Carnon

Carnon
Parent Clan:	Gangrel
Nickname:	Pucks, the Horned Gods
Reference:	Crone 168
Disciplines:	Animalism
	Protean
	Resilience
	Nightmare

Please refer to the Requiem Addendum to determine whether there are any restrictions on this bloodline.

Covenant

The Carnon bloodline, as it stands tonight, was created by a coterie of Acolytes as a means of solidifying and demonstrating not only their devotion to the covenant but their overconfident certainty that they were bad-ass sexy thugs entitled to represent the covenant and thumb their noses at stodgy local Sanctified. Though the blood and the culture of the Carnon has managed to spread throughout the western world in the past few decades, their attitudes haven’t been diluted by new members. Bucks are still self-aggrandizing pagan rockers waging a gauche guerilla war against a close-minded, old-fashioned Kindred church that they only know how to relate to as an exaggerated cartoon of itself. The same Lancea Sanctum that the first Carnons pumped their fists at turns out not to be as narrow-minded, grey-haired and impotent as those early Bucks said they were. The rhetoric of those first Carnon was shouted so loud, though, that it’s still echoing through the bloodline. To date, no Carnon is known to have joined the Lancea Sanctum, though several vampires have joined the bloodline after fleeing that church. In practice, of course, many Carnon actually get along just fine with their local parish Priest or coterie confessor. “I hate those gay-bashing, redneck old fucks!” says the Carnon. “But not you, carnon chapter four 170 Mother Lourdes. You’re not one of those Sanctified.” Indeed, few Sanctified probably are. Carnon have wandered into the ranks of every other covenant, however. In some cities, they serve Invictus or Carthian powers as Hounds, even going so far as to maintain membership in multiple covenants. The Ordo Dracul has attracted a few Carnon into its midst over the years, as well, though the type of monster that makes a good Horned God tends not to make a good Dragon. Carnon enter the Order for short-term benefits then bail when the dues (in service, in blood, in study) get steep.

Appearance

Many modern Carnon are drawn from the various subcultures of woodsy backpackers, base jumpers and hostel regulars. The iconic image of the Carnon tonight is something akin to a buff, neo-hippy Marlboro man: stubble, long hair, great physique, easygoing demeanor. In practice, it seems that just as many Horned Gods are ratty tattooed neo-punks with thousands of dollars worth of body modifications, from earlobes with oversized inset rings to clamped collarbones to ritual scars. Twisted, overgrown beards are common — even before the Embrace most Carnon looked like the Green Man. Almost universally, Carnon have solid, impressive builds. Often this means taut muscle, but sometimes barrel chests and simple height is all it takes to fulfill the image. The change of the Gangrel blood into that of the Carnon line somehow brings with it a firm grace, a practiced strut that exaggerates the stature and posture of the Horned God. Some move with the delicate precision of a stag, others with the sure calm of a wolf. As their Blood Potency increases, Carnon develop more and more unnaturally inhuman qualities. In modern nights these seem to be subtler: some Carnon leave hoof prints inside their own footprints when they walk barefoot, others cast shadows or distorted reflections that seem to be capped with forked, elk-like horns. According to rumor, the eldest Carnon grew horns and were forced to flee the sight of mankind.

Haven

Carnon live like stags. Many dwell together in seedy, dank bachelor pits littered with unwashed clothes and crumpled magazines. Many others dwell alone in the kind of unreasonable independence that make up adolescent fantasies: sleeping in blacked-out trailers, nesting in the hidden attics of record shops and movie theaters or hiding out in the bomb shelters beneath the high school. Carnon thus favor Haven Location above all else, though for them a prime location may have as much to do with their self-indulgent pastimes as it does with the practical concerns of feeding. Haven Security is also important, though seldom is it anything high-tech; a Carnon finds safety in obscurity and cement walls, not expensive equipment. Haven Size seldom matters much to a Buck, so long as it has a good stereo or television. Eventually, all of these modern (and bright) things mean nothing to a Carnon, though. Eventually, they all must retreat from the eyes of mortals, either to prowl the wooded shadows at the edge of civilization where they can stalk other vulnerable, isolated vampires for their Vitae or to sleep off the inhuman deformities sparked by their own blood.

