Alternate Virtues
Conviction
The Conviction Virtue quantifies a character's ability to maintain a sense of reason when faced with desire, suffering or need. Utterly inhuman, Conviction represents the reconciliation of the predatory urge with the character's capacity for atrocity.
As opposed to Conscience, which deals with remorse and atonement for Path transgressions, a character with Conviction recognizes his failure and plans to overcome it. Conviction is completely inhuman; the character who has this Trait can no longer pass for human under anything but the most cursory of scrutiny. Creatures who can sense the Beast (vampires, werewolves, etc.) immediately recognize someone with the Conviction Virtue for what he truly is: a monster. Like Conscience, Conviction comes into question when a character must check for degeneration.
* Steady
** Determined
*** Driven
**** Brutal
***** Completely self-assured
Instinct
The Instinct Virtue refers to a character's ability to contol the Beast by familiarity rather than denial. It allows characters to "ride the wave" of frenzy and emotional excess by keeping a close reign on their passion, rather than letting passion control them. As atavistic as Conviction, Instinct is the Virtue of a monster who accepts his nature rather than maintaining a sense of human compassion.
Instinct allows the character to harness the Beast's destructive power; a character with high Instinct is primal and turbulent. A player uses Instinct when attempting to control a character's existing frenzy. When a character who possesses the Instinct Virtue faces frenzy, she always enters the frenzy, unless the difficulty to avoid it is less than her Instint Trait, in which case she may choose whether or not to frenzy. Thereafter, for the duration of the frenzy, the character is wholly under the Beast's sway, and must be run by the player in an appropriate fashion. Any time the player wishes the character to consciously take an action (known as "riding the wave"), she must use Instinct against the difficulty to avoid the frenzy. Frenzies affect the character normally, though she may sometimes exert a bit of control while so enraged.
* Intuitive
** Feral
*** Bestial
**** Visceral
***** Primal
