From left to right:
The Honorable Naghini, Malkavian Neonate
The Honorable Christophe Charpentier, Malkavian Neonate
The Honorable Yelena R. Nastenka, Malkavian Neonate
The Clan
For some, eternity is no more than a continuance of mortal existence. For Malkavians, the transition is far more abrupt and devastating. The act of Embrace shatters the minds of those brought into this clan, driving them over the sharp brink of madness — but also unlocking supernatural gifts of insight and introspection.
All Malkavians are deeply, darkly insane; their psychology is precariously balanced on the edge of sanity’s cliff. This is a painful, alienating phenomenon. The madness may take the form of a structured, clinically understood insanity, or it may be a complete reversal of the senses. It may come and go in vivid psychosis, or it may manifest as elaborate, longterm hallucinations. Each Malkavian’s Embrace shatters the mind in a different pattern; no two emerge into immortality exactly the same.
It is dificult for other vampires to relate to members of the Malkavian clan. They are fractious, unpredictable, and sometimes unintelligible. They see the world differently and, occasionally, they try to educate and enlighten others to truths that only they seem to understand. These lessons take the form of pranks, and they are elaborate, terrifying, and dangerous, following logic only a Malkavian could understand.
Malkavians Embrace seemingly at random, taking their childer from all strata of mortal society. A Malkavian’s outward appearance is usually specific to the individual’s derangement, varying from disheveled and dirty to obsessively clean. Younger Malkavians tend to be deviants and loners, struggling to understand themselves and the new world into which they’ve been plunged. Elders tend to have a better grasp of their inner pandemonium, and seem more at ease. Further, all Malkavians are connected by a vast, lingering sixth sense – some say it is the slumbering consciousness of the founder of their clan – and they all have insights beyond any mortal capacity to understand.
Stereotypes
Assamite: There’s something flattering in what they’re doing. Like I’m a little piece of their God.
Brujah: You can’t hide your horns, devil-man.
Followers of Set: Walking westward, they should meet the sun before it sinks.
Gangrel: Pin the tail on the— OW, OW, OW, FUCK!
Giovanni: Ashes, ashes, we all fall down, and get back up, and dance with ghosts.
Lasombra: A hyena doesn’t ever choose to be a hyena, I think.
Nosferatu: I have dreamed what hunts them in their dark, humid warrens, and it is what each of us can become, if we’re not careful.
Ravnos: It looks different depending on if I close my left or my right eye.
Toreador: Made up of the pieces of the people they’ve harmed. Each time they feed they become a little less.
Tremere: If you can rub those letters off their foreheads, they’ll stop in their tracks.
Tzimisce: I tried to sprinkle salt on one’s tail and he bit off my hand.
Ventrue: I will make you a fine new waistcoat, my emperor.
Caitiff: I didn’t do it.
Camarilla: When all you do is look behind you, you never realize that the door in front of you is closed.
Sabbat: They have the answer, but they don’t understand the riddle itself.
Anarchs: All they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense.
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