is free to use all of his other vampiric abilities, however, including the advantages in soaking bashing and lethal damage.
Use of this ability can be construed as a rejection of even the echo of humanity within a character's road advancement at the Storyteller's discretion.
5) Gift of Life:
The Cappadocians' obsession with the line between life and death has lead them to approach - but never quite reach - the line between the mortal and the undead. Try as they might, they cannot give themselves both the richness of mortal life and the power and immortality of vampirism. Most of the path represents the result of various experiments down such roads. The Gift of Life is the most complete one known outside certain elder sects. Within it, the character can experience the best and most positive things about being alive. The overwhelming hunger for blood temporarily abates, allowing the character to consume and enjoy food and drink. She an experience and enjoy sexual coupling as she wishes, and the sun does not burn her.
The Gift of Life comes with a dark, terrible cost, however. Its use is almost sure to result in the death of a mortal, as the vampire must expend an enormous quantity of vitae in order to initiate it. The Discipline's effects last until the midnight after the character uses the power, so it is in her best interests to use it just after midnight. Those few Cainites outside the Cappadocian clan who have heard of this power distrust and fear the Graverobbers even more than other vampires might. The Clan of Death believes that his reaction comes from envy (or a fear of being attacked by daylight),. but vampiric scholars agree that so obviously flouting God's curse on Caine as a tremendously dangerous thing to do, one that might bring a heavy cost in the nights to come.
System: The player spends 12 blood points (yes, 12), burning as much blood as possible each turn until she meets that level. She then rolls Stamina + Occult (difficulty 6) and needs only one success for the power to work. A botch has catastrophic effects. The character might be instantly killed or might inadvertently Embrace her victim, for example. If it takes longer than one turn to spend the necessary blood to enact this ability, it does not take effect until all 12 points have been spent. However, the blood must be spent continuously - the vampire cannot burn five, run off and feed, then burn seven more an hour later. On the other hand, she may feed as she activates the power - in one turn she might burn one blood point while drinking three. Since few Cainites above the 7th generation can easily expend such an amount of blood, the most efficient way to activate this power is to have a human nearby who can be sacrificed to power the transformation.
After her transformation, the character gains many traits of an ordinary human. she is largely immune to the scorching effects of the sun (Fortitude difficulties to soak damage from direct sunlight are halved, and she takes no damage if she is sufficiently covered), and she can experience and enjoy many of the fine things about human life. She retains a few of her vampiric benefits, however. Fortitude and Auspex abilities remain in place if she has either of those Disciplines. The Storyteller may allow her to retain other disciplines as well if he deems them dramatically appropriate. She also retains the vampire's benefits when it comes to handling bashing damage. However, she is still vulnerable to holy artifacts, human faith and being staked. Her blood remains vitae, not human blood. Use of this ability - which creates a mockery of human life - many interfere with a character's road advancement, at the Storyteller's discretion.
The vampire is no more vulnerable to fire than any other mortal while in this half-alive state, but she still suffers slightly from the Beast. Frenzy and Rotschreck difficulties are halved (round up). She can remain active during the day without road-based dice pool checks, although she is certainly tired during the day, since that is not her usual time of activity.
Her Beast exacts a dangerous retribution when her day of "life" is done. Although its influence is greatly suppressed during this power's duration, the Beast has its way with the vampire for the next six nights, as all difficulties to resist frenzy increase by three. The wise Cappadocian hides herself away somewhere during that period, but, depending on road and temperament, enforced isolation might drive her to frenzy on her own.
