The Last Pillar: It's their world, not ours.

Regardless of what you might think, you have power. You are capable of things that no mortal man is capable of. Your nightly decisions change lives and destinies. There are vampires more powerful than you, but there are some that are less.

But there is one thing that you must never forget.  You are but one drop in a great big ocean. It doesn't matter how old or puissant you happen to be. In the end, everyone loses the numbers game to human beings. And just like humans, we all have to take our rest.

When you forget this basic thing, you endanger yourself. You endanger your community. and you endanger the humans.  If you forget the basic thing, honestly you won't care about the humans...But that way lies wassail...and you may not want to go that route.

Oh sure, you can get powerful and your influence can be deep and pervasive. and you can own multi-national corporations and you can have powerful humans tremble in fear....

But you will never not get hungry.
You will never know an existence that is free of fear.
It's unlikely you'll ever master your beast completely.
You will never get a good all-over tan.

There are limits. There are boundaries. You cross them at your peril. You flout them and you will pay the price.

Maybe the Sanctified have it right, maybe we are part of a plan. and maybe we ARE supposed to operate from the shadows. But one thing is for certain, unless we mean to mass embrace and TAKE this world from them, it's going to stay theirs.

And what will we drink then?

More than the humans, we need to maintain a balance with the world around us. More than the humans we need to protect the world and the environment. Both from our depredations and theirs. We have to protect the human race from our weakness, from our rage, even from the ignorance and docility, we'd have from them.

There may come a day when some of them become like us. And believe me, I tremble thinking of such people becoming vampires.  I am a Journalist, which is a kind synonym for "Asshole" or "Felon"  I am a drug abuser. Many people suspect that I have already cracked like a piñata and spilled my candy on the ground.

And yet, some night down the line, my felicity of expression and my ability to manage abstract thought might mark me as an aristocrat among the undead. I don't mind being the smartest guy in the room. But I would have a hard time with the being the smartest guy in EVERY room.

I don't have trouble with any plan which involves turning a particular city into a kindred utopia. But by definition, such a utopia must be one for the humans TOO.

In the short run, you can always fuck over the humans.
But in the long run. You will always pay a higher price than you expected.

Always.

Into the Mailbag!

Dear fuckface:

Who in the sky-fucking hell do you think you are? You aren't a Carthian any more. What makes you think you can dictate some kind of platform to us?

-No love
(Didn't sign his name. Quel Surprise)

Me. I'm nobody. I'm just some guy. I used to write books about stuff that I thought maybe the Carthians ought to know about.  I was a fan of helping fellow Carthians get an education. A vast number of fellow Carthians gave zero fucks about any of my efforts.  The only people who seemed to be actively upset about what I was doing were the Invictus. So what does that tell you?
In any case, the only thing you need to know about who the fuck I am, is, that I am the guy that was ASKED. A guy who has read my work, reached out to me, asked me questions that he'd been turning over in HIS brain-pan, and got me thinking along the same lines.  I'm the guy who cared enough to share what he'd thought up based on his own experience. I am not some dude walking down from the mountain with the clay tablets of the LAW in his mitts. As I mentioned from the outset chimpy, No one can change the Movement by himself. He can only change himself and hope to inspire others by example.

BTW: I should mention that I receive this exact same email from members of the OD who wonder why I'm wasting my time on this. I should mention that the language is a good deal more formal.

PS: I will say, no one does invective like my former covenant. "Sky-Fucking" is brilliant and I will look for ways to use it in future. So, thank you for that.

Dear Mr Berkowitz:
Why Pillars? Why so many?What's the point of living a moral and ethical existence as a vampire?
Nina

Pillars, because we need something to help hold us up.
So many pillars, because we're vampires and we need special help.

That last question though...
That's the good one.

Morals and ethics are necessary. More necessary than people think they are. Ethics enables you to govern your behavior so that you can live with other people. Morals enables you to govern your behavior so that you can live with yourself.  Some vampires aren't convinced that they need to govern either one. ALL of those vampires inevitably end up destroyed either by us, or by the humans.  But usually, not without committing some viscera-curdling atrocity or otherwise jam-fucking the commonweal first.
Remember kids. It's THEIR world. not ours.  In fact, I may have to make a pillar out of that. Vampires who forget that cause all manner of problems, and eventually, all those chickens come home to roost.

The Eighth Pillar: Ritual and Tradition are only as full you make them.

Symbols have power. 

Words, said in the right way and at the right time have power. 

Music has power. 

Poetry has power.  

These things move the heart and if you do not move the heart, nothing will flow.  The mind can be afire with a new idea or a vision of the world to come, and yet, if the heart is not moved, that fire will fade like dreams on waking.

Understand: We have an entire lobe of our brain that is tasked with and dedicated to, making up crazy shit. If you cannot harness it’s power you become a prisoner in a cage of your own making.

The Sanctified get this.  The Crone get this. Even some of the Ordo Dracul get this.  

Ritual has a place in our unlives.  It can fill certain needs and connect us to our history and our traditions.

Yes. Traditions. I said it.  and I didn’t even say it like i’d say, “Crabgrass” or “Herpes” or “Scientologists”.   Traditions have a place in our society, until they don’t anymore.

