Malkavian

Even other Damned fear the Malkavians. The cursed blood of their clan has polluted their minds, with the result that every last Malkavian across the world is incurably insane. What’s worse, a Malkavian’s madness can take nearly any form from overpowering homicidal tendencies to near-catatonia. In many cases, there’s no way to tell a Malkavian apart from the “sane” members of other clans. Those few whose psychoses are immediately obvious are among the most terrifying vampires to stalk the streets.
For as long as even the eldest Cainites can remember, the Malkavians have always stirred Kindred society with their passage. Although the clan has instigated no great wars nor toppled mortal governments (at least, to the best of their fellow vampires’ knowledge), the very presence of a Malkavian works a subtle change on a city. Chaos nips at the Lunatics’ heels, and those who associate with even the most well-meaning Malkavian often find their lives or unlives altered by the Cainite’s madness.
Recently, the Malkavians executed their grandest “prank” of all. None can say whether it was worked in a great Malkavian Parliament held somewhere in an isolated European village, or on a bleak and forgotten moor somewhere far from the cities. A few stories speak of a epidemic of contagious dementia exploding among those of Malkav’s blood. Whatever the cause, Malkavians across the world have begun displaying a new, dangerous edge to their madness, accompanied by bizarre events in Kindred cities around the world. A long-standing Malkavian conceit holds the Jyhad to be a joke instigated by the founder of the clan; some Kindred wonder if, in fact, Malkavians have played the joke on them all along.
None can say what exactly makes the Lunatics so dangerous. Certainly, their madness often frees them from fear of pain or Final Death. More than a few demonstrate horrifying murderous urges or a complete lack of emotion, including compassion. But most convincingly, the Malkavians are free from the confines of rationality and may do whatever they like and this freedom is coupled with an uncanny insight, a strange wisdom that cannot be perceived by the sane. The Malkavians possess a dark intellect that is often — and increasingly - set to frightening purposes.

Nickname: Lunatics

Sect: The Malkavians as a clan have an.. .understanding. . .with the Camarilla. They also populate the Sabbat in lesser numbers, where they frighten even their packmates with their psychotic displays. But when it all comes down to it, their true loyalties likely transcend sects. When Gehenna arrives, nobody can say for sure where the Malkavians will stand.

Appearance: Malkavians run the gamut from terrifyingly psychotic to convincingly ordinary in every way — sometimes both at once. Just like serial killers, they could be anyone — the scruffy bum talking to himself, the pleasant but quiet neighbor, the borderline-suicidal musician. These vampires are capable of great subtlety, and rarely show anyone a face other than the one they want people to see.

Haven: The Lunatics by and large take whatever shelter they like, although more than a few find aging hospitals and poorly funded asylums to their tastes. Many seem to enjoy the company of desperate mortals, and prefer slums and institutions to more secluded havens.

Background: Malkavians take their childer from all walks of life and for all number of reasons. Anyone can be chosen to further a sire’s twisted purposes, although most Lunatics prefer Embracing those already close to (or subject to) madness. Most other vampires believe that the Malkavians Embrace childer on a whim; however, virtually all Lunatics discover themselves subtly championing some barely perceptible "purpose", the full extent of which none--not even their sires--can properly fathom.

Character Creation: Malkavians come in all shapes and flavors, but many have primary Mental Attributes, befitting the clan’s reputation for wisdom and insight. Apart from that, it's anyone’s guess just what Traits a Malkavian may manifest--with the diversity of their concepts and backgrounds, the mad vampires could be anyone. Anywhere.

Clan Disciplines: Auspex, Dementation, Obfuscate Discipline information

Weaknesses: Every last vampire of Malkav's blood is irredeemably insane in some form or another. Some attribute this to a curse of the blood, while other Lunatics actually call it a special blessing, a gift of insight. When a Malkavian character is created, the player must chose at least one derangement for that character at the time of the Embrace, this derangement can be temporarily fought with Willpower, but can never be permanently overcome.

Organization: The hierarchy of the Malkavians, if it exists at all, defies description. Most are usually content to let one another do as they like from night to night. But now and again, in times of great need, Malkavians demonstrate an uncanny ability to act in unison, even without any apparent leadership — and sometimes without any apparent communication. As one, they rise from their desolate haunts; as one, they all are on the problem at hand. And when it is a problem no longer, they drift back to their usual routines. If the Malkavians indulge in any form of machinations as a clan, it is incomprehensible to outsiders--which may be a blessing.

Bloodlines: Before the Dementation Discipline spread contagiously throughout the clan (in 1997 or so), a great number expressed their mind-warping talents through of the Dominate Discipline. A few Malkavians weren’t caught in the redoubled tide of insanity that swept the clan, and still possess that power in lieu of Dementation. The rest of the clan pays these offshoots no particular notice; indeed, with only a few exceptions, Malkavians don’t differentiate between this bloodline and the clan proper at all.

Quote: Laugh if you like. Doesn’t matter. Assume that you’re so much smarter than the poor, broken lunatic. Doesn’t matter. But think about this: You’re a dead thing, same as me. You died and were reborn.. .as this. What makes you and me different? Simple--I remember what I saw when I was full and truly dead. You’d be mad, too.

