A Dramatic History

I know, darling. The past is so yesterday. But you have to know the rules before you can break them. You have to understand the fundamentals before you can innovate. Those who forget the past, and so on and so forth. So sit down and keep your bloodhole shut, because it’s story time.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. You might think that immortal creatures would be able to tell you with certainty how we came to be or the exact events that happened because somebody was surely there and they recorded exactly what happened and didn’t embellish things at all because history, right? Sadly, Kindred seem to be as shortsighted and self-centered as mortal historians are. We rarely remember what happened unless it revolved around us, and even then, we tend to... embellish.

What can I say? Our family has always had a flair for the dramatic.

The Founder

Noddist scholars have spent endless nights debating the identity of the Toreador founder. She has many names: Arikel, Astarte, Inanna, and Ishtar, to name a few. In most tales, she is a sculptor. A small number of medieval texts even identify Arikel as a man. While I’ve heard stories of Ishtar the bull-dancer, who entranced Enoch with her sinuous grace and bravery, the bulk of the Toreador share the story of Arikel the radiant, the sculptor who enthralled even Caine. Personally, I choose to believe that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It is probable that she was all of these things; athlete, dancer, and sculptor; one does not preclude the others. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the truth of what happened is different. Most Toreador will gladly choose romance and a good story over dull, dry facts any night.

Caine ruled Ubar, the First City, with his childe Enoch. They say that in those nights, the Kindred existed alongside the kine in something that passed for harmony. Among the mortals, Enoch found a pair of twins who bore the grace and beauty of angels. They immediately captivated him. He spent endless nights discussing philosophy with the young man and listening to his poetry and prophecy. While he sat, the young woman, Arikel, sculpted, drawing Enoch’s image forth from clay with such skill that Zillah mistook the statue for her own brother. Enoch could not bear to watch the angels fade over time like the other Kine the Cainites ruled. He knew that Caine would not approve, but he could not deny his heart’s desire to share immortality with the twins. He Embraced first Arikel, followed by her twin brother, whose name history has forgotten. We call him Malkav, now. You can’t be surprised, childe. Art has ever been closely followed by madness.

In time, the three childer of Caine begat their own childer, for a total of 13. No, I don’t know all their names. I don’t think anyone does, and it doesn’t really matter, does it? If one of the Antediluvians woke now, deciding what to call them would be the least of your worries. The important thing is that Caine finally decided that enough was enough, and he forbade the creation of new vampires. This was, as you can imagine, not terribly popular with the progeny of Enoch, Irad, and Zillah. But they listened, at least at first.

For a while, things worked out. Some say that Arikel even fell in love with Absimiliard, one of Zillah’s childer, a man as beautiful as she was. They shared their haven and their blood, and became utterly bound to one another. The Cainite empire grew from the city of Ubar, and the 16 Cainites existed among the children of Seth with their Dark Father.

Then came the Deluge, and washed Ubar away. Caine looked upon the devastation and the deaths of so many of his subjects, and he blamed himself. Surely this was a punishment from God for spreading the curse he’d been given. For daring to seek the company of others in his endless purgatory. So he forsook his childer and his grandchilder, and he buried himself away from humanity. Twelve Cainites of the Third Generation begged for permission to Embrace, but their sires denied them. They rose up and slew their sires in a great battle. Caine heard of the battle, and he returned to find the carnage. The sight of his three favored childer reduced to ash and dust filled him with rage. In his wrath, he leveled his own curses upon the 12 Cainites who participated in the slaughter. The only one who remained uncursed was Arikel, the bull dancer and sculptor, for she alone had refrained from the slaughter. To her, Caine said, “Flee far to the north, for when your siblings find that you escaped their fate, they will be angry.” With her, she took Caine’s blessing: that no matter how long she stayed on our side of the grave, she would never lose the human taste for beauty.