Background

The Carnon bloodline isn’t the sort that Kindred adopt after long centuries of searching or consideration. Carnon are impulsive, shameless (but often regrettable) creatures. Carnon worry about tomorrow when it comes. Tonight is about tonight. The vast majority of Carnon were Embraced in their youth, and maintain a mixture of teenage rebellion and twenty-something vagabondage throughout their Requiems. Carnon are often though to be exclusively male — which is to say that many Kindred passively assume that all Carnon are men while many others presume the bloodline is philosophically closed to women — but this is not the case. Only a small number of Carnon are Horned Goddesses, but such Kindred do exist, particularly in the Pacific Northwest and the UK. Plenty of Carnon are intelligent, but many lack the discipline to put it to work. The early Carnon wrote insightful, biting critiques of the Lancea Sanctum in their night — manifestos potent enough to draw lesser-willed vampires to adopt their blood. As the number of Carnon grew over the years, the percentage of great minds in the bloodline naturally dropped as followers gathered around the rock star-like leaders they celebrated. Still, rocking revolutionaries and savvy punks continue to be drawn to the Carnon family, even if they don’t realize their potential or find their discipline until decades after.

Character Creation

Carnon thus tend to favor power Attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Presence) over others. On average, Social or Physical traits tend to be primary. The Expression Skill is common among the bloodline, whether carried over from life or learned in undeath. The Iron Stamina Merit is a good choice to represent the bloodline’s reckless disregard for its own comfort or wellbeing. Likewise, though it does them little good in damnation, the Iron Stomach Merit seems to have been common among many Carnon in life.

Weakness

Carnon suffer the same base affliction as their parent clan: the 10-again rule does not apply to Intelligence- or Wits-based dice pools for these vampires. Additionally, any 1’s that are rolled subtract from successes (see p. 107 of Vampire: The Requiem). These penalties don’t apply to perception-related dice pools or to the Resolve Attribute.

Organization

Concepts

Anti-Christian death-metal singer, bodymodification artist, environmental terrorist, fear-mongering biker, free-loading emo lay-about, long-haired militant liberal, patchouli-smelling politico, Space Monkey

