Song in the Dark

Level Six Animalism Power

Before the clan could hide in labyrinths buried beneath the cities of men, Ancients relied upon vast caves and caverns for their survival. The most powerful Methuselahs didn’t limit themselves to the few that existed — they created new ones. Loremasters tell tales of vast creatures underground, forgotten things from the early days of the world, monsters that Nosferatu himself could not destroy. Giants in the earth, these atavisms sluggishly tunnel and crawl countless miles beneath the surface world. Although cynical and scientific Nosferatu (autarkis or otherwise) deny the existence of such creatures, human scientists cannot fully predict the occurrence of earthquakes and similar subterranean events.

Some Nosferatu occultists claim that only Nosferatu Methuselahs are potent enough to draw upon this power. A few insist that mighty vampires employ this Discipline to create sinkholes, collapse unstable sewer tunnels or open up vast caverns in rural areas desperately essential to their descendants. The most outrageous stories concern entire ecosystems based around massive chthonic worms, subterranean leviathans or other burrowers beneath the Earth’s crust. Whether this supernatural power (if it exists at all) involves summoning these creatures or merely shifting vast amounts of earth with the power of the mind remains a point of conjecture. Your Storyteller must decide.

System: If these creatures exist, then Nosferatu Ancients can control them somewhat sparingly. A Nosferatu Methuselah should theoretically be able to summon and command a creature once each year for every five points of Willpower he possesses. First, the vampire burns these temporary points (or Traits) for a period of at least one month; he cannot regain them until this time has elapsed. The size of the subterranean disturbance depends on a Charisma + Survival roll; the difficulty depends on how rural the chosen location is. (An uninhabited plot of land in the midst of the Sahara would be difficulty 6; downtown Manhattan is difficulty 10.) Storytellers may choose to forego game mechanics where Methuselahs are concerned, of course, and just pass around newspaper clippings of recent massive earthquakes throughout the world.

Clanbook: Nosferatu Revised, Page 69