Available from Storytellers Vault

When I was approached about writing up the city I live in as a stretch goal for the Vampire: the Masquerade book Anarchs Unbound, I was thrilled. It was my first chance to contribute — in a meaningful, but small way — to the World of Darkness setting. My write-up was a side-bar, really — only about a thousand words — but the offer was made to me with a very short deadline in mind — less than a week, in fact — from accepting the job to turning over my completed draft. Once completed, I knew that there was more to this story, and I wanted the chance to expand on that very basic summary.

Always Another Secret

The Chronicles of Darkness stretch back to the beginning of human civilization, and perhaps further. When people fearfully peered into the darkness past their campfires, the Begotten were looking back. When they opened their mouths and spoke, attaching sound to meaning, the Awakened bound those words in power and light. When humanity was forming tribes, werewolves were communing with their totem spirits. When the first cities arose, the undead licked their lips in hunger.

And through it all, forces larger and more dangerous than the whole of humanity worked their dire machinations. Even these forces, though, are subject to the tides of history.

The Clans are not the only vampires that strut, if I might steal from the Bard, upon this great stage of fools. There are the errant Kindred inaccurately collected under the sobriquet of “bloodlines.” While their role in the eternal conflict between the childer of Caine is small, it is often incredibly impactful.

As such, I provide this corollary to my original study. It would be the work of several lifetimes to find and document every tiny aberration or fleeting dead end that constitutes a variation from one of the thirteen. Instead, I have focused on nine that I know for certain have an impact in our little culture war of the dead. From the brain-washed abominations of Tremere magic to vampires twisted by demonic will to the remnants of Clans long thought dead, each of these so-called “bloodlines” have their place in society. There is no larger picture for them — for us — to be a part of. Here on the fringes, each vampire’s experience is unique.

We are free to create our own truths amidst the lies.

I’ve never sailed the Amazon, I’ve never reached Brazil, But the Don and Magdalena, they can go there when they will! Unless I go to Rio, these wonders to behold Oh, I’d love to roll to Rio, some day before I’m old! — Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories The Marvelous City Beneath the splendor of […]

White Wolf partners with Focus Home Interactive for a video game adaptation of the World of Darkness Storyteller game, Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

White Wolf is pleased to announce its partnership with Paris-based video game publisher Focus Home Interactive for a licensed PC and console game set in the World of Darkness.

The partnership between Focus Home Interactive and White Wolf Publishing concerns the adaptation of a video game based on the acclaimed Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The game will be developed by the game development studio Cyanide (Styx: Master of Shadows, Blood Bowl, Call of Cthulhu…). In the game you will become a Garou, a rage-fuelled Werewolf warrior opposed to urban civilization and the destruction it brings. The Garou are born to fight the corruption of The Wyrm, a powerful supernatural force leading us towards an inevitable Apocalypse.

Sure, you can do what you want, feed from the locals, and go back to hiding in your lair when you’re done.
You may think you’re safe there, it sure feels safe.
But, you aren’t the only thing connected to the Primordial Dream, and no lair is safe from what lurks beyond.
Don’t fool yourself. — Naomi Walker, Ugalla

A Night Horrors Sourcebook for the Beast: The Primordial RPG

You are a pilgrim now, one of the Created. You rose to life from dead flesh or inert matter, under the ministrations of one of your own, or a mad scientist, or perhaps just the power of the Divine Fire. You wander the world, sometimes alone, sometimes in the blessed company of your own kind, driven by memories of events and facts you never knew, all in the service of one Great Work…

…to be human.

Humans don’t make it easy, though. The Divine Fire that animates you burns too bright, blinds people, and scorches the land if you linger too long. It masks your disfigurements and makes you appear human, but that mask slips and people see your hideous, true form. The Pilgrimage is a long, difficult road, but it is yours, and you know, somehow, that the salvation of the New Dawn waits at the end.

Jyhad.

–Beckett

By Blood It Is Done

Bound by their masters’ blood, ghouls serve the undead and fight their battles in the shadows. Dragged, seduced, or forced into the night, ghouls live at the whims of their masters–for better or for worse.

By Blood It Is Made Anew

Revenants are twisted and unique. They have vampiric powers and extended life, as well as a form of the Beast all their own. Crafted by blending ghouls with dark magic, Revenants have become something else altogether.

The wolf must hunt, but it cannot hunt alone. Your hunts need the talents and instincts of other werewolves to slaughter the most dangerous prey. Your hunting grounds and families need the watching eyes of those with the blood of the Wolf of the spirit of the Moon. Your pack needs grounding in the world, humans who provide their contacts, expertise, and support. A pack is not a pack without a totem, a warden in the world of Spirit that watches over the entire pack.

A pack is family and gang and club and cult, but some werewolves go further. Tragedy drives werewolves apart, leaving the Wolf-Blooded to hold the pack together and herd the surviving Uratha in service to the Siskur-Dah. A pack cannot hunt without knowledge of the broader
supernatural world, so accepts a mystic into their ranks. Packs form protectorates & fragile alliances, cemented in rituals of honor or arranged marriage. A packmate joins a Lodge, a
mystery-cult that teaches dangerous secrets that empower their whole pack on the hunt.

