Malkavian

Malkavian

Malkavians
Pseudonyms	Kooks, Lunatics, Moon Children
Sect	Anarchs Camarilla
Disciplines	Auspex Dementation Obfuscate
Bloodlines	Ananke Carriers
Rarity	Common

The Malkavians are the clan with perhaps the greatest variation among their members; they come from all walks of life, all parts of the world, all peoples, all customs, all ages. What unites them is their connection to the mystical, the unknowable, and the obscure - and their universal mental instability. All Malkavians suffer from some form of mental illness (referred to as a derangement), some in comparatively mild syndromes that are manageable in everyday life, and others with full-blown disorders that make hiding their state from others completely impossible. Malkavians know too much about how the universe works; they see and hear things that are invisible to others, causing significant struggles with maintaining a sense of their own self and of reality. In other words, they are mad, at least according to the other clans, and while they may be founding members of the Camarilla and hold many important positions in vampire society, they can never quite escape the stigma of their condition.

Although no one quite trusts the Malkavians (except for other members of their clan), they are still often sought out by other vampires because of their reputation as seers and enlightened possessors of mystical knowledge they shouldn't, by any normal standard, be able to know. Certainly many Malkavians seem to have startling insights beyond other vampires, and to share a special bond that cannot be explained in any rational way.

History

All Malkavians descend from Malkav, an Antediluvian seer and prophet who was said to know all things and in knowing all things to become mad for it, a gift (and curse) he has passed on to all his childer and grandchilder since. Unfortunately, this is about the extent of what anyone, even members of his own clan, know about him; while wild theories (everything from Malkav being an angel or demon to Malkav being some sort of embodied truth of the universe) abound, the only thing that anyone is sure of is that he was ambushed and killed by his fellow Antediluvians for his madness long, long ago.

His clan, however, lives on, strong in spite of the odds arrayed against them. In ancient times, Malkavians often exerted considerable power over human societies by placing themselves in the position of oracles, soothsayers, and advisors to kings and other officials. By the Middle Ages, they had become inextricable from most major power blocs; their wisdom and startling clarity were too important for an elder paranoid about assassination or a Prince about to try to take over a neighboring domain to pass up, so while they were considered among the low and unimportant clans officially, in practice they remained in the halls of the powerful simply because they were, and are, irreplaceable.

The Great Prank

With the rise of the Camarilla, the Malkavians saw the writing on the wall for their clan: like other malcontents such as the Assamites or Ravnos, they were becoming considered too dangerous and unstable to be worth having around, and were in danger of being expelled from the newly forming sects (or even being hunted to extinction, as the Salubri still are). Recognizing the danger and determined to protect themselves, a small group of elder Malkavians developed a bizarre ritual that they referred to simply as the Great Prank.

The Prank caused all Malkavians to lose access to Dementation, replacing it with the more common and understood discipline Dominate. While the Prank didn't cure any mental illnesses, it did remove Malkavians' ability to inflict them on others, and allowed the clan to both more easily hide or manage their struggles, as well as sue for inclusion in the Camarilla on the basis that they were now stable.

Of course, no good prank is complete without a revelation, which came at the very end of the twentieth century: the Malkavians suddenly regained their Dementation en masse. While most of the clan agrees that this was inevitably going to happen and that even their most potent elders could only hold their ancestral madness off for a little while, outsiders often question whether the Malkavians knew they would revert and just failed to actually tell anyone when they were arguing that they were new-and-improved. Others wonder whether a curse has been placed on them, and still others theorize that none of the Malkavians ever actually lost Dementation, and only locked it down for a while to let them get on with other things.

A few lingering members of the clan, interestingly enough, did not revert back to their original powers, and became the founding members of the Carrier bloodline.

