Quietus

Quietus

Quietus
Clans	Assamites, Assamite Antitribu
Bloodlines	Courtiers, Magi, Nomads, Viziers
Sects	Ashirra, Camarilla, Independents, Sabbat
Rituals	None
Combination Disciplines	Quietus Combination Disciplines
Rarity	Uncommon

According to legend, the Quietus Discipline was developed by the ancient founder of Clan Assamite, who are still its only common practitioners, and was intended to allow them to have control over the blood of other vampires, the better to pass judgment upon them if necessary. Quietus affects and transforms the essence of the blood within a body, allowing its users to draw supernatural properties from it or allow it to become dormant at will.

Basic Powers

Blood Tempering

You may infuse a little of your blood into an item, preserving it indefinitely with the power of your vitae. The object cannot be larger than a foot in eeach dimension; once infused, it is no longer affected by age, decay, or other natural forms of damage to it. It can still be broken by someone who actively tries to break it, of course.

Silence of Death

Like the silent movement of blood in your veins, you can extend your powers outward to create a zone of complete silence around you, in which no sound can be made or escape. The silent zone extends for about 10 feet around you, and while no one hears any sounds that should have been made within it, you can still hear noises that would have been created outside that range.

Ishtar's Touch

You can transform your blood into an intoxicating drug, one that affects your victim as if they were extremely inebriated or heavily drugged with a mind-altering substance (you have some minor control over what kind of drug effects it has, but it can only intoxicate, not physically harm). The drugged blood is potent, and even touching someone's bare skin with it is enough for them to feel its full effects even if they do not ingest it.

Scorpion's Touch

You can transform your blood into an acidic poison, injuring and sickening those who are touched by it or ingest it. Anyone who drinks your blood while it is thus poisoned becomes severely ill, and anyone you poor or spit that blood on is burned as if by acid. Vampires can recover from these effects by healing themselves with blood, but mortals generally become deathly ill or simply die within a few minutes.

Truth of Blood

By tasting a bit of someone's blood, you become able to sense whether they lie or attempt to otherwise deceive you; if they do, you feel their blood boiling inside you, warning you that something is wrong. You continue to sense their deceptions for the rest of the night, but this power does not grant you any extra ability to guess what the truth actually is.

Intermediate Powers

Cleansed in Blood

By feeding some of your blood to another person, you can burn impurities out of them from the inside, freeing them from all supernatural mental and emotional effects. This includes the effects of disciplines such as Dementation, Dominate, or Presence, the powers of other supernatural creatures such as Wraith Arcanoi or shapeshifter Gifts, and even blood bonds. This relief is only temporary; at the end of the night, the effects reassert their strength, but until then it can free others from even the strongest of compulsions just long enough to try to make a different decision.

Dagon's Call

By touching a victim, you can cause some of your blood to pass through your skin and into their body, there to wait for you to cause it to burst violently back out of them whenever you wish. Once you have done so, the blood erupts out of their organs, tissues, and orifices as it responds to your call for it to return, usually causing spectacular pain and injuries in the process. This power does not create a Blood Bond, since it does not actually involve a victim imbibing your blood.

Baal's Caress

You may cause a small portion of your blood to become so frighteningly toxic that it inflicts damage on others as if it were literal flame, dealing aggravated damage. You may only do this with a small portion of your blood at a time, and it can only inflict its terrible burning pain on them if you manage to introduce it into their bloodstream in some way.

Blood Agony

You may cause some of your blood to become a dangerous, toxic coating, one you can apply to weapons to make them more dangerous or simply splash onto your hapless victim's skin. In addition to the hideous pain that this inflicts on your victims, which is likely to incapacitate mortals immediately and give even supernatural creatures a run for their money, they also lose Willpower when they are struck by it.

Advanced Powers

Blood Essence

An intensely banned power (but nevertheless one still in existence), this skill allows you to extract all the hearts-blood of a vampire into a thick potion, killing them in the process. The resulting potion literally contains the dead vampire's soul, and can be consumed at any time in order to have the effects of a diablerie. It can also be introduced into a dying or exsanguinated human being's system to make them into a ghoul, although most vampires would consider this a distressing waste.

Quicken the Mortal's Blood

As a master of blood in all its forms, you may feed from those you drink from with much greater efficiency. You gain twice as much nourishment from any kind of blood you drink.

Taste of Bliss

You may exhale a cloud of bloody vaporous mist, causing everyone who breathes it in to be afflicted by a sense of langorous, drugged semi-paralysis, similar to an opiod high. Those affected slowly lose their Willpower, eventually running completely out if they do not escape the mist, a difficult proposition when they have trouble moving or caring enough to even try. The mist is too thinly dispersed to result in a blood bond.

Taste of Death

You can spit some of your blood at someone, and make it so terrifyingly acidic that it burns even bone to unusable sludge. It can also destroy most inanimate objects, so for obvious reasons it cannot be placed on a weapon or projectile, only directly coughed onto your target.

Elder Powers

Blood Awakening

You may communicate with the very blood in your body, learning about whomever it originally came from; by drinking blood from someone else and then meditating for several minutes, you mean access basic information about the person you drank from, as well as reading some of their most powerful memories. This power works best when tasting the blood of mortals or ghouls, but it can also be used to glean glimpses of information about a vampire (although the blood bond you will likely incur may or may not be worth it).

Blood Sweat

You may use this power to inflict an agonizing attack of guilt in your victim; they are incapable of doing anything but dwelling on every terrible thing they have ever done, none of which they can currently rationalize away. While this is happening, they literally sweat blood; vampires become hungrier adn weaker the more they lose, while mortals are likely to pass out or even die.

Deed the Heart's Desire

You may cause the blood in your veins to pound out a loud, steady rhythm, blocking out other sensations (including pain) so that you can meditate or simply rest free of cares. Alternatively, by touching someone else, you can do the same to them - but the marching beat is overwhelming and likely to cause mental distress.

Purification

By feeding someone your blood, you may now remove a single mental effect, much as you could with Cleansed in Blood; however, while you can only remove a single effect (for example, a single derangement or a single Dominate command), it is permanently cleansed from their system. You may do this as many times as you and the person in question wish to remove multiple effects, but of course the side effects of the blood bond are nothing to be sneezed at.

Rapturous Touch

You no longer need to bite your victims in order to feed; with this power, simply touching someone is enough, causing their blood to rise to the surface of their skin and be sucked out through their pores and into your own. This process is painless, and those you use it on may not even realize that they are being drained until they start to experience weakness or other side effects. Should you drain a victim dry until they die, they appear to have simply fallen over from heart failure.

This power has also historically been used in order to commit diablerie without being too obvious about it; however, this is a dangerous proposition, as vampires are much more likely to notice their blood reserves being lost and much more difficult to drain to death without being stopped or fought, and as a result this power may simply result in you becoming bloodbound to your intended victim.

Ripples of the Heart

You may infuse a mortal's blood with emotion, whipping them up into a passionate state; the emotion is yours to choose, and whatever you decide on becomes the dominant feature of the mortal's personality. Once you have done this, any vampire that feeds from this mortal is immediately afflicted by the same overpowering emotion, seemingly without source, and may even enter Frenzy if the emotion is appropriate or powerful enough.

Selective Silence

When you use the Silence of Death power, you may now choose specific others within that zone who are still able to make noise (including yourself, if you wish). Everyone and everything else in the area remains forcibly silenced.

Thin Blood

By touching a ghoul or vampire, you may thin their vitae so much that it can no longer reliably sustain and protect them. They can no longer heal any wounds they suffer by spending blood, forced to suffer the pain and inconvenience of their injuries as if they were a normal human until the sun sets on the next night.

Baal's Bloody Talons

With this power, you may now deal twice as much burning aggravated damage as you could with Baal's Caress. At this point, this power is so deadly that it can instantly kill not only mortals and ghouls but also vampires who are significantly less powerful than yourself.

Blood of the Cobra

Instead of having to touch your victim or coat weapons in your poisons, you may now use all your Quietus powers by spitting blood directly from your mouth onto another person; as long as it touches their skin, eyes, or another exposed part of their body, they are affected at full power.

Dam the Heart's River

You may use this power to control the blood even in other vampires' veins, controlling when and how they can spend their blood. You may prevent them from using blood, rendering them unable to heal injuries, increase their physical capabilities, or use their disciplines; alternatively, you may force them to use blood, firing off powers, becoming swollen with strength, or even simply vomiting up their blood. Needless to say, this is an extremely unpopular power among other vampires.

Foul Blood

By touching them, you may poison the blood inside a still-living mortal. The mortal themself is not affected, but their blood becomes toxic to everyone else; vampires who feed from them suffer immediate pain and damage from the poison (although they are still nourished by it, assuming they can keep it down). The mortal also cannot donate blood without killing the person they hope to transfuse, and their blood acts like a mild acid if spilled, likely baffling human science if anyone studies it.

Hinder the Cainite Vitae

With this power, you may permanently prevent a vampire from spending blood for anything except awakening in the evening. They can still drink as much blood as they wish, remaining sustained and alive, but have no ability to use powers or heal injuries. You must use this power again if you wish to remove this restriction from your victim, although this is rare - almost all uses of this power are designed to weaken or kill your victim.

Poison the Well of Life

By touching a mortal, you may cause their blood to become a virulent, inedible poison, one that causes anyone who drinks it to immediately vomit it back up and suffer from horrible burning pain, as if they had tried to ingest acid. Only you can safely drink from the mortal, who tastes as fresh and nourishing to you as anyone can. This power is especially popular for those Assamites who are concerned about the safety of their blood source, as it allows them to cultivate a herd of mortals with no fear that anyone else will poison or poach them.

Blood of Destruction

You may convert all the blood in your body into a terrifying, all-devouring acid. It is harmless to you while it remains inside your body, but as soon as your blood makes contact with anything else, it eats through it like hot water through ice, destroying even the toughest metals and most powerful supernatural creatures until it eventually sinks into the earth. Your blood is so powerfully acidic that it even harms you, if you come into contact with it once it leaves your body.

Songs of Distant Vitae

Every vampire has lived their undead life by stealing from the lives of others, and you can force them to confront that with this power. By touching a vampire, you force them to suddenly experience vivid flashbacks of all their former feeding victims - except that they are now in the role of victim themself, feeling exactly what their victims did as they were attacked. The most recent victims are generally the most vivid and immediate, but especially traumatic feedings (such as those where the victim died or was severely injured) are likely to also surface quickly and immediately. It only takes the vampire affected a second to experience each of their victim's feeding memories, but the older they are, the more people that adds up to and the longer they remain locked in horror, unable to do anything else.

Condemn the Sins of the Father

You may now affect not just the blood of an individual vampire but their entire bloodline, tapping into the shared vitae that binds them together. When you use any Quietus power on a vampire, you may use this power to additionally cause it to affect every single one of their descendants, inflicting apparently sourceless terror, pain, or other effects on all their childer, grandchilder, and so on.

Erosion

By touching their skin and eroding away the strength inherent in your victim's blood, you cause them to become completely drained of physical strength and health. They become almost incapable of any physical actions beyond the very basics of being able to get up and walk around; they cannot lift any significant weight, run for more than a few seconds, successfully fight anyone off, or attempt to do things such as climbing or swimming without exhausting almost instantly. Your victim remains weakened for the rest of the night.

Weaken the Blood of the Ancients

All blood comes from the original fount of Caine, and you may adjust how closely it is connected to him and how much power your victim has access to as a result. This power allows you to increase your victim's generation by one, causing them to immediately lose access to any powers or skills that would have required them to be closer to their ancient source. They remain thus depowered for the rest of the night.

Immaculate Vitae

You may use this power to concentrate the blood in your body so heavily that it is unbelievably potent; anyone who drinks your blood is immediately subjected to a full three-point blood bond even if they have only tasted your blood once.

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Quietus has a bad rap with most vampires, who consider it a nasty powerset geared toward assassination, so you may face some discrimination if you use it frequently or publicly. Poisons created from your blood are potent toward everyone, including yourself, so once you've created one, be mindful that it will hurt anyone and anything it comes into contact with.