Humanity
From OSWIKI
The change from life to undeath affects more than a person’s body. It changes the soul. A Kindred shares his human consciousness with a force completely opposite to humanity — a thing devoid of reason, conscience or any emotions except hunger and rage. Kindred call it the Beast. The presence of the Beast changes the very nature of morality for vampires. The Kindred can pretend to be human, but they are not. Even the most evil and monstrous mortal does not have a Beast. A vampire’s existence is a constant struggle between the Man, the aspect of a Kindred that can make moral choices, and the Beast, which cannot. The Beast follows a simple plan: Hunt. Kill. Feed. Sleep. Repeat. It feels no pity, only thirst for blood. It cannot even speak. The Man consists of everything that resists the Beast: rational thought, a conscience, and most of all the ability to relate to other people. The Beast does not understand what other people think or feel, and it doesn’t care. They are just food.
When a Kindred treats other people as prey or tools or inconvenient obstacles, the Man weakens. When Kindred make an effort to interact with mortals as fellow people, to care about their lives and happiness, the Beast… waits. The slide toward the Beast is easy. It comes naturally for creatures that must take blood from the living to survive. Strengthening the Man is very difficult. Most vampires slowly degenerate. Mentally, they become less and less human, more callous and brutal. Most Kindred stabilize as monsters with some degree of selfcontrol. They give the Beast some of what it wants and fight it just enough to preserve their existence. The Beast doesn’t know how to hide the bodies; the Man does. These vampires hunt and feed and sometimes kill, but they try not to get caught. Some Kindred cannot strike that balance. Each crime makes the next one easier. They no longer care if they kill their vessels. They show less discretion in who they feed upon, where or how. They might start… playing with their food. When the Beast nears total ascendance, the Man becomes little more than a psychological appendage, adding human perversity and cruelty to the Beast’s predation. Even that remnant of mortality goes in time, and the vampire becomes a killing machine as mindless and ruthless as a shark that scents blood in the water. The vampire retains just enough self-preservation to hide from the sun, flee fire and fight back when attacked.
The Kindred call such creatures draugr, from an old Norse word for a reanimated corpse that viciously stalks and kills its living relations. A draugr leaves a trail of corpses and public attacks that attract mortal attention. Even bitter enemies put aside their struggles and cooperate to stop a draugr before it breaks the Masquerade beyond repair.[1]
Interacting with Mortals
A Kindred's Humanity affects how they interact and are perceived by mortals. The Humanity rating limits how many dice can be rolled when using Empathy, Persuasion, or Socialize with mortals, this includes Hunting. The rules for this are more detailed on p. 185
At Humanity 5, a Kindred starts to show quirks that subconsciously put humans off, such as not blinking as often, or only breathing to talk, or the pallor of their skin. However, these can easily be covered in various ways, and can easily be written off by mortal observers. The person might just seem odd or weird if appropriate, but there is no reason to suspect anything supernatural.
At Humanity 4, a Kindred has a corpse-like appearance, but it can be covered by makeup. This means a deathly pallor, sunken eyes, skin that is room-temperature and thus cool to the touch. However, mortals still will not consider these reasons to think of the supernaturals, but will come up with other excuses, such as illness or disease, or some rare genetic condition.
At Humanity 3 and 2, however, the Kindred is very obviously not human, and very obviously a monster. The skin is taunt across the bones and pale or ashen, the eyes are sunken and dark, the skin is cold to the touch, and the subconscious cues are totally gone; a vampire at this stage will not blink or breathe unless they consciously do so. A mortal will realize within a few minutes of interaction that they are in the presence of some unhuman monster. Depending on the circumstances, this could theoretically be a breach of the Masquerade, at the decision of the Prince.
At Humanity 1, mortals see the Kindred as a total monster almost immediately, or at least a raving psychopath they should escape for their own safety and survival.
References
- ↑ Vampire: the Requiem pg. 181
