Few Disciplines inspire such fear and hatred as Despond, and with good reason. The Kindred play the Danse Macabre in part to distract themselves from the horror and futility of their own existence. Despond strips away the distractions. Kindred who feel its power can no longer hide from the awful truth that they are dead and Damned, with the Beast as their personal demon to torment them — until something destroys them, or they do the job themselves. Actually, Despond affects mortals worse than it affects vampires. The Kindred have years, decades or centuries to grow accustomed to anguish and self-loathing. The Beast rages against its own destruction, or maybe the vampires’ supernatural natures help them resist Despond. Mortals succumb all too easily to the lure of self-annihilation. The few Kindred who choose to learn Despond find the learning most unpleasant. To crush hope in others, they must explore their own despair. To set the lure of self-destruction, they must feel that lure themselves. Many among the Children of Judas — perhaps most — already walked that path as mortals, to its terrible ending. Other Kindred seldom want to touch the void, and be touched in return. Those who can resist the call of oblivion learn to make that call themselves.
For greatest effect, a user of Despond must speak to her victim. A minute is good; five minutes or more are even better. Through well-chosen phrases, she can prod her victim’s regrets, self-doubts and sorrows and send the message: you should not exist. The more she knows about her victim, the greater Despond’s power. Even without killing words, however, a vampire who knows Despond can send whispers of despair into a victim’s mind. Either way, the vampire must see her victim directly. Despond has no effect over the phone or through a recording. In most cases, a target of Despond does not immediately recognize that he was affected by a supernatural force. Once he recovers, he may wonder at the depth of his sudden despair. He might even connect his anguish to his conversation with the vampire. Mortals, however, don’t expect mind control. The very suspicion seems insane (giving the person another reason to feel depressed). The Kindred know better, so using Despond on them can be dangerous. A vampire who’s in too much of a hurry to converse with her target, but who doesn’t want the weakness of a silent attack, can simply snarl out a few cruel or menacing words to rouse the target’s grief or self-loathing — but the victim definitely knows the vampire tampered with his mind. Even the most skeptical or unwary mortal can’t deny he felt an alien touch in his thoughts.
Despond cannot actually force another person to attempt suicide. Despond’s lesser powers merely work on grief, anxiety and self-loathing already present, helping these feelings overpower the conscious mind in various ways, for a limited time. For Kindred or kine already troubled by thoughts of suicide, however, one use of Despond may push the sufferer over the edge — though he might do the deed nights or weeks later. The more times a victim suffers from Despond, the more likely he will seek suicide.
Storytellers should never decree that a player’s character destroyed himself because someone else used a Discipline on him. For other characters, Storytellers may want to base their resistance to despair on their traits or roles in the story. For a simple system, you can decide that, assuming no one intervenes to prevent the suicide, a Storyteller character commits suicide within the week if a use of Despond achieves more successes than the higher of the character’s Resolve or Composure.
STANDARD MODIFIERS
All Despond powers use the same set of suggested modifiers, based on how long the character can speak to his victim and his knowledge of the victim’s psychology.
Suggested Modifiers
Modifier — Situation
+2 — Character knows both his target’s Vice and Virtue.
+2 — Target is a vampire with whom the user has a blood tie (see Vampire: The Requiem, p. 162).
+2 — Target suffers from melancholia or some similar, severe derangement.
+1 — Character can converse with his target for at least fi ve minutes.
+1 — Character knows his target’s Vice or Virtue.
+1 — Character knows a significant anxiety, self-doubt, shame or perceived failure of the target.
+1 — Character knows at least one traumatic or sorrowful event from the target’s past (the Embrace doesn’t count).
+1 — Target suffers from depression or a similar, mild derangement.
+0 — Character can speak to his target for a turn or less. Afterward, the victim knows the character tampered with her mind.
+0 — Character can speak to his target for at least a minute; afterward, the target might not realize the character tampered with her mind.
–2 — Character cannot speak to his target.
Despond grants the Children of Judas one small, additional power. Any Child of Judas who has at least one dot in Despond recognizes any other Child of Judas who knows the Discipline. This acts as an additional bit of information from Predator’s Taint, the Beast’s instinctive recognition of a competing predator. The Suicide Kings also instinctively recognize the mystical taint left by their special cultivation of despair.
Everyone has moments when they wonder if they’re good enough — not just whether they can succeed at a task but whether they should even try. For a moment, the vampire’s target feels utterly worthless and incapable of doing anything right. She dithers briefly in a fit of doubt and despair.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Presence + Intimidation + Despond versus subject’s Composure + Blood Potency
Action: Contested; resistance is reflexive.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The subject does not feel the sudden loss of nerve and does not lose a turn of action. What’s more, she becomes immune to the character’s Despond until the next sunset.
Failure: The character loses or ties the contested roll. The subject feels nothing.
Success: The character wins the contested roll by getting the most successes. The subject loses her next turn of action as she struggles against her sudden certainty of failure and personal worthlessness.
Exceptional Success: The character wins the contested roll with five or more successes. The victim loses her next turn of action, and suffers a –1 penalty to all non-reflexive actions for the rest of the scene, as she struggles against her own feelings of failure.
Suggested Modifiers
Standard modifiers apply.
People caught in deep depression find it difficult to act. Every choice or action seems futile. What’s the point of trying anything when you’re doomed to disappointment? As a character develops his skill at Despond, he can set the whisper of Self-Doubt nagging constantly. The target suffers anxiety, doubt and pessimism about her ability to succeed at anything, in a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Empathy + Despond versus subject’s Composure + Blood Potency
Action: Contested; resistance is refl exive.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The subject does not feel depressed, suffers no penalty and is immune to the character’s Despond until the next sunset.
Failure: The character loses or ties the contested roll. The subject does not feel depressed and suffers no penalty.
Success: The character wins the contested roll. As long as the character concentrates on maintaining this power, his victim suffers a –2 penalty to all actions.
Exceptional Success: The character wins the contested roll by five or more successes. In this case (and only in this case), the victim suffers the power’s effect for the rest of the scene, without any need for the character to concentrate. The Suicide King can engage in combat, leave the scene or otherwise engage in whatever activity he wants.
Doomed To Fail works on line of sight. If the attacking character cannot see his target any longer, the power’s effect stops (unless the attacker’s player rolled an excep-tional success). While concentrating to maintain the effect, a character cannot engage in any other activity that challenges his mind or body. He can walk across the street but not climb a wall, make small talk but not craft a witty bon mot or remember someone’s name but not remember his business dealings for the last year. In rules terms, any action that would demand a dice roll breaks the character’s grip on his target’s mind.
If any character believes she is under this power’s influence, her player can spend a Vitae to attempt a reflexive Composure + Blood Potency roll (whichever Attribute is higher). If the roll fails, the character remains affected by Despond and she spent the Vitae for nothing. If the roll succeeds, she can throw off Despond’s effects for a turn. The target can use that turn to run away, attack the character or cause a ruckus that prevents the character from concentrating any longer. If she cannot escape the character or prevent her from concentrating, Doomed to Fail resumes its full effect a turn later. If the roll is an exceptional success, Doomed To Fail ends immediately and the character is immune to further uses of this power for the remainder of the scene, though the Child of Judas may invoke it again in the future.
Suggested Modifiers
Standard modifiers apply.
As her mastery of Despond advances, a character can plunge her target into a despair so profound he no longer cares about anything else. The victim struggles to muster the will to do anything but brood on his own failures and misfortunes — and, perhaps, seek relief in drink or drugs. Even protecting his own existence seems futile, though a fight is one of the few things that can break the target out of his dolor.
A skilled user of Despond can also create more precisely tailored forms of despair. A person who loses the desire to exist may attempt reckless actions he would never contemplate otherwise. On the streets, people talk about robbers or muggers who seek “death by cop,” and prostitutes who take clients everyone else can see are dangerous. Higher social strata have their own forms of self-destructive risk-taking, from taking up “extreme sports” without proper training to telling the boss what you really think of him. Any deed that makes other people wonder, “Is he trying to get himself killed?” can happen because of Dark Night of the Soul.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion + Despond versus subject’s Composure + Blood Potency
Action: Contested; resistance is refl exive.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The target feels great! He felt a little blue for a moment, but shook it off and counted his blessings. The target regains a spent Willpower point, if this is possible.