Ancient Times

Arikel made her way through the world, avoiding her cousins and trying to find her place in the world. She clashed with the Gangrel founder, Ennoia, and his childe Ereshkigal in Sumer. Some stories tell how she Embraced the son of Minos, king of Crete, before ending up in Mycenae. Around this time, we actually start to see the direct influence of Arikel’s childer on the world. For example, we know that a Toreador — possibly Arikel herself — sought the affections of King Amphion and, thanks to our obvious magnetism, he returned her affection. Niobe begged him to consider their marriage, their kingdom, and their fourteen children. And I know it’s a shock, but Amphion actually did! He told the Toreador he couldn’t go with her, because of his children. So she did what any reasonable bloodsucking psychopath would do: she killed his children and forcibly Embraced Amphion. As far as Kindred histories go, Amphion is the first Toreador whose bloodline can be traced to today. Well, unless you believe some rumors I’ve heard from Chicago about Minos. Anyway, Mycenae didn’t suffer the Kindred well. The Methuselahs fought amongst themselves to snatch at the reins of power, and only succeeded in destabilizing the entire nation. Their gambits left many of them dead or in torpor, and their mortal minions lost or mad. Which left Mycenae itself open to invasion by the Dorians.

When Arikel fled Sumer and had her time in Greece, the Brujah worked to build Carthage while the Ventrue shored up their own power in Rome. After Mycenae, some Toreador cropped up in each nation. They say one of Arikel’s childer — a girl named Tanit, Embraced for her beauty, not her intelligence — followed Troile, the founder of the Brujah, as her lover. Others say the Toreador would never stoop so low, but someone had to teach Troile and her brood the art of shaping emotion, wouldn’t you say?

Meanwhile, the Toreador in Rome, chastened by their experiences in Mycenae, simply did their best to survive. The Ventrue were fond of them, in part because they did not threaten the power dynamic the Blue Bloods had learned to manipulate and foster, but also because of their love of beauty, art, and architecture. The Toreador encouraged the arts while the Ventrue encouraged infrastructure. Rome became a center of culture and learning, a safe place — well, as safe as any place could be — that drew its people in.

Don’t get me wrong. You might hear some puffed-up, self-important Kindred spew this “secret masters” line, that vampires are somehow responsible for human history. It’s a lovely story, my dear, but it’s simply not true. We can barely keep control of our own society without things splintering in “sects,” “coteries,” and whatnot, so how could we possibly control humanity? Of course, there are ways that our kind can wield quite a lot of influence on a single person, through emotional or mental manipulation. In my experience, though, the easiest ways are the best. We act as patrons to the arts. We pay for it, darling. It’s actually very easy to amass a fortune as a Cainite.

But I digress. Like in all times, eventually war came. The inevitable conflict between Carthage and Rome, and Rome won. But the Ventrue’s obsession with the Brujah cost us all.

Like I said, the Kindred were never “rulers” of Rome. They operated in the shadows, nudging things here, assassinating people there. With the Ventrue spending all their time focused on empire building and their rivalry with the Brujah, who knows if they missed the opportunity to slit the right throat and stop the rise of Christianity? Probably not, but it would have made existence a lot easier if they had. Apparently they paid the tiny little mystery cult no mind, until the zealous newborn Christians divined our weaknesses and burned many of Rome’s Kindred to ash.

After the fire came a decade of emperors, fighting over Rome like it was the last hit of dope. A few puffed up elders might say this emperor was a Ventrue pawn or that one was pledged to the Toreador, but who knows, and who cares? It was a complete fiasco, and nobody came out on top except the Christians. Yeah, I have no idea how they pulled that eleventh hour conversion on Constantine, but it worked out big. And if the stories are true, there’s no way we were involved in that. They say he had a lantern on the battlefield that contained a fragment of the sun. It’s possible, I suppose, but I hope to hell it’s locked away in the basement of the Vatican way out of the reach of anyone actually pious.

So Byzantium became Nova Roma, and have you seen that place? Baby, the Toreador were on it like Licks on a blood bank. The Ventrue stayed behind in Rome, stubborn gits that they are. And of course, we were the bad guys for bailing.

The Dark Ages

The fall of Rome was a slow thing by mortal reckoning, but to the Kindred, it happened in the blink of an eye. As the empire collapsed, the Gangrel, Brujah, and Tzimisce tore through the carcass, slaughtering the Ventrue as they found them and chipping away at Rome a piece at a time. With the Ventrue occupied, the Toreador were left to gather what they could and get out while the getting was good. They did their best to salvage and preserve what they could of Rome’s knowledge and art before it was burned or buried or rutted with — whatever the disgusting barbarians were going to do with it.

There was nothing to be done but hoard and preserve the knowledge, and hope for a rebirth of reason and culture. On the other hand, the Kindred finally learned to survive under the nose of the Catholic Church. Since most academics of the time were monks living in monasteries, it became necessary to move among the men of God. Many were never the wiser, but of course, some came to enjoy the benefits of the blood, or became willing supplicants to immortal Toreador flesh.