See. The problem is, that ritual and traditions are only as meaningful or as important as we make them. When the world changes on us, there is that tendency to hang on to the old ways because they are comfortable and familiar. Because they may still mean something to us.

But if we don’t communicate WHY they are meaningful to us, and why they are still relevant to the next generation, then we have no call to castigate them for not feeling the same things WE feel.  We can go through the motions, but without meaning and context and connection, traditions become dead. 

So. I don’t get excited when I meet carthians who don’t give a fuck about the Chain. Maybe it wasn’t explained to them. Maybe it wasn’t important to them. Maybe they never got the memo. All of these things are possible in a largely rudder-less society.

So if nobody ever explained it to you, Let me help out:

The Chain is an opportunity.

You will meet many Carthians over the course of your unlife. No two are alike, except for those weirdoes who go in for that whole mind-meld shit.  When you run the chain two things are happening. Introductions, to be sure, usually a listing of skills and abilities, services that one is willing to put at the disposal of one’s brothers and sisters. So your rolodex...do people even still USE rolodexes?   In any case, you get to find out what people are good at, and advertise your own expertise a bit.  This is important, ritual or no.

But the other thing that is going on, is a willingness to share who we are by saying what we are looking to do. The ability to stand, look one another in the eye and share your plans, the merest tip of the iceberg of your hearts desire, differentiates us from every other covenant out there.  We are unique in this regard. 

Sure. there is always the danger that another vampire might use your goals against you. Happened to me.  But would I trade security for honesty?

I don’t know as I would. 

And the reason for that is that occasionally my words, my plans, my goals, my oratory, my understanding has inspired others. Inspired them to follow their own path, or inspired them to follow mine.  And I know, that there have been times when the fiery passion or quiet wisdom of another has inspired me.

Put no faith in a ritual that does not stir your heart. But look for ways to stir that heart, ritual or no.

The Seventh Pillar: Choice is Power

Occasionally. Back in the old days when I was still a Carthian myself, I’d occasionally get asked by well-meaning Invictus and Ordo Dracul, why I would waste my time and talent on the Carthian Movement. 

Even now, with this little project going on, I’m getting asked by people in the Ordo, “[title redacted] Eldridge! Why are you taking important time away from the great work to bother with these people?

My answer, is the same now, as it was then. It hasn’t changed, with my change of covenant.

I want freedom.

Of course, those Invictus types, looking to reign me in or recruit me, would say. “Well yes. But I have just as much freedom as you.”

“Sorry skippy. But you don’t.”

*Laughing. perhaps a bit nervously.*

“No really. and I’ll prove it.

Do you belong to family dynasty? 

Are you a member of a faction within your covenant? 

Do belong to a guild? 

Are you presently under an oath, mystical or otherwise?  

Is there some elder looking over your shoulder?   

Are your failures going to reflect badly on your sire and your sire’s sire?”

“Well...”

“You’re not free. You are, at the price of some power and perhaps a nice lump of cash, hopelessly entangled in a web of laws, rules, expectations, obligations, traditions, and horse-shit.  When you are forced by circumstances to stand idly by while some other member of your covenant executes a friend, or worse, are forced to do it yourself...Come talk to me about how free you are.”

And that usually shuts them up.

When you don’t have any power to speak of, you tend to pay attention more. You think through your moves. You work with what little you have and try to figure out ways to maximize and HACK what power you DO have.  When you are sitting on a fat pile of power, the tendency is to become a victim of your own success.   This is WHY I tell you that mental passivity is death. Some night, sooner or later, you’ll find yourself falling to someone younger and smarter who has figured out how to take you down with nothing more than a butter knife and a jar of mentholated salve. UNLESS you keep struggling to learn.

But as I say, when you don’t have power, your thoughts might turn to what it is, how it works, how to get it. How to KEEP it.

And I tell you, that the nature of power, true power, is choice.

When you have choices. You have power.

When all you have is poor choices or NO choices, you have no power.

When you hesitate to make a choice, because it seems like you have too many choices, the act of hesitation, STEALS your power until you make a choice.   It’s better usually to make a choice and be wrong, and have to choose again or change plans, than to dither and die.

The Carthian Movement is a covenant built on the idea that we each have a purpose and that the only thing that is going to keep us going from night to night is the ideal that we struggle to live by. No one can choose that purpose for you. Only you can do it.  The Movement can never ever be a sort of situation like hammering a square peg into a round hole. Other covenants do that stuff all the time. They’ll tell you who you are. They’ll tell you who you can be.  They’ll ruin you if you don’t play the role they’ve assigned and try to make you feel ashamed for being yourself.   When you realize this is happening, check your neck for bite-marks for they are draining you of everything you are.  I am beginning to suspect that the reason why Carthians seem to have a much lower incidence of insanity is not down to our dearth of elders.  It’s down to the fact that we are more likely to be ourselves and devil take the hindmost.

Frankly, if it weren’t for certain betrayals and the fact that most of my fellow carthians in my hometown were jerks, I’d still be one tonight.

Now, the freedom I fight for is finding my way outside of the curse of vampirism.

I was never all that keen on becoming a vampire in the first place.

