Nosferatu

Everyone else hides what they are on the inside. You don't get that luxury.

What Are You?¶

You were Embraced, and the blood ruined you. Every Nosferatu undergoes a transformation that warps their body towards the grotesque. Weeks of agonizing change that leave you looking like a horror movie extra, with such delights as tumorous growths, sunken features, weeping sores, translucent skin stretched over visible bone, and malformed but powerful limbs. The specifics vary, but the result is always the same: you cannot pass as human without supernatural help. Your sire chose you anyway; maybe because you were a survivor, a fighter, or just someone who already knew what it was like to be invisible or discarded. This Clan recruits from the margins. It figures, because who better to become a monster than someone society already treated like one?

The Nosferatu are the eyes and ears of Kindred society. When you can't walk among mortals, you learn to watch them from the cracks. Your Clan operates the most extensive information networks in the vampiric world, trading secrets, brokering deals, and knowing things that powerful Kindred would pay dearly to keep hidden. Every sewer tunnel, abandoned basement, overlooked office, and forgotten maintenance corridor is your highway. Other vampires come to you when they need to find someone, learn something, or make a problem quietly disappear, and they pay your price because the alternative is having you as an enemy. For all the disgust directed your way, nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a Clan that knows where the bodies are buried.

The cost is the face you see in every reflection. No amount of prosthetics, makeup, or clever clothing can fully conceal what you are from anyone really paying attention, and no supernatural disguise holds up perfectly under scrutiny. You are the most visibly cursed of all Kindred; every interaction with the mortal world is a Masquerade risk, every public space is hostile territory. Some Nosferatu rage against it. Others find a strange peace and freedom in it — when you can't pretend to be human, you stop wasting energy on upholding the lie.

Disciplines¶

Choose 2 to start: Animalism | Obfuscate | Potence

Bane: Monstrous Visage¶

Your body is permanently warped into something inhuman. You cannot pass as mortal by any mundane means. You have an Ongoing penalty equal to your Blood Potency (minimum 1) to all social rolls with characters who can see your true form and are unfamiliar with you or don't like you (or Nosferatu in general). This penalty also applies when using supernatural disguises (as with some Obfuscate Powers); the further your true form is from human, the harder any mask is to maintain.

Compulsion: Cryptophilia¶

When you suspect someone nearby is hiding a secret, you become consumed by the need to uncover it. Not knowing is intolerable.

Until you learn a secret significant enough to be useful (you or the Storyteller can decide what qualifies) or the scene ends, take an Ongoing penalty equal to your Blood Potency (minimum 1) to all rolls not dedicated to uncovering information.

Clan Perks¶

You get 2 unique abilities:

The Warrens: You maintain a sprawling network of informants, listening posts, and hidden routes throughout the city's forgotten infrastructure. When you Catch the Scent regarding anything happening in your territory, treat a roll of 6- as a 7-9. Intel always finds its way to you; the only question is how quickly.

Face of Horror: When you deliberately reveal your true form to intimidate or terrify, roll Influence with Advantage using your highest stat and ignore your Bane penalty for that roll. Unprepared mortals who witness your true face flee or freeze in panic unless they have a compelling reason to stay.

Clan Experience¶

Once each per session, gain +1 XP when you...

• Learn a secret that shifts the balance of power in a situation
• Use the city's hidden infrastructure to accomplish something the Coterie couldn't normally achieve
• Turn your appearance into an advantage rather than a liability

Archetypes¶

• Broker: You are the information hub. Your currency is secrets. And also money, probably.
  • Blood -1 | Shadow +1 | Resolve +0 | Demeanor +1 | Wits +2
• Stalker: You are the shadow who follows, watches, listens, and remembers.
  • Blood +0 | Shadow +2 | Resolve +1 | Demeanor -1 | Wits +1
• Bruiser: Folks sometimes forget that Nosferatu can rip holes in buildings. Why don't you remind them?
  • Blood +2 | Shadow +1 | Resolve +1 | Demeanor -1 | Wits +0
• Custom Archetype: Create your own by distributing these stats: +2 | +1 | +1 | +0 | -1