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St. Lawrence, Maine

Sunday, April 19th, 2015

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The shattered corpse of a dormant city slowly stirs as life seeps back into it. It is a place where seeds of redemption now take root while a timeless struggle for supremacy begins anew. Beneath the rotted shell of the city, under the desperation and despair, lurks untapped power. Multiple factions of Kindred (and others) vie for control, and that power impatiently waits for those ambitious enough to grasp it. Welcome to St. Lawrence by Night

We are currently at maximum player population and will not be accepting additional players into the game until further notice.



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Your Beast and You; Tips and Commentary Concerning the Beast
Topic Started: Feb 17 2018, 01:00 PM (3 Views)
Oracle

I wanted to take some time and talk about the nature of the Beast that every vampire carries in the World of Darkness. We see the Beast portrayed a lot of ways, and they’re almost all entertaining. And that’s good. That’s fun. But I also want to get everyone fairly grounded in the INTENT of the Beast, what it means thematically for your PC as a vampire, and why that is important.

Generally speaking, a character’s Beast is not just another more violent, more bestial personality. This is not a criticism against players who like to portray their Beast that way, as that’s fun, but consider this an encouragement to reconsider your approach to the Beast and what it means to you as a character.

The Beast is the feral, primal, bestial nature that lies inside every vampire. The curse that twists your soul to resemble the monster Caine became grabs part of your soul, twists it, warps it, and torments it into something else. Something inhuman. That something is the Beast. It’s core to your curse as a vampire. Your path (i.e. Humanity or otherwise) is how you measure how close to your Beast you are. Once you hit 0, you become the Beast fully.

The Beast is your primal, feral, predator nature. Some clans and individuals have different interactions with their Beast, or different aspects of the Beast are accentuated, but in general, they work the same way. The Beast is the part of you that is a predator, a monster, a force of nature. The Beast does not talk or scheme or nurse grudges. The Beast cares only for blood, for the moment, for survival at all costs. This is why when you frenzy or go into Rotschreck that you lose control and then flee or fight or feed. That’s your Beast taking over to try to make you survive in the most direct means possible. Sometimes it’s misguided, but the Beast is not a cunning force, typically. The Beast is too direct, too impulsive for such long range thought.

That said, the Beast is all Id. The Beast is a predator and the ultimate survivor. Sure, sometimes you can portray yourself arguing with it over how to act, but it’s important to note that in reality (lol, you know what I mean), you aren’t having a mental conversation with your Beast. At best, it’s an emotional conversation. More accurately, it’s your predatory, violent, survivalist nature that you’re trying to control or resist. But it’s a caged animal inside you, and it doesn’t want to be quiet. Not ever.

But if you want to portray that as an actual internal dialogue, alright, that’s fine, but I urge you to make the Beast less articulate and more demanding. Less of a sociopath and more of a wild animal. It should be all about raw emotion and impulse. It shouldn’t think ahead. It shouldn’t live in the past. It should care about right here, right now, and how can it get what it wants?

And what does it want? To feed. NOW. To destroy. NOW. To survive. NOW. Damn the consequences. Success at all costs. At ANY cost (short of immediate self destruction; delayed self destruction due to lack of foresight would never occur to it).

Some vampires are obviously better than others at holding the Beast at bay, but it’s important to note that it’s ALWAYS there, at least in the background, always scratching at the walls, dying to get out. You’re a monster now, and short of Golconda, it’s always going to be a part of you. I encourage you to keep this in mind when you’re role playing. If you have a high Path rating and/or high Self Control, you’re likely quite in control of your Beast usually. If either/both are low, then your Beast is much closer to the surface of your psyche and is much more present in your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In either case, keep this in mind, and let it influence how you act, the decisions you make, etc.

So why is all of this important? Because Vampire is a game about horror. Vampire is a game about intent. Loss. Sacrifice. Angst. Redemption. Temptation. It’s a game about exploring what it means to be a monster, especially when you aren’t always one. It’s about how you deal with that. It’s about IF you deal with that. Vampire is a game where you don’t just run around and pretend to drink blood. It’s a game where you examine a dark place through the eyes of someone you’re not. You have a monster inside you and it wants nothing more than to get out. How do you, in the shoes of your character, deal with that? How does it FEEL? How does it make you, the player, feel? Understanding what the Beast is and imagining it correctly is central to this experience. You can’t truly understand how damned you are unless you can grasp what the Beast is and just how it interacts with you.

You’re a vampire. You’re a monster, and the Beast is there to make sure you never forget it. Will you fight it? Will you embrace it? No matter what, you’ll have to confront it. And when you do, you need to have the right mindset about it to get the most out of the experience.
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