My front may have changed, but my fight hasn’t.

I want to be free. and if that means dying as a mortal man does, I’ll take it.

If you want to take my freedom. If you want to take my ability to choose. You’d better be ready for the fight of your unlife.

There is only one more thing you have to know about Power.

And I say this thing to you out of hard experience.

Power is never without cost.

Be sure, that you are ready to pay the price.

The Sixth Pillar: There are worse things than Death

Look. I get it. Death is scary. 

Even this Ur-Death is kind of messed up and weird.  Do you remember what it was like when you first realized that your heart wasn’t beating?  Even if your embrace was a long awaited goal or a rude shock, that first moment when you realized that something had changed...had changed Irrevocably....It took a bit of processing.

That’s the thing that’s easy to get lost in the shuffle about this existence, if you aren’t paying attention. Many times, the big choices that you make are irrevocable.  The choice to bend another’s will with your blood, the choice to create a childe,  the choice to drink someone dry.  Once these things are done, they cannot be undone. And once you’ve done them enough, you don’t even want to bother to atone.

Look. The fact of the matter is this, Death isn’t really all THAT scary compared to the idea that maybe you can’t stop yourself from diablerizing.  Or maybe you can’t stop yourself from lusting after another’s vitae.  Or you’re ruthlessly hooked on Lacrima or some other madness like that.

(No. the irony that I am counseling people against the use of certain substances has not been lost on me.)

Death isn't all that scary compared to the idea that you might end up on the receiving end of some princely punishment that lands you awake and aware in a concrete block at the bottom of the river.  Even should you win free of such a prison, you aren't likely to be the same afterwards. If nothing else, you'll have a withering case of claustrophobia for the rest of your Requiem. 

Death isn’t really all that scary compared to the idea that you can become addicted to another’s vitae for as long as they care to keep you on the hook. That you can be made to turn your back on friends, allies, mortal family, your personal philosophy and your ideals. That you can be made into a sad parody of yourself. When you have those occasional moments alone and you want no other thing than to be free from an abusive relationship to the point that you’re willing to wait for your savior to rise in the East...

Let’s just say I had a bad experience.

I won’t even take a personal ghoul because the idea makes me go squick. I can’t make that choice for anyone else though.  You have to determine where you personally have to stand on the whole addiction/slavery question.  For some, it might be the only way they can survive, and for others, having a domitor might be downright therapeutic. Especially if you treat them well.  Which you should.   

I should mention, that seeing a Carthian treat a ghoul, like an Invictus treats a Carthian is one of those things that riles me up pretty well.

The Ordo...Well. It’s a different culture entirely. Again, your mileage may vary.

Look. You can lie to your Prefect. You can lie to your prince.  Although I don’t recommend either. Lying at a certain level in kindred society is largely pointless. You might as well tell the truth. They may not be prepared for it.

But the one thing you can’t lie to, is your own conscience.

You have to deal with the idea that maybe you’ll enslave someone without meaning to.  You may have to live with the idea that someone will want to enslave you.

Some have tried with me.  When that takes place, there are only Three options. 

*Kill them.

*Kill yourself.

*Live the rest of your nights as a slave.

Me. I’ll get myself a suntan before I live that way again.

The Fifth Pillar: Be Nice

There once was a very wise man who said this:

"Be Nice.

If someone gets up in your face and calls you a cock-sucker, I want you…to be nice.

If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice.

If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both…be nice.

I want you to be nice, until it's time to not be nice anymore."

"Well, uh…How we supposed to know when that is?"

"You won't. I'll tell you when."

There is no percentage to be gained by being a raving douche-nozzle. 

There is no percentage to be gained by making enemies that you don't have to make.  

There is no point in going to formal court with the idea in mind of acting up, Hogging the spotlight, and then taking a huge dump on the rug. 

Carthians who do this sort of thing give us all a bad name, and while they are inevitably a self-correcting problem…they can do a great deal of damage before they are…Corrected.

The machinery of social interaction requires grease to function properly. Politeness IS the grease, and in NO society is it more necessary than in a society of predators, liars, murderers, and monsters. Politeness allows us the ability to interact safely. and is one of the reasons why Elysium is such an important tradition to our kind.

Elysium is SO important that it creates an office. Elysium is SO important that when some prince attacks his enemies in an elysium, it usually mean that Prince, or that city's domain is not long for this world. You cannot wipe your ass with the tradition of Elysium without dire consequences.  And if you cannot be trusted to follow the tradition of Elysium. You can't be trusted for much of anything else.  Many kindred will assume you're feebleminded or two steps off from wassail. 

Being Nice is simple. It's not necessarily always EASY, but it IS simple. 

Call people what they want to be called. Use a person's titles without rolling your fucking eyes.  Unless a state of war exists between your covenant and another covenant, don't go cruising for a bruising. Keep it in your pants. If you want to argue, save it for the Carthian hangout.  If someone says something to you that's liable to get you riled up, excuse yourself and go talk to other kindred until you cool off.  If that Asshole won't leave you alone. Speak to the keeper. If the keeper does nothing. Leave the Elysium. If the asshole follows you, make him wish he hadn't.  If you want to leave, and you're fairly sure you can't take that guy, gather your fellow Carthians and leave en-masse.  Once you've left elysium, speak to the Harpy and inform him that you and your fellow carthians will no longer be attending Elysium until the asshole is publicly censured.  

