Dr. Alistair Grout (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
malkavialogist) wrote2017-02-02 03:57 am
malkavialogist) wrote2017-02-02 03:57 am
+ application for entranceway +
Name: Caz
DW username: n/a
E-Mail: afunctional@gmail.com
IM: Rianofski on AIM, though it doesn't seem fantastically stable, so if you're not reaching me on there, I'm Caz#1241 on Discord.
Plurk: taakotime
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Alistair Grout
Series: Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Timeline: Mid-1960s. After he meets the Camarilla, during his time as the LA Malkavian Primogen but before the events of the game.
Canon Resource Link: Grout's page. And the game's page.
CREDIT: all the art in this app is from the sourcebook for Vampire: The Masquerade, 20th Century edition.
Character History
Alistair Grout does not appear in Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
But his house, the body of his wife, his ghouls and test subjects, and his carefully placed horror-game-style audio diaries all provide a very wordy picture of his life and his obsessions.
Grout either owned or worked in a mental institution some time around the 1810s-1830s0, when phrenology was the science of the day, and the mentally ill were treated more like prisoners who'd done something wrong than like patients in need of help. He wasn't there to win any Human of the Year competitions. His interest lay in studying the people there, learning about "the breadth and depth of human psychoses", and the way he later describes his patients makes them sound more like laboratory mice than people. It's hard to know how he felt about it at the time, but at least in retrospect, he showed a marked lack of empathy for them.
From his accent, this was probably in England.
Unbeknownst to anyone, one of the patients at his place of work was a vampire. This actually wasn't uncommon. Since the dawn of humanity you'd find Malkavian1 vampires seeking out mentally ill mortals, and often embracing2 them. Grout's sire was probably not the only Malk in the institution. But she was the only one to try to bring him over.
This wasn't a random accident; siring a vampire requires them to drink your blood as well as the other way around, which nine times out of ten is only going to happen deliberately. But Grout never found out who she was, why she turned him, or even, for a long time, what he'd turned into. Some orderlies found them and tried to break up what they thought was a cannibalistic attack, dragging the vampire away to the outdoor roaming pen. By the time Grout regained consciousness, the morning sun had destroyed her.
He faked his death around this time, or just let people believe he had died. It's possible that the orderlies thought his sire had murdered him, and took his body away, only for him to rise again and steal away (or feed from them, since newly-created vampires are hungry hungry hippos). At some unknown point he also must have relocated with his wife to America, possibly to escape recognition.
I'd place his embrace towards the end of the 1830s, because fifty years later he's griping about the decline of his favourite psychological methods, and telling Freudian theory to get off his lawn. Grout has spent the intervening years studying his own condition, trying to figure out why, just why, he's suddenly a pale nocturnal creature that drinks blood and can't go out in the sun. If only there was a word for that! He also mentions in his diary that his wife is ill; he refers ambiguously to her "condition", and says that he is trying to cure it. From later entries it doesn't seem like he's turned her into a vampire, so if they were married when he was embraced, she must be in her 70s or 80s by now.
Being embraced by a Malkavian also brought him under the curse of that clan, resulting in his developing some kind of psychosis which mmmmmight be schizoaffective disorder. Whatever it was, it started subtly, but turned inwards and got more severe over time. The game doesn't specify his diagnosis and he himself resists the idea that he's ill, but we see a lot of his symptoms through his audio recordings. These recordings are wordier than a sesquipedalian sipping sarsaparilla, and shift from depressed to fine to frenzied. He talks about his patients (and, later, his test subjects) with a strong sense of unearned superiority. He begins to experience auditory hallucinations and delusions, and at their height, he refers to those hallucinations as "compelling" him to take actions. We see him withdraw from society. He gets very paranoid about the other vampires in the Camarilla -- though to be fair, they are a backstabbing bunch. And he just straight makes up words like 'dactopindalism', unaware that in a hundred years we'd develop the internet and find out that that doesn't exist, Grout.
In the beginning, his diary recordings focus on the past. The pet psychological theories that nobody believes in any more. The uniquely disgusting conditions at the asylum where he worked, which he remembers disturbingly fondly. The "missed opportunity" that he never spoke to his sire. When he turns his attention towards the present, he talks about having "test subjects"; he's embarked on a quest to investigate and cure both his wife's condition and his own, as well as pursuing his "studies into the psychoses".
It's very likely that he acquires some ghouls3 during this time, as test subjects, and/or to fund his research. He doesn't have a job any more -- a fact that he makes sure to complain about -- and dealing with banks and investments is likely to be risky when you're supposed to be dead, so his money must be coming from somewhere. It's actually very common among vampires to use ghouls as living breathing piggy banks, so this seems the likeliest option.
Over the years, Grout goes in and out of what he calls a "black depression", in which he's unable to work, neglects his wife, and neglects the people he's more than likely kidnapped and put in an observation chamber in his basement. He can only wander the house in a spiral of negative thoughts. Other times he's wired, chipping obsessively at the problem of vampirism for literally decades. He's determined to cure it against all odds. There are myths and legends of ways to achieve this, but they're things like 'dying for true love' and spiritual journeys, and Grout doesn't hide his disdain for superstition. Whatever clues he pursued, they always led to dead ends.
He must have isolated himself like a champion, because for the first fifty or more years of his condition, he doesn't meet another vampire. Finally discovering that there are more like him marks a turning point in his life. At last, he's able to confirm -- or maybe unable to escape -- the idea that his condition truly is vampirism. It's not clear whether they found him or he found them, but the meeting opens up an entire new society that he had no idea existed. The city he lives in -- possibly Los Angeles -- has a whole vampire community with its own government and a long history. There is so much they can teach each other.
Grout may not have a cure for vampirism, but his years of study have not left him empty-handed, and he introduces himself to the Camarilla4 with a nerdy presentation. They're impressed by his research, and also by Grout's control over the curse of Malkav's line; he's well-spoken, confident, obviously educated, not a bit the stereotype of a raving and incoherent Malkavian. Maybe Prince LaCroix5 buys into that stereotype a bit too readily, because he's impressed enough to offer this societal newcomer a position as Malkavian Primogen for the area. Grout readily accepts. It seems a no-brainer: the position will give him "a lofty vantage point" from which to study the problem of vampirism in greater detail than ever before.
He has little time for the things other vampires say about themselves; he describes their society, and their theories and legends, as "mired in suspicion and pseudo-religious dogma". One gets the impression that as far as a scientific approach to vampirism goes, he's a big fish in a small and underexplored pond. They don't have the cure he's looking for. He keeps on looking anyway. But their way of thinking does rub off on him, at least superficially; he complains that he's started using their romantic way with words.
And he starts to hear voices.
It's not clear why this starts now. It could be his age, it could be a natural progression of his illness, it could be that first contact with vampire society -- and congregation with others of his clan -- knits him closer to the web of Malkav. But when he talks to other vampires, he starts to notice other voices speaking independently, giving him "insight into their lives beyond what I could gather from simple conversation". He forms various theories about this: maybe the voices are one of his burgeoning vampiric abilities. Maybe the other vampires are projecting them, consciously or not. He doesn't ask the Camarilla. He can't; he's already gotten a glimpse of how they do politics, and doesn't dare show any sign of weakness. The voices support that decision.
He builds or modifies a lovely gothic mansion in Los Angeles with a distinct purpose in mind: protection. The date of its construction is unknown, but it must have been before or soon after meeting the Camarilla, as he states that "at that time I was not privy to the full range of vampire capabilities". His approach to home security is very Winchester House: there are false mirrors, secret passages, fake doors, trap doors, doors you unlock by pulling candelabras in the right order on the other side of the house. The riddles the player finds around this mansion are exactly the kind of thing he rolls his eyes at other vampires for doing. It's very likely that he adds to this house as time goes on, changing puzzles and constructing an inner sanctum where he and his wife un-live.
He also constructs himself a laboratory in the cellars, a row of bleak square cells, an autopsy room and a huge locked refrigerator. His research into vampirism and its cure must continue.
