BASIC
LEVEL 1 Command
Exerting your will against a single individual, you can
give a simple command and demand obedience. A single word, even one
embedded in a sentence and stressed lightly, becomes an imperative command
to your victim. You need only meet your victim’s gaze. AS long
as your victim sees your eyes and hears your voice, your command carries
the authority of your blood. The command must be simple and easily
understood…”Sleep”, “Scream”, “Follow” and “Silence” are all acceptable
examples. The command cannot be blatantly harmful or self-destructive.
Observance of the Spoken Word
By intruding upon a subject's communication with the
divine, a Cainite can impose a one word command which must be instantly
obeyed. The command must be clear and unambiguous -- run, cough,
fall, yawn, laugh, sneeze, burp, follow. If the command is at all
confusing, the subject may be slow to respond, or clumsy in his performance.
The command may be sown into a sentence and stressed like a prominent stitch,
concealing the vampire's intent to the ignorant or the unwary.
LEVEL 2 Mesmerism
Like a hypnotist, you can impart commands to your subjects,
even keying them on specific trigger events. If you can meet your
subject’s gaze and speak aloud your commands, you can force the subject
to obey your will. Unsuspecting victims can even be given commands
that they must carry out. Only one such command may be implanted
in a victim at a time.
Murmur of the False Will
The Cainite can impose false thoughts and revelations
upon another mind. The False Will requires intense concentration
between vampire and victim, and orders or instructions must be precisely
and clearly worded to be carried out. The imposed inspiration may
be acted upon immediately, or worldly events may recall it later.
Eye Contact is required while the command is imposed.
The Cainite's command may be clear and unquestionable,
such as "reteurn to the refectory" to "drop your sword." Control
can also be protracted and much more subversive. Vampire and victim
need to look into each other's souls no longer than it takes to make the
initial suggestion.
Commands issued cannot force the subject to harm herself
or defy her innate Nature. Only one idea may be inspired in a subject
at a time.
INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Forgetful
Mind
Your considerable powers of mental manipulation allow
you to exert your influence in the very memories of your victims.
By meeting your target’s gaze, you can draw out answers to questions and
even alter the subject’s memory. You can erase entire blocks of the
victim’s past, or replace mental recollections with those of your own making.
LEVEL 4 Conditioning
The depths of your mental influence are frightful and
pervasive. With time, you can strip away the defenses of the most
determined mind, even removing your victims personality and free will.
You must have unrestricted access to your subject for several nights.
Should you manage to tear down the victims resistance, the victim’s will
is shattered and their mind becomes completely bendable to your will.
ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Possession
No mortal mind can resist the power of your will.
With but a touch, you can move your consciousness into a mortal body, taking
complete control of the shell and suppressing the victim’s mind.
For the duration of this possession, your own body lies comatose, while
the mortal’s mind is unconscious and unaware of what transpires.
During the coarse of Possession, you experience everything
that happens to the mortal body as you guide its actions. Your Vampire
form also suffers any damage sustained by the mortal body. If the
mortal body dies before your consciousness can flee, you immediately collapse
into torpor.
LEVEL 6 Loyalty
With this discipline in effect, the elder’s Dominate
is so strong that other Vampires find it almost impossible to break with
their own commands. Despite the name, Loyalty instills no special
feeling in the victim - the Vampire’s commands are simply implanted far
more deeply than normal. In other words meaning that the Vampire’s
command are tougher for most to break free from. Those whom the Vampire
has Dominated are made resistant to Dominate attempts by others.
Fealty
Fealty allows a vampire to ensure the loyalty of those
who vountarily swear allegiance to her. Whenever a mortal or Cainite
freely makes an oath to a vampire who then uses Fealty, the subject is
locked into fulfilling the oath to the best of her ability. Whether
the subject has false intentions or is sincere but later changes her mind
the oath is binding once it's uttered and Fealty is invoked. The
subject is unable to resist upholding the oath, though she may act against
the vampire in any manner not covered by the oath.
The lasombra are said to manipulate their victims into
freely making oaths on even the worst deals, and then binding them with
Fealty.
Chain the Psyche
Not content with merely commanding their subjects, some
elders apply this power to ensure obedience from recalitrant victims.
Chain the Psyche is a Dominate technique that inflicts incapacitating pain
on a target who attempts to break the vampire's command.
