There is a price to be paid, of course. The more blood I spend on such parlor tricks, the more quickly I exhaust what is in my belly. The more quickly I empty my gut, the sooner I need to feed - and hunt - once again.
Another use of blood, one that's quite useful for disguising myself in the presence of vampire-hunters and other unpleasant souls. You'd be amazed at how many of my kind have met their ends over the years because they forgot a tiny detail. The devil is in fact in the details, and he's just as happy to turn on his putative servants as he is on those who think themselves divinely inspired. In the meantime, this wolf likes to blend in with the flock, yes.
Hmm. Hunters. They're nasty, nasty people, full of fire and drive for their self-appointed mission. Most of them never come within a half-mile of destroying one of my kind; of the rest, the vast majority do their causes more harm than good. They cull the weak and the stupid from this state of unlife, leaving better, smarter, stronger vampires. Many hunters are self-employed, a raging rabble toting shotguns and stakes as they stomp blindly through the gardens of the night. Others work for branches of your government, convinced we're part of some enemy's conspiratorial attempts to bring down the American Way. Imbeciles.
The most dangerous hunters are tied up with the Catholic Church and something called the Society of Leapold. Don't be fooled: It's the Inguisition in modern guise. They, and others like them, have learned just enough of the truth about the Kinred to draw all the wrong conclusions. According to your basic vampire-hunter, we are all evil awns of Satan, sent to Earth to wreak havoc and serve our Infernal Master.
That, contrary to what one might think, is unequivocally merde. I hold as master no man, vampire or devil; I serve no will save my own. Vampires simply have ... appetites and goals that diverage from what your average Inquisition adherent thinks is normal. Then again, I'm told they run to hair shirts and self-flagellation, which is hardly well-socialized behavior either.
There are a great many other half-truths and misconceptions out there, most of which serve our purposes. Do you see the church across the way? You will notice that I am not standing kin media crucis - right where the shadow of the cross falls on the street - and it's not doing a blessed thing to me. Nor will any other crucifix, Star of David, or other religious apparatus, unless the person holding it has some faith of her own. That sort of faith is really quite rare these days, I assure you. Nine times out of ten you can walk up to a priest (if so inclined), rip the cross out of his hands, and then kill him while he's still asking God what precisely when wrong.
Not that I've done such a thing, of course.
Garlic? Worthless. A stake? Only if it catches you right in the heart, and even then it only immobilizes you. Running water? I do bathe, thank you very much. Sunlight? Well, that does hurt, but it takes more than a single sunbeam to turn yu to ash. The same for open flame - it burns you, but it takes more than a few seconds to do so.
There are what we call a ghoul. Every so often they drinks some vampire blood and in exchange gets a few of the peaks of being a vampire. Just a few, mind you - ghouls are most assuredly still mortal. The benefits to the arrangement are limited; ghouls don't get the full range of our powers, but in exhange they are still capable of fathering childer, feeling the sun on their shoulders, and accidentally drowning.
Yes, ghouling is yet another property of the Blood. There are a great may things about the Blood I haven't told you; I'm not being paid to tutor you, after all. Still curious? Well, how's this: Drink a vampire's blood three times, and you;re hopelessly enthralled with him. They resultant feeling of affection is called the blood bond, and if that vampire responsible for it reinforces it, the bond can last forever. After all, it's not like one can ever die to escape it.
Can you imagine that, by the way? Being forced to love someone, forever? Knowing that the love you have for them - which is so strong you'll kill or die for this person - is a lie, a damnably induced lie? Hating them and loving them at the same time, and not being able to do a thing about it?
Yes, it does sound like I'm speaking from personal experience, doens't it? Funny how that works.
Now here's a little primer on family relations before I introduce you around. According to vampire legend, we are all descended from Caine, son of Adam and Eve. Supposedly God punished Caine for killing Abel by turning him into a vampire; the "mark" God placed upon Caine was in fact the curse of vampirism. Caine discovered he could pass his curse on through the Emrbace, and crated childer to ease his loneliness. Unfortunately, the process did not stop there. Each of Caine's childer made childer, and they made childer,and so on. Caine realized his mistake, forbade the further creation of vampires, and vanished.
Of course, with the cat away the mice did play. The younger vampires listened about as well as one might expect, which is why I'm here. Of course, each step away from Caine - each generation of vampires - is a little weaker, a little closer to mortal. Caine himself is the First Generation, his childer are second, and so on down the line. The 13th generation is about the last one worth the old it will take to roast them in Hell; I am led to believe that 14th-generation vampires are all mules anyway.
Never ask someone her generation. Doing so is considered fatally rude.
That's not all there is to it. In any case, we're not all like Caine. Heaven help the world if we were! Instead, each of Caine's grandchilder - Antediluvians, we call these mythical beings, for they are presumed to predate Noah's little Flood - supposedly bore unique mystical gifts and curses, and all vampires descended from that particular Kindred kept those characteristics. We become specialized, bred like hounds or racehorses, and those specialized lineages became known as clans. Thirteen great clans are knwn to us, Venture, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Ravnos, Toreador, Lasombra, Tzmisces, Setites, Giovanni, Saulot, Assamites, and Brujah, each distinct in powers and purview. Those powers, by the way, we call "Disciplines". For all intents and purposes, they're magical. You're seen me use one of mine. Pray you don't see the others.
Oh, and then there us the Jyhad, of course. Yes, Jyhad. The Eternal Struggle. The Great Game, or whatever poetic sobriquet one wishes to attach to it. Most Kindred would say Jyhad, like the Antediluvians, is but a myth, and yet many believe it deep in their cold, dead hearts. As the stories go, during the first nights, the eldest childer of Caine began fighting amongst themselves, using their own childer and the kine as pawns to be sent to and fro against the minions of their rivals. Naturally, since we vampires are immortal, the ancient feuds never quite died out, and so the game of feint and thrust, parry and counter continue - so they say - to this very night, with most participants entirely unaware of their part in the struggle. Kindred versus Kindred, caln versus clan, mortal nation versus mortal nation, all at the strings of hidden puppetmasters. A silly notion, really. And yet, I have seen many strange things in the night, and I occasionally wonder whether my actions are indeed my own ... Ah well. Existentialist piffle.