You’d think the Dark Ages were an utterly boring time to be a Kindred. I mean no castles yet to play at Gothic drama, and Europe was basically nothing but plagues and heresies. You’d be right, of course, if it weren’t for the rest of the world. Over in the Middle East, they were perfecting algebra and making the most fascinating art. I mean, there was Salianna and her Courts of Love, playing at chivalry and courtly love, but quite a few Toreador decided to abandon Europe entirely for the Middle East or south, to Africa.

In Byzantium, the Toreador tried to keep the idea of a real Empire, of a larger culture and society, alive. The Byzantines, at least, appreciated and valued the lessons the Toreador had to teach them. After standing strong for so many years, in 1204 C.E., the gates of Constantinople were finally breached; not by Saracens, but by Christian men. I have heard whispers that the Giovanni were intimately involved in the Crusade that finally tore through their defenses, but I couldn’t tell you what a bunch of sibling- loving necromancers would want with the last light of Nova Roma. They say the streets ran red with blood, and you can be sure it belonged to both Kindred and Kine.

Anyhow, before I move on to this next bit, let’s get one thing out of the way first. Yes, I’m sure there were Toreador involved in the slave trade. Many Toreador were ambivalent; some saw it as being little different from the practice of ghouling mortals. Others saw a great deal of difference between creating one or two dependable ghouls and enslaving an entire race through violence. There were Toreador who worked to fight slavery, but they railed against an overwhelming tide.

Most of the Toreador in Africa were, as always, fascinated by the societies. The little things that make up a person’s life, which they don’t even consider. And their art. The people of Africa were capable of great works of art, of beautiful traditions and wonderful legends and tales. There’s just so much! Malian Bògòlanfini and Dogon ceremonial masks, Shona soapstone carvings from Zimbabwe, and so much more. I mean, Africa is so large that most of the rest of the world’s landmasses can fit inside it comfortably. There are so many different cultures and civilizations across the continent that one could spend centuries just exploring them all. And after Europe started colonizing, the frisson of the cultures meeting produced even more amazing art. Look at the Ghanaian figurative palanquins and abebuu adekai coffins to see what I mean.

Somehow, the Toreador congregated in Nigeria, in a place called Sungbo’s Eredo. They Embraced and ghouled and mixed with the locals, and from what I hear, it was the center of Toreador culture on the continent well into the 1980s.

The Renaissance and the Founding of the Camarilla

Remember how I said that there were Kindred hiding within the Church? Well, sometime in the 1200s, the Church decided to root out groups of heretics. Which seems kind of harmless, right? Let them dig at each other’s dogma and maybe they won’t notice that the pale fellow in the corner’s drinking from an altar boy. The Toreador encouraged the formation and growth of a little sect within the church called the Inquisition. One of the major casualties of the Inquisition was the Court of Love, and specifically Esclarmonde, the Queen of Love of Toulouse. Would it be twee to say that this backfired?

But in the end, it was worth it, because it led to a rebirth of reason and culture! The first bit of reason we can discuss is that the Kindred finally united enough to set down in writing a few laws that should have been there from the start. The Convention of Thorns was, essentially, the Versailles Treaty of our kind. It set aside the bloody Jyhad and punished the losing parties for their crimes, while — if we’re being honest — not really addressing the concerns that started the revolution in the first place.

Of the seven Clans who built the sect, the Toreador were undeniably one of the — if not the — most vital founders. The Ventrue are built for zero-sum wheeling and dealing. We’re built for diplomacy. The Camarilla may not itself be luminous, but it makes for a grand conductor of our light. The most important law that the Camarilla instituted, and most common sense, was the Masquerade. That’s right; it took until the fifteenth century for them to figure that out. Even then, it took Rafael de Corazon and the Toreador to convince the rest of the Camarilla to actually put it into practice. It’s not my place to say that the Kindred wouldn’t exist today without our guidance. It might have been said, and who am I to argue? Regardless, the Toreador were finally able to fully blend with the mortals without an overzealous Tzimisce splitting someone in half for an imagined slight.