He carries on hearing voices. Over time they multiply and diversify, and he incorporates them into his research, first as subject and later as confidant. They tell him things that "range from curious to frightening", and after a while they're popping in for a chat even when nobody else is present. And he continues to keep them a secret as he grows to doubt and mistrust the other vampires. He's well aware of the reputation of Malkavians, and believes that if other vampires know what's going on with him, they'll be able to use it against him. But he never thinks of himself as mad.
Wife update: still mortal, still has an unnamed condition he's trying to cure, now pushing ~160 years old.
The more Grout involves himself with the Camarilla, the more his invisible allies begin to give him dire warnings. Most of these are against a vampire he doesn't name, but who is implied to be LaCroix -- "they speak of his blackest crimes both past and future". Over time, it gets harder and harder to hide his distraction and paranoia from others, and he becomes convinced that LaCroix is suspicious of him -- that "he knows that I know".
The suspicion he sees in the others isn't entirely his imagination, as they have noticed him having issues; LaCroix tells the player with practiced Ventrue weariness that the Primogen is eccentric and has "developed a paranoid bent".
By late 2004, the pressure is too much for him and we see him in the middle of what might be a psychotic episode. He secludes himself in his house, prompting mild consternation from the other Primogens and a comment from the Prince that he's forgotten how to answer his phone again. He takes care to protect his beloved wife, who by the way has her vital organs kept in jars outside their bedroom, but that's just part of her condition and he can definitely still find a cure. His hallucinations are at their height; the voices he hears now compel him to actions, and have started whispering about a "formless menace", an end of days. He's sure that the Camarilla have it in for him, and that LaCroix is about to mount an attack.
As it turns out, at least as far as LaCroix and the apocalypse are concerned, he's absolutely right.
Grout doesn't live to see his predictions come true, which, all things considered, might be kinder. When the player is sent to find him in Bloodlines, it's just this whole bad news bears situation: he's been murdered by LaCroix's assassin as part of a political gambit to frame and bring down the leader of the Anarchs, and on top of that, there's a vampire hunter setting his house on fire. A fan theory states that he might have out-double-crossed everyone and left a patsy to be assassinated in his place, based on the condition of the skeleton you find, a cryptic comment he makes, and the fact that several unsigned emails in the game sound like they could be from him. Then again, who'd catch him dead using newfangled things like email.
There's no word on whether his beloved wife survived the house fire.
0 Oh boy it comes with footnotes!
Okay since the wiki page directly contradicts this statement, I'm going to explain my logic. Both I and the wiki are basing his age off a statement in the first audio log we find: "Would that I could make my voice heard again, although it may be suspicious should I return to popular medical discourse fifty years after my apparent death." Whoever wrote the wiki took this at face value: we're listening to it now, it says 50 years ago, ergo he was embraced 50 years before the events of the game.
I'd argue that the audio logs give context clues that tell us otherwise. In this entry, he also says that phrenology has "fallen by the wayside" with himself as its sole surviving champion, implying that it was The In Thing when he was alive. He also complains about Freud leading the field in psychology, which definitely wasn't true in 2004, the year Bloodlines is set. For me, based on some incredibly scholarly googling, this places the first audio log anywhere from the end of the 1890s to the beginning of the 1910s.
Personally I'd put his embrace at the end of phrenology's popularity, and this audio log near the beginning of Freud's psychological work, and then assume he's rounding the number of years, to make the 'fifty years' statement make sense.
But Caz, he also says his hospital performed lobotomies. That was a 1940s-50s procedure. What if that's dated right and it's phrenology and Freud that's dated wrong? WELL MAYBE BUT the earlier date makes more sense to me for other reasons too: he's old enough to be made a Primogen, for instance. Plus if the diaries all happen in the same year as the game, as the wiki imples, then that's a really condensed timeline. It's not impossible that he was sired in the 1950s, but I'm sort of playing the odds here. If it was the 1830s and everything fits but the mention of lobotomy, I can rationalise that as him misremembering or the writers messing up one date. If he's describing Freud dominating medical theory in 2004 and phrenology doing the same in 1950, and if he worked in the 1950s but I'm supposed to picture him working in La Bicetre, then I don't know what's going on any more.
In one piece of dialogue he's referred to as an elder, which usually means a vampire more than 300 years old. But Bloodlines takes a couple of liberties with canon, and the character speaking is relatively fresh and doesn't necessarily know all the right vocabulary, so I take that with a pinch of salt.
Although that would explain how he has so much freaking elder vitae in his refrigerator.
1Vampires in VtM have a few ways of organising themselves -- some political, some physiological. The various 'clans' of vampire are the latter. You've got the hideous, intelligent Nosferatu, the fighty Brujah who were once scholars, the beauty-obsessed Toreador, and so on. Each clan has its own specialties, a different major weakness, and various associated stereotypes.
Those in Clan Malkavian are either already mentally ill, or they develop an illness when they're sired. This concept can either be the best or the worst depending on who's writing it (some players take it to a 'lol random stab you with a spork' level, because the earth is a terrible place and we should all fly into the sun as soon as possible). Their clan connections are typically informal, social, even protective. They seem to recognise each other on sight. On a subconscious level, they're all connected by a psychic network of information and compulsions called the Cobweb, or Network, or Tapestry. Sometimes you'll think for years that they are acting individually, without a common goal, and so will they, until that goal is reached and you look back and see all the connections that were right under your nose. They have an unfortunate habit of predicting the future. When not written by Jared Leto preparing to play a disappointing Joker, they're one of my favourite clans.
Historically they've had ups and downs finding acceptance in vampire society. When the Camarilla first crawled out of the primeval muck of the Dark Ages, and when the Malks were feuding with the Anarchs and being slaughtered by the Inquisition, they were nearly excluded from this new government. The Masquerade didn't exist at the time, and both humans and vampires feared the things that boiled in Malkavian blood. They were brought into the Camarilla for one reason: better to have the Malkavians with them than against them.
Politics in VtM are cut-throat, and whether you live or die can sometimes depend on how useful or dangerous you seem; Malkavians walk all over that line. Around the late 1400s, clan leaders led almost every Malk on a pilgrimage and then straight up swapped their feared Dementation discipline for the more-accepted Dominate. Nobody agrees on exactly how. No affected Malkavian even knows about it. They'd just... always had Dominate, suddenly. This whole situation was labeled "the Great Prank". For centuries, Malks with Dementation were a tiny number of fringe cases, antitribu outcasts. And then in 1997, everyone woke up one night and the Malks all knew Dementation again. Was it deliberate? Was it Malkav stirring in his sleep? No-one knows. Wait, does that mean everyone's antitribu now? Nobody fucking knows.
2 Hugging. Nah, that's just jokes. "Embracing" (or "the embrace") is one of the euphemistic names that vampires give to turning somebody into one of them.
3 If you're a vampire, and you feed a living creature your blood but don't drink theirs, then boom. Congratulations. You've got a ghoul.
Ghouls get some benefits from their consumption of vampire blood -- unnatural life and vitality, and weak versions of vampires' Disciplines (see: special powers). But in essence they're slaves. Drinking a vampire's blood is addictive, and gives the ghoul a powerful sense of love/obsession with the vampire in question, a desire to please them. They could be butlers, expendable hitmen, or just go about their normal lives while forwarding half their paychecks to the beautiful stranger that they can't get out of their minds. Ghouls won't necessarily know about vampires at all, but if they do then there's no way out for them.
The traits of a particular clan are carried in the blood; Malkavian ghouls might experience this as anything from panic attacks to extended hallucinations.
Drinking more blood makes the effects more powerful, but also makes the addiction less likely to ever wear off.
4 There are a few different factions of vampire, and some individuals who don't subscribe to any faction at all. The largest and most powerful government body is called the Camarilla. They're the ones who are stringent about maintaining the Masquerade, the big lie that vampires don't exist, meant to keep humankind from finding out that they're being used as breakfast burritos. Because, well, humans in a group are dangerous.
