White Wolf Night Edition Number 11

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News, Events and Embarrassing Seepage from White Wolf. Free! Your Money's No Good.

Year-End Blahs

This season sucks. Sure you get disgusting amounts of junk food. You can gorge yourself on turkey. You make off with free stuff in December. And you can guzzle complimentary champagne on New Year's. But it still sucks - because everyone else wants something from you, too. Give 'em all copies of White Wolf: Night Edition. Then everyone will know what's new and useful from White Wolf.

What? Your grandmother doesn't game? What is she thinking?

Vampire: The Masquerade

Portents of the Future.

Here's a "taste" of thing to come with the revised edition of Vampire: The Masquerade.

"Gothic-Punk" is perhaps the best way to describe the physical nature of the World of Darkness. Buttressed buildings loom overhead, bedecked with Classical columns and grimacing gargoyles. Residents are dwarfed by the sheer scale of architecture, lost amid spires that seem to grope toward Heaven to escape reality. The institutions that control society are even more staid and conservative than they are in our world, for many in power prefer the evil they know to chaos engendered by change. The world is corrupt. Humanity is spiritually bankrupt. Escapism replaces hope.

As if this weren't fearful enough, the last few years have seen a quiet but pervasive dread grip the Kindred. Many vampires whisper of the Jyhad, the eternal war or game said to consume the most ancient undead. This struggle has been waged since the dawn of time, but many Kindred fear that as one millennium passes to the nest and the curse of undeath grows weaker, an apocalyptic endgame is at hand. Signs and portents, many recorded in the prophetic Book of Nod, trouble vampires of all clans and lineages, even those who profess to not believe. Whispers in Sabbat covens and Camarilla salons alike speak of turmoil in the East, of armies of Clanless rabble, of vampires whose blood is so thin that they cannot Embrace, of meetings with mysterious elders whose vast power betrays no discernible lineage, of black crescent moons and full moons red as blood. All, say the believers, are omens that the Final Nights approach and that the end of all things is nigh.

Some Kindred believe that a Reckoning is at hand, that the powers of Heaven prepare to judge vampires and what they have made of the world. Others speak of the Winnowing, or Gehenna, the night when the most ancient vampires will rise to consumer their progeny. Few admit to such superstitions, but most feel a palpable tension in these nights. Elder vampires play their hands in one fell swoop, undoing centuries-long schemes in a single mad flurry of action. The war packs of the dread Sabbat hurl themselves at the fortresses of their enemies, for fear that they might nor get another chance. Cells of Assamite cannibals, formerly held in check by a great curse, hunt other vampires and drink their blood ravenously. Vampires of uncertain lineage are hunted down and destroyed by paranoid elders who fear them as harbingers of Gehenna. Though patience is a special virtue among the immortals, it is practiced less and less, and the whole Kindred world teeters on the verge of a great frenzy.

The revised edition of Vampire: The Masquerade is available in October, in regular and limited-edition formats.

White Wolf Q&A

Ask Me, I Know Everything by Fred.

I have no friends. None of you are reading this column. Nobody cares one iota for anything I have to say. I don't even know why I bother answering these questions when no one pays attention. Here's what I have to deal with:

The Sects Revealed!

The slavering Sabbat stood before me, his aura rippling with the contemptible black viens of diablerie. A crazed look fixed his face, no doubt the product of nights spend dancing by bonfires and conducting his heinous rituals. I wondered how formidable he was - had he killed his sire? Or perhaps fought with fearsome Lupines? One thing was for certain, however: This would be a victory well-earned.

The miserable Camarilla toady postured in front of me, self-assured and cocky as all hell. It didn't look like a century of nights spent in pompous salons and pretentious parties had softened him any, I'll give him that. But that didn't matter - he and his kind keep us in chains, for both the worthless mortals surrounding us and the cannibalistic Antediluvians who pull their strings. It would be a pleasure to take this one down, though it wouldn't be easy.

Hot on the heels of the revised edition of Vampire: The Masquerade come two titles guaranteed to make all Vampire fans lick their fangs in anticipation: The Guide to the Camarilla and The Guide to the Sabbat. Both of these volumes study their sects in incredible depth - each book is a 200-plus page hardbound look at what makes the sects tick and what terrible secrets they hide. From expanded Discipline information to clan structures to the monstrous Paths of Enlightenment, from the Camarilla's genteel wickedness to the Sabbat's war on the elders, no stone is left unturned in these comprehensive resources. Pull back the shadows to reveal the truths behind the sect, but be prepared to face the deeper darkness that lurks beneath.

