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Vampire: The Masquerade Clanbooks
Clanbook: Nosferatu Revised
Hideous Horrors
Of all the Kindred, the Nosferatu most resemble the Beasts they hide within. But the clan is far more than a motley assembly of twisted freaks. From their first nights to their modern incarnation as informants and spies, the Sewer Rats have as many secrets of their own as they have gathered from other Kindred. Up from the storm drains and tunnels they scuttle, but whether as ally or foe remains to be seen.
And the Creatures They Fear
As the first entry in the ambitious revised lineup of clanbooks, Nosferatu complements the clans appearance in the revised edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. All-new information accompanies a re-examination of earlier concepts, allowing you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each 32 pages longer than the first-edition series) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
Of all the Kindred, the Nosferatu most resemble the Beasts they hide within. But the clan is far more than a motley assembly of twisted freaks. From their first nights to their modern incarnation as informants and spies, the Sewer Rats have as many secrets of their own as they have gathered from other Kindred. Up from the storm drains and tunnels they scuttle, but whether as ally or foe remains to be seen.
And the Creatures They Fear
As the first entry in the ambitious revised lineup of clanbooks, Nosferatu complements the clans appearance in the revised edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. All-new information accompanies a re-examination of earlier concepts, allowing you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each 32 pages longer than the first-edition series) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.
104 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2000
3 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Brian Campbell
129 books8 followersLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 28, 2018
The two things everyone knows about Clan Nosferatu are that 1) they're indescribably ugly and 2) they all live in sewers. Clanbook: Nosferatu Revised is about how one of those point is true.
This has the best history section of the Clanbooks I've read so far. There's the standard legend about Caine, of course, and the First City, and how vampire history is basically Middle East -> Europe -> North America and the rest of the world may as well not exist. But the history section is cast as a Nosfertaru Hosting, a gather of vampires, telling stories, and around the time the one vampire talks about the Victorians exploring Africa, an African vampire breaks in and castigates those gathered for ignoring most of the world. He points out that they were right, there were already vampires in Africa and the Americas when the sects showed up, and in Africa the Nosferatu didn't feel like they had to hide in the sewers. They lived separate but still among mortal societies, and acted as councillor and advisors to the mortal empires that surrounded them until the Europeans came. They were called the "Hidden Kings" and provided a valuable role. It's a bit heavy-handed in that White Wolf way, but who cares? Finally a book that realizes that there were vampires in places other than in Europe.
The rest of the book is more about modern cities because that's the assumed location that Vampire games take place, admittedly, but I like the idea of Nosferatu advisors. They're the most knowledgeable Clan, after all, which is the focus of another section of the book. The sect line is pretty thin between Sabbat and Camarilla, because of that most common of unifying factors in history--external pressure. In both the Camarilla and the Sabbat, the Nosferatu are shunned by other vampires because they're ugly, because they live in sewers or abandoned buildings, because they're strange, and because everyone knows they know secrets. But the Nictuku provide a unifying opposition as well.
The Nosferatu Antediluvian, after his curse, was ashamed of his childer and created a brood dedicated entirely to wiping them out, so the legend goes. And it's true that none of the Nosferatu know anything about the Nictuku other than the name and that legend, but there is something out there killing Nosferatu. Sometimes, a solitary Nosferatu will just vanish. Sometimes a brood disappears. Sometimes a SchreckNET node goes silent. There's no reason for it to happen so often, across such a wide area, and so the Nosferatu stick together and trade bits of information, because you never know what could be useful to avoid death at the hands of the Nictuku. And yes, being able to blackmail everyone else in the city or make oneself indispensible is an excellent side effect as well.
The book does a really good job making the clan's Discipline spread sound attactive. I mean, I've always thought that Animalism, Obfuscate, and Potence might be one of the worst Discipline spreads, matched only by the Brujah, but there are extensive sections about using Obfuscate and Animalism for information gathering. From the simplistic sending a neonate with Obfuscate and a video camera to stand in place and record something to developing a network of ghouled animals that the Nosferatu can possess at any time, knowing that few people will bother to notice the rat scurrying on the street or the feral cat lurking the alleyway, there's a good foundation laid for how the Nosferatu could develop such a wide information network in a way that Clans with more social prowess or connection to human society do not. A little bit of solidarity and being overlooked together go a long way.
I liked the brief note about failed Embraces. Like the Malkavians, who are also fundamentally changed by their passage into undeath, not all the Nosferatu who are Embraced survive. Unlike Malkavians, who sometimes come out as beings of pure madness with no higher consciousness to temper it, Nosferatu are sometimes warped into completely unsurvivable forms by their particular curse. Some of them have unusable limbs, or mouths that cannot drink blood, or perhaps the pain of their flesh and bones changing destroys their minds. Perhaps that's part of what drives the surviving Nosferatu--they know that, as much as they have changed and been alienated from that which is human, in a way, they're the lucky ones.