Live by the dictum:  Don't start none. Won't be none.

You may find, that there are political compensations to be had for this effort. That you can become known as a "reasonable" carthian. A possible "back-channel" into other covenants.

And if you're whole covenant hews to this idea then YOU become known as a covenant of vampires that is easy to work with and respectable.

How many times have YOU personally, been saddled with an unfair characterization because of the public relations problem of our covenant. 

Who needs that shit? Nobody.

Am I saying that it's important to roll over and show your belly. No. Far from it.

But seeing as how we are passionate and excitable creatures, we don't always have a good yardstick for knowing when a fight is called for.  I say to you:

If you would be a moral and ethical vampire in this modern day and age, That you should start no fight, but always be ready to finish one.

“There is nothing in our book, the Qur'an, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.” 

- Malcolm X

In fact, as a Carthian we should want to adopt the basic premise of the Hell's Angels. "Raise a hand to one of us? You raise a hand to all of us." 

This of course requires a caveat for any Carthian with poor impulse control.  If YOU started the fight, and there didn't NEED to be a fight, then you're going to get the shit kicked out of you by all of us, twice as hard afterwards.

This will occasionally mean that you'll end up fighting with someone who you consider a friend/ally simply because SOMEONE decided to be ignorant. All you can really do is say, "Hey. Sorry about this…" and maybe send them a nice gift afterwards.

Hey. Who knows. Maybe if we adopt the basic idea that fighting with us isn't consequence free FOR ANYBODY. Then maybe other covenants will do the same.

But, i'm not going to hold my nonexistent breath.

Look. there are entirely too many motherfuckers walking around with the attitude that you only give respect to those who respect you in return. This is, at its basis, the philosophy of the self-justified asshole.  You give respect to all beings until they stop being worthy of it.  And if you do so, you in turn, earn the respect that you are given.  and Hey, if YOU are respected, and someone loses YOUR respect, they are likely to lose the respect of all who respect you.  Win/Win.

It takes so little time and effort to simply be polite, I recognize that many Kindred are emotional cripples or burn victims. But I still don't see how kindred go from social engagement to social engagement and are unwilling, or unable, to extend basic courtesy to one another.

I recognize that following this pillar is a bit like walking a tightrope. But within all philosophies are dichotomies. All of existence is walking one tightrope or another. 

Now it can be told.

So. People have been wondering about me. Whatever happened to Pinky? What kind of secrets did he have?  How'd he end up?

As far as secrets go, I don't have any. Never did. I might have pretended I did a time or two, but that's easy. If you act like you have an ace up your sleeve, people will assume you do.

When you're a vampire, you don't exactly get to ride off into the sunset. It makes for stinging that Bactine won't help, and an extremely poor attitude. But as far as it goes, I did at least end up in a place of peace.

When last seen, I had left Lexington. Janosh had decided to go home to the Ukraine, and still being relatively new to this century, asked if i'd accompany him. The idea of international travel was frankly a daunting one to someone who was still getting used to this modern world. Fortunately, I was used to traveling in a way that most kindred aren't.

So we did some plane-hopping. I called a guy i knew in NYC and got us some traveling documents and then threw some baksheesh at the Kindred who have their hooks into TSA at JFK. Had to do some favor trading.  Also stopped in and saw my literary agent.  And then we were on the red-eye overseas.

Had to stop in France. Janosh had this bee in his bonnet about making a full report to the Ordo Chapter house that had sent him to the states in the first place. It took some looking, the old chapterhouse had been burned down and had eventually relocated underground in the parisian catacombs.  His "full report" took 3 full weeks of non-stop talking in a symposium. The French Ordo seemed largely bemused by it all. None of the kindred that had known about Janosh's original mission were alive or out of torpor. Literally, no one knew who Janosh was, and in addition, while Janosh's French was way better than mine, it was characterized by the kindred in that Chapterhouse as "Somewhat rustic".  

At least, I think that's what they were saying. In the end, most of the Kindred that turned up left after about an hour, except for the contingent of Ventrue Architects. Those guys ate it up with a spoon. By the end of 3 weeks, they were treating Janosh like a bona-fide rock star. The old Russian bore it with humility and good grace.  But I think he was tiny bit embarrassed.  After promises to visit again, we set off across europe.

If Janosh's French was "Rustic". His Russian was turning out to be incredibly archaic. It was like someone who had learned to speak Elizabethan English turning up in London today and trying to get around.  Granted, the old man is eideticker and learns fast, but for the first couple of week back in the old country, i had to do a bit of translating for the old man.

Russian Kindred fall into 3 major categories. Political, Aristocratic, and Proles.  So, Janosh's return upset the applecart somewhat. He is VERY old. When he wants to, you can feel the power in his blood from across a ballroom. But in his breathing life, he was, to put it mildly, a farmer.  He has no patience for political rhetoric, and he's not an aristo.  Most of the Aristos are kind of old and used to ordering people like Janosh around. Janosh has even less patience for that.  Some Romanov-blooded piece of work said something stupid to Janosh, and he, showing remarkable restraint, picked him up off his feet and threw him across the room and into a Hepplewhite sideboard.