One of their big enemies, the Sabbat, holds that hiding in the shadows is a coward's game -- and they'll occasionally break the Masquerade on purpose, forcing the Camarilla to run around cleaning up after them. But the Sabbat still preserve the Masquerade as a rule, rationalising that it's bad tactics to be fighting the Camarilla and then also open themselves up on another front to the humans. Because, well, humans in a group are dangerous.
5 If the Camarilla is a government, it's not a democratic one. The highest office of that of Prince; a Prince runs a city, assisted by a council of Primogen, who are picked from each Camarilla clan to be their local representatives. The Prince might be a powerful influence on the city, or little more than a figurehead; their job involves things like allotting hunting grounds, and acting as judge and jury in criminal cases. The Primogen form a council and help to run things, and they too can be anything from empty titles to the true powers behind the throne. Under the Prince and Primogen are other offices such as Baron and so on.
Prince LaCroix is old, up himself, and ambitious. Which doesn't really distinguish him from any other Prince. Grout's invisible informants have a few things to say about Prince LaCroix, each one more disturbing than the last. Oh! But that comes later.
Abilities & Special Powers
The lower a vampire's generation, the more powerful they are. The scale ranges from Cain himself at 1st generation, to barely-dead thin bloods at 15th. Grout's generation is never stated in canon, and since his sire was a stranger, it's doubtful even he knows what it is. At his age, he's maybe sitting around 11-9. I just think that's neat.
Anyhoo,
IMMORTALITY. Firstly, vampires are immortal; the years won't touch them. Ageing just doesn't happen.
VITALITY. Vampires are tough to injure, and heal very quickly, depending on what hurt them (handguns don't do much, but a blade or a shotgun is dangerous.) They don't need to breathe, eat food, or drink anything but blood (from humans, which is fine; from animals, which is super gross; or from other vampires, putting you in temporary thrall to them, which may or may not have been the result you were going for). They don't usually get sick, though they can spread blood-borne diseases, and they feel milder effects from being drugged or poisoned. They don't feel ill effects from extremes of temperature, unless we're talking, like, hot enough to spontaneously combust. Every day, the body of a vampire returns to the state it was in at the time of the Embrace -- excluding any injuries, which have to be healed using blood.
BLOOD... STUFF. Vampires store consumed blood in their own desiccated bodies, and use it for various things: healing wounds, using Disciplines, or imitating life (they can force their heart and lungs to function and their skin to blush, for instance). They can also blow some stored blood in order to temporarily reach a peak of strength/stamina/dexterity comparable to that of the strongest humans.
CREATING FRIENDS. Vampires are able to create ghouls, mortals bound to them and given supernatural abilities, by feeding their blood to a human. Vampire blood is addictive and mind-altering. First drink makes the vampire play on your mind. Second drink makes the vampire important to you, and it's easy for them to persuade you, and difficult for you to do them harm. Third drink and it's a full on blood bond and an obsession. But ghouls can still respond in various ways; some will do anything for their vampire, while others have core principles they won't violate even for 'love'.
They're also able to create new vampires by drinking from a human and then feeding that human their blood, a process called the Embrace. Simply feeding from a human is super euphoric for everyone involved, and probably the closest thing to sex that some vampires get any more, but it doesn't create a vampire. It's neither necessary nor encouraged to drain a human to the point of death. A human who's been fed from will either pass out or be super woozy in the aftermath.
CLAIRAUDIENCE. Grout has a power unique to his clan: a sliver of a glimpse of the web of Malkav. The voices he hears aren't random, and they aren't all liars. They tell him things he couldn't possibly know about the people around him. Sometimes they give him secrets and juicy tidbits that people are hiding, sometimes they warn him about enemies, and sometimes -- just sometimes -- they join together and scream at once because the red star is rising and the sarcophagus has been broken and Gehenna is coming Gehenna is coming Gehenna is coming.
But these prophecies are neither clear nor direct. These are good old-fashioned cryptic whisperings, because the very nature of Malkavian prophecy is that, even when it gets within a few miles of correct, it's often self-fulfilling or indecipherable until after the event. And Grout is also hallucinating a lot of the time, and he doesn't have a way to tell the actually helpful whispers from the ones that are just there to bug him.
This is basically the World's Worst Clairvoyance: voices say things, sometimes it's junk, sometimes it's true and absolutely vital knowledge, you're on your own figuring out which is which.
DISCIPLINES. As well as the basic vampire stuff, vampires learn some of several specialist Disciplines. As a Malk doing his thing during the time of the Great Prank, Grout's would be Auspex, Dominate, and Obfuscate. Demen-whatnow?
His diaries don't show him using disciplines, but I'm including them here because it would be bizarre and unrealistic for him not to have them, especially as a literally-god-damned Primogen. To work out a power level, I've looked at various recommendations for statting 100+ year old Vampire NPCs, and then nerfed them by a few points to be safe. These powers are activated with blood and would not be available to him when he's too hungry.
Auspex. Supernatural sensory enhancement. Ref: VtM20e p134.
• Heightened Senses. When actively channeling blood into Auspex, his five basic senses will double in clarity and range. Can also give flashes of insight or empathy, whether activated or not, which ties nicely back into Grout's whole voices deal.
Drawbacks: There's great potential for distraction or disorientation. Sudden lights/noises/smells while using Auspex really suck, and can leave him overwhelmed or even oblivious to his surroundings.
•• Aura Perception. He can activate this -- again, with blood -- for a chance to perceive someone's aura; there are various nuanced ways an aura can show up, a mix of colours and brightnesses depending on what the person is (vampire, mage, mortal, etc) and how they're doing in general (scared, excited, suspicious, and so on). He can give a crowd a cursory scan to look for a particular aura.
It's possible, but by no means guaranteed, for Auspex to reveal people hiding behind invisibility, or pierce through illusions.
Drawbacks: It's very possible to fuck this up and get a weak, unreadable, or even an inaccurate reading. It also can't tell him if, say, someone's lying; an aura of anxiety or distrust might ping, but nothing more specific. If he's focused in on a person's aura once, successful or not, he can't do it again for a while.
••• The Spirit's Touch. By holding an object for a while, and going into a light trance, he can sense something about the person who had the object last, or its long-term owner. On a wild success it might be the person's name, but it's much more likely to be brief impressions -- their hair colour, the shirt they wore, maybe their emotional state if it was notable. Strong emotions leave a stronger impression on the object.
Drawbacks: While in the trance, he's only barely aware of what's going on around him, and jarring interruptions will break the trance. Sometimes the impressions can be overwhelming and leave him trapped and useless for up to half an hour after.
Dominate. The famous vampire mind control. Ref: VtM20e p151.
It requires direct eye contact to put in place. He can't make someone directly harm themselves, and commanding them to do something against their core nature means things get confusing. It doesn't work if the target doesn't understand the vampire. The target doesn't know they're being controlled per se, but they might go 'hey why tf did I do that', and if they're aware of the possibility of mind control they might put two and two together.
• Command. He can speak a clear, straightforward one-word command, or hide that word in a sentence, meeting the target's eyes at the correct time. Depending on chance and the target's willpower, it might fail, work okay, or really really work (for instance on 'laugh' they might just chuckle, or they might lose their goddamn minds for the next ten minutes).
•• Mesmerise. With a person's gaze, and intense concentration, he can verbally implant a thought or hypnotic suggestion into their mind, to happen immediately or trigger later. "You'll follow me into this dark alley", for example. This can't plant delusions or false memories, and it can't change feelings i.e. "you are in love with me". The command can be complex and in if x then do y until z structure, but has to be part of one general sentence/suggestion; he can't plant two separate commands in the same person. The suggestion might fail to take hold or be overridden by another suggestion from a stronger vampire.
Obfuscate. The power to conceal oneself from sight. Ref: VtM20e p184.