History

of these so-called Horned Gods was a San Francisco vampire who had confused Wiccan writings and the monomythic analyses of cultural anthropologists with historical fact. Thinking he was fashioning himself in the timeless image of an ancient god, this young vampire invested his Vitae with his wild passion for earthly thrills and, in a night of bloody frenzy, transformed his blood forever. He never learned that Wicca was a modern creation made from fragments of old pagan beliefs in an effort to honor ancient ways. Rather, that fi rst Carnon went out of the world in a screaming, fi ery mess after leading mortal witch-hunters on a brutal, three-night chase by car, on foot and across the Northern California hillsides. Later Kindred claimed the fi rst Carnon was an ignorant neopagan hippy driven to his mad destruction by tainted blood. But that misses the point. To the Carnon, it doesn’t matter if he was wrong about Cernunnos and Pan and the scholastically correct origins of their image. What matters is that he survived for three nights with desperate, hateful hunters on his heels. The fi rst Carnon terrifi ed his enemies and was part of a great hunt. Vampires will sing songs about it. That’s what it’s about for the Carnon. The Horned Gods are the descendants of that fi rst Carnon, who they worship not like a god, but like a rock star. His name is unknown, lost in the tangled grapevines of a million mistaken versions of his tale. Tonight, they call him John Carnon, and nobody cares that it’s wrong. John Carnon put himself through hell, heroin and the Requiem in an effort to create something new in the 1960s. He tried painting, music, poetry, but he always met with miserable failure. How exactly he came to be Embraced is unclear, but it happened somewhere between 1965 and 1967. Something about his tribulation — his self-destruction in pursuit of art — appealed to some Acolyte witch who took his blood and gave him hers. That was the turning point. John Carnon took to bloodsucking like he’d been born to do it. He looked like Jim Morrison and fucked like John Holmes. He hunted women and the LSD in their veins with animal intuition. He imagined that hunting would be his art. Somewhere during this time, John Carnon fell in with an Acolyte coterie and became obsessed with neopagan symbolism. Based on just the barest threads of pagan belief and imagery, he chose to fashion himself and his Requiem on the virile and wild Horned God archetype. In 1970, all but starving and tripping on precious little laced Vitae, he fell into a terrible frenzy while in pursuit of a woman on the streets of San Francisco. According to bloodline legend, this frenzy lasted for six nights. On the seventh, John Carnon’s blood had changed into the Carnon bloodline. What, if anything, Carnon intended for his bloodline will never be known. In the weeks immediately following his transformation, John Carnon Embraced fi ve childer in a fl urry of insane excess. As William Blake wrote, and Jim Morrison lived, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” John Carnon spent an eternity in half a decade under this philosophy. With his four childer left reeling in his wake, and his will broken by the expenditure of their creation, John Carnon degenerated into an almost animal state. Within a month his bloody attacks had attracted the attention of vampire-hunters from as far away as Portland and L.A. His legendary chase and destruction took place soon thereafter. John Carnon’s Requiem was no more than fi ve years long from end to end. In his absence, left with only his confused legacy, the Carnon bloodline stood on the verge of extinction. But each of Carnon’s four childer adopted their sire’s bloodline within a few years and reinvented it for their own Requiems. In their hands, the bloodline was calmed and refi ned, if only in comparison to their frenzied founder. carnon 169 chapter four Those first Carnon researched more of the Horned God myths that had inspired, however vaguely, their sire and strove to give their Requiems new meaning through its symbolism. But they also worked to make themselves more valuable to the covenant that had taken them in, the Circle of the Crone, and to express their rebellious attitudes against the first establishment they found to oppose: the Lancea Sanctum. That first Carnon coterie used the Sanctified church as a landmark to position themselves on the Kindred philosophical spectrum. These young rockers would be religious radicals and the Lancea Sanctum would be their crusty adversaries. To the Carnon, the Sanctified were narrow-minded oppressors forcing a single, suffocating take on religion down the throats of the Kindred masses. Nevermind that this was hardly the case in San Francisco, where the Circle of the Crone had a robust membership. The Carnon wanted to protest, and they’d found their cause. That gave the bloodline its appeal to other fiery neonates. The Carnon became pagan radicals with a rock ‘n roll sensibility, and hedonistic new vampires ate it up. Kindred came to the Carnon (and, by extension, the Circle of the Crone) from the shadows of unaligned society and the ranks of the Carthians in startling numbers. This gave the bloodline new credence in the eyes of the local Hierophant. At least for a time. The Carnon cult of personality eventually imploded when, in the tradition of their sire, those first four childer Embraced too much too soon and left themselves weakened to the sway of the Beast. None of them went out as spectacularly as their sire, but it seems that none of them survived to 1980. Such is the tradition of the Carnon. Few of these Horned Gods enjoy long Requiems. Thus, not many Kindred know what secrets lurk in the blood of the Carnon, waiting to manifest in those rare Bucks whose Vitae ripens with power. Tonight, the Carnon have spread throughout the United States and into parts of Canada and Mexico. Nomadic Requiems appeal to the kind of souls that become Horned Gods, and escape from a scuffed Masquerade is often necessary for these wild ones. Modern Carnon strive to make more of their Acolyte traditions. A few decades of circulation in the Circle of the Crone has given many Carnon a desire (or a mandate) to become more meaningful parts of the covenant, besides stage performers and thug service. Though plenty of older Acolytes mock and deride the Carnon to their faces, plenty of others see something marvelous in these young lunatics: The Carnon have endured through a crazy time and great tribulations to create something that is both new but mindful of its ancient roots. If they accept that the Carnon are not yet finished with their creation, and so have not yet reached the heights of their power, then the Acolytes should be able to appreciate the admirable, exuberant possibilities inherent in the Horned Gods. Parent Clan: Gangrel Nickname: Pucks, Bucks or Horned Gods. Covenant: The Carnon bloodline, as it stands tonight, was created by a coterie of Acolytes as a means of solidifying and demonstrating not only their devotion to the covenant but their overconfident certainty that they were bad-ass sexy thugs entitled to represent the covenant and thumb their noses at stodgy local Sanctified. Though the blood and the culture of the Carnon has managed to spread throughout the western world in the past few decades, their attitudes haven’t been diluted by new members. Bucks are still self-aggrandizing pagan rockers waging a gauche guerilla war against a close-minded, old-fashioned Kindred church that they only know how to relate to as an exaggerated cartoon of itself. The same Lancea Sanctum that the first Carnons pumped their fists at turns out not to be as narrow-minded, grey-haired and impotent as those early Bucks said they were. The rhetoric of those first Carnon was shouted so loud, though, that it’s still echoing through the bloodline. To date, no Carnon is known to have joined the Lancea Sanctum, though several vampires have joined the bloodline after fleeing that church. In practice, of course, many Carnon actually get along just fine with their local parish Priest or coterie confessor. “I hate those gay-bashing, redneck old fucks!” says the Carnon. “But not you, carnon chapter four 170 Mother Lourdes. You’re not one of those Sanctified.” Indeed, few Sanctified probably are. Carnon have wandered into the ranks of every other covenant, however. In some cities, they serve Invictus or Carthian powers as Hounds, even going so far as to maintain membership in multiple covenants. The Ordo Dracul has attracted a few Carnon into its midst over the years, as well, though the type of monster that makes a good Horned God tends not to make a good Dragon. Carnon enter the Order for short-term benefits then bail when the dues (in service, in blood, in study) get steep.

Bloodline Disciplines

The Carnon gain no Unique Disciplines but do gain the ability to use the Nosferatu Discipline of Nightmare

• (•) Monstrous Countenance
• (••) Dread
• (•••) Eye of the Beast
• (••••) Shatter the Mind
• (•••••) Mortal Fear

Bloodline Devotions

Members