He literally stood and waited for the keeper of Elysium to turn up while the aristo worked himself into a paroxysm of hysterics. (I pegged him for old Ventrue) The Aristo demanded that Janosh be taken for judgement to the Prince. Janosh calmly explained, that the aristo had offered him insult and being hucked across the room was his way of challenging the "young fledge" to a duel. After all, he'd not been seriously harmed. And if he wanted to satisfy his honor, Janosh was more than willing to meet him, and any seconds, friends, allies and blood relations who were willing to cast their lives away, directly outside.  "If I had wanted to kill him," he continued, "I'd have done this…"  and then he did his trick.

Now, I've SEEN him do it, and i still think it's pretty startling, knowing he can do it, so I can only imagine what THEY thought. I've seen the aftermath of him depopulating crack houses in the sketchier parts of Lexington and it's frankly terrifying. He is able to turn to mist form subliminally fast, and reform even faster. I have Quicken Sight, and it still looks like he's almost teleporting. Also, he's got the longest claws I've ever seen on a Gangrel.  The ventrue had only the mildest knick on his cheek, but everyone in the room got the message. His more level headed kin moved in immediately, and with some "lordly words", forced him to pipe the fuck down. For his part, Janosh's apology to the Keeper and the prince was long and properly flowery.

Janosh would introduce me as his "Childe". Which brought me some unwelcome scrutiny, even though I thought it an honor. The old man is a good mentor.  In fact, when we made contact with the Russian OD, his name was legend and carried an interesting amount of weight.

The Moscow Chapterhouse is one of most impressive libraries I have ever been in. We made a point to travel there after Janosh had established some territory in the Ukraine and felt he could safely leave for a week. The library had taken over three blocks within walking distance of Dzhershinski Square and was originally a firm that exclusively handled accountancy for the KGB back in the old days. The upstairs was all still regular buildings and seemingly unconnected, but the underground areas extended down at least 4 stories by my count,  Built and maintained by Gangrel and Nosferatus.  Floor to ceiling with books for 4 stories and 3 whole blocks. Most of them old and crumbling before the rise of the Tsars.  The largest collection was the Stalin's Black Library, which was rumored to hold such occult works as would take a belt sander to the sanity of most researchers.

Now how can I resist that sort of challenge?

After 2 weeks it became apparent to me that I was only scratching the surface. Janosh understood. I'd found a thread in some very old works that would have led to something I've been working on in the Great Work. So he bid me stay and look as long as I'd like while he returned to his home.

We'd been traveling together for months. and in about an hour of his leaving, I missed him terribly. It made we want to turn aside from the work. And perhaps the only reason I did not, is that if I chased after the old monster like some frightened child, I'd never earn his respect again…

So I stayed. and I read.

I made diagrams. Talked to the librarians. 

I did math that made my head hurt.

I called up spirits using age old and very reliable protocols.

I asked questions. Found fellow travelers on the same road as myself.

I spent 4 months there.

I followed the thread of my research.

See. We have this ability to manipulate the monster within us. It occurred to me at some point that it may be that we can enhance and manipulate that which is in us, that enables us to still be human.  I've crudely referred to it as a form of "Weaponized Humanitas"  But that's a limited way of putting it.  It's more like having Humanity that shareable.  Possibly even by force.

It led me to a certain dragon's nest in the heart of the slums of new delhi. To drop acid, and throw myself bodily into the deepest hole in hell, just to see if I could claw my way out.

It led me to Tibet. I spent three weeks there with no blood and no sleep. and when I did taste blood again, it was only a drop, but that drop of blood was as sweet as a promised kiss in the springtime.

It led me to Honshu where I studied with a noted blood alchemist. I lived in the form of a junkyard dog or as an Owl, and became the unofficial protector of our neighborhood against the Akuma that lived there. I still have the sword, which is a true thing of beauty.

All that left me changed.

Golconda?  Nah. Golconda is a tiny flyspeck town in Western Kentucky. I went there once as a lark. They have 3 streets and one stop sign. You actually have to leave town to pick up your mail.  No. I was looking for a soul-deep change and half measures weren't going to do.

Finally, I went wandering. I found myself heading north and remembered some unfinished business in Iceland. 

I was negotiating with the local prince for permission to stay there. It wasn't going well.

The last time I'd been there it had been because one of my ex-wives had tracked me down and demanded some answers and I had to go into hock with some of the local Ventrue to get the situation handled. and as it happened, those kindred weren't exactly friendly with the prince. Lovely.

Fortunately for me, an incursion of Brood swept into Reykjavik in numbers so large that it was truly daunting. See. Iceland is far enough north that there are periods of months at a time when you have no sun. At times, Brood come out of the woodwork. The locals hate it of course.

The unfortunate thing is when kindred attack something in THOSE sorts of numbers, it doesn't really matter what the security arrangements are, they tend to fail and then it's pretty much every man for himself.  These guys were fast, tactically savvy, and well armed.

