Ordo Dracul - The Mystery of Life (VtR2e homebrew)

While I've already posted a lot of short fiction pieces ('vignettes' as I call them) from Tumblr, I've also done a lot of homebrew, making new stuff for roleplaying games, mostly Chronicles of Darkness (previously new World of Darkness). Obviously to make use of these you'll need to [cough cough] "buy" the relevant books, in this case Vampire: the Requiem second edition.

First up is a Mystery I made for Requiem 2e that updates some traits that were in other coils in 1e into the new system. It's all about being stingy with your vitae, hoarding it like status effect cures in an RPG.

Blood is power to the Kindred, but Blood has power over them as well. While vitae can allow a vampire to strengthen her body and enthrall others, the need for it still chains her. If there’s one thing that a Dragon despises, it’s another chain around her neck. With this Mystery, the limitations of the vampiric condition are mitigated.

The Defiant who study this Mystery seek to restore a semblance of life to themselves. This isn’t due to a desire to return to mortality, but to reclaim what undeath denies them. Scales of Life are often learned through massive vitae expenditures and experimenting with the border of life and death.

The Dead waste vitae simply through waking from the Daysleep. To a Dragon, this loss of power is akin to theft. With this Coil, the Defiant only needs to spend a point of vitae to wake after a number of days equal to the lower of her Coils of Life or Resolve.

A Lord of the Night should not be shackled by the restrictions of their Blood. A Defiant who has reached this level of mastery over Life has their effective Blood Potency lowered by their dots in the Coil of Life when determining feeding restrictions. A Dragon whose effective Blood Potency is less than one dot may drink from stored blood and gain two vitae for each liter she drinks.

The vampire is a corpse. Not a shambling one, but fully ambulatory and capable of logic and reason, undeterred by decay or rigor mortis. “Not good enough!” Says the Dragon. And with this Coil, she can cause her blood to pump once more through will alone. The Blush of Life costs only a point of Willpower, not vitae.

Like a greedy wyvern lying atop a pile of coins and precious treasures, the Defiant is unwilling to part with her well earned treasure. Any time she would spend two or more points of Vitae, she may spend up to two points less by paying a point of Willpower instead. This can never lower the ability’s cost below one point of vitae, and can only be used once per effect.

While the Kindred metaphorically refer to vitae as “the Blood”, it’s so much more than that. Vitae is life essence, stolen and used by the damned–or, as the Dragons see it, blessed. The Dragon knows how to stretch that stolen life for all she can. With this level of mastery, treat every mortal vessel the Dragon drinks from as if he had the Producer merit (Vampire: The Requiem pg 299), but treat his Stamina as one lower when determining whether he gains the Drained Condition.

Prerequisite Coils: Full Faced Beast
Procedure: Vitae is like euphoria in liquid form, but even Elder Kindred will sometimes long for the taste of mortal food. The procedure for this Scale is simple enough, albeit more time consuming than most, and some would say it serves no practical purpose: The Defiant must ghoul and raise an animal for a number of weeks equal to its Size. The animal’s feed must come from plants watered with the Dragon’s vitae. The Dragon then slaughters the animal and prepares it to taste.
Outcome: Any animal raised in such a fashion gains a point of Size. When slaughtered and cooked, it will always retain a bloody, reddish hue no matter how ‘well done’ it is (there is of course still argument on how the meat should be cooked). Once prepared, the meat provides one point of vitae per health box of the animal, and any vampire may eat the meat and enjoy it as if they were using the Blush of Life. The taste is exceptional due to the infusion of vitae, and anyone who consumes it must roll for Vitae addiction if their Resolve is two or lower. Other than that the vitae is ‘neutral’ and doesn’t cause Vinculum. Eating food in this way doesn’t cause it to be vomited up, and provided half the meal is flesh, it can be garnished with vegetables or sauces.

Prerequisite Coils: The Chosen Drink
Procedure: The Dragon must binge on as much vitae as she can, drinking (or eating) until she has a taken in a number of points of vitae over her maximum equal to twice her Blood Potency within the scene. She holds the blood in by spending a point of Willpower each turn, looking like a bloated corpse. During this time, she forces herself into a Frenzy where the Beast does nothing but roil about in it’s own gorged stupor, only attacking if someone gets close.
Outcome: The Dragon bleeds and vomits up the excess vitae, but for a number of nights equal to her dots in the Coil, her Blood Potency is treated a number of dots higher equal to her Coils solely for determining how much Vitae she can store.

Prerequisite Coil: Perspicacious Blood
Procedure: A large tub (such as that used for Epidermal Shielding Bath) is filled with an alchemic mixture of vitae (or blood), special salts, oils, and potent elixirs. The vitae must come at least in part from the subject. A Kindred subject is placed into the warm bath and over the course of an hour and allows the water to seep into their skin, and concentrates on their sense of self. A mortal may also be the subject, but at it takes three points of lethal damage to obtain enough water for the ritual. The dragon then bleeds into the tub, and the subject is forced to spend all of their Willpower..
Outcome: The Dragon spends a point of vitae for each point of Blood Potency of the vampire the subject has a stage three Blood Bond with. The Blood Bond is broken, and replaced by a stage two bond–never more–with the Defiant. For a number of nights equal to the Dragon’s dots in the Coil of Life, the subject is unable to move passed the second stage blood bond, but after that point if they drink from the original vampire, the bond is restored to full after only a single sip.