Dementation

Dementation

Dementation
Clans	Malkavians, Malkavian Antitribu
Bloodlines	Ananke
Sects	Anarchs, Camarilla, Independents, Sabbat
Rituals	None
Combination Disciplines	Dementation Combination Disciplines
Rarity	Uncommon

Dementation is the specialty Discipline of the Malkavian clan, and it has only one function: to share the mental illnesses and strange hallucinations that the Malkavians suffer from with everyone else around them. Depending on the Malkavian you ask, some will tell you that Dementation is a gift, a way to share the inexplicable insights and warnings that only they can see with other Kindred less fortunate; others will shrug and simply say that everyone deserves to experience what they do once in a while, or that they enjoy watching less mentally prepared people suddenly manage the bewildering effects they live with daily. Whatever the reason, Dementation has the effect of sharing a little bit of the Malkavians with everyone else - whether they want it or not.

Basic Powers

Passion

You may increase the emotions of one person in your vicinity three times over, fanning a small spark of discontent into seething resentment, annoyance into unreasonable rage or gentle fondness into passionate love. The person thus affected does not know why they suddenly feel so strongly, but they respond to it anyway, and do not know that any power was used to cause this shift in their emotions. You cannot choose what emotions to increase - whatever the person you target is currently feeling is immediately blown out of proportion, and more than one Malkavian has accidentally increased the intensity of an emotion that was definitely not beneficial to them. The newly heightened feelings last only for the remainder of the scene, after which the person affected returns to normal (although they still remember the feelings).

The Haunting

By subtly breaking down the image of normal, safe reality around them, you may afflict someone with the delusion that they are being haunted. They begin to hear strange voices and whispers that they cannot identify or find the source of, sometimes see what seems to be a shadow or a face out of the corner of their eye, become sure that something terrible lurks just behind them or out of sight, and suffer from the constant nervous breakdown of believing themself to be in continual supernatural danger. Mortals or Kindred who don't know anything about the occult are likely to believe that they are being haunted just like the protagonist in a horror movie; those who know a little bit about Wraiths or other frightening inhabitants of the astral realms might imagine that such beings have come after them. The haunting lasts for the entire evening and extends into terrible nightmares during the daylight hours; prolonged and repeated uses of this power on the same person may cause permanent traumatic damage.

Intermediate Powers

Eyes of Chaos

Things that seem like random coincidence or that "normal" Kindred would completely ignore have hidden meaning for you with this power, which allows you to see past the cracks and crevices of reality to recognize the underlying pattern that controls all things. You may gain insight into what is likely to happen for the rest of the current scene; you cannot be surprised, can accurately claim to have known things were going to happen, and may have a second to pre-empt various actions that you know are coming. Of course, it's not entirely accurate and you can't know all the details of events to come, and many Malkavians use this power simply to know, rather than trying to interfere with what they see as destiny unfolding.

Vision of Death

You may cause your victim to suddenly and vividly hallucinate their own death. You decide what form this death takes (drowning, being decapitated, and so on), but your victim's mind does the rest, suddenly terrified by its own mortality and the experience of dying. Mortals are likely to simply instantly drop dead unless they are exceptionally hardy, and supernatural creatures are unable to do anything but flail at the terrifying vision until it ends when they finish dying. Those who survive this power are completely unharmed physically (although the mental scars may remain, depending on the person).

Berserk

By touching someone, you stimulate their unreasoning fight-or-flight instinct, washing them in adrenaline and instantly turning them into a maniac on a wildly violent rampage. Your victim attacks others near them at random, screams and cries, and destroys objects if there are no people nearby, blindly infuriated with no knowledge of their actions for the rest of the scene. This power creates such a mental overload that mortals often fall unconscious or even die when it expires if they are fragile, while supernatural creatures survive but are exhausted and frightened. Vampires and ghouls may enter a rage Frenzy in this state if they are able, while shapeshifters are likely to immediately shift into their bestial forms to rampage.

Confusion

You may lay a shroud of confusion and muted unreality over everything that one person perceives, causing them to wander in a semi-daze, unable to recognize anyone they don't know very well or care about anything in the general wasteland of blank fog. They can still recognize normal landmarks and won't intentionally place themself in mortal harm, but they aren't capable of doing anything particularly important or difficult until the fog clears at the end of the night.

Fire Voice

You may immediately inflict Rötschreck on everyone in your immediate vicinity; vampires respond as if confronted by overwhelming flame, while mortals and other supernatural creatures are afflicted by the same unreasoning fear regardless of whether or not they could normally experience it. The fear lasts for the rest of the scene, which is usually more than long enough to clear the area.