I waded in. Sword and claws. Moving fast, like I can. Taking the occasional hit, in order to gain position and leverage, for a strike of my own, like i've learned. But something was different about this fight. I could feel it in the air, the sharp tang of blood already on the breeze.

I could feel it in their moves. In their eyes. A distinct lack, like a hunger, not for blood, but for something more nourishing. I could feel it in the monster charging me, most keenly, as if he somehow sensed that I had what he sought.

But he didn't have to take it from me. I would give it to him willingly. 

We locked eyes. 

He ground to a halt. 

He dropped his weapon.

He shed one tear, and then another.

He fell to his knees and sobbed. He never took his eyes off me.

The sounds of combat had ceased all around us. The brood had remembered their humanity. and even the kindred on my side were finding it hard to raise a weapon and punish those crying monsters.

My Devotion only works for a single night. Most of the Brood begged us to kill them or leave them for the sun, but we ended up staking them until we could sort out a means to rehabilitate them. It's slow going, but it's still going on tonight. I don't know exactly what I did, but it seemed to have a longer term effect on the Brood.

Of course, NOW, i'm the princes best friend. I don't know if I can even teach this gift to another kindred or whether it's something unique to me, but I'll see what I can do.  

I call my Devotion, "Here. Have some of Mine."

Ilse and I live together now. She won't re-marry me, but she's still fond of me, and we still have earth-shatteringly great sex.  And, bonus, I speak more Icelandic now, and she speaks more English, and I'm finding I can occasionally bridge the gap with Russian. So we understand one another much better now.  

I don't exactly know how I got here. But here is a good place to be. If you're receiving this email, You're one of the people I trust and I don't mind visitors, even if trouble is dogging your heels.

Come see me sometime.

P. Berkowitz.

The Fourth Pillar: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

There was a nice jewish boy who once wrote, “With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.”  All the rest of what he has given to the world, pale in comparison to the basic premise of this simple aphorism.

It’s core is simple.  If you have power, you have a moral and ethical responsibility not only to yourself, but to the rest of the world around you.  The only way that you can consider yourself a moral and ethical person is take up your responsibilities and fulfill them to the best of your ability.

Now, you could go the other way and do like rich and powerful people down through the ages have done. Rather than live up to your responsibility, you can use the bulk of your effort to demonize the poor and powerless, so that you can feel good about shirking your responsibilities.

Doesn’t mean you aren’t shirking them.

And make no mistake. It doesn’t matter if you are the puniest of your sire’s get and you were embraced two nights ago, you are yet, able to do things that a mortal man cannot do. 

THAT IS POWER.

I am continually amazed by the number of Invictus who are shocked and surprised at how hard some Carthians work on behalf of their domains.  I think most of them tell one another stories about how all we do is stumble around in a haze of bong smoke, muttering socialist platitudes, with our hands out for something.  But some of us understand our responsibilities and lean into them.  Additionally some of us understand the concept of enlightened self interest.  Why do we work so hard on behalf of our Domain?  BECAUSE WE FUCKING LIVE HERE!

But the crux of the biscuit is this: This basic idea cuts both ways. With Less Power comes Less Responsibility.

With NO power, comes NO responsibility.

If you marginalize us and take away our power, then we are not responsible for propping up the society that robs us of our agency.

And THEN it’s all Fight the Power/Kill Whitey time.

We work hard at achieving our personal goals.

We work hard at achieving our shared goals.

We work hard at trying to keep our cities safe out of enlightened self interest.

We do this because we know that no one is going to do it for us.

It’s like being in a relationship. If I’m in a relationship with someone and the sex is great, well...there is a certain amount of shit i’m willing to put up with. I think most men and women know what I’m talking about. But say my partner decides, for whatever reason, to stop having sex with me. Well that means that the amount of shit I’m willing to put with goes WAY the fuck down. 

Some vampires get this. Others do not. And the sad fact is, Those of us who get this are constantly cleaning up the messes of the vampires who feel they have power, and "responsibility" is just something that happens to other people.

And when I say responsibility I mean it not just in the small sense of honoring your debts and helping out your brothers and sisters in the Movement.  I don’t just mean it in the middling-sized sense of trying to keep your nose clean with our laws and keeping your domain safe for kindred and mortals alike.  I mean it in the enormously huge sense of thinking about the future. Because the price of standing against a sick and rotting society is that you must have a ready alternative.  Be ready when some somebody says to you in open court, “Ok mister smart-ass Carthian. What would YOU do?”

Hit them with it right between their beady little pig-eyes.

YOU SHOULD BE SCARED by the amount of responsibility that comes with the power of undeath.

Because power doesn’t really corrupt. It merely magnifies what is already there. Your virtues and vices will be writ large on the pages of history, and incidentally on the backs of the proles.

It’s absolutely true that if you want to see the measure of a person’s character, give them a taste of real power. It’s the same reason why the revolution tends to eat its own children. 

Would that other kindred understood this as keenly as we do.

The Third Pillar: Do NOT cast away your humanity.

I’ve written about this before, so this will be treading old ground for those of you who have read my works.  This is a refinement of that basic idea. 

If there is one thing that is the cause of the bulk of our problems as a species and as a society it is the fact that we have a beast inside each of us.  I’m certain that without the quintessential “asshole room-mate” tromping around in our skulls, we could live in relative peace with each other and with the humans too.

