GESTALT

By Jay Knioum (madafro@trip.net)

Background

The bizarre result of a Tremere inquiry into the effects of radiation upon a vampire's physiology, the Gestalt are a bloodline of monsters who carry death in the palms of their warped hands.

The bloodline was created around 1955 by a Tremere named Dr. Heinrich Gerber, once a Nazi scientist embraced by the Warlocks just before the Allies arrived in Germany. Gerber was in many ways a brilliant man, and in many other ways a mad one. Indeed, he would have been fodder for the Malkavians if not for his almost legendary progress in studying radiation, atomic theory, and their effects upon the human anatomy. Many of his experiments were conducted upon Jewish concentration camp prisoners, giving an indication of Gerber's lack of humanity even before his Embrace in 1945.

Gerber was not interested in the atomic bomb, however, but rather in using radiation treatments to foment a "master race" in the true sense of the word. He theorized that radiation in small but increasing doses over time, particularly to pregnant females, would result in eliminating imperfections.

He succeeded, but in ways he had never imagined.. A chantry of Tremere based deep under Berlin had been watching Gerber's work with interest for some time. They knew that many of this theories had "merit," but as long as he experimented upon mortals, he would only create badly burned corpses. However, if he were to try his theories on a few captured Tzimisce...

Gerber was Embraced the same night Hitler is said to have committed suicide. Since that night, he was sequestered in laboratories and remote bunkers. Even Gerber did not know where in Europe he was half of the time. The Tremere had him working on his experiments all the time he was awake. They did not tell him of Kindred society, only that he was immortal, that he must feed, and that the sun is a bane to him.

Thus began the shadowy Project: Gestalt. They brought to Gerber six torporous Tzimisce, named only by their numbers. They told the scientist only that these vampires were "defective," much like Gerber had believed the Jews were defective, only good for experimentation. Thereafter, Gerber fell into his work with abandon. The Tremere brought him various radioactive substances over the years with which to "operate." Over time, the Tzimisce had ceased to be so, instead becoming abominations, as the radiation treatments mixed horribly with the vampires' Vicissitude.

So too, were the vampires' minds warped by the incessant rambling of the demented Dr. Gerber, brainwashing them with a warped version of the already warped Nazi doctrine. This Doctrine would later be called the Manifest, the "holy book" of the Gestalt line.

It was now 1955. The Tremere had moved Gerber and his work to the United States, into an underground stronghold in Nevada. (Rumors persist about the link between this chantry and Area 51, as yet unsubstantiated).

Then, something happened.

The Tremere are strangely quiet about what occurred in the winter of 1955 in the Nevada desert, but whatever it was, the underground Chantry was cemented in, and Gerber's name was struck from Tremere archives, all the way to Vienna.

Even so, every so often a tabloid will run a story about a weird monsters appearing in the alpine forests, jungles, and even the backyards of the States and abroad. More recently, the Camarilla has been covering up various murders around the world where a body, burned so badly that the victim's sex cannot be determined, is discovered...drained completely of blood.

The Tremere may feign ignorance, but to those few in the know, the truth is undeniable. The Gestalt have escaped, and they are increasing in number.

Description

The Gestalt are monstrous, as one might expect from a Tzimisce suffering radiation treatment for ten years. Theirs are not the malformities of the Nosferatu, however. Whereas the Nosferatu have wrinkled skin, huge fangs, horns, slimy skin or the like, the Gestalt are the stuff of nightmares. Eyes blink from along the necks of some. Others have tiny tentacles instead of hair. Many have more than two arms; some even more than one head. Others are covered with fanged mouths; others have no mouths, instead drinking vitae through lamprey-like suckers on the ends of their fingers. Worse still, the Vicissitude still tears through the tortured bodies of these vampires, and they may awaken each night with a new set of mutations, even more disgusting than the last.

The one uniform characteristic to the Gestalt's collective appearance is horribly burned skin. Every Gestalt looks as if he has just escaped an incinerator.

Weakness

The Gestalt obviously have no Appearance rating. However, their main weakness lies in spontaneous eruption of horrid physical deformities, usually during sleep. Every time the vampire sleeps, she must roll her Stamina score against a difficulty of 10 minus her Humanity score. When she awakens, she may find herself with something as minor as an extra ear, or she could discover that her fingers have melted together. Consult the table below:

Five Successes:	No very noticeable changes. Perhaps her toenails are an inch longer.
Four Successes:	Minor deformity, -1 to a random physical Ability.
Three Successes:	Serious deformity, -4 to be divided randomly among Physical Abilities.
Two Successes:	Major deformity, -6 to be divided randomly among Physical Abilities.
One Success:	Debilitating deformity. One Physical Ability is dropped to 0 for the night.
Failure:	Supernatural deformity. -4 to be divided among the vampire's Disciplines.
Botch:	Vampire falls into seizures and incessant gibbering until the next dawn. When she next awakens, she will have gained a permanent physical flaw of the Storyteller's choice.

Unless otherwise noted, deformities last only until the next time the vampire sleeps.

Regardless of the rolls, each Gestalt character must have a minimum of 6 points in physical flaws before beginning the chronicle. As for any deformities the Gestalt suffers, creativity is encouraged, Don't just have the vampire be missing an arm...tell what's growing in the arm's place! For example, a Gestalt's Dominate score may take a beating one dusk (Failed Stamina roll) due to the fact that the vampire's eyes have relocated to his chest.