Onyx Path Publishing is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for a Deluxe edition of the upcoming Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition RPG. This crowdfunding campaign has blown past the original goal and is well on its way to achieving several excellent stretch goals to enhance the original product and offer Changeling fans some bonus content for this new edition of the game.

Flames Rising had the chance to ask Onyx Path’s Rich Thomas and Matthew McFarland a bit about the Kickstarter and this edition of Changeling: the Dreaming.

Lore of the Clans

My sire always told me, “There’s no instruction manual for being dead, strákur.” I believed her, because she was older and smarter than me, and we value knowledge if nothing else. Many sires spill a lot of poison into the ears of their childer, telling them the One True Way to be a vampire. Some vampires don’t even bother, kicking their errant progeny to the streets and letting them figure it out for themselves. A few smother their instruction in religious imperatives, philosophical tenets, or mystical confluences. But not one of them has a pamphlet with clear, easy instructions once you’ve become Damned.

Of course they lie. All vampires lie. But the best lies are those that are told between two truths, yes? Here are thirteen such truths, childe. They may line up with other things you know, or they might not. Sometimes the narrators present tantalizing rumors and conspiracies, while others digress into areas not often considered by many. Some of what they say have no facts to back them up, but not everything is a lie, either.

Let us find instruction from amidst the lies, together.

Keep walking.

Don’t look back.

In the shadows and between the cracks of our everyday lives hide the Chronicles of Darkness. Here lurk creatures of ancient myth and urban legend. Here lie the graves of angels and the bunkers of secret government programs. Here every malformed horror you’ve ever seen out of the corner of your eye has a home. And they’ve seen you.

Don’t look back!

Judge us not by our seemings for we are never what we appear.
Come hither, changelings and join the dream-dance,
lest the winter come and the Dreaming pass into memory.

Recall your heritage! Let the games begin!

Twenty years ago, White Wolf published Changeling: the Dreaming, the fifth of their promised five game-lines that together comprised the World of Darkness. Seen by some as a lighter, more fantasy-based setting in the modern-day, and by others as the darkest game White Wolf had yet created, players had to face the question of what happens once creativity and magic fades from their world.

We’re all mages, we Awakened Ones. Tradition wizards and Technocrats, Mad Ones and Fallen Ones and all the “ones” in between who refuse to choose a side in our demented little War. We’re ALL mages. Many refuse that title, or deny it to others, but that’s what we are: priest-kings holding the keys to reality.

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition is available now in PDF and Hardcover editions at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

It’s 1242. The Mongol army crushed Baghdad, then Russia under its heel, then moved on to devastate Poland and Hungary. The Holy Roman Empire stood to war with the Papacy. The second Lombard League wielded the word of the Pope and fought off Frederick II.

The War of Princes rages. Patricide looms. Young powers look up the ladder to the next rungs, and see stagnation and hypocrisy. They see targets. When they look down, they see humanity. They see a power that could change everything. They see mortals organizing into universities and empires.

In the mortal world of 1242, power shifted at the rate an army marched. For the undead, power shifts faster than a fire overtakes a haven. To the Damned, power flows as fast as blood from an ancient heart.

Savannah is under siege.

For 20 years the minions of the Wyrm have threatened the Coastal Empire, checked only by the courage and cunning of the Shadow Lords. Every year, the septs of the Southern Protectorate send young warriors to aid in the defense and to prove their mettle in the pressure cooker of the port city.

It’s not enough.

Every night, the Wyrm grows stronger, its forces more bold. Now, young cubs are dead and a hidden foe reaches out its claws to exact revenge against Savannah’s Garou.

Ingrid Stormwalker, war chief of the Coastal Empire, must defy her sept’s law, her family, and her pack to uncover the root of the rotten vine that chokes her beloved caern.

Time is running out for the historic city — and the entire Southern Protectorate.

There are some threats that transcend a local Prince’s domain and become enemies of every Kindred in the Camarilla. These Anathema become targets of a global Blood Hunt for their crimes. Not just political enemies, the monsters on the Red List have been named enemies of the entire Camarilla by the Justicars.

Dread Names, Red List explores the Camarilla’s “Most Wanted” List, naming those deemed most dangerous by the Justicars and their chosen deputies, the Alastors. Included are details on the Anathema that occupy the Red List, as well as details on those who hunt them. Storytellers are also given a toolkit for running Alastor-focused chronicles.

The need to hunt burns in your heart and in your soul. To chase down prey with your blood pumping fire through your body. Yesterday you didn’t know what that felt like, but today you’re sitting in a room with the bodies of your family and you need to hunt.

What are you going to do?

On Wednesday, February 4th Onyx Path Publishing will be hosting a Twitter chat for fans to discuss the World of Darkness: Dark Eras supplement that is currently funding at Kickstarter.com. Starting at 8:00 p.m. EST, tune in to the #DarkEras hashtag and connect with the writers and developers who worked on this book. You can […]