As for the rest of the age, it was glorious. Artists, thinkers, and oh, the printing press. You’ll hear Toreador brag about Embracing some of the most iconic artists of the period, but I truly doubt anyone was ever stupid enough to risk that kind of exposure. The most well-known artists were institutions, managing stables of apprentices who were themselves incredibly gifted. Quite a few masterpieces were the work of many hands, under the direction of the genius whose name lives on. I’m sure any number of those gifted apprentices were Embraced by admiring Toreador.

As populations grew across Europe thanks to advances in health and hygiene, the Kindred population also exploded. It was quickly becoming clear that the children of Caine had outgrown their world.

The New World

It is lucky for everyone involved, then, that explorers discovered the Americas. Well, except for the native inhabitants. Christopher Columbus may not have been the first European to set foot on the new continents, but like Elvis and rock and roll, he certainly popularized it. Quite a few Kindred traveled on with the new widespread colonization and exploration efforts, and a significant number were Toreador. A new land, with vast empires of people who created entirely different forms of art, held novel philosophies, and harbored new creatures and experiences. Just like Africa, the Toreador found an incredibly rich vein of humanity where the other Europeans (both Kindred and kine) saw resources to exploit and obstacles to convert or bowl over. It was like a flame to a moth! The Toreador couldn’t resist.

Early Toreador moved among the vast empires of the native peoples, learning from and integrating with the Mississippian cultures, the Iroquois League and the Ojibwa in the north, and the Nahua peoples of Mesoamerica. I spent months one evening listening to an old Toreador ramble on about a lost empire in the Amazon, but I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of what he said. The Toreador were soon horrified as illnesses from Europe obliterated large swaths of civilization on the continent. The puritanical settlers and their incredibly stifling social values also horrified them. Not enough to return to Europe, of course, but enough to give them a strong sense of Dark Ages déjà vu.

Over time, the colonies built up, and took on their own identity. The American Revolution cut a swath through the Clan, as young Kindred in the colonies chose to support the revolution, while elders resisted it. Both sides were fascinated by the inflamed passions of the kine, and neither could deny that the world was more interesting after the smoke cleared.

The fire of American passion made for a turbulent few centuries. Not long after the Revolution — to a Kindred, at least — the American Civil War ripped the country in half, and again the Toreador found themselves torn. Because of our deep involvement with mortal society, many Kindred found themselves unable to reconcile their loyalty to mortal friends or family from one side with their sire’s demands on another. Older Kindred felt echoes of the same passions that drove the Anarch Revolt, and tightened their hold on their childer… that inflamed things and caused small eruptions of outright war between the Camarilla and the Sabbat on the same battlefields mortal brothers fought their siblings. Immortality doesn’t necessarily convey the ability to learn from the past, darling.

The Twentieth Century

It’s easy to point to 1900 as the next big shift, but the truth is, things changed almost a decade before that. The World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893 was really the beginning of the modern era. The fair’s glorious white city introduced the world to artists, poets, serial killers, and inventors hawking everything from the Ferris Wheel to phosphorescent lamps. It truly began the American love affair with spectacle. Chicago at the time was a utopia for the Kindred, as the flow of humanity into and out of the city for the fair made it incredibly easy to hide and hunt. Chicago’s Kindred still burnish the reputation their city built during that summer.

As time passed, the entire world followed the example of the big cities who competed for that fair. They industrialized, marginalized, and depersonalized everything while demanding more and more, newer, faster innovation. The people demanded immediate gratification, and they got it. The beginning of the century brought malaise and disillusionment to the Toreador, because they feared that the anonymous big cities would crush out the spark of humanity. But they were wrong. It drove people to build bigger, louder, and to create more dynamic expressions of humanity’s beauty. They took those very tools of automation and turned them into platforms for art and self-expression. Granted, humanity also clamored and fought through a Great Depression, two World Wars, and any number of smaller ones, but they also embraced free love and made it possible for anyone to have their voice heard. Which brings us to now, doesn’t it?