Silence the Sane Mind

By touching your victim or making eye contact with them, you may block off the part of their mind that regulates one emotion, skill, or set of memories. This generally causes immediate instability, with your victim becoming unable to handle their emotions, becoming so confused they have difficulty functioning, or becoming distraught over the sudden inexplicable loss of their own thoughts. This power lasts until the sun rises, although those affected are likely to be frightened and confused for a while afterward as they try to figure out what happened to htem.

Voice of Madness

By whispering terrible things in someone's ear, you whip their emotions to unbearable heights, triggering a Frenzy immediately no matter where they are or what they're doing. You must be able to directly communicate with someone in order to use this power, and they will remember that you were present and acting to incite them later, although whether or not they know that you actually caused the Frenzy depends on how much they know about Dementation. You may choose which kind of Frenzy they enter.

Advanced Powers

Total Insanity

By gaining your target's full attention for a moment, you may pull all their deepest traumas, fears, and mental anguishes to the forefront, inflicting immediate, debilitating stress and resulting mental conditions upon them. They immediately suffer from five random Derangements for the rest of the evening; the player must do their best to play the same character while dealing with the effects of these new and unexpected conditions, and will remember the experience on later evenings fully (although untangling it and understanding what happened may not be possible).

Elder Powers

Babble

If you are connected to the Malkavian Madness Network, this power allows you to send messages across long distances that are heard by other members of your choice (and, usually, a few extra ones you didn't choose). The resulting message is loudly babbled in the air near your recipients' ears (or in opportunistic text on whatever is nearest to them if they are unable to hear), making it difficult to understand but technically audible to others who are near them at the time.

The Call

You may call to anyone else who is connected by the Malkavian Madness Network to come and meet you at a prearranged place; you telepathically grant them basic knowledge of the place, enough for them to find and recognize it but not enough to add any additional detail. Those you contact are not necessarily forced to arrive, but they feel a strong compulsion to do so, and many will automatically answer regardless of what else they are doing. You must be connected to the Network yourself to use this power.

Derange

By looking into a person's eyes or touching them, you may inflict one derangement on them permanently. This derangement is random, and you do not necessarily know what it is once you have inflicted it, although studying your victim's behavior may give you some clues.

Devil in the Mind

With this power, you may cause a person to lose all impulse control and inhibitions, acting immediately on their impulses without being constrained by social morals or the judgment of others. Most people affected by this power are prone to violent outbursts, theft, and even assault, depending on what they want at the moment and how much others try to interfere with them. Some victims may have firmly held internal philosophies or values that this power does not shake, but a surprising number turn out to only follow the rules because they fear being judged by others.

Enigmatic Text

You may hide secret messages in patterns and clutter - writing, artwork, music, the arrangement of items in a room, a pile of trash, and anything else that you could conceivably arrange in such a way as to mean something. No matter how weird and esoteric your communication of choice, those who perceive it for more than a few seconds are suddenly struck by the knowledge of what it is trying to communicate (although what they do about this information, if anything, is up to them).

Kindred Spirits

By touching someone, you may inflict your entire personality on them, creating a composite personality from yours and theirs. They gain any derangements or other mental features (for example, addictions) that you have, as well as becoming inclined to behave similarly to you, although they retain free will and a similar amount of their own personality as well. You cannot control their actions while in this state, and many vampires have found to their disgruntlement that seeing their own flaws played out in someone else isn't nearly as much fun as they thought it might be.

Kiss of the Moon

Like the cycles of the moon, you can cause your victims to cycle through different states themselves

Lingering Malaise

Luna's Embrace

Shattered Mirror

Stain the Soul

Childmind

Cobble the Road

Delayed Delirium

Mind of a Killer

Restructure

Sleep of Reason

The Sword of Malkav

Wave of Insanity

Coma

Deny

Minds of the Children

Personal Scourge

Prison of the Mind

Blessing of Chaos

Lunatic Eruption

Mass Coma

Touch of the Saints

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Derangements (and the real-life mental illnesses they model) are not convenient, funny, or easy to ignore; they cause very real and very difficult-to-manage effects, and any player affected by them should make the best-faith effort possible to portray them realistically. Users of Dementation may want to be sparing when it comes to affecting others; even a well-established court Malkavian might find themself bloodhunted if they meddle in the wrong person's emotions or show themself to be a loose cannon one time too many.