Vampire: The Masquerade/Headscratchers


 * It bugs me that in oWoD Vt M, there was any doubt about the existence of Antediluvians. Two clans came up out of nothing through Ante diablerie in the last few hundred years, and a major faction is saying "yes, they're out there, controlling us". So why does the Camarilla deny their existence to a man?
 * Part of that is the Nosferatu being mostly in the Camarilla. They're being hunted by their stronger, eviler, utterly scary brothers so they know their antedilluvian is "alive" and kicking and killing them, but choose not to join the Sabbat, the guys known for hunting and killing Antes.
 * The guys known for saying that they hunt and kill Antes. When the Antedeluvians actually arose, the Sabbat was useless against them. Then again, given the cosmic power that the Antedeluvians throw around, that just made the Sabbat like everybody else.
 * The vast majority of the Sabbat rank-and-file sucks not only at killing Antes but at even surviving for more than a year or two before getting themselves slaughtered by the Order of Leopold or the Technocracy or a bunch of random cops hunting down "maniac gangbangers on PCP". As Betram Tung put it, "You ask me, the Sabbat make no sense. Look at me! I'm a monster! I'm a Lord of the Night! Do my bidding -- wait, I'm dead, how did that happen?"
 * This is because the * real* Sabbat, the True Black Hand or Tal'Mahe'Ra, is a conspiracy that purposely created and is manipulating the regular Sabbat as patsies in order to * support* the return of the Antediluvians. Irony of ironies. Yes, this is all part of how the Wo D is, as its name implies, a Crapsack World.
 * Anyway, the Nossies being the Camarilla doesn't make much of a difference either way. There are plenty of Nossie antitribu, too. The Clan doesn't care -- for the Nosferatu more than any other clan, factional loyalty is just a formality and a convenience. The Nossies are loyal to the Camarilla because they happen to be the ones keeping law, order and the peace right now -- they have no ultimate loyalty to them, * none* of the non-Nosferatu Princes, no matter how highly ranked in the Camarilla, have * any* knowledge of the sewer rats' personal security system, internal clan organization or deep secrets, and the Nossies sure as hell aren't relying on any Camarilla or Sabbat higher-ups whatsoever when it comes to their plans to survive the return of the Nicktuku.
 * Likewise, the Tremere got where they are because the historically verifiable Tremere diablerised Saulot. Granted, they wouldn't join the Sabbat because it's not their style, but their membership should at least know the other clan's founders can/might still be around.
 * That is a piece of their clan history that they deliberately worked to forget as early as they could. Advertising that the entire basis of your clan was an act of diablerie? That's effectively death among the Camarilla. Not just social death, Final Death.
 * It's not that they don't know that the Antedeluvians exist, its that they will not admit that the Antedeluvians exist. So long as the neonates & ancillae believe that the Camarilla elders are the pinnacle of power... the Camarilla elders will be treated like they live at the pinnacle of power. As for the real Antedeluvians? Pish tosh. They'll never wake up. Us elders can live high on the hog!
 * Another possibility is that the Antedeluvians' existence is denied out of fear. Some folks just don't want to face the idea that someday a big fucking blood-sucking monster with a power level that is OVER NINE THOUSSAAAAAANND!!! could one day show up and start making trouble in THEIR neighbourhood.
 * Also, it is implied, that many of the Camarilla elders are either directly controlled by Antediluvians and their lieutenants or subtly manipulated to remain in denial.
 * Also the average Kindred knows a good bit less about vampire history, world events etc than someone whose just read the main rulebook, never mind the clanbooks and other suppliments.
 * Speaking of antediluvians, Saulot learned about Golconda during his visit to the Kuei-jin in the east, and the concept was associated with the Salubri ever since. Wasn't one of the benefits of Golconda supposed to be immunity to diablerie? I mean, granted, Tremere was a mage, so he could probably have worked around that somehow, but...
 * Most people seem to think Saulot was trying to pull off a giant Xanatos Gambit by allowing the Tremere to rise to power. Three of the endgame scenarios in Gehenna have Saulot saving the world with the party's help, and the other one makes all the ancient's games rather irrelevant.
 * And if you read the sourcebooks, you'll se that it wasn't your average diablerie (for starters, it was performed in a ritual and done from a distance)
 * Saulot had long fallen out of Golconda by the time Tremere got to him.
 * In one of the source books (2nd ed) it reveals that Saulot has awakend inside Tremere and after a battle of wills took over and is now wondering around in Tremere's body while Tremere has now possessed the leader of the Tremere antribu and killed them all in one big spell in mexico city.....
 * This ended up backfiring horribly in Gehenna when.
 * OWOD vampire nitpick, if vampires have basically been around forever, how can the fifteenth generation of vampires have not come into generations ago? Did the entire vampire population abstain from siring for hundreds of years at a time?