It is the beast that prods and pokes us. It never leaves us alone. It’s constantly there to ask you, “Are you going to take that from him?”  It makes first impressions among our kind a ticklish business. It makes us passionate and excitable. It makes us get our noses out of joint over things that probably wouldn’t have bothered us when we were alive.  It makes kindred gatherings a bit like walking around in a minefield with clown shoes on. Normally come 10 o'clock, if kindred are raising their voices,  I just tap my watch and say, "Hmm. Time to bounce."  Am I wrong?  Don't think i'd care to find out really.

But this isn't even the main reason that Kindred gatherings ought to make you nervous and have your antennae up. We are a large extended family of liars, thieves and murderers. That's bad enough. But along the course of your Requiem, you may do things. Awful things, terrible things, Things you cannot justify to yourself or forgive yourself for. And many people crack under those

sorts of stresses. And each time you do those sorts of things, you find yourself giving in to those urges more and more.

Insanity is a low-grade fever that runs through the body politic of kindred society. In any given group of more than ten kindred there is likely to be at least one person who is coocoo for coco-puffs. 

I’ve been to a gathering of at least 200 Kindred. DO the Math.

And to make it even worse, the tendency is for the elders, the most powerful of our kind to step off the curb, usually in some dramatic sturm-und-drang fashion.

And let me assure you my friends, for every single kindred who is flatly, obviously, full goose bozo, gone up over the high side, CRAZY with a capital "CRA", there are at least six kindred of your immediate acquaintance who have gone mad in some quiet way that you may not notice until it's far too late. He may be lucid for long periods of time. May even be a strong political ally of yours. And you may not even know that he's wearing underwear made from the skin of Argentinean babies.

I feel very sad for you if you don't care about that sort of thing.

Some recover. Most don't. Most get sicker and sicker with each passing night, until sooner or later joining the Brood seems pretty fucking tame compared to your night-to-night itinerary of calumny. Sadly there is a great tendency to turn a blind eye to these activities. Some people in other covenants indulge in practices that erode their basic humanity. Even the Ordo Dracul has a particular blind spot about this, eschewing traditional human morality in the name of scientific inquiry. Not all go down this road, but enough do, that it frankly scares the shit out of me.

This will come off as serious blasphemy to some, and naiveté to others, but it is my considered opinion that to reject human morality is to become alien. To reject human emotion, as the basis of one's emotional apparatus is to invite the hunger to rule your heart...Or what's left of it. And that way lies madness.

And you know the ones always excusing the loss of humanity or segregating ourselves off from the mortal world, always say that we ought to do these things in order to be better predators.  Well by that fucking logic, I should chop off my legs and jam some wheels into the stumps so I can be a better bobsled racer. Seriously?

We all make mistakes. This much is assured. Hell, a number of us wouldn't be like this, if it weren't for the mistakes we made, or the mistakes made by our sires. We are going to do things in the midst of frenzy. We are going to do really unpleasant things in the name of political expediency or some idealistic intent. We might even trade away pieces of our basic humanity in exchange for mystic power or occult understanding.

And I, personally, am going on record as saying, "THIS IS A BAD PLAN".

Let me put it to you like this: Your sanity and its maintenance is one of your most primary responsibilities. It is your responsibility to yourself, and to your covenant to retain your sanity. And it's my opinion that you cannot abdicate your responsibility on pain of death or torpor.

And this, from a man who has explored a goodly chunk of his own brainpan with a saucy mélange of chemical entertainments.

Guess what, I live alone for a reason. I try to stay sober for kindred gatherings. And even if I do some crazy thing, odds are good that I'll be sober tomorrow night, crazy people will still be crazy.

Look, the fact is that if you don't keep your humanity and sanity together you are essentially asking, nay demanding, that other members of your covenant deal with the messes you make. Some covenants are by their nature more forgiving of this sort of thing than others, but all of them will have a breaking point. No one wants to deal with a vampire who flips out over nothing or who curls up into a fetal ball and starts mewling when things get

tough. NO ONE. Nobody else wants to carry your fucking baggage.

Truthfully, I don't see how kindred politics function in face of this unpleasant tendency to madness. The fact that we still often run under political systems that Caligula would feel right at home in, might have something to do with it. But that's a screed for another time.

Check yourself. Get someone you trust to check you too. Keep an eye on your friends and speak the fuck up if you

feel you need to. Avoid, or if necessary, put down any kindred who have left their humanity and their sanity behind. And if you have to put them down, do so without hatred. Maybe after they've had a long rest they'll be more amenable to treatment.

Look. The world is a harsh place already. You shouldn’t be harsher than it.  And you shouldn’t strive to be harsher than you have to be.  

You should cry.

You should feel like a complete fucking heel at times.

You should find things to laugh at and occasions to smile and not mean any of that in a nasty predative way.

You should try to love, even if you’re not sure you remember how.

You should hurt.

There’s a good reason why you should.

Because if you cast it all away.

If you forget who you are or where you came from.

If you simply can’t handle the shocks and hurts of this existence and lock it all away so you can simply survive...