Strongholds

Depending on who you believe, the ancient Malkavian stronghold might be located anywhere that someone wishes to explain events with a lazy, flippant answer of "madness": the court of Nero in ancient Rome, the St. Vitus' dance plagued lands of Aachen in Germany, and the cliff-diving settlements of Madagascar have all been suggested at one time or another, mostly by vampires who think little of the Malkavians and don't bother trying to imagine much nuance in their condition.

According to the Malkavians themselves, however, their ancient stronghold is in Jerusalem, where they believe that Malkav lies in the pit of Hinnom, called Gehenna in the modern day, and attribute religious mania and attacks of wild violence in the area to his influence, even while in his unconscious and dead state. However, Jerusalem is a fraught city with huge numbers of vampires attempting to influence it from every direction, and while the clan still claims it as their territory, in practice there are no more of them there than there are of any other clans.

Instead, the Malkavians have the Madness Network, also called the Cobweb. Believed to be the still-living, ever-growing mind of Malkav himself, it is a gestalt fever-dream of a mind that all Malkavians can tap into, allowing them to receive visions and cryptic information they have no way of knowing (at the cost of being destabilized even more, of course; the Cobweb is as likely to add new derangements as it is to do anything else). All Malkavians are somewhat hooked into the Cobweb, even when they don't know it, and thus their knowledge (and struggles) also leak into it to be shared with the rest of their clan.

Advantages and Weaknesses

Advantages

Because other Kindred consider Malkavians to be "insane" or "unstable," they often let them get away with misbehavior that they wouldn't tolerate out of other clans; Malkavians may ignore the status of those they interact with once in a while without suffering from the usual consequences of doing so. They are also much less likely to lose status as a result of their behavior, unless they make such nuisances of themselves that the Harpies can't ignore them. Malkavians are perfectly well aware of the fact that the prejudice against their mental conditions makes others treat them like children or fools, and are usually quite willing to take advantage of this perception when they can.

Malkavians are all also connected to one another through a mystical, inexplicable connection of the Madness Network. They can automatically recognize other Malkavians with a little bit of concentration, and notice mental illnesses in even those who aren't Malkavians once in a while. If a Malkavian's emotions and situation are strong or important enough, they can also send out information over the Network, alerting other nearby Malkavians; the information may not be particularly coherent and those who receive it may not know exactly what it means, but sometimes it gives them a warning or insight just when they need it.

Disadvantages

All Malkavians are mentally ill, and must manage their conditions as best they can; if they weren't already suffering from a mental illness as mortals, the Embrace causes them to develop at least one. Nothing can in any way remove these conditions or ease their symptoms through supernatural means, although they may attempt to manage them through therapy and/or medication like everyone else. These mental illnesses (all Malkavians suffer from at least one, but many may have comorbid conditions) always significantly impact a Malkavian's life, and never disappear or cease to cause problems for them when it is convenient.

The Malkavians in DC

Washington's Malkavians are somewhat infamous for being notorious, powerful, and dangerous wildcards - all the more so because the other clans tend to ignore them more than is strictly healthy. They are by far the most "disorganized" of the Camarilla clans in the city, with little official structure outside of the nominal power of their Primogen, but they control vast networks of influence that would surprise and alarm other clans if they were aware. In particular, the Malkavians control large swaths of the internet and information technology networks in the city, and because of the high rate of mental trauma among government workers, especially in the CIA and FBI, they also have more contacts than any other clan among the city's secret services.

Malkavian Player Characters

Alexandra Villanova	Alisa Morgan	Ben del Toro

Carter Vanderweyden	Chance Pentecost	Danny Wheyton	David Morgan	Destiny Pentecost	Draven Blake	Henry Morgan

Jack Lyghe	James Bolden	Kiera	Mia Johnson	Nicolae Carpathose	Pagliaccio	Quincy Jones
Quincy Monroe	Shard Pentecost	Shoshana Bell	Thomas Pentecost	Vyres Briggs	Zachary Fox	Zen Pentecost

See Also

Ananke
Carrier
Madness Network
Malkavian Antitribu

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