This isn't true invisibility; instead it's basically a small, portable Somebody Else's Problem field. It's based on clouding others' minds so that they don't perceive the vampire using it. For this reason it doesn't work on things like cameras (and robots probably), and it can be pierced by powers/abilities that let you see through illusion.
• Cloak of Shadows. This lets him stay unseen in a shadowed place, with some small kind of cover, as long as he doesn't undergo concentrated observation. He must say quiet, and can't move or attack or fall under direct light, or else the illusion ends.
•• Unseen Presence. This allows him to move around unseen. People unconsciously move to let him through, and he remains Somebody Else's Problem unless someone's specifically seeking him out or he draws attention to himself (by making a noise, interacting with an item/person, that sort of thing). The likelihood of becoming visible increases in direct correlation with how noisy or intrusive he's being, and if he does get spotted, there's a small chance that very alert characters will remember what he was doing while hidden.
••• Mask of a Thousand Faces. He can influence the perception of others, causing them to see a different face than his own. Impersonating a specific person is difficult, and imitating their voice/mannerisms as well is even more so.
•••• Vanish from the Mind's Eye. He can vanish from sight even when someone is looking straight at him. This is much more manageable if only one person is looking; if there's a crowd to deal with, or some very smart and alert people, he might only be able to fool them into seeing him as an indistinct translucent shape. If he vanishes in front of someone who's very confused or weak-willed, there's a chance they'll forget he was there at all.
Man this is a lot of stuff. god.
WEAKNESSES. Vampires do have several of these, I promise. They must feed on blood, or else they'll eventually violently lose control or go into a catatonic state. They are like me in that they have great trouble staying conscious during the day. Certain kinds of weapons -- such as blades, shotguns, magical spells, and (!)fire(!) -- do lethal/aggravated damage, which is much harder to heal from. Sunlight will end them, do not pass go, do not collect 200 blood points; the threat of fire or the sun can strike a vampire with mortal terror. Other sure ways to deal with them include a stake to the heart, which renders them basically a corpse for the duration, or decapitation, which dusts the bastards.
Vampires also have to deal with:
THE BEAST. Vampirism is a curse, and vampires are monsters, and all of a vampire's morals and allegiances and intentions are little more than tissue paper holding back the thrashing of their Beast. If a vampire can be provoked or starved enough that the beast comes forth, they'll enter a state called "frenzy" where they'll basically just fight or eat their way through anyone they can until it wears itself out. Self-control is gone and the vampire's main goal is instant gratification. Even with a huge effort of will, the vampire can't stop it once it's begun, only hold it on pause for a second or two. The frenzy can have lasting effects, too: there's a chance that it will leave permanent damage on the vampire's mind. In the Camarilla, succumbing to frenzy is an enormous social faux pas, and if you go around frenzying and breaking the Masquerade, you will be put down.
RÖTSCHRECK. The red fear. This is the "flight" to the Beast's "fight". Because sunlight and fire are so dangerous to vampires, there's a sort of species-wide phobia about them. Being around a lit cigarette or a screened-in fireplace can be enough to make a vampire uneasy. Being outright threatened with sunlight or fire, or being burned, can bring down a mindless fear and an overriding need to escape at all costs. Being in frenzy overrides going into rötschreck.
Web Note:
The Malkavian Tapestry is a vague, instinctual and quasi-religious psychic network, which is sort of inherent to Malkavians and may be the source of Grout's prophetic voices question mark? And obviously it's not getting ported wholesale with him into Wonderland. I've spoken to Mouette about it and she's suggested treating it the same way Dragon Age mages do their connection to the Fade, which is to say, [ENERGETIC HANDWAVING].
Roleplay Samples
Third-Person Sample:
It's 1965, and the Anarchs are making another push to evict the Camarilla from Los Angeles. They seem to have swayed the Nosferatu, a significant blow. Grout makes an heroic attempt to care about the tactical chatter that flits back and forth like bats between his fellow Primogens.
Mostly he hopes he won't be driven out of his house. It's a fine piece of construction, organised exactly as he likes it, and he'd rather not go again through the rigmarole of -- you know, of hiring contractors, firing them, hiring more, keeping each group blind to the work of the last, explaining for the twentieth time that these doors go to sheer drops by design, walling up the occasional labourer. All of that blasted inconvenience.
And the danger of moving his wife, in her condition.
Chance has offered him one twisted blessing. Several of the other Primogens have begun organising their clans into some midnight bastardisation of a standing army, and Grout has been worried that he'll be called to do the same. It's not his own ability he doubts, but honestly, look at the Malkavians. They can come together, yes, en masse, like ants; but not for such little things as a city's civil war. He's not even sure where a lot of them are, not counting the one or two under electrodes in his cells. But fortunately, the other vampires seem to recognise this, and have not asked him to attempt to herd cats.
Unfortunately, his unseen friends tell him all about their disrespect. About the way the Primogens are just waiting for him to show a single sign of his clan's famous weakness. About the cold contempt they hide behind their smiles. Is this true? Can he take that chance? Better that he keep these invisible things a secret. Politically gifted though they may be, the narrow minds of these other vampires could never comprehend the difference between a madness that seems to be reality, and a powerful reality that disguises itself as madness.
He is not without duties, of course. He is expected to co-ordinate supplies and attacks, to help scrape together an intelligence network from what the Nosferatu left behind, and to deal with the minds of mortals who've noticed something going on. (Or to just have them killed, whatever works.) He goes about these tasks with all the drive and enthusiasm of a man being pulled from his true life's work -- his experiments, his medical journals, his cold, disease-eaten wife.
Each dawn, he goes home to restless thoughts and hag-ridden sleep. And the war carries on outside his walls.
First-Person Sample:
{ library, night }
[ As darkness spreads and the moon rises, some of you might notice an unfamiliar figure knocking around in the library. It's gothic and jagged tonight, like a cathedral of books.
The person in question is a pale and somewhat careworn-looking man, in bare feet and a dapper nightshirt, with hair that's only barely under control. He's going along the bookcases, cautiously, patting them, cautiously. Now and then he'll mutter aha! and pull a book out, only to push it back in disgust when it doesn't activate the secret switch to make the bookcase roll away.
What, they don't build secret doors like that here? Poppycock.
He breezes past a mirror hung on the wall.
I am not blind, says a voice: a deep, slow voice that reaches his ears and no-one else's. I am not deaf.
Trust that, says another, trust me, you can trust that.
Grout hmms softly, a signal that he's taken... whatever that means on board. It could be literal. It could be metaphor. It could be gibberish. He runs his thumb over a spot on the wallpaper, making sure it's not the light of a spy-hole. He raps the mirror with his knuckles, just in case it's hiding a secret room or something behind it.
But the knocking doesn't sound hollow. He steps back, disappointed. ]
Drat, absolutely nothing.
{ kitchen, night }
[ He finds his way to the kitchen as well, and here it's harder to conduct a search while staying silent. In the dead of night, there's a certain amount of banging involved in opening cupboards and knocking on walls, no matter how careful you're being.
The mansion, he's realising, is huge. Whoever brought him here certainly has resources -- and who? the Anarchs? perhaps; there's a Toreador or two in their ranks who might be tickled by a political kidnapping. He grits his teeth, ducks down and checks inside the unlit fireplace; but there are no pull chains or hidden switches in sight. Not the Sabbat; he'd be dead. A rival in the Camarilla? Several possible names come to mind.
I'm a trap without hinges, key, or lid. The voice is inaudible, but Grout hears it with pure clarity. He straightens up, dusts off his night-gown, and tugs on a wall lamp in case it's a hidden lever. (It's not.)
Yet inside, God forbid. Yet inside, God forbid.
It's good practice not to talk back to his little club of followers and hangers-on; they're secret for a reason. But he's nervous, frustrated, and it helps his concentration to think out loud. ]
A trap without any way in or out isn't a trap. That's absolute consummate nonsense! If I set out a box trap in a field and neglect to add hinge or door, it won't very well catch any rabbits, will it? Every trap has a lid, including this one. Utter nonsense.
