Preview: Mithraist Ambition
over 4 years ago – Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 07:08:59 AM

Happy Boxing Day, Bloodthirsty backers!

Today, we'll unpack another sneak peek, this time looking at our backers only preview that will be posted in full tomorrow. But first, instead of reading my ramblings, let's listen to the Gentleman Gamer himself, Matthew Dawkins, in a special Cults of the Blood Gods podcast interview conducted by The Story Told RPG podcast group...

THE STORY TOLD RPG PODCAST...

"In our first foray into V5, Matthew Dawkins joins us once again, this time to talk about Cults of the Blood Gods. Cults of the Blood Gods gives you all the rules you need to play a member of Clan Hecata, or a vampire member of any number of faiths, including the Church of Caine, Bahari, Church of Set, and Cult of Mithras, among many others."

Click <HERE> and give it a listen!

Mithraist Ambition

The Cult of Mithras follows a many-headed religion, but above all, they are a cult of law. At the cult’s height its rituals were formal, its structure rigid, its mysteries impenetrable to outsiders. Since Mithras’ destruction the cult broke up, and with it the religion lost much of its power. Mithraism is strongest when centralized around an unliving god with firm edicts. Since his apparent return, the cells returning to the fold have found great purpose in returning to the old ways. They believe in a world where secrets are kept secret, where the truly powerful seize power and hold on to it until someone more potent can topple the leader, and where training should start young, so age and experience might convey wisdom.

Mithras is the model the cult strives to emulate. As a god, he is multi-faceted, symbolizing spheres from conflict to fertility, and justice to business. This appeals to the cult’s varied followers, as while the Ventrue adherent might find attraction to the cult’s wealth, a Brujah might find appeal in its dedication to war. Through this range of influence, Mithras belongs to his followers, but they all belong to him in turn.

Once a follower digs deeply into the Mithraic Mysteries, concepts such as diablerie become less and less of a taboo. As Mithras gave himself up to his diablerist in the 20th century — at least, that’s how the Mithraists describe it going down — some of the cult’s elders may give themselves over to promising up-and-comers. They may even try to create gestalt personalities, giving themselves up to create something close to divine. This horrifying ritual rarely works, but such self-sacrifice is a point of great pride to Mithras’ cultists.

Unlike the Setites, who believe in unshackling oneself from mortal fetters, and the Bahari, who believe in exalting in vampiric power to serve their goddess, the Mithraists believe in enlightenment by way of control. Mithraists reinforce each other’s Convictions, Touchstones, and therefore Humanity, not due to ethical concerns, but because doing so makes the cult stronger and brings a vampire closer to mastering their urges.

When not pursuing their vein of enlightenment, the Mithraists run a successful protection racket in multiple domains, utilizing their tight structure to extort and bodyguard those who pay into the temple. The temple itself acts both as a clubhouse — often along the lines of an exclusive gentlemen’s club with old fashions and practices, such as telling stories, singing as a pianist or harpist plays, or even playing war games — as well as a site for cult rituals, inductions, and burial of torpid peers. The few Tremere who gain admittance to the cult (Mithras always despised the clan) draw parallels between their practices and those of Hermetics, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, while the Mithraists boldly declare that if anyone set the mold the others followed, it was them.

 Law and Chaos

If there are two diametrically opposed cults in this book, one might suspect the Church of Caine and Bahari make for the most contentious, but it’s the Cult of Mithras and Church of Set most inclined to go to war. One could argue Mithras and Set are among the most “successful” of vampires, to have successfully masqueraded their identities behind the names of gods and cultivated religions in their wake. However, the two have never been comfortable sharing success, this world, or potential followers. The two faiths have two completely opposed views of the world, which in extreme terms amounts to Mithras wanting a vampire world governed with tight laws, with power funneling up to him, while Set wants a vampire world with no laws, and power raging unbridled. The Mithraists may be the best fit for the Camarilla, with the cult’s preference for hierarchy, Blood Bonds, and secrets, while the Setites veer toward the Anarchs with their love of unrestricted knowledge and influence.

Of course, neither vampire is open to speaking their views, which leads to this law vs. chaos divide being one perpetuated among their followers. It’s not known if Mithras and Set ever encountered each other or discussed their opposing philosophies, but there’s enough vehemence between their followers to make any city with a temple of Mithras and a temple of Set within its borders liable to assassination attempts, bombings, and other assorted strife.

