Aye! Here! Who was it that sent you? Did your sire make you, then realize just how very tiring the whole thing is? How hard it is to raise a fledgling vampire up from the mud? Pay it no mind. No mind at all. You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. You, come sit here at my knee.
Stop your sobbing, you’re wasting the vitae. You’re the Damned, now, and it could be a whole lot worse. Count your blessings, aye? Being damned, vampires, it’s as bad as you feared and better than you ever imagine. You sit here, and I’ll tell you all you really need to know.
A hundred Cainites or more came and sat here to hear this, and now you join a proud tradition.
The Embrace :
There’s a beginning to all of this, but that’s not a story I know. I know the end though, and what follows the end, so why don’t we start there?
Someone murdered you, childe. Someone decided
that your life was to come to an end. There are a lot of justifications for a vampire murdering another, but theonly reason it’s ever done is egotistical selfishness. I know, I’ve done in more than a few times.
What’s worse, though, is that after they murdered you, they corrupted your corpse, put their foul blood in your mouth, and pulled you from the Grace of God back into this mud pit we call Earth. You’ve been robbed of Heaven, childe, and in exchange, you’ll get an eternity of struggle or servitude or a gruesome and painful end. We
don’t know what happens when we die the Final Death, only that we are gone. So I’ll make no promise of Heaven now, but then again, I won’t promise Hell, either.
Physiognomy of the Dead :
But it isn’t all doom and gloom, little bird. Here.
You wipe your eyes again with my apron. Put on a brave face and I’ll tell you about the wonders of your new self.
There’s a world of new curiosities and pleasures ahead of you. Oh, don’t you turn away when an ugly old woman talks of pleasures. You’d be surprised what joys you’ll soon find in horror, and what toe-curling delight you’ll draw out of things you’d never speak about in church.
Your body, mine, all of us, are made of sin. It’s not a thing to be ashamed of; it’s simply what it is. What a human can do we can do better. We can run faster and see in the dark.
For most of us, our bodies become more perfect visions of what we were as humans. No, not me, childe, but I am a special kind of sinner. No! You are a creature meant to steal virtue and arouse vice. You drink blood and tempt the holy with your strange secret powers and your allure.
It’s the cleanliness about you that’s always thrown me. Even in my clan, don’t our teeth straighten and grow so very white? I’ve watched during the Embrace, watches as pox marks vanish and turn to baby-smooth skin, or even smoother. Once, I saw a lad who was struck by an affliction of the crown that left him bald as a friar, but didn’t Damnation go and give him a head full of lovely
hair. Didn’t he just become a randy beast as a result? This is what I’m saying! We’re creatures made of sin rebuilt by the corruption of Caine to spread slowly but surely across all four corners of the earth.
What else have you noticed? The heart, aye? Sad, that.No, your heart won’t beat unless you make it or you’re thick in the heady rush of slaking your lust. See here, the tears you’ve wept on my skirts? They’re bloody too, and so beware, as a good weeping will give away your nature.
You’ll learn to hold it in, childe; we all do somehow.
Did I say that you are stronger? Throw yourself from a parapet. Get kicked by a horse. Even a well-intended thrust by a man-at-arms will hardly slow you down. Beware only the Sun, God’s judgment, and fire, God’s purifier, and a blow that would sever your head from your shoulders. No matter whatever the Orthodoxy out of Russia about a stake killing you, they’re wrong. Put a spike of hollywood into a vampire’s chest, and all you will do is stop him. When the stake is removed, he will rise, most likely hungry, mad, and bent on revenge against them that incapacitated him in the first place.
The Beast
But you’ve still got your human mind. Odd, aye?
All your memories, your feelings, your attachments
are still there. You may still be in the town where you grew up, living on your father’s land. You still feel guilt, don’t you? A heavy heart over your first kill? Oh, I seeit in your eyes.
There’s a reason for that! For now, you’ve got a human soul as you did before you died. Does that comfort you? I don’t know that it should, because having a human soul means that you can still lose it. And if you do? You fall to the Beast. You become a creature not of sin, but a creature of destruction and murder. You’re nothing but killing and eating without a thought in your head or your heart.
You act coy, aye, but I know you already know what I’m describing. You can feel it, can’t you? It moves behind your eyes, testing the confines of your ribcage like your heart is its prison. It’s boiling in your blood, this hate, your Beast. But make no mistake; it’s as much ally as it is enemy. It needs your body to survive for it to survive,and so, it will keep you alive if you know how to find equilibrium with it. When you see fire and you start to run before you’ve realized it, that is the Beast protecting you. When you fly into a rage and kill off the competition invading your territory, that is the Beast ensuring you have enough blood to survive. It isn’t kind or beautiful, but it is nature, after a fashion. It is your nature, anyway, and nature can be terribly cruel .
...... To be continued
What else have you noticed? The heart, aye? Sad, that.No, your heart won’t beat unless you make it or you’re thick in the heady rush of slaking your lust. See here, the tears you’ve wept on my skirts? They’re bloody too, and so beware, as a good weeping will give away your nature.
You’ll learn to hold it in, childe; we all do somehow.
Did I say that you are stronger? Throw yourself from a parapet. Get kicked by a horse. Even a well-intended thrust by a man-at-arms will hardly slow you down. Beware only the Sun, God’s judgment, and fire, God’s purifier, and a blow that would sever your head from your shoulders. No matter whatever the Orthodoxy out of Russia about a stake killing you, they’re wrong. Put a spike of hollywood into a vampire’s chest, and all you will do is stop him. When the stake is removed, he will rise, most likely hungry, mad, and bent on revenge against them that incapacitated him in the first place.
The Beast
But you’ve still got your human mind. Odd, aye?
All your memories, your feelings, your attachments
are still there. You may still be in the town where you grew up, living on your father’s land. You still feel guilt, don’t you? A heavy heart over your first kill? Oh, I seeit in your eyes.
There’s a reason for that! For now, you’ve got a human soul as you did before you died. Does that comfort you? I don’t know that it should, because having a human soul means that you can still lose it. And if you do? You fall to the Beast. You become a creature not of sin, but a creature of destruction and murder. You’re nothing but killing and eating without a thought in your head or your heart.
You act coy, aye, but I know you already know what I’m describing. You can feel it, can’t you? It moves behind your eyes, testing the confines of your ribcage like your heart is its prison. It’s boiling in your blood, this hate, your Beast. But make no mistake; it’s as much ally as it is enemy. It needs your body to survive for it to survive,and so, it will keep you alive if you know how to find equilibrium with it. When you see fire and you start to run before you’ve realized it, that is the Beast protecting you. When you fly into a rage and kill off the competition invading your territory, that is the Beast ensuring you have enough blood to survive. It isn’t kind or beautiful, but it is nature, after a fashion. It is your nature, anyway, and nature can be terribly cruel .
...... To be continued
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