(VtM 3rd Ed)

Kooks. Fools. Madmen. Such are the descriptions the other clans have for the childer of Malkav, who frankly don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of them. The Malkavians are insane, but not in the way that others imagine. Each Malkavian sees the world through her own cracked lens perception, a highly personal distortion that outsiders dismiss as mere insanity. But that distortion is the key to enlightenment, the Malkavians insist at least those philosophically inclined and often the Lunatics seem to know more about what’s really going on than their so-called sane brethren. What exactly the Malkavians are doing in the Camarilla is a subject of some debate. While the clan’s allegiance to the sect has never wavered, it is nevertheless true that the sect’s interests only seem to intersect with the clan’s peripherally. As a result, the Malkavians view the Camarilla with a sort of bemused affection, while their counterparts in other clans can’t help feeling vague and disquieting suspicion about the Lunatics’ real motives.
Recently, the entirety of the clan was somehow infected with the Dementation Discipline by the antitribu of the Sabbat. The deed was done over the Malkavian Madness Network, though even the Malkavians themselves seem at a loss to explain how exactly that happened. The new Discipline doesn’t seem to have affected clan members’ behavior over much, but with the Malkavians, one never knows.

Strength and Influence:Malkavian strength and influence varies from city to city, depending on the individual quirks of the local Malkavian population. In some places the Lunatics are nearly incapaci tated by their manias, and thus are a non-factor in city politics. In others, the famed clan dementia is a non-issue or actually feeds an individual’s drive to power. A power-hungry Malkavian with an obsessive personality can be a frightening thing for friends and foes.
To no one's surprise, the Malkavians find the mental health system to be a hospitable environment; many set up little fiefdoms in managed health care systems. However the Lunatics aren't limited to health care facilities--it's more a question of what an individual Malkavian is driven to experiment with. In some cases that's nothing at all, in others it's art that the Toreador envy or business dealings that give the Ventrue pause. A very few dabble in magic, and the thoughts of what those Malkavians might be up to gives many powerful Tremere nightmares.

Organization: Defining Malkavian organization is like trying to empty the oceans with a sieve. The task is simply pointless, as the Lunatics’ ways of arranging themselves mutate and change with blinding speed. The clan's irregular meetings are open to all comers, primarily because the Malkavians don’t care about keeping anyone out, but observers often returned chilled by what they saw. At times the MaIkavians have mounted eerily accurate pastiches of Ventrue or Tremere clan gatherings; at others they mimic the Sabbat, or engage in behaviors utterly incomprehen sible to anyone not sharing the communal cup of madness. There is no local, national or global organization of Malkavians. The clan simply is. Trying to force it into the framework of ”normal” behavior, as the Ventrue and others have been trying to do for centuries, is utterly fruitless. The Malkavians meet whenever they choose, do whatever they choose and revel in the thread of insanity which binds them all together.

Concerns: Do the Malkavians have unifying concerns? No one knows. There is speculation that the infection perpetrated by the antitribu has sparked at least some discussion among the Malkavians, but if anyone knows the truth, they’re not talking. The more socially adept Malkavians routinely steer conversation away from clan matters, while the less func tional ones don’t seem to be worth asking.
If the clan can be said to have a core issue, it is the matter of enlightenment through new perception (or what the unenlight ened mistakenly call insanity). By removing the scales of ”normal” behavior from their eyes, the Malkavians claim to be able to see true reality more clearly than ever before. Not a few clan members want to share that renewed vision with the rest of the Camarilla and then the world. Such vampires are almost universally feared, as their conversion efforts amount to driving their victims insane.

Practices and Customs: The Malkavian custom that has the highest profile is the art of pranking, playing “jokes” on other Kindred so as to expand their perceptions. Of course, these jokes can take any form and are usually only funny to the Malkavian playing them; the targets find them to be anything from annoying to fatal. Malkavian pranking doesn’t involve whoopee cushions and buckets of water balanced on doors; rather, it is an inspired attempt to kick the crutch of consensual reality out from under other Kindred. Pranks can range from continually rearranging all of the furniture in a vampire’s haven to careful use of Dementation to siccing a hunter on an unfortunate target, and a vampire who becomes the subject of a Malkavian’s interest rapidly finds his friends abandoning him for fear of being caught in the blast radius.
Malkavian targets for the Embrace tend to be outside the mainstream of society. While not all are clinically insane before the Embrace, none are paragons of stability, and many just need the horror of the Embrace to push them over the edge. Malkavian sires don’t seem to be particularly attentive to their childer, but somehow the neonates end up knowing everything they need to know. Outsiders speculate that the Madness Network must somehow be involved, but since outsiders blame the Malkavian Madness Network for everything since the murder of Abel, such theories are often yawned off.

Clan Prestige:There’s no telling what might set a Malkavian above her fellows. Clan standing varies wildly from night to night, and the Malkavian everyone follows one night might be shunned the next. It only makes sense to the Malkavians, and not even to all of them, it seems. An approximate guideline is that anyone who does exceptional work to break down a shared perception of reality (say, by getting a prince to speak in tongues or a keeper of Elysium to hang a finger painting) often wins kudos from her peers, but otherwise the Malkavian system of prestige just seems to be a parody of the other clans’ approaches.

Insanity:It is a common misconception among the other clans to regard the Malkavians as cute or childlike, wacky little prank sters who, in the end, are harmless. Nothing could be further from the truth. Malkav’s childer sport a wide range of dysfunc tions, ranging from relatively mild cases of regression to full-blown psychoses and homicidal manias, but as a rule they are not cute. A Malkavian is far more likely to be toting a much- used straight razor than he is to carry a teddy bear; bloody rags are infinitely more common than bunny slippers. While there are some Malkavians who do regress to childish behavior, they do so with all the strengths and powers of a full-grown vampire. Tantrums thrown with the weight of Dementation or a frenzy behind them should not be thought of as adorable, and neither should the Kindred throwing them.
VtM 3rd ed