 * I think that at first, the Antediluvians and other Elders were afraid their Childer will turn on them like they did themselves to the Second Generation, so they abstained from siring too often. Coupled with the constant final deaths due to in-fighting, this probably kept the vampire population stable. Camarilla's Masquerade additionally put an extra leash on the process by giving power over new Embraces to the Princes. So it wasn't until shortly before the Final Nights that the vampire population experienced a demographic explosion (the Kine demographic explosion paved way for it, btw, since it became much easier to hide in their masses) and the fifteenth generation and thinbloods emerged. Also, it is pretty likely that if someone did create a fifteenth generation vampire before modern times out of scientific interest, they would have killed them and destroyed all records, given the dangerous nature of such discovery.
 * In the beginning, all vampires were apparently in the First City, then the Second City; when the population grew it was whittled down to manageable proportions, and the first to go were always the weakest, meaning weaker vampires didn't exist long enough to sire higher generations. Simple (un)natural selection ensured that vampire lineages wouldn't have the chance to get higher-gen since constant turnover and frequent diablerie meant that weaker vampires/younger vampires were killed. In relatively modern nights the population explosion of humanity allowed for more camouflage and more food, allowing the vampire population to grow; since vampires generally don't rule as openly/aggressively as they used to, particularly in the New World where thinbloods are most common, it's harder to locate and weed out the unlicensed or unwanted Cainites than it would have been in the smaller world of past ages. The increase in new vampires also means an increase in untutored Caitiff who wouldn't understand why they shouldn't Embrace others who would subsequently be weaker than the original Caitiff, and who might go on in turn to Embrace Caitiff of still higher generation. Note as well that the thinbloods are actually a sign of Gehenna; it's possible that their appearance is literally supernatural, that forces of Destiny or Fate or what-have-you prevented 15th-gen. vampires from happening until the End Times.
 * Actually, thinbloods were a sign of Gehenna because their much greater relative fragility compared to their "elders" meant that a lot of them would die, but they were still vampire enough to disturb the torpor of the early-gens (unfortunately, nobody knew this or they might have actively tried to buff those vamps up a bit instead of causing the very thing they were trying to prevent).
 * If vampires are killed by a slight exposure to sunlight, even if it is reflected (remember how the Technocracy killed that Antidiluvian during the Week of Horrors with orbital mirrors), how come they do not feel any discomfort in the moonlight, which is basically reflected sunlight, as well.
 * Sunlight equals God's Face, which the vampires are banned from, yet the Moon is tied to both Gaia - a non-Judeo-Christian figure - and Lilith, part of the vampire mythos and the flipside to God (God punished Caine with night, Lilith found Caine in the night and taught him magic). Filtered sunlight reflects off of Gaia/Lilith's moon/mirror to lose the damaging powers imparted to it by being the unfiltered radiance of God. Or something.
 * But isn't Gaia hostile to vampires, as well? Why would it filter sunlight if the werewolves consider the bloodsuckers agents of the Wyrm?
 * Yes, Gaia is. But see: Lilith. It's implied that Lilith is as strong as Caine, if not stronger, and she's not hampered by the whole 'sunlight makes you die' thing; additionally, she's identified with the Moon throughout the various ancient texts, so it's entirely possible that the early affiliation - established long before pre-history - is sufficient to change sunlight enough so that it doesn't kill vampires on contact. Why? Well, that depends on your view of Lilith and her motives...
 * Lilith is in fact weakened or harmed by daylight, although it doesn't make her burst into flames. As far as the whole Gaia/Luna thing, that's Werewolf lore, not Vampire.
 * Because that is part of the Paradigm.
 * This answer should apply to every Wo D-related headscratcher ever.
 * Because once it reflects off the moon, it's no longer sunlight, it's moonlight - with a different metaphysical makeup.
 * I've read somewhere that the Setites, whose weakness is extra sensitivity to light, can sunburn under the full moon.
 * Because once moonlight reaches Earth, it is weakened over two hundred thousand times. Wouldn't cause even bashing.
 * Worth noting: the vampire's various weaknesses are curses from God, mystical in nature rather then scientific. And much as the Technocracy would like to say otherwise, any of their really good stuff is also mystic in nature, just filtered through scientific foci. So the satellites that killed Ravnos/Ravanna/Zaputhrustra/whatever-the-hell-he-was-really-called were True Magic, not science.
 * But not "magic" either; it's stated repeatedly throughout the various gamelines (though especially in Mage) that "magic" and "science" are the same thing, which is in turn something greater than either facet. "Primal essence of the universe," maybe, but the actual stuff of Creation isn't "magic" anymore than it's "science" or "fae glamour" or "really really powerful Disciplines."
 * Well, sure. But the point is Vampires are hurt by the sun and not the moon because that is the way the curse works. The nature of sunlight or moonlight doesn't enter into it.
 * It is available as a supernatural flaw. Presumably the amount of light reflected isn't sufficient to cause them harm on a regular basis, but some Vampires are more sensitive and can be harmed. Also, see the Settie example above.
 * UV Light...blame UV light...UV light doesn't reflect off the moon, its to weak to do so as its short wave light energy and not long wave like actual photons. There you go, vampire problem solved.