Thread by @jachilli

Howdy, #vamily! A few new streaming chronicles have recently started, so it's a good time to look into the themes of Vampire. While these chronicles and your own certainly have their own themes, some ideas are almost universally true to Vampire stories. #Vampirethemasquerade

𝔸 𝔹𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕀 𝕒𝕞, 𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥 𝕒 𝔹𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕀 𝕓𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖

(Nicola Samori)

What will you do in the dwindling time you have left before succumbing to the Beast? This theme concerns itself with the price of power and the illusion of what it offers. The Kindred have great power, but it comes with a chained monster within them, tempting ever to monstrosity.

To paraphrase @bbridges, "Power is the hook that draws the Damned deeper into Damnation." The promise of power — over whatever threat or challenge the Kindred perceives — invariably precedes the erosion of what Humanity they have left.

The Kindred will lose to the Beast, with almost perfect certainty. The question the game seeks to answer is what they will make of the unlife they have before the Beast becomes permanently ascendant.

𝔸 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕝𝕕 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕜 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕤

(George Natsioulis)

The World of Darkness is our world but darker, giving brilliant value to the light that remains, however faint it becomes. Rage against the dying of the light, as the villanelle cautions us, in keeping with the theme above.

This is often expressed as a contrast of high society and low life. Vampires are junkies prowling the alleys, but they're also predators lurking among marble halls. As Kindred, we are all of us halfway between the gutter and the stars, one failed hunt away from destitution.

Kindred only ever feel pale echoes of mortal emotion, and seek ever-greater stimulation by which to take comfort in those memories as age fades them. Young Kindred still have fresh memories while elders feel a keen edge of supposed immortality. Eternity is a burden, not a gift.

Before their Final Death, the Kindred may well experience the withering and dying of all things each once held dear, a fate which no doubt explains a vampire's slide into inhumanity, or the ennui that grips the most annotated elders.

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔹𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕕 𝕚𝕤 E𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕪𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘

(Alexandre Meneghini)

Despite the power it imparts, the price of becoming Kindred is higher than its benefits. Being a vampire means utter dependency upon the substance that represents vampirism’s great heights and desperate depths.

The Hunger replaces every mortal drive in a Kindred: Love, sex, sustenance, comfort. The thirst for vitae crowds out all of these, and even overtakes what mortals might think of as the greatest sins. Lust — for blood. Wrath — for blood. Avarice — for Blood. And so on.

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝔸𝕘𝕖𝕤

(Photographer unknown)

To become Kindred is to be yoked to an infinite wheel of conflicts perpetually borne by the loneliness of vampires who must remain suspicious of the fledglings they sire.

While Kindred almost always take childer in order to hold isolation or alienation at bay, this is almost never a permanent solution.

Too often the Tradition of Progeny takes shape as a selfish feudalism, with the sire grasping jealously the secrets they have learned so they maintain their value in scarcity. Sires often position themselves as masters more than mentors.

No surprise, then, that the War of Ages is represented by forbidden amaranth, the anathema of diablerie, by which the young may destroy the elder and usurp their dark gifts — and the imperfect understanding the young have about that power’s price.

𝕆𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕍𝕖𝕣𝕘𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝔾𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕟𝕟𝕒

(Nydia Lilian)

A reckoning is coming, an accounting for the vast sins of the Kindred by their dark father. The presentation of this theme varies by edition but in every case, it manifests as a looming disaster. For what worse fate awaits the Kindred than the penultimate accountability for sin?

Little time left, an approaching doomsday, burdened by the anxious tension of the imprecise knowledge of when it will arrive. Or has it come already? Gehenna is the prophecy of heresy, apostasy, and... hope?