Rites & Rituals

The Tremere ceased making Gargoyles after the Slaves revolt, and, as part of the Camarilla negotiations, promise never to revive the technique. This horrific ritual creates a Gargoyle from the dismembered parts of slain Cainites, and is the process through which the first of that line came into being.

To enact this ritual, the caster must prepare at least two other vampires (of the Nosferatu, Tzimisce, or Gangrel Clans) for at least a full turn of the moon, feeding them a very small amount of cursed and defiled blood, and starving them to within an inch of wassail. These individuals are tortured nightly, and various humiliations and physical horrors inflicted upon them, to break their sanity and weaken their body.

After the subjects are prepared, they are staked, and brought into a prepared room where this ritual is begun. Over the next few nights, the victim’s limbs are cut from their bodies (the ritual prevents the parts from falling to dust). The ritualist sews the two (or more) vampiric corpses together into a single vaguely-humanoid shape, and then wraps the resultant form (and all extra parts) within the stretched womb of a deer or horse. The bodies must remain undisturbed in this sac for a period of three months, while the thaumaturge periodically visits and performs various incantations. If the thaumaturge misses even a night of these incantations, the ritual is increasingly likely to fail — if it does, the fetal Gargoyle dies, and the creature cannot be revived. If the thaumaturge is successful, at the end of the three months a newborn Gargoyle will force its way out of the thick sac of flesh.

System

The blood cost of this ritual is 5 points for each Cainite used in the Gargoyle’s manufacture. After

three months of casting, on the final night of the ritual, the thaumaturge must make a roll as the fetal sac is cut open. The roll is Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 9, but the roll requires three successes). Subtract one die for every night the thaumaturge did not perform her incantations. A single success allows the creation of a Gargoyle (if this is a player character, it must be built according to the standard character creation rules). Attempted use of this ritual, whether successful or not, removes a single point of morality from the user’s morality total. No matter what path a character espouses, this ritual (and the activities required to perform it) is deeply and utterly abhorrent. Gargoyles created with this ritual are infertile, and cannot Embrace.