Wassail

Wassail refers to the permanent state of mindless frenzy and aggression that a vampire enters into when they lose all touch with any morality path and are taken over by their Beast, rendering them a mindless monster bent on nothing but gorging themself. The condition is similar to entering a permanent Frenzy that cannot be calmed. A vampire who has fallen into Wassail is referred to as a wight.

Entering Wassail

Most vampires become wights when they lose their last grip on their humanity; once they have become so degraded that even the most sordid horrors of the world no longer faze them, it is easy to slip into becoming an actual monster. Many vampires, as a result, attempt to at least pay lip service to the ideals of humanity, if for no other reason than to do "maintenance" to keep themselves from falling too far.

Vampires can attempt to safeguard themselves somewhat if, realizing that they are struggling to maintain their humanity, they choose a different morality path instead, one that is more in line with their new values as one of the undead. However, this is not without risk, either; in order to move to another path, the vampire must drop to the lowest possibly humanity first, and some fail to make the transition, falling into Wassail instead.

It is also possibly for a vampire to degrade from a morality path and fall into Wassail, although this is less common since most vampires choose and work hard on their non-humanity paths.

Effects of Wassail

A vampire in Wassail is, for all intents and purposes, dead; they just won't stop moving around. The wight's consciousness and personality are fully lost, replaced by mindless aggression and animal hunger, and while they remain lucid enough to recognize potential threats and use the environment around them, they no longer really understand human (or vampire) society or languages and wouldn't care to try if they could. They no longer care about or in most cases even recognize former loved ones, and are just as likely to kill and feed on them as they are anyone else. They can and will still use their disciplines, but are unlikely to be able to competently wield any that are especially social or complex; they are more likely to spend vitae on physical capabilities that get their next meal into their mouth than trying to navigate things like Dominate or Presence, which no longer make sense to them.

Because wights are driven only by instinct, it is technically possible to threaten one so severely that they flee instead of attempting to kill their aggressors; while this can protect people in the short term, it does nothing about the wight now off devastating some other part of town, and it is not guaranteed to work, as a wight that doesn't really believe that their enemies can harm them is one that cannot be frightened into running away. Most cases of wights fleeing instead of fighting involve them already being severely injured, or else a group of vampires that has created enough overwhelming force to convince the wight that it will die if it does not escape.

There are no real other side effects of Wassail, nor does it negatively impact a wight's physical body or powers at all; in many cases, it actually makes the wight more likely to survive longer, as they stop caring about anything except feeding and killing threats. However, wights are an enormous problem for most other vampires outside of the Sabbat, who risk being exposed if a rogue vampire runs around messily killing mortals in public, and therefore concerted efforts are usually made to bring down any wight as soon as it appears.

Leaving Wassail

It is not possible for a wight to return to being a normal vampire; once they have been consumed by the Beast, they are irrevocably dead. Vestiges of their personality may still cling to the wight, but they will never be able to return to their "right mind" or control their actions again. As a result, they may rampage for a little while but invariably die at the hands of Hunters or other vampires seeking to protect their secrecy.

Ancient folkloric rumors circulate that one or two ancient elder vampires have returned from Wassail and regained their former senses. However, as this has never been corroborated and these former wights have never given an accounting of their experiences, it is assumed that these are mere urban legends.