[ The voice is obviously trying to tell him something, but what damned unnecessary riddling. No-one who wanted to send a clear message ever wrote poetry! ]
DW username: n/a
E-Mail: afunctional@gmail.com
IM: Rianofski on AIM, though it doesn't seem fantastically stable, so if you're not reaching me on there, I'm Caz#1241 on Discord.
Plurk: taakotime
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Alistair Grout
Series: Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Timeline: Mid-1960s. After he meets the Camarilla, during his time as the LA Malkavian Primogen but before the events of the game.
Canon Resource Link: Grout's page. And the game's page.
CREDIT: all the art in this app is from the sourcebook for Vampire: The Masquerade, 20th Century edition.
Character History
Alistair Grout does not appear in Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
But his house, the body of his wife, his ghouls and test subjects, and his carefully placed horror-game-style audio diaries all provide a very wordy picture of his life and his obsessions.
Grout either owned or worked in a mental institution some time around the 1810s-1830s0, when phrenology was the science of the day, and the mentally ill were treated more like prisoners who'd done something wrong than like patients in need of help. He wasn't there to win any Human of the Year competitions. His interest lay in studying the people there, learning about "the breadth and depth of human psychoses", and the way he later describes his patients makes them sound more like laboratory mice than people. It's hard to know how he felt about it at the time, but at least in retrospect, he showed a marked lack of empathy for them.
From his accent, this was probably in England.
Unbeknownst to anyone, one of the patients at his place of work was a vampire. This actually wasn't uncommon. Since the dawn of humanity you'd find Malkavian1 vampires seeking out mentally ill mortals, and often embracing2 them. Grout's sire was probably not the only Malk in the institution. But she was the only one to try to bring him over.
This wasn't a random accident; siring a vampire requires them to drink your blood as well as the other way around, which nine times out of ten is only going to happen deliberately. But Grout never found out who she was, why she turned him, or even, for a long time, what he'd turned into. Some orderlies found them and tried to break up what they thought was a cannibalistic attack, dragging the vampire away to the outdoor roaming pen. By the time Grout regained consciousness, the morning sun had destroyed her.
He faked his death around this time, or just let people believe he had died. It's possible that the orderlies thought his sire had murdered him, and took his body away, only for him to rise again and steal away (or feed from them, since newly-created vampires are hungry hungry hippos). At some unknown point he also must have relocated with his wife to America, possibly to escape recognition.
I'd place his embrace towards the end of the 1830s, because fifty years later he's griping about the decline of his favourite psychological methods, and telling Freudian theory to get off his lawn. Grout has spent the intervening years studying his own condition, trying to figure out why, just why, he's suddenly a pale nocturnal creature that drinks blood and can't go out in the sun. If only there was a word for that! He also mentions in his diary that his wife is ill; he refers ambiguously to her "condition", and says that he is trying to cure it. From later entries it doesn't seem like he's turned her into a vampire, so if they were married when he was embraced, she must be in her 70s or 80s by now.
Being embraced by a Malkavian also brought him under the curse of that clan, resulting in his developing some kind of psychosis which mmmmmight be schizoaffective disorder. Whatever it was, it started subtly, but turned inwards and got more severe over time. The game doesn't specify his diagnosis and he himself resists the idea that he's ill, but we see a lot of his symptoms through his audio recordings. These recordings are wordier than a sesquipedalian sipping sarsaparilla, and shift from depressed to fine to frenzied. He talks about his patients (and, later, his test subjects) with a strong sense of unearned superiority. He begins to experience auditory hallucinations and delusions, and at their height, he refers to those hallucinations as "compelling" him to take actions. We see him withdraw from society. He gets very paranoid about the other vampires in the Camarilla -- though to be fair, they are a backstabbing bunch. And he just straight makes up words like 'dactopindalism', unaware that in a hundred years we'd develop the internet and find out that that doesn't exist, Grout.
In the beginning, his diary recordings focus on the past. The pet psychological theories that nobody believes in any more. The uniquely disgusting conditions at the asylum where he worked, which he remembers disturbingly fondly. The "missed opportunity" that he never spoke to his sire. When he turns his attention towards the present, he talks about having "test subjects"; he's embarked on a quest to investigate and cure both his wife's condition and his own, as well as pursuing his "studies into the psychoses".
It's very likely that he acquires some ghouls3 during this time, as test subjects, and/or to fund his research. He doesn't have a job any more -- a fact that he makes sure to complain about -- and dealing with banks and investments is likely to be risky when you're supposed to be dead, so his money must be coming from somewhere. It's actually very common among vampires to use ghouls as living breathing piggy banks, so this seems the likeliest option.
Over the years, Grout goes in and out of what he calls a "black depression", in which he's unable to work, neglects his wife, and neglects the people he's more than likely kidnapped and put in an observation chamber in his basement. He can only wander the house in a spiral of negative thoughts. Other times he's wired, chipping obsessively at the problem of vampirism for literally decades. He's determined to cure it against all odds. There are myths and legends of ways to achieve this, but they're things like 'dying for true love' and spiritual journeys, and Grout doesn't hide his disdain for superstition. Whatever clues he pursued, they always led to dead ends.
He must have isolated himself like a champion, because for the first fifty or more years of his condition, he doesn't meet another vampire. Finally discovering that there are more like him marks a turning point in his life. At last, he's able to confirm -- or maybe unable to escape -- the idea that his condition truly is vampirism. It's not clear whether they found him or he found them, but the meeting opens up an entire new society that he had no idea existed. The city he lives in -- possibly Los Angeles -- has a whole vampire community with its own government and a long history. There is so much they can teach each other.
Grout may not have a cure for vampirism, but his years of study have not left him empty-handed, and he introduces himself to the Camarilla4 with a nerdy presentation. They're impressed by his research, and also by Grout's control over the curse of Malkav's line; he's well-spoken, confident, obviously educated, not a bit the stereotype of a raving and incoherent Malkavian. Maybe Prince LaCroix5 buys into that stereotype a bit too readily, because he's impressed enough to offer this societal newcomer a position as Malkavian Primogen for the area. Grout readily accepts. It seems a no-brainer: the position will give him "a lofty vantage point" from which to study the problem of vampirism in greater detail than ever before.
He has little time for the things other vampires say about themselves; he describes their society, and their theories and legends, as "mired in suspicion and pseudo-religious dogma". One gets the impression that as far as a scientific approach to vampirism goes, he's a big fish in a small and underexplored pond. They don't have the cure he's looking for. He keeps on looking anyway. But their way of thinking does rub off on him, at least superficially; he complains that he's started using their romantic way with words.
And he starts to hear voices.
It's not clear why this starts now. It could be his age, it could be a natural progression of his illness, it could be that first contact with vampire society -- and congregation with others of his clan -- knits him closer to the web of Malkav. But when he talks to other vampires, he starts to notice other voices speaking independently, giving him "insight into their lives beyond what I could gather from simple conversation". He forms various theories about this: maybe the voices are one of his burgeoning vampiric abilities. Maybe the other vampires are projecting them, consciously or not. He doesn't ask the Camarilla. He can't; he's already gotten a glimpse of how they do politics, and doesn't dare show any sign of weakness. The voices support that decision.
He builds or modifies a lovely gothic mansion in Los Angeles with a distinct purpose in mind: protection. The date of its construction is unknown, but it must have been before or soon after meeting the Camarilla, as he states that "at that time I was not privy to the full range of vampire capabilities". His approach to home security is very Winchester House: there are false mirrors, secret passages, fake doors, trap doors, doors you unlock by pulling candelabras in the right order on the other side of the house. The riddles the player finds around this mansion are exactly the kind of thing he rolls his eyes at other vampires for doing. It's very likely that he adds to this house as time goes on, changing puzzles and constructing an inner sanctum where he and his wife un-live.
He also constructs himself a laboratory in the cellars, a row of bleak square cells, an autopsy room and a huge locked refrigerator. His research into vampirism and its cure must continue.
