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The Antediluvians

Thirteen vampires of the Third Generation, progenitors of the thirteen clans who have existed before The Great Flood. Their existence is a hotly debated issue, the Camarilla denying their existence while the Sabbat prepare for their eventual awakening.


  • Abusive Precursors: The rise of the Antediluvians is not a good thing. Many of them seek to create hell on earth in their own style, enslaving humans and vampires alike. And if you are an elder vampire, you are now food.
  • Ambiguous Gender: In the "Nightshade" scenario of Gehenna: Time of Judgment, the Toreador Antediluvian is described as "so beautiful even that it is impossible to tell its gender."
  • Ancient Evil: As their name implies, they are believed to be the oldest vampires on earth, and many are evil beyond measure. Especially Absimiliard, Set, Lau-Som-Bheu, and the Eldest.
  • Assimilation Plot: The Tzimisce Antediluvian's end goal in "The Crucible of God" scenario from Gehenna: Time of Judgment involves turning every vampire and human in the world into an extension of his own body.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: They managed to kill the second generation vampires. This is a rare case where even the "normal" is still a "Cthulhu" by normal standards.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Some of them aren't even vampires anymore. For example, Ennoia melded with the entire earth, shaping the earth according to her wishes. Lau-Som-Bheu shed his humanity entirely and became a creature of the darkness before the universe. The Eldest, in one possible Gehenna scenario, becomes a virulent virus, causing all sorts of lifeforms to become horrifying fleshy abominations.
  • Food Chain of Evil: As a vampire grows in power, they will require more potent blood. Elders can only feed on vampire blood (and since vampire blood creates Blood Bonds, Elders would go all the way). Ancient Elders (Methuselahs) would need to feed on Elder blood. Antediluvians would need to feed on Methuselahs' blood.
  • Gender Bender: Malkav was male while human but during Gehenna takes on the form of a group of extremely creepy young girls connected by his Hive Mind.
  • Horror Hunger: The Antediluvians have been vampires for so long the only part of being alive they remember is being hungry.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Many of the Antediluvians get this. For example, the Eldest is obliterated by the power of God.
  • Monster Progenitor: Clan Progenitor, rather. For turning against and killing the Second Generation, Caine punished each of them with a curse that would become each clan's signature flaw.
  • The Nameless: Often, an Antediluvian is not referred to by a name, just the name of their clan in square brackets. Some of them are just so old their names have been lost to time. The Tzimisce Antediluvian, however, has no name because no sound on Earth could make the alien tones that are its name.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The awakening of the Ravnos Antediluvian led to drastic changes across every existing gameline, effectively ended Wraith: The Oblivion, and indirectly created three new gamelines.
  • Physical God: The most powerful vampires aside from Caine, they all possess the capability to use ten-dot Disciplines suitably named Plot Device.
  • Primal Polymorphs: Ennoia, the Gangrel Antediluvian. Even before she was Embraced, she is said to have grown up as a Wild Child abandoned by her mother and literally Raised by Wolves (at least in one version of the story). As a vampire, she is often depicted as a wild and sometimes even monstrous figure made all the more ominous for being the undisputed master of Protean. Taken to the logical conclusion in the Gehenna scenario "The Crucible Of God," in which Ennoia has gained such mastery in Protean that she manifests entirely as the ground beneath people's feet... and she's so alien and so hungry that she can't even operate on a vaguely human level, instead simply levelling cities with Protean so she can feast on the vampires inside.
  • Real After All: Obviously the Antediluvians eventually turn out to be very real. The Week of Nightmares had the Ravnos founder Zapathasura wake up and start raining death and destruction. This was such a big event that the Kuei-jin sent their strongest warriors while the Technocracy authorized Code: Ragnarok just to stop him. It worked. Barely.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Their existence is hotly debated, and the lore book says they are where 'facts meet with legends and myths'. Even how many of the Third Generation there were is up for grabs, with various books suggesting there are/were more beyond the clan founders.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Downplayed. There is only one explicitly female Antediluvian, the Gangrel's, but some others might be female. The Brujah Antediluvian has an ambiguous gender and the Toreador Antediluvian is most likely but not definitely a woman. Malkav is male but during Gehenna appears in the form of a hive minded horde of extremely creepy girls.
  • The Starscream: They betrayed and killed the vampires of the second generation.
  • That Thing Is Not My Child!: Absimiliard, the Nosferatu Antediluvian, absolutely despises his Clan and seeks to wipe them out entirely, typically through sending Nos-hunting monsters called Niktuku after them. Half of the reason the Nosferatu made SchreckNet was to keep track on Niktuku sightings to help better protect themselves from the wrath of their collective sire. This is because Absimiliard is scared shitless of Caine's wrath after the 3rd Generation were ordered to keep their numbers and generations low in the wake of the fall of the First City, and his first childe Baba Yaga went rogue and founded an entire clan to spite him for Embracing her. The Niktuku are a bloodline specifically sired by Absimiliard to annihilate his wayward childer, and he considers them to be his true clan and not the Nosferatu.
  • Token Good Teammate: Haqim is the only one of the Antediluvians who doesn't abuse his children and in the Gehenna scenario where all the Antediluvians start a vampire apocalypse, he's one of the few to rule with justice over vampire and human alike. Saulot was downright saintly when first introduced, but Depending on the Author varies dramatically.
  • Was Once a Man: All Antediluvians were once mortal men and women, trying to eke out a living in the hardscrabble existence of life in the Neolithic period. Now... most of them have shed their humanity entirely, and all that remains of their humanity is an all-consuming hunger.
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman: Unsurprisingly many believe the Toreador Antediluvian is this trope. Some claim their Antediluvian was male though so it's ambiguous.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: Tremere and Augustus Giovanni are technically not Antediluvians (literally "before The Great Flood") since they simply diablerized Saulot and Cappadocius. Giovanni finds out the hard way in Gehenna that death does not come easy to such godlike vampires; as for Tremere, he's already discovered this the hard way and has been dealing with the consequences of his actions for close to a millennium.

