The Ones You Can’t Deny

Vampire the Requiem Second Edition

Something dead approaches. It moves with the calm of someone who already knows the outcome. It stalks as bold as a revenant lion. Bullets and threats slide off its skin, raindrops on obsidian. Eyes like the tinted windows of a luxury car, mouth like an iron maiden, smile like a blood-stained crown. Those tinted windows roll down. Its words violate you. You’ll put that gun to your head if it asks. Its voice is full of chains and meathooks. You dance like a marionette, as it leads with all the grace of storybook nobility. In obeisance and despair you realize Prince Charming is Bluebeard.

The Ventrue are rulers, yes, but more than that they’re winners. They’re the best and the darkest, the lords and generals of the night. They don’t ask, they take. You start, they finish. They come, they see, they crush. They are the raggedy king of the beggars and buskers and stray animals. They are crime boss in the back room, talking to gangsters and aldermen alike. They are the self-help guru selling their books and CDs through an online empire.

The Gangrel might chase you down, but the Ventrue walks calmly towards you, shrugging off your pathetic attempts to hurt him. No weapon or words will stop him, but his quiet voice will freeze you where you stand. He’s going to get what he wants, and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt, because it won’t be him.

What if no one could say no to you? Maybe it would feel great at first. For many of the Ventrue, it does. They command their lessers, and are unquestioned. But what resentments lurk behind those mesmerized eyes? Again, better to be feared than loved…but what if the Ventrue are just despised ?

Ventrue are:

• Winners
• Self-confident to the point of arrogance
• Dressed appropriately
• Impressed by breeding
• Happy to be the centre of attention

Ventrue are not:

• All-conquering
• Self-deluding
• Unwilling to get their hands dirty
• An aristocracy
• Desperate to be in the spotlight

Clan Disciplines: Animalism, Dominate, Resilience

(Text on this page taken from Vampire: the Requiem 2nd edition.)