The Latest Trends

This is the age of the Toreador. And aren’t you so lucky to be here for it? There is no other Clan more suited to the twenty-first century. Culture has become democratized so completely that a well-placed word on a social media network can transform someone completely. One could elevate anyone to celebrity or plunge him or her into an abyss of ridicule or obscurity at a moment’s notice. At the same time, the cycle of mortal memory spins more and more quickly, hurtling forward at breakneck speed. A superstar can be forgotten if she doesn’t make the news for a few weeks. Trends are measured in minutes. Regimes rise and fall so rapidly that the corpse is cold before the news can cover the story. At the same time, culture has become defined by this strange atemporality. The memetic tide of the internet washes up vanished flotsam on a daily basis, bringing viral attention to forgotten artists and musicians. Suddenly a song from the ‘30s is a top ten hit, and the kids are all sharing animated gifs of Bogey and Bacall. Just as quickly, nobody remembers that song, and we’re all singing a remix of a parody of a Korean pop hit that came out this morning. It all moves at a whirlwind pace that hopelessly baffles most elders, leaving them completely out of touch. They can’t even begin to cope with the strange culture the kine are wrapped up in. But to us, the world is finally catching up to how we’ve existed for centuries.

We Walk in Beauty

The Toreador are alone in the Kindred world. I’m not saying we’re better than the other Clans (even though of course we are — have you talked to them?), but when Caine was passing out his lovely little punishments, he apparently chose not to include us. In fact, Caine gave Arikel a blessing because she was the only one who didn’t join in the murder of the Second Generation: the Toreador never lose their taste for human beauty. Combined with our preternatural senses, it can be a bit of a problem, because it can be a little distracting, but let’s weigh our options, shall we? We could be twisted by the Embrace into looking like someone parked a taxi on our faces, or we could be incredibly distracted by a beautiful mortal at the club.

I’m sure it’s different for you, but it’s hard to describe the sensation I feel when I run across something sublime. Whether it’s a beautiful person, a work of art, or a brilliant song, it’s like tunnel vision. The rest of the world melts away, until only that thing exists. I suppose it’s irritating to the idiots I was talking to a moment ago, but that’s not important. I can’t even remember their names. I just know I have to move with the current of the music, the flow of sound around me is so substantial that I can almost see it. If I squint, I can see the swirls of the sounds spiraling through the air. The arpeggio keeps unfolding, expanding out and folding in on itself like aural origami. I dance, and the world shrinks to the point and counterpoint of the rhythm. Nothing else matters. Then the song is over, and I find out the dance floor is empty and my friends are trying to keep a determined hunter from blowing my head off, and I don’t even know why.

Wearing the Mask

Most Kindred play at being human in some cursory way. They avoid drawing undue attention, preserving the Masquerade in the most convenient ways possible without descending into the morass that comes from maintaining relationships with mortals. They remain with the herd of humanity without becoming part of it. The Toreador cannot abide such distance. The beauty of life, the genius of humanity, can’t be seen at arm’s length. We blur the lines between predator, lover, family, and prey.

Most Toreador maintain a constant presence in the world of mortals. I would go so far as to say most of us consider mortals to be more authentic, trustworthy, vital, and constantly surprising than the Kindred. Except maybe the junkies. They’re almost exactly like a Lick, except they won’t mean to get your haven raided at two in the afternoon. Which won’t make you feel better when you’re awkwardly burning in front of a squad of well-built men in uniform, but there it is.

Quite a few Toreador build these elaborate mortal identities, entire lives that they can step into for a few decades. They surround themselves with lovers, friends, and acquaintances who remain unaware of the Toreador’s, shall we say, “darker predilections.” Others return to the families they had before the Embrace, binding their spouses and children with little sips of blood to keep them close and maintain secrecy. It’s basically impossible to cohabitate with someone without him or her knowing you’re essentially a corpse during the day. If you try and keep secrets like that, you will come home to a drug intervention, if you’re lucky. Others view their web of mortal relationships as works of art. They create these carefully orchestrated stories, precisely manipulating their social circles to create an effect or reinforce a theme.

At the same time, the kine are a mirage, a romanticized ideal made more beautiful by nostalgia and our supernaturally heightened senses. The Beast curled in your chest is more than just a ravening hunger for blood. It is an amplifier. Our passions burn like phosphorous and our disappointment is a frozen, bitter pill. There is no baseline state for most Toreador; we exist in the peaks and valleys of emotion. Every moment with mortals is an invitation to pain, guilt, and depression, so we love them until something breaks, and then we hurt, and then we beg for more.

The point is, darling, mortals are love and beauty and all the things that shine brighter than the sun we’ll never see again. They’re a drug. And the really interesting thing is that they also contain a drug. But don’t mix those drugs. I know I’m wasting my time here; you’ll have to learn this one yourself. Don’t feed on the people you love. It will be too much, and you’ll get lost in it. The worst K-hole you’ve ever been in — that fluttering, unfolding feeling, the displacement and the way things become other things that are somehow both things? When you come to and find yourself covered in your boyfriend’s blood and his spark has been snuffed out and you can’t help but lick the blood off your hands?