He carries on hearing voices. Over time they multiply and diversify, and he incorporates them into his research, first as subject and later as confidant. They tell him things that "range from curious to frightening", and after a while they're popping in for a chat even when nobody else is present. And he continues to keep them a secret as he grows to doubt and mistrust the other vampires. He's well aware of the reputation of Malkavians, and believes that if other vampires know what's going on with him, they'll be able to use it against him. But he never thinks of himself as mad.
Wife update: still mortal, still has an unnamed condition he's trying to cure, now pushing ~160 years old.
The more Grout involves himself with the Camarilla, the more his invisible allies begin to give him dire warnings. Most of these are against a vampire he doesn't name, but who is implied to be LaCroix -- "they speak of his blackest crimes both past and future". Over time, it gets harder and harder to hide his distraction and paranoia from others, and he becomes convinced that LaCroix is suspicious of him -- that "he knows that I know".
The suspicion he sees in the others isn't entirely his imagination, as they have noticed him having issues; LaCroix tells the player with practiced Ventrue weariness that the Primogen is eccentric and has "developed a paranoid bent".
By late 2004, the pressure is too much for him and we see him in the middle of what might be a psychotic episode. He secludes himself in his house, prompting mild consternation from the other Primogens and a comment from the Prince that he's forgotten how to answer his phone again. He takes care to protect his beloved wife, who by the way has her vital organs kept in jars outside their bedroom, but that's just part of her condition and he can definitely still find a cure. His hallucinations are at their height; the voices he hears now compel him to actions, and have started whispering about a "formless menace", an end of days. He's sure that the Camarilla have it in for him, and that LaCroix is about to mount an attack.
As it turns out, at least as far as LaCroix and the apocalypse are concerned, he's absolutely right.
Grout doesn't live to see his predictions come true, which, all things considered, might be kinder. When the player is sent to find him in Bloodlines, it's just this whole bad news bears situation: he's been murdered by LaCroix's assassin as part of a political gambit to frame and bring down the leader of the Anarchs, and on top of that, there's a vampire hunter setting his house on fire. A fan theory states that he might have out-double-crossed everyone and left a patsy to be assassinated in his place, based on the condition of the skeleton you find, a cryptic comment he makes, and the fact that several unsigned emails in the game sound like they could be from him. Then again, who'd catch him dead using newfangled things like email.
There's no word on whether his beloved wife survived the house fire.
0 Oh boy it comes with footnotes!
Okay since the wiki page directly contradicts this statement, I'm going to explain my logic. Both I and the wiki are basing his age off a statement in the first audio log we find: "Would that I could make my voice heard again, although it may be suspicious should I return to popular medical discourse fifty years after my apparent death." Whoever wrote the wiki took this at face value: we're listening to it now, it says 50 years ago, ergo he was embraced 50 years before the events of the game.
I'd argue that the audio logs give context clues that tell us otherwise. In this entry, he also says that phrenology has "fallen by the wayside" with himself as its sole surviving champion, implying that it was The In Thing when he was alive. He also complains about Freud leading the field in psychology, which definitely wasn't true in 2004, the year Bloodlines is set. For me, based on some incredibly scholarly googling, this places the first audio log anywhere from the end of the 1890s to the beginning of the 1910s.
Personally I'd put his embrace at the end of phrenology's popularity, and this audio log near the beginning of Freud's psychological work, and then assume he's rounding the number of years, to make the 'fifty years' statement make sense.
But Caz, he also says his hospital performed lobotomies. That was a 1940s-50s procedure. What if that's dated right and it's phrenology and Freud that's dated wrong? WELL MAYBE BUT the earlier date makes more sense to me for other reasons too: he's old enough to be made a Primogen, for instance. Plus if the diaries all happen in the same year as the game, as the wiki imples, then that's a really condensed timeline. It's not impossible that he was sired in the 1950s, but I'm sort of playing the odds here. If it was the 1830s and everything fits but the mention of lobotomy, I can rationalise that as him misremembering or the writers messing up one date. If he's describing Freud dominating medical theory in 2004 and phrenology doing the same in 1950, and if he worked in the 1950s but I'm supposed to picture him working in La Bicetre, then I don't know what's going on any more.
In one piece of dialogue he's referred to as an elder, which usually means a vampire more than 300 years old. But Bloodlines takes a couple of liberties with canon, and the character speaking is relatively fresh and doesn't necessarily know all the right vocabulary, so I take that with a pinch of salt.
Although that would explain how he has so much freaking elder vitae in his refrigerator.
1Vampires in VtM have a few ways of organising themselves -- some political, some physiological. The various 'clans' of vampire are the latter. You've got the hideous, intelligent Nosferatu, the fighty Brujah who were once scholars, the beauty-obsessed Toreador, and so on. Each clan has its own specialties, a different major weakness, and various associated stereotypes.
Those in Clan Malkavian are either already mentally ill, or they develop an illness when they're sired. This concept can either be the best or the worst depending on who's writing it (some players take it to a 'lol random stab you with a spork' level, because the earth is a terrible place and we should all fly into the sun as soon as possible). Their clan connections are typically informal, social, even protective. They seem to recognise each other on sight. On a subconscious level, they're all connected by a psychic network of information and compulsions called the Cobweb, or Network, or Tapestry. Sometimes you'll think for years that they are acting individually, without a common goal, and so will they, until that goal is reached and you look back and see all the connections that were right under your nose. They have an unfortunate habit of predicting the future. When not written by Jared Leto preparing to play a disappointing Joker, they're one of my favourite clans.
Historically they've had ups and downs finding acceptance in vampire society. When the Camarilla first crawled out of the primeval muck of the Dark Ages, and when the Malks were feuding with the Anarchs and being slaughtered by the Inquisition, they were nearly excluded from this new government. The Masquerade didn't exist at the time, and both humans and vampires feared the things that boiled in Malkavian blood. They were brought into the Camarilla for one reason: better to have the Malkavians with them than against them.
Politics in VtM are cut-throat, and whether you live or die can sometimes depend on how useful or dangerous you seem; Malkavians walk all over that line. Around the late 1400s, clan leaders led almost every Malk on a pilgrimage and then straight up swapped their feared Dementation discipline for the more-accepted Dominate. Nobody agrees on exactly how. No affected Malkavian even knows about it. They'd just... always had Dominate, suddenly. This whole situation was labeled "the Great Prank". For centuries, Malks with Dementation were a tiny number of fringe cases, antitribu outcasts. And then in 1997, everyone woke up one night and the Malks all knew Dementation again. Was it deliberate? Was it Malkav stirring in his sleep? No-one knows. Wait, does that mean everyone's antitribu now? Nobody fucking knows.
2 Hugging. Nah, that's just jokes. "Embracing" (or "the embrace") is one of the euphemistic names that vampires give to turning somebody into one of them.
3 If you're a vampire, and you feed a living creature your blood but don't drink theirs, then boom. Congratulations. You've got a ghoul.
Ghouls get some benefits from their consumption of vampire blood -- unnatural life and vitality, and weak versions of vampires' Disciplines (see: special powers). But in essence they're slaves. Drinking a vampire's blood is addictive, and gives the ghoul a powerful sense of love/obsession with the vampire in question, a desire to please them. They could be butlers, expendable hitmen, or just go about their normal lives while forwarding half their paychecks to the beautiful stranger that they can't get out of their minds. Ghouls won't necessarily know about vampires at all, but if they do then there's no way out for them.
The traits of a particular clan are carried in the blood; Malkavian ghouls might experience this as anything from panic attacks to extended hallucinations.
Drinking more blood makes the effects more powerful, but also makes the addiction less likely to ever wear off.
4 There are a few different factions of vampire, and some individuals who don't subscribe to any faction at all. The largest and most powerful government body is called the Camarilla. They're the ones who are stringent about maintaining the Masquerade, the big lie that vampires don't exist, meant to keep humankind from finding out that they're being used as breakfast burritos. Because, well, humans in a group are dangerous.