Another thing I liked was the section on Nosferatu art. That might sound contradictory, but the book points out that one of the uses of Potence for Nosferatu is making sculpture, and there are whole areas of their underground homes that are decorated with brutalist abstract art. Some Nosferatu also take up horticulture, cultivating fungal gardens and breeding weird strains that never see the light of day.
There are also some interesting threads of monsters under the earth. Nosferatu are already the monsters under the earth, but since they're the playable characters and they know secrets, they need something to fear as well.
I still don't want to play a Nosferatu, but I can see why other people do.
This has the best history section of the Clanbooks I've read so far. There's the standard legend about Caine, of course, and the First City, and how vampire history is basically Middle East -> Europe -> North America and the rest of the world may as well not exist. But the history section is cast as a Nosfertaru Hosting, a gather of vampires, telling stories, and around the time the one vampire talks about the Victorians exploring Africa, an African vampire breaks in and castigates those gathered for ignoring most of the world. He points out that they were right, there were already vampires in Africa and the Americas when the sects showed up, and in Africa the Nosferatu didn't feel like they had to hide in the sewers. They lived separate but still among mortal societies, and acted as councillor and advisors to the mortal empires that surrounded them until the Europeans came. They were called the "Hidden Kings" and provided a valuable role. It's a bit heavy-handed in that White Wolf way, but who cares? Finally a book that realizes that there were vampires in places other than in Europe.
The rest of the book is more about modern cities because that's the assumed location that Vampire games take place, admittedly, but I like the idea of Nosferatu advisors. They're the most knowledgeable Clan, after all, which is the focus of another section of the book. The sect line is pretty thin between Sabbat and Camarilla, because of that most common of unifying factors in history--external pressure. In both the Camarilla and the Sabbat, the Nosferatu are shunned by other vampires because they're ugly, because they live in sewers or abandoned buildings, because they're strange, and because everyone knows they know secrets. But the Nictuku provide a unifying opposition as well.
The Nosferatu Antediluvian, after his curse, was ashamed of his childer and created a brood dedicated entirely to wiping them out, so the legend goes. And it's true that none of the Nosferatu know anything about the Nictuku other than the name and that legend, but there is something out there killing Nosferatu. Sometimes, a solitary Nosferatu will just vanish. Sometimes a brood disappears. Sometimes a SchreckNET node goes silent. There's no reason for it to happen so often, across such a wide area, and so the Nosferatu stick together and trade bits of information, because you never know what could be useful to avoid death at the hands of the Nictuku. And yes, being able to blackmail everyone else in the city or make oneself indispensible is an excellent side effect as well.
The book does a really good job making the clan's Discipline spread sound attactive. I mean, I've always thought that Animalism, Obfuscate, and Potence might be one of the worst Discipline spreads, matched only by the Brujah, but there are extensive sections about using Obfuscate and Animalism for information gathering. From the simplistic sending a neonate with Obfuscate and a video camera to stand in place and record something to developing a network of ghouled animals that the Nosferatu can possess at any time, knowing that few people will bother to notice the rat scurrying on the street or the feral cat lurking the alleyway, there's a good foundation laid for how the Nosferatu could develop such a wide information network in a way that Clans with more social prowess or connection to human society do not. A little bit of solidarity and being overlooked together go a long way.
I liked the brief note about failed Embraces. Like the Malkavians, who are also fundamentally changed by their passage into undeath, not all the Nosferatu who are Embraced survive. Unlike Malkavians, who sometimes come out as beings of pure madness with no higher consciousness to temper it, Nosferatu are sometimes warped into completely unsurvivable forms by their particular curse. Some of them have unusable limbs, or mouths that cannot drink blood, or perhaps the pain of their flesh and bones changing destroys their minds. Perhaps that's part of what drives the surviving Nosferatu--they know that, as much as they have changed and been alienated from that which is human, in a way, they're the lucky ones.
Another thing I liked was the section on Nosferatu art. That might sound contradictory, but the book points out that one of the uses of Potence for Nosferatu is making sculpture, and there are whole areas of their underground homes that are decorated with brutalist abstract art. Some Nosferatu also take up horticulture, cultivating fungal gardens and breeding weird strains that never see the light of day.
There are also some interesting threads of monsters under the earth. Nosferatu are already the monsters under the earth, but since they're the playable characters and they know secrets, they need something to fear as well.
I still don't want to play a Nosferatu, but I can see why other people do.
August 27, 2007
I am no longer as big a fan of Vampire: the Masquerade as I used to be - and Vampire was never my favorite game. However, I always liked this supplement. It really shone a light onto the twisted inner lives of a seriously underappreciated clan.
November 7, 2014
Hm. Liked the first one better...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews