This Discipline reflects a Malocusian’s connection to the haven he has bound to himself. As Spiders grow older and more powerful in this Discipline, the distinction between the vampire and his haven breaks down.
Before a Kindred can use any of the powers of the Domus Discipline, he must perform what Malocusians call “the investiture.” Investiture requires the Kindred to mark the perimeter of his haven with his own Vitae. The larger the area claimed, the more Vitae the investiture requires. Full investiture (i.e., completely marking a haven’s perimeter) requires several nights and a great deal of Vitae. Even a modest haven consequently requires the Kindred to feed much more than he would need to under normal circumstances. The investiture is something of a rite of passage and sometimes the most dangerous portion of a new Malocusian’s Requiem. Once it’s completed, however, the investiture provides the Kindred with security and power within his haven that other Kindred can only envy.
So attuned to his property is the Malocusian that he knows when the boundary of his territory is crossed. The land tells the house, the house conveys the information to its master. The very boards and nails whisper the intelligence to him. In time, many Malocusians come to think of this sensation as akin to the ringing of the dinner bell. Most think of it also as something like a brush against the skin — subtle, acute and intimate. Any material creature sets off this territorial sense. If the Malocusian in question has some other ability to sense ephemeral creatures, such as ghosts and spirits, even they are detectable with this power.
Cost: —
Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy + Domus versus subject’s Composure (+ Obfuscate, if applicable and activated).
In practice, this Discipline is considered to be “always on,” even if the Spider is away from his haven. The Storyteller makes the roll on the player’s behalf any time he has a guest. Due to the sensual connection the Spider has to his web, the supernatural potency of another vampire’s blood is no help in combating this power. Indeed, Malocusians can instinctually distinguish between the arrival of Kindred and other creatures with this power, in much the same way that the Predator’s Taint informs their senses of nearby Beasts.
Action: N/A
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Spider’s sense of his web is numbed by the trespass. He has no idea intruders are present and suffers a –2 penalty to all dice pools related to this power for the rest of the night.
Failure: The Spider does not sense the intruder at all.
Success: The Malocusian knows when and where an intruder has entered the ground he has claimed in his investiture. The moment the intruder crosses the Spider’s blood perimeter, the Spider feels his blood thrum like a plucked string. This effect occurs whether the Spider is awake, in daysleep or in torpor (though he may be helpless to act). This power senses flying creatures (vampires in bat form, for example) as high up as 100 feet above the ground.
Exceptional Success: Achieving an exceptional success gives the Spider a taste of the power that this Discipline grants at its more advanced levels. Not only does the vampire know when and where an intruder enters his haven, he knows where that individual is at all times until the intruder leaves. If the intruder is anyone the vampire has ever met, the vampire instinctually recognizes the intruder’s identity, too.
Beyond simply knowing when the boundary around his property has been crossed, this power lets the Malocusian sense everything that’s taking place throughout his haven, as though the building were a part of his body. He sees, hears and feels everything that goes on within the walls of the house, everything that happens under his dark roof. He senses the rugs beneath an intruder’s feet, the dust as it swirls before a trespasser and the rain as it streaks down the windows. There is no surprising him.
Cost: 1 Vitae per scene
Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy + Domus.
For mundane tests of Perception against subjects not trying to be stealthy, this power requires no roll; the Spider can observe the trespassers in his mind as though he were watching them directly. For all sorts of covert actions within the haven, the Malocusian rolls Wits + Empathy + Domus in place of any other Perception dice pools he would normally use in the contest. The Spider can even use this dice pool in place of Wits + Investigation + Auspex to contest Obfuscate and other powers, as described in the “Clash of Wills” sidebar on p. 119 of Vampire: The Requiem.
Though a Spider has an excellent sense of his lair, he can still be fooled into misreading what he perceives. In many ways, the greatest advantage of this power is the massive sensory organ it gives to the Malocusian — he suffers no penalties for darkness, for distance, for background noise or other similar conditions. The house is his.
Action: Instant and contested; resistance is reflexive.
This power allows the Spider to inflict a variation of his own blood’s weakness in reverse: those within his boundaries experience terrible anxiety, physical weakness and, in the case of mortals, intense nausea. Those who stray into the Malocusian’s web often realize too late that they are on cursed territory, where even normally easy tasks seem difficult and challenging tasks become nigh-impossible. Intruders find themselves growing dull and clumsy while they’re in the lair of the Malocusian, while he grows more powerful. The house itself seems to oppose all trespassers in subtle yet disconcerting ways: a nail may catch a jacket, a floorboard may give way at an inopportune moment or a bulb may burst when switched on.
Cost: 1 Vitae per subject, per scene.
The Spider may continue to apply this power’s effects to more and more subjects provided he takes the necessary action and has the Vitae to spend. Any creature within the haven is an eligible subject.
Dice Pool: This power requires no roll to activate. Instead, the Malocusian sacrifices Vitae to the house (usually by opening a vein and bleeding onto the floor or flinging his Vitae across the walls), and the place becomes attuned to his needs and hostile to the needs of others. Subtle effects drive this home: floorboards creak of their own accord to foil a trespasser’s Stealth efforts or the air inside the house may grow stale and dusty during a physical confrontation, causing intruders to falter or stumble. For the rest of the scene, the haven grants a +3 bonus to the Malocusian’s Physical and Social dice pools as though it were a specialized piece of equipment. At the same time, the haven imposes a –3 penalty on the Physical and Social actions of all targeted subjects.
Action: Instant
At this advanced level of the Discipline, the Malocusian literally becomes one with his haven, much in the way that Kindred who have studied Protean can become one with the earth, but with much more powerful results.
When fused with his haven, the Spider can do more than sense anything that goes on within the place: the actual structure of the building becomes an extension of his undead body. The doors, windows and fixtures become his limbs, the air becomes his forced breath, the pipes become his veins and every nail becomes a fang.
Cost: 1 Vitae plus 1 Willpower per scene
Dice Pool: Presence + Occult + Domus
Action: Extended. Five successes, plus one success per dot of Haven Size of the subject haven, must be accrued to complete this power’s activation. Each roll represents one turn of bloody dissolution.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: A dramatic failure at any point of the process ruins the attempt and wastes the Vitae and Willpower spent on the attempt. The Spider is also subject to damage for being forcibly rejected by the haven. Roll the haven’s dots in Haven Size; each success deals the Spider one point of lethal damage.
Failure: The Spider makes no headway toward his transformation. If the effort is abandoned, the Vitae and Willpower spent on the attempt is wasted.
Success: The character makes headway towards his absorption by the haven.
Exceptional Success: The character makes considerable progress towards his assimilation into his haven.
As the process progresses, the Spider’s body seems to dissolve into blood, which soaks into the haven’s surfaces. When the process is finished, the Malocusian’s body is nowhere to be seen. In effect, the entire haven is now the Kindred’s form. He can sense everything going on within his blood boundary, and the house itself becomes his body. He controls the structure of the house and everything in the house as he would his limbs. The vampire’s dice pool for attacks while merged with his haven in this way is Presence + Weaponry + Domus, plus a weapon bonus determined by the Storyteller based on the fixtures used to attack. Only objects that are installed in the body of the haven may be used by the Spider in this way. For example, chandeliers, doors and shutters may be used to attack, but furniture may not. Enemies within the haven can find little cover and are almost certainly caught by surprise during the initial attacks.
The vampire can use nails in the walls, glass in the windows and any other sharp edges to feed on trespassers in his haven. As with any feeding attempt, the appropriate dice pool must be determined by the Storyteller, but the Spider may attempt to feed blatantly by swinging the sharp edges of broken light fixtures or subtly by extending nails from a hardwood floor.
Damaging the haven does not damage the vampire directly, but it can force him out of the haven’s physical structure. Damage to the walls or fixtures of the haven merely rob the Spider of weapons to use. Fire damage to the haven, however, forces the Spider to resume his own form, which he may do anywhere within the confines of the blood boundary, including the grounds outside the house. The precise amount of fire damage varies based on the nature of the haven, as decided by the Storyteller, but a good guideline is this: once the fire inside the haven is large enough to deal damage equal to the Spider’s Health + Haven Size, the Malocusian is ejected.
This power transforms the Malocusian’s very haven into the geomantic equivalent of the Spider himself: a vampire. The entire area within the haven’s blood-soaked perimeter draws life force and blood from the landscape around it and feeds it to the Spider in his web. When this power is in effect, the Malocusian need not hunt, as he is already passively preying on every living thing in the entire countryside. His haven and grounds maintain themselves perfectly to his standards — his gardens remain in a state of perpetual bloom or naked sorrow, as he sees fit. The whole of the haven estate changes expressions to reflect the master’s mood. The haven even discretely repairs itself of any damage and stores blood for its master.
Cost: 2 Vitae plus 1 Willpower per day or night
Dice Pool: This power requires no roll to activate, but numerous actions are affected or made possible through the power’s use.
The Spider’s haven becomes a subtle extension of his psyche, much as the previous power made it a gross extension of his body. The character’s dots in Domus become a bonus to all Social rolls he makes in the vicinity of the haven as the garden grows welcoming and colorful for Socialize rolls or falls dark and fierce for Intimidation efforts.
The Malocusian might subtly alter the grounds to draw in animals (Manipulation + Animal Ken + Domus) or dramatically alter the grounds to draw in curious schoolchildren (Presence + Persuasion + Domus). At the Storyteller’s discretion, the character’s command over the haven grounds can also be used to augment other actions, such as a Stealth dice pool to hide bodies or a Survival dice pool to trap lured animals.
The haven also hunts and stores blood for its master, though it has no special ability to alter the nature of Vitae. For example, if the haven is far removed from human society, it may be unable to procure human Vitae. Once a day, while the Spider sleeps, or once a night, while the Spider is out, the haven may hunt for blood from foraging animals, neighbor kids and even errant vampires. As with all hunting actions, no single dice pool is appropriate for this task. However, the haven has the advantage of being able to use its dots in Haven Location or Haven Size to form dice pools as well. As with other hunting rolls, each success brings in one Vitae, which the haven stores within its walls and grounds. Two Vitae may be stored by a haven for each dot it has in Haven Size.
Finally, the haven is also capable of “healing” itself over time by channeling geomantic forces into its form. All damaged surfaces, fixtures and so forth within the haven repair one point of Structure each night this power is activated. Destroyed objects cannot be repaired.
Example: Dorian, an Invictus Malocusian nesting in a forgotten farmhouse, chooses to activate The Living Web upon his return home shortly before dawn. He’s been sensing the crunching of gravel under bicycle tires and the shouts of roughhousing boys in his sleep of late, and he wants his haven to fetch him some of their blood. His player spends the necessary Vitae and Willpower and informs the Storyteller that he’d like to alter the atmosphere of the haven to lure the boys playing on his property closer to the farm- house with a Presence + Subterfuge + Domus roll — young kids can’t resist a mystery. That’ll be the haven’s dice pool for hunting.
The Storyteller decides that if the kids can be lured into the farmhouse with a few suspiciously opening and closing doors from the abandoned old farmhouse — or even just by leaving a radio on inside — then they’re sure to hurt themselves on something.
Dorian’s player rolls the hunting dice pool and nets four successes. One of the neighborhood boys is hurt pretty bad, having gashed open his leg on some broken glass. His blood runs down the dirty jagged edge into the dirt, where the haven stores it for Dorian. Later, the boy’s doctor is amazed that he lost so much blood from such a relatively minor injury.
Even stranger, when the kids return the following weekend, they find the window their friend cut himself on is still old and still filthy, but is in one piece again, with no blood to be found anywhere.
Action: Varies
Spiders and Werewolves
If you’re using elements of Werewolf: The Forsaken in your chronicle, you might suspect that the geomantic forces a Spider manipulates to alter or repair his haven are some form of Essence. Maybe the haven has even become some sort of locus. That’s really up to the Storyteller. If you want to attract a few werewolves into the story, it certainly seems reasonable that the evil, predatory home of an aging monster like a Malocusian could alter the resonance of a site over the years. That, in turn, might draw hungry spirits that terrorize or cooperate with the vampire, or it might provoke local Lupines to investigate the site.If Essence is important enough in your chronicle to be tracked, then it’s fair to say that The Living Web uses Essence to repair havens. As a rule of thumb, every time this power is used, all the Essence available at the site is used up, even if only one point of Structure is repaired, even if the haven isn’t used for a hunting check. Whenever the mystic properties of the blood are used to tamper with Essence, Essence is sure to be wasted.