One of their big enemies, the Sabbat, holds that hiding in the shadows is a coward's game -- and they'll occasionally break the Masquerade on purpose, forcing the Camarilla to run around cleaning up after them. But the Sabbat still preserve the Masquerade as a rule, rationalising that it's bad tactics to be fighting the Camarilla and then also open themselves up on another front to the humans. Because, well, humans in a group are dangerous.
5 If the Camarilla is a government, it's not a democratic one. The highest office of that of Prince; a Prince runs a city, assisted by a council of Primogen, who are picked from each Camarilla clan to be their local representatives. The Prince might be a powerful influence on the city, or little more than a figurehead; their job involves things like allotting hunting grounds, and acting as judge and jury in criminal cases. The Primogen form a council and help to run things, and they too can be anything from empty titles to the true powers behind the throne. Under the Prince and Primogen are other offices such as Baron and so on.
Prince LaCroix is old, up himself, and ambitious. Which doesn't really distinguish him from any other Prince. Grout's invisible informants have a few things to say about Prince LaCroix, each one more disturbing than the last. Oh! But that comes later.
Abilities & Special Powers
The lower a vampire's generation, the more powerful they are. The scale ranges from Cain himself at 1st generation, to barely-dead thin bloods at 15th. Grout's generation is never stated in canon, and since his sire was a stranger, it's doubtful even he knows what it is. At his age, he's maybe sitting around 11-9. I just think that's neat.
Anyhoo,
IMMORTALITY. Firstly, vampires are immortal; the years won't touch them. Ageing just doesn't happen.
VITALITY. Vampires are tough to injure, and heal very quickly, depending on what hurt them (handguns don't do much, but a blade or a shotgun is dangerous.) They don't need to breathe, eat food, or drink anything but blood (from humans, which is fine; from animals, which is super gross; or from other vampires, putting you in temporary thrall to them, which may or may not have been the result you were going for). They don't usually get sick, though they can spread blood-borne diseases, and they feel milder effects from being drugged or poisoned. They don't feel ill effects from extremes of temperature, unless we're talking, like, hot enough to spontaneously combust. Every day, the body of a vampire returns to the state it was in at the time of the Embrace -- excluding any injuries, which have to be healed using blood.
BLOOD... STUFF. Vampires store consumed blood in their own desiccated bodies, and use it for various things: healing wounds, using Disciplines, or imitating life (they can force their heart and lungs to function and their skin to blush, for instance). They can also blow some stored blood in order to temporarily reach a peak of strength/stamina/dexterity comparable to that of the strongest humans.
CREATING FRIENDS. Vampires are able to create ghouls, mortals bound to them and given supernatural abilities, by feeding their blood to a human. Vampire blood is addictive and mind-altering. First drink makes the vampire play on your mind. Second drink makes the vampire important to you, and it's easy for them to persuade you, and difficult for you to do them harm. Third drink and it's a full on blood bond and an obsession. But ghouls can still respond in various ways; some will do anything for their vampire, while others have core principles they won't violate even for 'love'.
They're also able to create new vampires by drinking from a human and then feeding that human their blood, a process called the Embrace. Simply feeding from a human is super euphoric for everyone involved, and probably the closest thing to sex that some vampires get any more, but it doesn't create a vampire. It's neither necessary nor encouraged to drain a human to the point of death. A human who's been fed from will either pass out or be super woozy in the aftermath.
CLAIRAUDIENCE. Grout has a power unique to his clan: a sliver of a glimpse of the web of Malkav. The voices he hears aren't random, and they aren't all liars. They tell him things he couldn't possibly know about the people around him. Sometimes they give him secrets and juicy tidbits that people are hiding, sometimes they warn him about enemies, and sometimes -- just sometimes -- they join together and scream at once because the red star is rising and the sarcophagus has been broken and Gehenna is coming Gehenna is coming Gehenna is coming.
But these prophecies are neither clear nor direct. These are good old-fashioned cryptic whisperings, because the very nature of Malkavian prophecy is that, even when it gets within a few miles of correct, it's often self-fulfilling or indecipherable until after the event. And Grout is also hallucinating a lot of the time, and he doesn't have a way to tell the actually helpful whispers from the ones that are just there to bug him.
This is basically the World's Worst Clairvoyance: voices say things, sometimes it's junk, sometimes it's true and absolutely vital knowledge, you're on your own figuring out which is which.
DISCIPLINES. As well as the basic vampire stuff, vampires learn some of several specialist Disciplines. As a Malk doing his thing during the time of the Great Prank, Grout's would be Auspex, Dominate, and Obfuscate. Demen-whatnow?
His diaries don't show him using disciplines, but I'm including them here because it would be bizarre and unrealistic for him not to have them, especially as a literally-god-damned Primogen. To work out a power level, I've looked at various recommendations for statting 100+ year old Vampire NPCs, and then nerfed them by a few points to be safe. These powers are activated with blood and would not be available to him when he's too hungry.
Auspex. Supernatural sensory enhancement. Ref: VtM20e p134.
• Heightened Senses. When actively channeling blood into Auspex, his five basic senses will double in clarity and range. Can also give flashes of insight or empathy, whether activated or not, which ties nicely back into Grout's whole voices deal.
Drawbacks: There's great potential for distraction or disorientation. Sudden lights/noises/smells while using Auspex really suck, and can leave him overwhelmed or even oblivious to his surroundings.
•• Aura Perception. He can activate this -- again, with blood -- for a chance to perceive someone's aura; there are various nuanced ways an aura can show up, a mix of colours and brightnesses depending on what the person is (vampire, mage, mortal, etc) and how they're doing in general (scared, excited, suspicious, and so on). He can give a crowd a cursory scan to look for a particular aura.
It's possible, but by no means guaranteed, for Auspex to reveal people hiding behind invisibility, or pierce through illusions.
Drawbacks: It's very possible to fuck this up and get a weak, unreadable, or even an inaccurate reading. It also can't tell him if, say, someone's lying; an aura of anxiety or distrust might ping, but nothing more specific. If he's focused in on a person's aura once, successful or not, he can't do it again for a while.
••• The Spirit's Touch. By holding an object for a while, and going into a light trance, he can sense something about the person who had the object last, or its long-term owner. On a wild success it might be the person's name, but it's much more likely to be brief impressions -- their hair colour, the shirt they wore, maybe their emotional state if it was notable. Strong emotions leave a stronger impression on the object.
Drawbacks: While in the trance, he's only barely aware of what's going on around him, and jarring interruptions will break the trance. Sometimes the impressions can be overwhelming and leave him trapped and useless for up to half an hour after.
Dominate. The famous vampire mind control. Ref: VtM20e p151.
It requires direct eye contact to put in place. He can't make someone directly harm themselves, and commanding them to do something against their core nature means things get confusing. It doesn't work if the target doesn't understand the vampire. The target doesn't know they're being controlled per se, but they might go 'hey why tf did I do that', and if they're aware of the possibility of mind control they might put two and two together.
• Command. He can speak a clear, straightforward one-word command, or hide that word in a sentence, meeting the target's eyes at the correct time. Depending on chance and the target's willpower, it might fail, work okay, or really really work (for instance on 'laugh' they might just chuckle, or they might lose their goddamn minds for the next ten minutes).
•• Mesmerise. With a person's gaze, and intense concentration, he can verbally implant a thought or hypnotic suggestion into their mind, to happen immediately or trigger later. "You'll follow me into this dark alley", for example. This can't plant delusions or false memories, and it can't change feelings i.e. "you are in love with me". The command can be complex and in if x then do y until z structure, but has to be part of one general sentence/suggestion; he can't plant two separate commands in the same person. The suggestion might fail to take hold or be overridden by another suggestion from a stronger vampire.
Obfuscate. The power to conceal oneself from sight. Ref: VtM20e p184.
This isn't true invisibility; instead it's basically a small, portable Somebody Else's Problem field. It's based on clouding others' minds so that they don't perceive the vampire using it. For this reason it doesn't work on things like cameras (and robots probably), and it can be pierced by powers/abilities that let you see through illusion.