#V5BloodGods

#V5MithraicMysteries

BACKERS ONLY – MANUSCRIPT PREVIEW #2E
over 4 years ago – Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 02:08:56 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Just Another Family Dinner
over 4 years ago – Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 03:19:14 PM

Just Another Family Dinner

By Eddy Webb

Moonlight pours through the stained-glass windows of a remodeled Gothic church, and in its basement, the dead dine with family. From a small table off in the corner, I watch a thin, almost emaciated woman with steel hair and pale eyes stand from one end of a ridiculously long table. Anja Giovanni raises her wine glass of treated blood to the assembled. I swirl around the thickening blood in my own glass, half-listening to her speech. Something about gathering the Clan of Death, embarking on new beginnings, the usual horseshit. I tune in just as I sense she’s wrapping up. “For we are all Hecata, now. We are all family.”

She nods to the Japanese man at the other end of the table, who also stands up. Hiromitsu Asano has a twig pinned to a jacket that’s worth more than I make in a year. He thanks her and raises his glass in return. Everyone else raises their glass, too. The whole room smells like a hospital dump: nothing but coppery blood and dead bodies. The gazillions of flower place-settings just add a layer of fragrant death over everything.

The fat, sweaty-looking man in a rumpled suit sitting next to me has been trying to catch my eye for half an hour now. Clearly annoyed that I didn’t raise my glass for the toast, he reaches over and taps his glass against mine. “There. Now you’re being social.”

I take a sip of the blood. “Didn’t come here to be social.”

“Tough.” He shoves a hand out to me. “Tony Ambrose. Of the Puttanesca.”

I sigh and take it. It feels clammy and soft, like a fish a day past its sell-by date. “Maria. Of the Pisanob, I guess.”

He raises an eyebrow at that. “Pisanob? Ain’t many of yours around anymore.”

I bite back yet another profanity and close my eyes.

I watched the flames lick the sides of my sire’s haven. I didn’t get the call fast enough, I didn’t drive fast enough, I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. I fell to my knees, tears rolling down my face. And all I could hear in my head was him chiding me, like he did during my first ceremony lessons.

“Don’t cry, little Maria,” he would say. I could remember how he always smelled of sandalwood and copper. “Death comes to us all, even the immortals. One day I, too, shall cross the Shroud and join both those we have lost and those we have enslaved. You can’t become a necromancer if you cry over every single death.”

I wiped my arm across my eyes, and blood smeared on my sleeve. In the corner of my eye I could see a man who was also watching the blaze. He put his cell phone away and got back into his large sedan. He was a fat, sweaty man in a rumpled suit. He didn’t look at me as he drove away.

“Hey, you listening to me?” Tony’s voice cuts through my reverie. “I asked you what happened to all of youse.”

I open my eyes and turn to stare at him — the first time I’ve looked at him all evening. “Most of us were murdered.” He leans back from my gaze, and I imagine what it would feel like to rip his throat out with my teeth.

I feel a hand touch my shoulder, gently. “Leave him be,” she says. “It’s not nice to play with your food.”

I turn back to look at her. Berlin smiles at me, like she always does when she knows I’m about to punch someone. Her green eyes twinkle with mischief, like they always do. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks, but she’s always telling me that I’ve gotten under her skin, in the best possible way. I nod, and she drops her hand to my knee. Her fingers feel cool through my stockings as she points to the head table. “Besides, Mora the Death Seer is up to something.”

I follow the line of her finger, and see a delicate person dressed in a draping black sweater stand up. Their back is to our table, and they speak softly, but their voice carries through the room. They talk about Augustus Giovanni’s plans to murder the Cappadocians, and how they’ve killed many Giovanni in retaliation. They just manage to avoid making it sound like a boast or a threat before they offer their condolences to Asano for his losses. He murmurs something nice in return.

Berlin clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Damn, Mora must have practiced that apology for a week. Imagine having to kiss Giovanni ass after everything done to them.”

I take a sip from the glass before pointing it at Berlin’s face. “You’re just mad they’re not kissing your Giovanni ass.”

“Damn straight,” she laughs. “My ass is much nicer than his.”