Failure: The target does not feel any depression because of Despond.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the target’s player must succeed at a reflexive Resolve + Composure roll to attempt any feat challenging enough to require a dice roll. Failure on this roll indicates that the feat occurs at a –3 penalty. “Any feat” includes defending himself from attack. If a victim of Dark Night of the Soul faces combat, however, that single roll suffices to keep him fighting through the entire battle.
Alternatively, the attacking character can suggest a particular self-destructive course of action. Dark Night of the Soul cannot make a target consciously seek extinction but can remove most of the target’s sense of self-preservation. For the rest of the scene, the target effectively has a very specific, additional Vice that involves taking dangerous chances. For instance, a target who’s anxious about money might impulsively try robbing a bank using nothing but his outthrust finger in his pocket. Other people can try to talk the victim out of his bout of self-destruction, but resisting the new compulsion costs the target a point of Willpower, just like any Vice.
Exceptional Success: The effect of Dark Night of the Soul lasts until the next sunset.
Suggested Modifiers
Standard modifiers apply. Suggesting a course of action that’s out of character for the victim but isn’t immediately self-destructive and might distract him from depression, such as persuading a teetotaler to get drunk, gives a –1 modifier to the attacker’s dice pool. Nudging the target into an actively self-destructive course of action takes a –2 modifier. Of course, a course of action that accords with a Virtue or Vice of the target partly counters this penalty with a bonus. (See the modifiers)
As a vampire’s mastery of Despond grows, she can induce a longer-lasting state of depression in her victim. Such a long-lasting effect — an actual derangement — demands a great effort of will from the character.
Cost: 1 or 2 Willpower, spent before the roll is made (see below)
Dice Pool: Presence + Expression + Despond versus subject’s Composure + Blood Potency
Action: Contested; resistance is refl exive.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The target does not feel depressed and is immune to the character’s Despond until the next sunset.
Failure: The target ties or exceeds the number of successes rolled by the character, and so the target suffers no effect
Success: The character rolls more successes than her target. For each success rolled, the target suffers a derangement for one week.
Exceptional Success: An exceptional success returns one of the spent Willpower points to the character.
The player must spend all requisite Willpower points before she makes the roll. Remember that a character may spend only one Willpower per turn (see p. 95 of the World of Darkness Rulebook), so she may need to begin this process at least one turn before bringing it into effect. For one Willpower, the character attempts to inflict a mild derangement: usually Depression, but Inferiority Complex is equally possible, at the character’s discretion. For two Willpower, the character attempts to inflict a severe derangement such as Melancholia or Anxiety. Storytellers may permit other derangements if they seem appropriate as expressions of grief, shame, humiliation or other emotions that could lead to suicide. If the subject already has a given derangement, it costs only one Willpower for the Child of Judas to attempt to exacerbate that derangement to its more debilitating state.
See the World of Darkness Rulebook, pp. 96–100, and Vampire: The Requiem, pp. 188–192, for descriptions of derangements.
Suggested Modifiers
Standard modifiers apply.
When a character achieves full mastery of Despond, the Discipline takes a strange and terrible turn. Death no longer ends pain. At this Discipline’s greatest power, Despond can reach beyond death to deliver the Embrace to a suicide who is really, truly dead. As long as the body remains intact, a master of Despond can call the suicide’s spirit and force it back into the flesh the spirit spurned, to rise again as a vampire. A suicide remains susceptible to the Embrace until the next sunrise. Thus, a mortal who kills himself during the day can be Embraced the next night, long after the body has cooled. Some Children of Judas see a connection to the old religious prohibition against burying a suicide in consecrated ground.
Cost: 1 Willpower dot (see below)
Dice Pool: Unlike the other powers of Despond, The Earth Rejects Thee does not involve dice pools. If the victim meets its requirements, the power always works. As with any other Embrace, passing undeath to a suicide costs a dot of Willpower in addition to the Willpower spent to activate this Discipline power. At the sire’s discretion, the Discipline’s added power may repair some damage to a suicide’s body, such as slit wrists or even the broken neck of a properly conducted hanging (though some sires leave these imperfections in order to keep their childer humble). This power cannot restore lost body parts, such as brains blown away by a shotgun blast. If a suicide’s self-inflicted wound would have destroyed a vampire, or at least instantly forced him into torpor, the body is too damaged to sustain the Embrace.
Action: Instant