I’m not one to say “I told you so,” but you’ll wish you listened to me.

Disco Bloodbath

The Kindred are a strange lot. The paradox of a social animal transformed into an apex predator makes them fiercely territorial but also unable to walk away from the only creatures able to relate to their existence. The other Clans Embrace for all sorts of reasons. The Ventrue might Embrace a promising young business major, or a wandering Gangrel might choose a girl who held her own in a bar fight in Idaho or something. But the Toreador, we pick the artists, the misfits, and the interesting or gorgeous people. Our garden is full of pretty and poisonous flowers.

When the other Kindred want to cut loose, they turn to us, because we throw the most spectacular parties. Nobody wants to go to a party at the local Tremere chantry, dear. They pretend that they’re above mortals, beyond them, but underneath it all they want to be one of the popular kids like everyone else, and they’d do just about anything for an invitation to one of our get-togethers. They just want to feel that wildness course through them again. Imagine your entire existence is a black and white photograph, desaturated and pale. The only real color is pulses of hot red, pumping from a vein. To someone whose nights are that pallid, Toreador festivities are absolute wonderlands of psychedelic color. They’re little wooden boys who just got invited to Pleasure Island.

Here’s the secret, darling. Our parties aren’t just sybaritic displays of hedonism. If you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself with an ass’s tail, yes you will. The lush, lavishly decorated halls of the Toreador salons are their own battleground, no less deadly than a back alley or a gladiator’s pit. The wounds inflicted may not bloody the combatants, but they can be just as fatal. Because, for a group of lethal killers, the Kindred are shockingly averse to actually fighting. It’s always fascinated me how quickly mortals throw their lives away over ridiculous, stupid things, and how jealously elders guard their every precious night, despite existing for three or four mortal lifetimes. I know, I’ve heard the argument “they have more to lose.” But I disagree. Scarcity creates value. That’s why everyone wants reservations to Dorsia, my dear. Because they can’t get them.

You have to understand. Even in a city like London or New York, the Kindred scene is an incestuous, tiny little thing. It’s like living in a small town. Everyone knows everybody else, and while the dead may travel fast, gossip is faster. The worst — or best! — thing about a party is that you can lose the fight before the night’s even begun. The first attack is a crisp little envelope or a glossy flyer. Invitations are sent, and dreams are crushed. Being left out sends a message, doesn’t it? Exclusion is bad enough, but being left out when everyone else you see makes a point of asking you if you’re going to the party? It lets you know where you stand and lets everyone else know where you stand.

It may seem like a small thing, but in a society as insular as ours, it can very effectively leave you out in the cold. Other Kindred turn their backs even if they don’t know why, just to avoid getting cut loose themselves. The blade can cut the other way, too. If you don’t invite the right guests to your party, or some shining star you invited doesn’t bother showing up... or worse, schedules a party for the same night. I know, it’s complicated and terrible and completely unfair, but you’ll end up just as fucked. The point is the Toreador party scene is as effective a way to play the fun little prestation games as any Elysium or Primogen intrigue. Throw the right party, orchestrate the right moment between two Kindred, and then make sure they know that you know that it wouldn’t have happened without you. They’ll both owe you favors you can cash out in your own time.

It’s customary for a host to provide refreshments for her guests, of course. Even that can arm you if you’re observant. Watch the guests and see which vessels they prefer. You can learn a lot about someone based on the way they treat the kine, and which ones they choose to drink from. Especially the Ventrue, with their picky little dietary restrictions. Being able to procure rare or illicit delicacies or being able to control the supply can be a significant advantage all by itself. But for Caine’s sake, don’t try to use it as an opportunity to slip some of your blood into the supply. A paranoid Tremere will test the blood, and you will get caught. You won’t succeed in binding your entire party, and the reputation you’ll acquire is far less valuable than the things you can learn when Kindred let down their hair.

Guilds and Clan Hierarchy

If you put two vampires in a room for any length of time, a pecking order will emerge. There’s no such thing as an equal relationship among the Kindred. The best you can hope for is détente. Beyond the wider social structures we built in the Camarilla for all Kindred, all the Toreador in a given city are part of a guild, even if that guild is called “fuck your guilds.”

