Path of Death and the Soul
A Path on the Road of Bones
Nickname: Necronomists
The dead do not walk. The dead rot. Sometimes their sould linger in a tormented in-between state. But eventually even they pass, to Heaven or Hell or to whatever fate lies beyond earthly experience. And yet, vampires walk and vampires are dead. Their organs are rotted, vestigal things. The Embrace purges out every bodily fluid but one. Vampires are dead, but they walk. How can this be?
The simple, glib anser is that vampires are cursed by Caine's legacy. But a mere curse cannot defy the order of things.
Vampires are therefore something else, something not perfectly understood. Various undead have tried to solve this mystery. A few have made it an obsession. The necronomists are among them. Death, the afterlife, the strange anatomy of vampirism, the scinece of the soul - these are believed to be the Enochian keys to opening the secrets of the universe.
If only they could be understood.
Basic Beliefs: Vampires are dead things. They are cursed, animated corpses, but they are dead, cold and unliving. A vampire's soul is trapped, cut off from the mortal world in life, but unalbe to move on. This morbid state has been the subject of discussion by Cainite philosophers since the nights of the First City. Fascination with the issue has never wavered and Kindred of these Final Nights still pursue the secrets of their exisence and the knowledge of death.
Vampire existence is a key to all knowledge. Straddling two worlds - the land of the living and the land of the dead - a vampire must claw the secrets of Creation from the night. To attempt to unravel such mysteries, a necronomist must first understand her own state and know what it means ot be undead. Necronomists do not speak of a "living world" and a "dead world." They sepak of the rational universe and the irrational realm of secrets, spirits and pain. Students of this path must develop a deep comprehension of the soul, that spark of irrational divinity that exists in the rational universe. A necronomist must discover how the soul interacts with the body, and how the soul migrates from its clay shell to what lies beyond.
Necronoists may project a demeanor of cold rationality, but they believe that powerful emotions - hate, love, despair - are expressions of the spirit bubbling up from within. These powerful eruptions are to be treasured and explored. Followers believe the heart of the human romantic, and the physical, dead heart of the vampire. When a wooden stake is driven through an undead heart, a vampire is paralyzed. Thus, when the soul is violated, a vampire cannot move. The soul drives a vampire's corpse. Like the ghosts that necronomists study, vampires are driven by emotion, by the heart. Blood flowing from the vampire's heart gives power to his dead limbs. Blood transubstantiated from base liquid and iron becomes magical and fuels a vampire's powers. The blood literally is the life, and the fountain of all magic and might.
Like several other faiths, the Path of Death and the soul seeks to repress the Beast by denying it, and by pursuing knowledge and understanding against all else. But the knowledge these vampires seek is scientific comprehension of the vampiric state and the Beast that sleeps within. Necronomists repress the Beast and study death so they may at last confront and destroy their inner creature. The Beast is believed a viceral, animalistic ting and is diametrically opposed to the soul.
So, the soul is the key to a vampire's existence. If the soul can be understood, a scientist has a key to understanding the irrational universe. It is then his duty to pass that information along, into the rational world. Necronomists are therefore a group of academics. Though they are obsessed with death and the world beyond mortal perception, their interests are not the scrabblings of the occultist or the ritualism of the necromancer. They seek to categorize, dissect and experiment.
Avenues of Research: Two very promising lines of investigation into the soul have provide to involve the Asian ("Cathayan") vampires and the thin-blooded. Stories claim that the souls of both of these vampire "species" spend a little time in the Underworld before returning to life. Some followers of this path work on a "unified theory of vampirism" and seek knowledge from Noddists and others to establish the exact nature of the relationship between Cathayans and Cainites. Some necronomists suggest that Cathayans are actually childer of one of the so-called Second Generation whose curse has changed over the ages and miles. Instead of the "blood" being passed down from sire to childe, the Curse has become an expression of some predetermined destiny. Necronomists have recorded ghosts speak of things known as "death signs." Perhaps these marks designate all Cainites. Perhaps no vampire is ever Embraced randomly, but some other force of death or predestination leads sire to childe. Many vampires dismiss such possibilities, but to necronomists they remain tantalizing possibilties. Perhaps a fated Embrace is all part of an Antediluvian plan.