“Nice ass,” I said, as I watched her walk down the hallway.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “You know it. Have we met?”

I shook my head and walked to her as she turned around. “Maria Ibarra. A cousin.”

“Berlin Giovanni.” I clasped her hand as she looked me up and down. “A cousin, huh? Not a kissing cousin by chance?”

“Kissing? No.” I leaned over and put my lips next to her ear. “I’m thinking of something much, much better.”

She shivered then. The same shiver she had later, tied down to the bed, when she was begging for my tongue.

I smile, but I’m not looking at her. Instead I’m watching as Asano walks over to Mora, who’s pulled a cylinder wrapped in pale blue silk out of the folds of their sweater. The two vampires are going through some tiresome ritual where Mora offers the gift and Asano refuses it, then he pulls out a small wooden box from his jacket and the roles are reversed as the two of them go through it all over again.

The man sitting across the table from me sighs and turns back to face us. The moonlight from the stained glass glints off the polished ebony of his mask. “I have always found these pleasantries to be tiresome. They detract from my studies.” He carefully adjusts his tattered brown robes around his frail form, and carefully lifts the edge of his mask up so that he can sip from his wine glass.

“I’m surprised this pulled you away from your studies, Zebadiah.” Berlin has reluctantly pulled her hand off my knee and leans forward on the table, her elbows resting on either side of the barren plate in front of her. “I figured you would still be in mourning for the loss of your childe, Elias.”

Zebadiah carefully pulls the mask back over his face. “We are the Clan of Death. To mourn those that have died seems… pointless.”

Tony has, unfortunately, decided to join in the conversation. “Pointless? Don’t know about that, Zeb. If I—”

“Zebadiah.”

Tony is distracted by the sudden interruption. “Huh?”

The cool, flat voice comes from the mask again, faintly muffled and hollow. “My name is Zebadiah. Not ‘Zeb’.”

“Sure, that’s what I said. Zebadiah. And if I had a childe that was tore up like that, I wouldn’t be mourning. I’d be out hunting the bastard that did it.”

“Would you? I suppose that makes a degree of sense. But I am simply… what is the word?”

Berlin leans back again. “Upset?”

Tony knocks back the rest of his glass. “Fucking furious, more like.”

“Jealous. Yes, that’s the word. He died in such a creative way. I hope I get to experience that some night.”

The pale man never said a word when I nailed his hands to the wooden top of the table. Nor his feet. But when I pulled his mask off, he started screaming like he was on fire. “Please! Please! Give me back my face! I am Elias of the Harbingers, and you must give me back my face!”

I leaned over him and gave him a smile. I made sure he could see the blowtorch under the spoon, which had started to glow from the heat. “Here’s what I’m going to do, Elias. If you don’t answer my questions, I’m going to scoop out your eyes. If you do, you get to keep them.”

Those same eyes, dark and terrified, stared at me. “And then you’ll let me go?”

I set the blowtorch next to his hand, which was starting to ooze thick, coagulated blood. “Let’s not go crazy now. But first things first. The Harbingers are hunting down the Pisanob. Correct?”

He closed his eyes. I jammed a finger in one of them, and they snapped back open. I waved the cooling spoon in front of his face. “Correct?” I asked again.

“Yes! Yes! You know we are!”

“I do, because you tried to come after me, and you were sloppy. Honestly, I don’t know how you ancient fuckers managed to accomplish anything. But I’m not here to debate your failings as a family.” I moved onto the table surface, managing to sit right next to where his hand was nailed down. I picked up the blowtorch again and began reheating the spoon. “Next question. Who told the Putanesca where to find my sire’s haven?”

“I don’t—” The rest of his sentence was lost in the scream, as I plunged the white-hot spoon into his right eye. There was a soft pop and then a sizzling sound, as the vitreous fluid in his eye began to boil.

I gave him a minute to calm down before I spoke. “I told you, I need you to answer my questions. See, no one really gives a shit about the Pisanob except you Harbingers. And the Putanesca aren’t clever enough to hunt down one of us in our haven. But they are just dumb enough to take on a job for someone else if they think it will get them somewhere.” I slid off the table and moved to the other side, so he could see me with his remaining good eye. “I know your sire hired them. And don’t worry — he’ll get his. But I also know that you don’t get out of your crypts for a simple hit job. There was someone who arranged everything. Wasn’t there?”