On the other hand, I wouldn’t call that pecking order exactly stable. What’s de rigeur today is utterly passé tomorrow, and that includes who is calling the shots. Socializing is just another game to many Toreador and, really, many of us don’t put a lot of work into it. Basically, there are two kinds of Toreador who are allowed to appear invested in Kindred political games: The very old and the very young. The old have lost touch with mortal society, so they feel most comfortable around their own kind. The young are fascinated by the vast new world of intrigue and excitement that they’ve discovered and they consider it serious business indeed — oh my, I didn’t mean to yawn. Of course, some of us know that it’s basically high school or nightclub scene politics with weirder stakes. The players rarely change, so the game gets boring after a while. Especially when there’s a constant stream of new and unpredictable mortals to play with.

If you insist on paying attention to the guilds and you want to join in their reindeer games, here’s the secret. Don’t look so desperate, darling. Nobody likes desperation. You can’t just wander around with drink tickets and drugs and gather a trail of adoration. Those days are gone. Guilds are hard to nail down because we like it that way. The more utterly obtuse and arbitrary we seem to the other Kindred, the more they underestimate us and write us off as flighty, flaky little dilettantes who are utterly harmless and beneath their notice. You’d be amazed how many Kindred are so invested in their own superiority that they fall for the same lies over and over for centuries. It would be funny if it weren’t so absolutely dreadful.

Where was I? Guilds. Guilds are artist collectives and cliques of Toreador, microclimates of ever-shifting alliances and cults of personality. They aren’t organized in the strictest sense. Well, that’s not true. Better to say that they aren’t organized in any consistent way. One might be Lady Agatha’s Sunday Social Club with a Grand Dame and a strict hierarchy based on the seating arrangements at her tea parties, while another might be a book club of bloodthirsty suburban soccer moms vying for status under the guise of choosing the month’s reading. Dear me, I think I just frightened myself. It helps to come up with a catchy little name for your clique if you want to gain a reputation. Something that sticks in the mind and boils down to the core of it without losing anything essential. New York has its Dolls, because of course it does, perfect little plastics with strict fashion guidelines and feeding rules. Atlanta has an excellent hip-hop collective called the Undaworld Art Society, who gain status by signing brilliant new musicians. Chicago has a group of artists dedicated to veganism — I know! — called the Slaughterhouse Five.

There are usually multiple guilds operating in the same city, with overlapping memberships, making art, throwing monthly parties, raves, gallery openings, and balls, and generally trying to outdo one another. The only time a city’s guilds tend to work together is when they’re involved in the yearly Grand Ball. The Grand Ball is held in a different place on each continent every Halloween because we do love our camp, darling. It’s like a failing marriage; heaven forbid our city look torn apart by fractious infighting and politics when guests come over.

Low Lights and Trick Mirrors

It’s so easy to dismiss the Toreador as just artists, or socialites, or put them into some other box that makes things simple. The truth is harder to comprehend, particularly for Kindred who have a vested interest in pretending it’s not their fault they’ve fallen away from the kine. Much easier to pretend that the Toreador are deluded creatures, fools playing at their parlor games and mawkishly aping the spirit of humanity, than it would be to admit that the so-called degenerates might still have some semblance of their living spark.

Humanity’s saving grace is that it can create and appreciate beauty for its own sake. We — and I include Kindred and kine in that — are the only creatures on the planet that we know for sure can stop and appreciate the beauty of the world. A lion doesn’t stop to appreciate the flowing agility of the gazelle. The shark never pauses to consider the sinuous shimmer of a school of fish. Though we as a species have also wrought terrible destruction, we can create as well. We appreciate the sublime beauty of that which we have destroyed. We make monuments to the lives we take, the lights we shutter forever. We have the capacity for regret, and the amazing ability to find joy in the grief of loss.

One of the reasons that we as a Clan have become so intrinsically tied to art and artistry is that art is beauty. It doesn’t seek to reproduce a thing exactly. Art distills its subject to the bare essence. It distorts fact into truth. Art is an expression of our humanity and our grace. It’s philosophy and communication. Art is humanity, and it’s the center of everything we do and everything we are. I don’t just mean actual, directed art, like sculpting, painting, poetry, or music. There’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself through whatever medium you choose, but that’s so little of what it means to be Toreador. It’s merely one language that you speak. There is art in being.