This power costs one blood point/trait. Any attempt
that the subject makes to go against the vampire's implanted commands or
to recover stolen memories causes intense pain. Each application
of Chain the Psyche crushes a number of resistance attempts equal to the
vampire's rating in Manipulation, after which the effect fades.
Obedience
While most Kindred must employ Dominate through eye contact,
some powerful elders may command loyalty with the lightest brush of the
hand. AKA: Touch and Dominate!
Rationalize
The vampire can make a victim of Dominate believe that
she is acting of her own accord.
1 suc. The target won’t suspect she has been dominated...
at first.
2 suc. The target will suspect something... eventually.
3 suc. The target can only be convinced by others that
the action was not her idea.
4 suc. The target will only suspect something if shown
hard evidence.
5 suc. The target will ignore all evidence, and may become
angry if the point is pressed.
Tranquility
The vampire may bring another vampire out of frenzy.
If she botches, the target vampire will attack her.
LEVEL 7 Still The
Mortal Flesh
A Vampire who has developed this discipline is able to
override the victim’s body as his mind in order to cut off his senses or
even stop his heart. It is rumored that this discipline once came
more easily to the Kindred, but modern medicine has made the bodies and
spirits of mortals more resistant to such manipulations.
Using this, you can affect any of the body’s involuntary
functions; breathing, circulation, perspiration, sight and hearing are
viable targets. While Still The Mortal Flesh is in effect, a Vampire
can either stop any one of these functions entirely or cause them to fluctuate
erratically.
Most mortals panic if suddenly struck blind, but only
the shutdown of the heart will kill a target instantly. Vampires
are unaffected by loss of heartbeat or breathing, but may be rendered deaf
and blind as easily as mortals.
Mass Manipulation
A truly skilled elder may command small crowds through
the use of this power. By manipulating the strongest minds within
a given group, a gathering may be directed to the vampire's will.
Eye contact with the initial target, the one most resistive
to the power, needs to be gained before invoking this power.
Mob Rule
This discipline allow the Vampire to attempt to Dominate
more than one person at a time. For every extra success over the
amount needed to Dominate the first victim, the Vampire can Dominate one
other person. This discipline does not require eye contact after
the first target has been Dominated.
Repression of the Obvious (Clanbook: Malkavian)
The vampire can learn what thought, emotion, or urge
is being most rigorously repressed. Three successes cause the victim to
blurt out the thought being repressed.
LEVEL 8 Far Mastery
Allows the use of Dominate on any subject that the Vampire
is familiar with, at any time, over any distance. If the elder knows
where his target is, he may issue commands as if he were standing face-to-face
with the victim.
LEVEL 9 Best Intentions
The vampire can make a victim act in her interests, without
further command, and the victim will automatically know what constitutes
the vampire’s interests. This bond is broken when the victim gains a permanent
willpower point, or gains Humanity.
Speak Through The Blood
The power structures of methuselahs extends across continents
and centuries. This power is a powerful tool by which such ancients
wield control over their descendants, even far outside their geographic
spheres of influence. Speak Through the Blood allows an elder to
issue commands to every vampire whose lineage returns to her -- even if
the two have never met. Thus, entire broods act to further the goals
of sleepingancients whose existences they are completely unaware of.
The vampires affected by this power rarely act directly to pursue the command
they were given, but over ten years or so, their priorities slowly shift
until the fulfillment of the methuselah's command is among their long-term
goals. Speak Through the Blood, because it takes effect so slowly,
is rarely recognized as an outside influence, and its victims rationalize
their behavior as "growing and changning," or something to that effect.
This power costs a permanent Willpower point/trait.
Unless the vampire is aware of the locationa nd present agenda of every
descendant of his -- a highly unlikely event -- he may only issue general
commands, such as "work for the greater glory of House Malkavian" or "destroy
all those who seek to extinguish the light of Knowledge." Speak Through
the Blood can be used by a vampire in torpor. Commands issued through
this power last for one decade per success on the roll.
A vampire who has reached Golconda is not affected by
this power, and is completely unaware that it has been used. Her
chylder, however, are affected normally unless they are also enlightened.
ghouls of the vitims of this power are also affected but to a lesser extent
than vampires.
LEVEL 10 Puppet
Master
The Vampire is able to Dominate another so completely
that the victim will act as if he is the Vampire, taking actions just as
the character would. The victim has in fact become the Dominator,
and his personality has been infused with that of his master. A link
is maintained between the two; thus, the puppet is intuitively aware of
what the Master needs and desires. |