Zantosa
Introduction: The Zantosas don’t really seem to have a reason for continued existence. In fact, if the average Sabbat vampire was asked her opinion of them (assuming she had even heard of revenant families), she would likely reply with a blank look. The Zantosa family appears to have outlived its usefulness, and exists primarily to continue its members’ decadent, self-indulgent life-styles, and to provide entertainment for the Toreador antitribu, Serpents of the Light, and Tzimisce.
Once the cream of Eastern Europe’s social elite, the Zantosas have curdled and withdrawn, forsaking long-term socio-political manipulation for short-term gratification. The primary family pursuits these nights include petty crime, vice, black marketeering, and pushing the boundaries of sensation. Indeed, the only apparent reason the Zantosas haven’t been wiped out by a Black Hand-led pogrom already is that the end results wouldn’t be worth the effort expended to cleanse their penthouses, nightclubs, and movie studios.
Recently, an internal purge rocked the Zantosa family estate in New York. No less than two dozen family members, most with previously impeccable reputations (as Zantosa reputations go), were put to death in sudden and grisly fashion by household elders. Sabbat inquiries were notably cursory (“let them kill themselves off” seems to have been the general attitude), and were met with responses that the destroyed parties had been caught dabbling in dark sorcery — a response that, curiously enough, did not warrant an Inquisition investigation.
The truth, known only to the Zantosa family’s upper-most echelon, is far more ominous. For the past several centuries, the Zantosa family has guarded a torporous form believed to be a Tzimisce vampire of great age. A year or so ago, the crypt in which the body in question lay was found empty with no prior warning and no evidence. No explanation has yet been forthcoming.
Disciplines: Auspex, Presence, Vicissitude
Weakness: Zantosas are rather weak-willed when it comes to resisting temptation. Accordingly, whenever a Zantosa is exposed to a particularly pleasurable experience, she must make a Willpower roll (difficulty determined by the Storyteller, depending on the experience in question). Failure indicates that the Zantosa is now obsessed with or addicted to that particular sensation (which can be anything from doing a new drug, to performing a particular sexual position, to enjoying a sumptuous wine, to the act of being fed upon), and will do damn near anything to experience it again.
Zantosas are also unable to spend Willpower to resist any supernatural power that entices them toward a new source of pleasure, and many have met untimely ends at the hands of Cainites, fae, and stranger creatures.