A View from the Gutter

By Andy "Lackey in Exile" Vetromile

"You got an internship with White Wolf? Man, are you asking for trouble!" they warned. This wasn't the response I was hoping to hear. For $4.99 a minute, I wanted news about my love life or finances, but like so many others, my psychic buddy was fixated on the indignities interns supposedly suffered at White Wolf.

The warning was echoed by everyone from friends to drunken strangers on the Internet with screen names like "saluv8n4sex." To hear them tell it, White Wolf was populated by mutants, deviants and egomaniacal speed-freaks who would treat me like a doormat while breaking my break with a laborious workload.

Nothing, I was sure, could be farther from the truth. surely they would treat me with equanimity, as a peer in search of knowledge, a fellow gamer. Trust, respect and responsibility would be their watchwords. I was not disappointed.

As I grew to know my co-workers, we traded outrageous stories. Eddy and I joked about the rumor that interns vacuumed his car. I wiped tears of laughter from my eyes even as I wiped Lexall pH into Eddy's patent-leather recliner.

Phil was much more philosophical about such things. "Some folks just want to feel important," he opined, stoking his chin thoughtfully with one hand while tilting the Coke machine with the other. I dug my hand into the sticky dust bunnies under the dispenser looking for spare change for his drink. "The rumor mill kind of gets out of hand sometimes."

I asked why they would single out White Wolf for such abuse, but Phil wandered off to meditate, leaving me to ponder my own questions and free my own hand.

I knew I wouldn't have to wait long for assistance; Ian was bound to come looking for me to get his completed tax returns, and Kathy had to retrieve her dry cleaning. I resolved to ask one of them for their insight.

As it turned out, Ken found me first. I was killing time scrubbing the greasy spot under the microwave with my hair, and he helped me out so I could wallpaper his office. "Your bright outlook is a positive boon to the to the company, Andy," he said, taking the credit cards from my wallet. "The barbs people poke at the company can be really damaging to morale. I'm glad to see you're above that sort of thing."

I wanted to acknowledge this bonding with a handshake, but Ken didn't want to get paste on his hand before he teed off. Just as well; the makeshift wallpaper bandage wasn't doing much for the pain. I left him to erase my name from a 40,000-word Vampire supplement that I banged out the night before.

If only others could see the side of White Wolf that I do. When people trust you enough to guard their Porsche overnight, when they allow you to assume responsibility for driving their grandparents to the airport, when they respect you enough to tell you to your face that you're a slack-jawed loser, then you know you have found a kinship that an outsider simply cannot understand. Speed-freaks, indeed.

White Wolf's Fall '98 Releases

December

Vampire Storytellers Companion

The Vampire Storytellers Companion collects new rules, abilities and bloodlines to aid Storytellers in their task of world-building. This book and screen present new information on the less numerous Kindred of the World of Darkness, as well as an expanded weapons list and frightening Disciplines only whispered of by the Kindred of the Camarilla and Sabbat.

Stock #2304, ISBN 1-56504-203-4, $14.95 U.S.

• Gurahl Stock #3079, ISBN 1-56504-339-1, $17.95 U.S.
• The Orphan's Survival Guide Stock #4252, ISBN 1-56504-436-3, $16.00 U.S.
• Castles and Covenants Stock #4803, ISBN 1-56504-492-4, $17.95 U.S.
• Trinity: Shattered Europe Stock #9004, ISBN 1-56504-761-3, $19.95 U.S.
• Dark Kingdoms Stock #11049, ISBN 1-56504-984-5, $11.99 U.S.

Artists Spotlight on John Van Fleet

John graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 1984 and now lives in North Carolina with his wife Paige and daughter Grace. He recently redesigned the 13 Vampire clan signature characters, and illustrated parts of Kindred of the East. Other projects include the X-Files movie graphic novel as well as several X-Files: Season One adaptations for Topps Comics. His past works include the Typhoid miniseries for Marvel Comics, the Shadows Fall miniseries for DC Vertigo and The Bradbury Chronicles.

Go online with White Wolf. Check us out at:

http://www.white-wolf.com; alt.games.whitewolf and rec.games.frp.storyteller

Yes, "just" looking at the pictures counts as bestiality.