Bestiary

The Garou regard vampires as blood-sucking cannibal corpses, thus obviously making them servants of the Wyrm. Vampires would differ. They have a flowery adage

— a beast I am lest a beast I become — that describes their

fundamental dilemma. Each vampire wages an eternal battle to hold onto some shreds of the person she used to be, lest she become nothing but a mindless animal howling for blood. However, in order to maintain that control, the vampire must do terrible things to appease her cursed nature, things corrosive to maintaining her soul. It’s a poignant and complex struggle, which plays out over a span of centuries or even longer.

Or, it ends quickly and prematurely when a Bane known as a Thirster manages to slip into a vampire’s soul during frenzy.

It’s an excellent partnership at first. The vampire grows more resilient, and her blood seems more powerful and potent. But her self-control starts eroding soon after, and it becomes much easier for the scent of blood to send her into a killing frenzy. The Bane eats another piece of what’s left of the vampire’s soul during each murderous revel, until there’s nothing left but a creeping, bloodthirsty corpse. That’s when the real renovations begin.

Unlike a normal vampire lost to the Beast, there’s still something controlling a Bloodworm — the Bane. A Bloodworm is a cunning, canny predator, using its mutated body and its vampiric Disciplines to seek out the blood of Gaia’s defenders.

Powers: Blood Gorge*, Corpse Hide*. After losing all Humanity: Darksight, Rat Head, Slobbersnot, Wall Walking.

* Blood Gorge: This power doubles the size of a vampire’s Blood Pool, but causes her to fail all hunger frenzy rolls, and to automatically fail any Humanity rolls she makes.

* Corpse Hide: Corpse Hide allows the vampire to soak damage at a difficulty two lower than normal.

Image: At first, the vampire seems no different than she did before possession. Once the Bane finishes eating her soul, the vampire’s body undergoes radical alteration. Her fangs disappear as the Bane repurposes her tongue into a far more effective blood-drinking tool in the form of a three-foot long, jointed siphon ending in a deadly sharp needle, which folds up in the throat when not in use. The vampire’s skin turns deep red, and glistens with a thin layer of bloody lubrication. Her limbs wither into corpselike sticks, after about six months they fall off entirely. The vampire’s torso elongates into a fleshy sack designed to store blood, while her pupils grow to take up almost the entirety of her eyes. Muscular, rasp-like bands line the underside of the torso, allowing the vampire to move with terrifying speed through muscular contraction, and even to ooze up walls and across ceilings.

Roleplaying Notes: You’re an ambush predator, and don’t have any worries in the world to distract you

from the hunt for blood. The blood is everything, and when you’re warm and sloshing full of it, you’re content to hide and digest. It’s perfect. You can’t remember why you wanted to fight this.