• Cloak of Shadows. This lets him stay unseen in a shadowed place, with some small kind of cover, as long as he doesn't undergo concentrated observation. He must say quiet, and can't move or attack or fall under direct light, or else the illusion ends.
•• Unseen Presence. This allows him to move around unseen. People unconsciously move to let him through, and he remains Somebody Else's Problem unless someone's specifically seeking him out or he draws attention to himself (by making a noise, interacting with an item/person, that sort of thing). The likelihood of becoming visible increases in direct correlation with how noisy or intrusive he's being, and if he does get spotted, there's a small chance that very alert characters will remember what he was doing while hidden.
••• Mask of a Thousand Faces. He can influence the perception of others, causing them to see a different face than his own. Impersonating a specific person is difficult, and imitating their voice/mannerisms as well is even more so.
•••• Vanish from the Mind's Eye. He can vanish from sight even when someone is looking straight at him. This is much more manageable if only one person is looking; if there's a crowd to deal with, or some very smart and alert people, he might only be able to fool them into seeing him as an indistinct translucent shape. If he vanishes in front of someone who's very confused or weak-willed, there's a chance they'll forget he was there at all.
Man this is a lot of stuff. god.
WEAKNESSES. Vampires do have several of these, I promise. They must feed on blood, or else they'll eventually violently lose control or go into a catatonic state. They are like me in that they have great trouble staying conscious during the day. Certain kinds of weapons -- such as blades, shotguns, magical spells, and (!)fire(!) -- do lethal/aggravated damage, which is much harder to heal from. Sunlight will end them, do not pass go, do not collect 200 blood points; the threat of fire or the sun can strike a vampire with mortal terror. Other sure ways to deal with them include a stake to the heart, which renders them basically a corpse for the duration, or decapitation, which dusts the bastards.
Vampires also have to deal with:
THE BEAST. Vampirism is a curse, and vampires are monsters, and all of a vampire's morals and allegiances and intentions are little more than tissue paper holding back the thrashing of their Beast. If a vampire can be provoked or starved enough that the beast comes forth, they'll enter a state called "frenzy" where they'll basically just fight or eat their way through anyone they can until it wears itself out. Self-control is gone and the vampire's main goal is instant gratification. Even with a huge effort of will, the vampire can't stop it once it's begun, only hold it on pause for a second or two. The frenzy can have lasting effects, too: there's a chance that it will leave permanent damage on the vampire's mind. In the Camarilla, succumbing to frenzy is an enormous social faux pas, and if you go around frenzying and breaking the Masquerade, you will be put down.
RÖTSCHRECK. The red fear. This is the "flight" to the Beast's "fight". Because sunlight and fire are so dangerous to vampires, there's a sort of species-wide phobia about them. Being around a lit cigarette or a screened-in fireplace can be enough to make a vampire uneasy. Being outright threatened with sunlight or fire, or being burned, can bring down a mindless fear and an overriding need to escape at all costs. Being in frenzy overrides going into rötschreck.
Web Note:
The Malkavian Tapestry is a vague, instinctual and quasi-religious psychic network, which is sort of inherent to Malkavians and may be the source of Grout's prophetic voices question mark? And obviously it's not getting ported wholesale with him into Wonderland. I've spoken to Mouette about it and she's suggested treating it the same way Dragon Age mages do their connection to the Fade, which is to say, [ENERGETIC HANDWAVING].
Roleplay Samples
Third-Person Sample:
It's 1965, and the Anarchs are making another push to evict the Camarilla from Los Angeles. They seem to have swayed the Nosferatu, a significant blow. Grout makes an heroic attempt to care about the tactical chatter that flits back and forth like bats between his fellow Primogens.
Mostly he hopes he won't be driven out of his house. It's a fine piece of construction, organised exactly as he likes it, and he'd rather not go again through the rigmarole of -- you know, of hiring contractors, firing them, hiring more, keeping each group blind to the work of the last, explaining for the twentieth time that these doors go to sheer drops by design, walling up the occasional labourer. All of that blasted inconvenience.
And the danger of moving his wife, in her condition.
Chance has offered him one twisted blessing. Several of the other Primogens have begun organising their clans into some midnight bastardisation of a standing army, and Grout has been worried that he'll be called to do the same. It's not his own ability he doubts, but honestly, look at the Malkavians. They can come together, yes, en masse, like ants; but not for such little things as a city's civil war. He's not even sure where a lot of them are, not counting the one or two under electrodes in his cells. But fortunately, the other vampires seem to recognise this, and have not asked him to attempt to herd cats.
Unfortunately, his unseen friends tell him all about their disrespect. About the way the Primogens are just waiting for him to show a single sign of his clan's famous weakness. About the cold contempt they hide behind their smiles. Is this true? Can he take that chance? Better that he keep these invisible things a secret. Politically gifted though they may be, the narrow minds of these other vampires could never comprehend the difference between a madness that seems to be reality, and a powerful reality that disguises itself as madness.
He is not without duties, of course. He is expected to co-ordinate supplies and attacks, to help scrape together an intelligence network from what the Nosferatu left behind, and to deal with the minds of mortals who've noticed something going on. (Or to just have them killed, whatever works.) He goes about these tasks with all the drive and enthusiasm of a man being pulled from his true life's work -- his experiments, his medical journals, his cold, disease-eaten wife.
Each dawn, he goes home to restless thoughts and hag-ridden sleep. And the war carries on outside his walls.
First-Person Sample:
{ library, night }
[ As darkness spreads and the moon rises, some of you might notice an unfamiliar figure knocking around in the library. It's gothic and jagged tonight, like a cathedral of books.
The person in question is a pale and somewhat careworn-looking man, in bare feet and a dapper nightshirt, with hair that's only barely under control. He's going along the bookcases, cautiously, patting them, cautiously. Now and then he'll mutter aha! and pull a book out, only to push it back in disgust when it doesn't activate the secret switch to make the bookcase roll away.
What, they don't build secret doors like that here? Poppycock.
He breezes past a mirror hung on the wall.
I am not blind, says a voice: a deep, slow voice that reaches his ears and no-one else's. I am not deaf.
Trust that, says another, trust me, you can trust that.
Grout hmms softly, a signal that he's taken... whatever that means on board. It could be literal. It could be metaphor. It could be gibberish. He runs his thumb over a spot on the wallpaper, making sure it's not the light of a spy-hole. He raps the mirror with his knuckles, just in case it's hiding a secret room or something behind it.
But the knocking doesn't sound hollow. He steps back, disappointed. ]
Drat, absolutely nothing.
{ kitchen, night }
[ He finds his way to the kitchen as well, and here it's harder to conduct a search while staying silent. In the dead of night, there's a certain amount of banging involved in opening cupboards and knocking on walls, no matter how careful you're being.
The mansion, he's realising, is huge. Whoever brought him here certainly has resources -- and who? the Anarchs? perhaps; there's a Toreador or two in their ranks who might be tickled by a political kidnapping. He grits his teeth, ducks down and checks inside the unlit fireplace; but there are no pull chains or hidden switches in sight. Not the Sabbat; he'd be dead. A rival in the Camarilla? Several possible names come to mind.
I'm a trap without hinges, key, or lid. The voice is inaudible, but Grout hears it with pure clarity. He straightens up, dusts off his night-gown, and tugs on a wall lamp in case it's a hidden lever. (It's not.)
Yet inside, God forbid. Yet inside, God forbid.
It's good practice not to talk back to his little club of followers and hangers-on; they're secret for a reason. But he's nervous, frustrated, and it helps his concentration to think out loud. ]
A trap without any way in or out isn't a trap. That's absolute consummate nonsense! If I set out a box trap in a field and neglect to add hinge or door, it won't very well catch any rabbits, will it? Every trap has a lid, including this one. Utter nonsense.
[ The voice is obviously trying to tell him something, but what damned unnecessary riddling. No-one who wanted to send a clear message ever wrote poetry! ]