Let’s take Marilyn Monroe as an example of what I mean. She was a brilliant, beautiful, shimmering light. She was an icon, a goddess. The incarnation of glamour, poise, and seductive grace. She wasn’t a human being; she was a work of art. The person behind the mask may have been a simple human with foibles and flaws, but when Norma Jean became Marilyn Monroe, she was literally transformed. The art in her was immortal. When the flesh, bone, and minutia that make up a life are swept away by time, the art remains. That is the true humanity; the soul of us is what remains when the transient is gone.

Somewhere in the last century, everything has turned inside out. The ivory towers have cracked, and all the lunatics have taken charge of the asylums. Art has finally gained at least the illusion of freedom. Everything has been democratized in the purest sense of the word. Everyone, from the richest silver-spoon debutante down to the lowliest spray-painting street rat can access the same avenues to express themself. The internet is — at least, ostensibly — a relatively level playing field among the mortals, but only the Nosferatu and the Brujah seem to have half as many truly tech-savvy young Kindred as we do in their ranks. A girl in her bedroom can play the guitar and gain a worldwide throng of followers. A wave of social media attention can follow a graffiti artist’s trek across a country in a crowd-sourced aggregate portfolio of photography.

And the art can be freed from the shackles of the person, or tied even more closely to them, according to the whims of the artist. It’s wonderful for us, because we can still release our art; still connect with those who understand it, without having to physically be “the artist.” It’s very good for the Masquerade. Nobody knows who is behind the account posting that intricate harpsichord music that reminds us so much of the baroque masters. Isn’t it amazing how like Michelangelo this painting seems? It’s almost as if the master himself taught the artist. A Toreador can remain active, vital, and present as a procession of usernames over time without anyone ever seeing her face. One vampire could become an entire art movement without anyone blinking an eye.

It can be very difficult to keep up that beautiful facade. Look back at the brilliant goddess we talked about before, and what happened to poor Norma Jean. It’s worse for the Toreador. We feel everything too keenly, thanks to the ravenous thing that keeps us going. Our senses are too potent. We hear every word spoken behind our backs, feel every noxious eye turned toward us. The only thing people love more than an icon to worship is the destruction of that icon. It’s hard to pretend everything is perfect when your hand is kissed by lips still dripping with the poison that so recently flowed into you. At your best, you float on a haze of adoration, but don’t think for a moment that your admirers won’t tear into you like a pack of wild dogs with the slightest provocation. We dance on the razor’s edge. It’s easy to slip up, and nobody will be there to help catch you. Many Toreador aren’t as perfectly adjusted as I am.

But don’t forget that there can be a beauty found in the depths as well.

A Few Words About the Black Sheep

Imagine you have a bunch of kids with daddy issues. Now imagine you give those kids a loaded gun, drop them into a society that makes Lord of the Flies look like a hippy commune, and teach them that they’re all trying to impress the ultimate deadbeat dad. Mix that with the world’s least hygienic fetish club, and you’ve got the Sabbat.

It’s not something you hear people discuss in Elysium, but the Toreador were actually instrumental in the formation of the Sabbat, too. What can I say? We contain multitudes, and artists are nothing if not passionate about their beliefs. The antitribu I know remind me of Jackson Pollock, disappearing during a dinner party to strangle an art critic under the dinner table.

Don’t look so scandalized, my dear. Of course we still keep in touch with the Toreador who choose the “Sword of Caine.” They’re welcome at our Grand Balls and carnivals. If you’re quite well behaved, maybe I’ll take you with me next time I go to this wonderful little coffee house, and we can listen to them debate politics for, oh, hours. Philosophically, they’re a little odd, but the passion is positively sex, darling. I mean, yes. They’re sadistic and their art is on the visceral side, but they aren’t animals. Some of them wear the most elegantly beautiful suits while they carve their victims apart, mind first.

Some of the most interesting thinkers are outsiders, skirting the edges of “proper” society or abandoning it altogether. It’s good to step outside your comfort zone from time to time. It helps to keep perspective, as long as you remember that they are still religious extremists who will gladly Embrace or kill your entire neighborhood if they think it will get them closer to the answer to “What Would Caine Do?”

And who knows? Maybe someday a few of them will come play with us in the Camarilla, and bring their lovely ideas with them.