He cried a bit. I slapped him in the face with the blowtorch. “Wasn’t. There.”

“Yes… yes, there was a… a Giovanni that my sire knows. Someone who wants to take out the competition in her family.”

My thoughts are interrupted as a crowd of mortals start to mill into the dinner area. They’re all dressed in white clothing, but otherwise there’s nothing linking them together. A wide variety of ages, genders, sizes, what have you. Some carry carafes of blood and start refilling glasses. Others start to carefully put food onto the places — small bones stuck into carefully sliced raw meat, also covered in blood. Tony waves off the meat and looks a little green around the gills as he looks at it. Zebadiah nods once at the server filling his plate. Berlin just stares at me with a smirk on her face as she takes a sip from her newly filled glass. I can feel her foot running up the side of my leg.

As the servers continue to fill glasses and plates, Mora is chanting a prayer. “I am the end and the beginning. Dead flesh may cover my bones, and my bones may encase an unbeating heart, yet I remain….”

I held the spoon close to Elias’ remaining eye. “Give me a name.”

He started to speak, like he wanted to negotiate. But he realized that I was going to kill him anyway. I could see his whole body relax a little, as he accepted the end.

“Berlin. Berlin Giovanni.”

Mora’s voice rises in volume. “For I am Hecata. I am the beginning and the end. I remain.”

I turned and looked into Berlin’s beautiful eyes. I wonder what they taste like.

#V5BloodGods

Stretch Goal Surprise!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 09:09:22 AM

Hello Bloodthirsty Backers!

Have you all been good little backers? Or, maybe more appropriate, bad little vampires? Lots of celebrations going on around the world at this time of year, and we'd like to keep celebrating the success we're having with this Cults of the Blood Gods kickstarter campaign!

Yesterday, we hit our "celebration" Stretch Goal of $90,000!

ACHIEVED! - At $90,000 in funding - DIGITAL WALLPAPER: An awesome digital wallpaper for your computer desktop featuring art from Cults of the Blood Gods. All backers will have this automatically added to their rewards list.

UPCOMING STRETCH GOALS

And, from reading a recent update, you're probably aware of our upcoming $100,000 funding target and our goal to increase the art budget for the book:

At $100,000 in funding - ART BUDGET INCREASE: Additional funds will be allocated to the art budget for Cults of the Blood Gods, allowing Onyx Path to include even more awesome art in this sourcebook.

But, since it's the season of giving, and we've just passed 300% of our funding goal, this is our chance to squeeze in a surprise Stretch Goal!

At $95,000 in funding - FORBIDDEN FAITHS PDF — PATHWAYS TO POWER: Help us fund another supplement, featuring a chapter focusing on cults dedicated to power through fear, influence, or devotion, including worshipers of the Nictuku, errant houses within the Tremere, and the ancestral obsession of the Ventrue. All backers receiving the Cults of the Blood Gods PDF will automatically have the Forbidden Faiths PDF added to their rewards list.

That's right! More content! A second supplement automatically added to all backers receiving the Cults of the Blood Gods PDF!

And, now that Forbidden Faiths has been introduced, let's keep it going!

At $106,000 in funding - FORBIDDEN FAITHS PDF — DREAMS OF GOLCONDA: Help us fund a chapter in which a series of cults, all believing they know the path to Golconda, are profiled with their flawed wisdom and powerful gifts on display.

So, our next three Stretch Goals all lined up! Let's see if we can open another of these Stretch Goal presents ... or maybe even two! ... while our Kickstarter calendar is still set to 2019! And then let's slide into 2020 with some great momentum and see how much more we can add to this project!

Tonight: Just Another Family Dinner

This is not only my plan for the evening of December 24, but also the title of some Cults of the Blood Gods fiction from Onyx Path designer Eddy Webb (who's celebrating his birthday today! Happy Birthday, Eddy!). So, leave out the cookies and a glass of milk (or blood...) and I'll reach out later tonight with a special story time.

#V5BloodGods

#V5ShalimIsComing

#V5StretchGoalSurprise

#V5THREEHUNDREDPERCENTFUNDED

BACKERS ONLY – MANUSCRIPT PREVIEW #2D
over 4 years ago – Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 03:08:10 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.