The Thin-Bloods

The further a vampire is removed from Caine, the more their vitae is diluted, and the less his curse seem to affect them. This is especially true for the so-called "Thin-Blood", also known as "the Duskborn", who are considered the furthest removed from him. Some Kindred, however, would claim that they are actually doubly cursed, as they occupy a quite uncomfortable spot in the merciless hierarchy of Cainite society, as they are definitely not human, having the exact same hunger for blood as any other Kindred, but they are not considered full-fledged vampires either; their powers often being nothing but pale imitations of those of their sire, and they themselves (by all appearances) entirely lack the ability to sire Childer of their own. This has frequently caused their persecution at the hands of superstitious Elders throughout history, as their very presence is often interpreted as a bad omen. As a consequence, it is often hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the Thin-Bloods, as they are only very sparsely studied by Kindred scholars, and many things about them are poorly understood at best. Amongst the most frequent rumors are that they are capable of walking in sunlight, are less dependent on blood, still physically age (albeit at a remarkably slower rate than a mortal), have a heartbeat, the need to breathe, and the ability to eat and digest food without any problems. Most controversial is that they have been proven to be able to father and, even more rarely, give birth to children, both with each other, but also with regular humans; such offspring are known as "dhampirs", and their nature is considered an even greater mystery than that of their parents.

The "Thin-Blood Syndrome" usually starts manifesting in Kindred beyond the 13th generation. It was once believed that every member of the 15th generation had the syndrome and were therefore unable to sire Childer of their own, and would be the furthest possible generation removed from Caine, but recent developments have firmly established that a 16th generation does indeed exist. It appears the blood of Caine might get thicker over time...


  • Beneath Notice: Thin-Bloods might be considered "weaker" vampires, but this is also potentially their biggest asset. As they are more life-like in general than "normal" vampires, they are also less likely to set off the Uncanny Valley response that fully-fledged vampires are normally met with, allowing them to have a much easier time blending in amongst humans, and their potential to be Daywalking Vampires also makes it much easier for them to maintain a convincing civilian cover identity and avoid the attention of vampire hunters. Elder vampires also tend to dismiss at them as non-threats due to their weakened mastery of Disciplines, and such they often end up severely underestimating the danger they can potentially represent.
  • Daywalking Vampire: Thin-Bloods only take limited damage from sunlight (in gameplay terms, they only take superficial damage from sunlight exposure, whereas regular vampires take aggravated damage) and are often able to wake up during early dusk and can even stay awake a bit past dawn. V5 introduces the so-called "Day Drinkers", Thin-Bloods who are even more resistant to sunlight than their peers, being able to walk around outside in daylight without experiencing any major discomfort, though they are still Weakened by the Light (in gameplay it means that their health tracker is halved and they lose access to any supernatural abilities whenever they are exposed to sunlight) and they still need to sleep eventually.
  • Dream Spying: A power unique to Thin-Bloods is their so-called "Insight" ability, where they, usually involuntary, make sporadic telepathic contact with Methuselahs and the Antediluvians and can momentarily read their thoughts, granting them knowledge of the plots and deeds, and for some reason, this ability seems to be amplified the more Thin-Bloods are in a group together. The ability is generally not very well understood, as its usage is often entirely unintentional on behalf of the Thin-Blood in question, and they only rarely comprehend what they are actually experiencing when it happens. Naturally, this makes them of great interest to the few who know their secret, but debates rage over the source of their visions and whether they can be trusted.
  • Had to Be Sharp: Being severely weaker versions of their Elders, stuck on the bottom rung of an already very competitive hierarchy, and having historically been barely tolerated at best and actively hunted at worst, means that Thin-Bloods on the whole tend to be quite a bit more resourceful than your average Vampire. They had to, if they wanted to cling on to their undeath. They even developed the unique art of "Thin-Blood Alchemy" to make up for their natural difficulty in mastering Disciplines.
  • Power at a Price: Downplayed. Thin-Bloods doesn't have all the strengths of a "true" Vampire, but in turn they tend to also have severely diminished versions of their weaknesses, and might even entirely lack some of them. Most notably, while the majority of Thin-Bloods have weaker versions of their sire's Disciplines, they just as often doesn't have their clan weaknesses either. Finally, the fact that they are more resistant sunlight by default, and even have the potential to be Daywalking Vampires, gives them a serious edge against fully-fledged vampires.
  • That Thing Is Not My Child!: As Cainite society sees it as a major sign of weakness and/or bad luck for a Kindred to produce a Thin-Blooded Childe, most Thin-Bloods are rejected by their Sire, who see their very existence as a walking mark of shame upon them.
  • Took a Level in Badass: In V5, where they renamed themselves the Duskborn, developed their own unique form of magic which lets them steal Disciplines from others and began taking advantage of their Daywalking Vampire characteristics to become a major force in the rising Anarch movement.
  • Weakened by the Light: While Thin-Bloods with the "Day Drinker" trait can walk around in sunlight without taking physical damage, this is still very much in play for them. In gameplay terms, they lose the ability to use any supernatural powers and their health pool is cut in half as long as it is day.

Alternative Title(s): Vampire The Masquerade Fifth Edition

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