Then it were better for you to walk into the sunrise. Because you’re no different from those goons in the Brood. It doesn’t matter whose colors you’re wearing.

I hear they’re always hiring.

I think that it’s the great failing of Kindred society that they always can.

The Second Pillar: Mental Passivity is Death

If history has shown us nothing else, it has definitely shown us, that all of the myriad forms of mental passivity, lead directly to death.

Fighting the last war instead of the war you’re fighting now is death.

Classism, Racism,Sexism, Creedism, Cynicism, Cronyism, Optimism, Pessimism, are all death.  Cynicism is especially bad and epidemic in this modern age. It is essentially a pre-judging of all people.  You think to yourself, as Henry Rollins puts it so eloquently, that All People Suck.  And you go about living your life based on that mental laziness.  But it's bullshit.  How the fuck do YOU know that all people suck?  Have you met ALL people?   It's fair to say that a statistically significant sampling of people that you have personally met suck, but just because it's 95% doesn't make it a 100%  If you make it a 100%, YOU'RE the problem. YOU'RE the one who sucks.

Dogma, whether it’s political or religious. is death.  Notice how the more dogmatic a person is in their covenant how they slide towards social death...and possibly actual death.

Getting fed up with the pace of the modern world and slipping into the patterns of a simpler age IS DEATH!

Slavish devotion to tradition long past it’s sell-by date is death.

Not even knowing what a sell-by date is, because you haven’t been in a grocery in 20 years is death.

Not keeping a weather-eye on popular culture is death. I’m not saying you have to give a fuck about Nicki Minaj, but you ought not  come off like a foreign person in your own home town.

Thinking with your heart instead of your head? Death. full-on, lacing up his shoes, coming to get you.

Been living somewhere for a century and still sound like you’re fresh off the boat? DEATH!

Assuming that once you’ve become powerful that you no longer have to be polite, especially to people you don’t know. Death. Heck it’ll probably be me who kills you, because people are all the time rude to me, because they assume i’m just some schmuck.

Some of those people are dead now.

Oh sure. We’ve all got our blind spots and our prejudices.  We’ve all got things that we’ve let get away from us over time. But I say to you that part of your ethic should always be, that when you notice a spot of mental passivity within you, that you root it out with fire and tongs as fast as you can.

Some of these deaths are slow like crabgrass. Other’s will be fast and agonizing and you’ll wish to ash as fast as possible but death will be long in coming and even the most hardened hearts watching will flinch and shy away.

Am I being poetic to make a metaphoric point? Maybe.

Do you really want to take that chance?

I’m not saying that you have to reinvent the wheel every time out.  I’m not saying that you can’t do things that have worked before. But I am saying, learn to adapt when that thing stops working instead of standing there dumbly or curling up into a fetal ball.

Death. You’ve tasted it before.

If you don’t use your brain, you’ll get a belly-full.

The First Pillar: No One lives Forever

The First Pillar:

No one lives forever.

One of the fundamental problems of being a vampire is that people keep telling you that you’re going to live forever.

It’s not true.

In fact, it’s overwhelmingly and demonstrably untrue.

Oh sure, get some time under your belt, learn a few tricks, and your life expectancy goes WAY WAY up. You might even out-last your sire or your siblings, or even your childer.

But no one lives forever.

No one.

In fact, most of us will die, likely by violence or by our own hand.

You can’t even say that you’ll live forever with a straight face, knowing that a sun-tan will definitely destroy you completely.

So the best thing that you can do is stop acting like you’re going to live forever. YOU more than any mortal know EXACTLY how fragile life is.  You are living on borrowed time, No...I correct myself. You are living on STOLEN time. and frankly you had better make the most of it. it is a moral imperative that you do so.

LEARN everything you can manage to learn and as fast as you can learn it.

EXPERIENCE as much as you can fit into your mind and heart.

DO as much as you can to leave the world a better place than you found it.

USE the powers that you’ve been given to accomplish the things you want to accomplish.

Because, sooner or later Insanity or fear or torpor will catch up to you and try to slow you down. 

Don’t you let it. 

Don’t kid yourself like the humans do that you’ve got all the time in the world. Life moves pretty fast, and as the man said. If you don’t stop and look around a bit, you might miss it.  

You don’t have time for fear.

You don’t have time for Insanity. In fact, if you used as much energy battling your demons, as you do excusing your behavior simply because you have them...You’d beat them every time.

Torpor...well. There may not be a way around that...yet. Check in with the Ordo from time to time and see if we’ve licked the problem.

But stop acting like you’ve won the fucking time lottery. 

Get to work. Tonight.

And as a corrollary to this idea. Learn to HATE wasted time.  I’m not saying don’t learn how to be patient. Learn to be patient. But if you’re sitting at court waiting on the Prince and his retinue to arrive, take the opportunity to introduce yourself around to the newbies and visitors. See what you can do network-wise. Catch up on news and gossip. Hell, knit a sweater if you think it will keep you from losing your cool. But learn to hate a waste of time.  Learn to avoid anyone who seems like they want to waste yours. Learn to hate any other vampire who wants you to just keep spinning your wheels.  Every moment is a weapon. 

Learn to wield it.