Haven/Society

As one might imagine, the torture the Gestalt have been through...and still go through is very damaging to the vampires' psyches. They tend toward an intense hatred for any other Kindred who does not share their torment, which is most of them. Thus, the Gestalt mainly keep to themselves, organizing into groups called Flocks. The name is not accidental, as the leaders of these small groups are very priestly, making grand sermons against the other clans, and claiming to lead the tortured Gestalt to salvation.

Thus, the bloodline is not exactly paragons of sanity. As a matter of fact, many Gestalt have drawn a whistle and a "That dude is whacked!" from even the most schizoid of Malkavians. The Gestalt is a young bloodline, and due to Gerber's love of preaching his madness to his immortal victims as they lay helpless under his scalpel, they have been brainwashed by a twisted form of Nazi philosophy.

This philosophy, called the Manifest by Gestalt elders (not much older than their neonates, actually) preaches that the Gestalt mutations are the road to perfection, being carried on by the vampire's bodies as they lie in repose. With each mutation, the Manifest goes, the vampire is one step closer to Perfection.

The Manifest itself is a meandering and unorganized document consisting mostly of the thoughts of the oldest Gestalt elder, the one known as Church. Church gave himself the name, having completely forgotten his former unlife as a Tzimisce. Church was the leader of a group of Tzimisce tasked with hunting down and eradicating Tremere chantries in Germany (circa 1930 onward), mostly to keep the Warlocks from gaining any sort of foothold in Hitler's growing empire. He had been a little too successful. The Tremere eventually rendered Church and his group torporous, and presented them as test subjects to Gerber.

Also according to the Manifest, the Foxfire (the Manifest's word for radiation) is necessary as a catalyst to this perfection. In fact, the presence of radiation does have impressive effects upon the Gestalt, but these can be harmful as well as helpful (see the Atomos Discipline for info.). For this reason, the Gestalt are obsessed with gaining access to radioactive materials. They haunt waste dumps; they break into military installations; they raid compounds where nuclear weapons await destruction...a post-Cold War feeding frenzy.

The "Foxfire" becomes an addiction to the Gestalt, and soon they need it as badly as they need vitae. Foxfire gives them great power, true, but it also speeds up their mutations, and increases their severity.

Often, the Things will masquerade as Nosferatu to learn more about Kindred society, and also to make use of that clan's vast information network. It is this clan of abominations that most readily befriend the Things, in any case...and companionship is always valuable.

At this point, though, the Gestalt are only found primarily in the United States, although more and more are making pilgrimages to "holy places" were Foxfire is plentiful. Any country in the world with nuclear power is a potential destination for these Gestalt pilgrims.

The Embrace

The Gestalt do not embrace often, but when they do, they look for the lost. Runaways, the homeless, the incurably insane...all of these are candidates. Occasionally, they look for brilliant, yet frustrated scientists, (and even artists) especially if they have a tinge of madness behind their eyes. However, they only Embrace those who they can turn toward their cause prior to immortality. If they won't follow the Manifest, they are of no use except food.

Nicknames

Things

Disciplines

Fortitude, Obfuscate, Atomos (Pronounced: ah-TOME-ose)

Radiation and the Gestalt

Even though the Blood Fire power of Atomos demonstrates how the Gestalt can use radiation to their own ends, the relationship between the Foxfire and this clan is much more complex. Simply put, the Gestalt need radiation. The presence of it induces a euphoric state in this clan, very much like a stimulant drug.

This need for Foxfire is intensified by the fantastically bizarre mutating effects that it produces in the Gestalt. Since the clan believes that mutation is the road to Perfection, these mutations are desired. The Gestalt try to embrace brilliant yet unhinged scientists, to try and further the work that Gerber had begun. They wish to learn more about the relationship between their mutations and Foxfire to gain greater mastery over their forms.

Here, the Storyteller has a great deal of freedom. What kind of power can the Gestalt gain by harnessing the Foxfire's effects on themselves? Here are some ideas along these lines for "radiation rituals" that the Gestalt can invent:

1. Perhaps the Gestalt can learn to temporarily lower their Generations by absorbing enough radiation.

2. The Gestalt could create Toxic Ghouls, which feed off of the radiation in Gestalt blood. These ghouls would be monstrous but may contain great power.

3. The Gestalt could induce further mutations to bring out their latent Disciplines. For example, a Gestalt ritual could be created to grant a Gestalt a third eye on his palm, which contains the Dominate discipline. Perhaps a second heart could be grown to produce Potence or Celerity. Third and fourth arms could be grown to manifest second-level Protean. The possibilities are endless...but regular doses of radiation should always be required to maintain these changes.

These are just examples, but it should be noted that the Gestalt have nowhere near this kind of control over their mutations...yet.

The Gestalt in a Chronicle

While it may seem that these vampires are Armageddon waiting to happen, it isn't necessarily so. There are several factors standing resolutely between the Gestalt and their ultimate goal:

1. The Gestalt were created and exist on the most extreme fringes of Kindred Society. Thus, any Gestalt without the Twisted Upbringing Flaw had better have a good reason why. They are only dimly aware of the presence of other vampires than the Tremere, due to that clan's constant bombardment of propoganda, and the radiation's devastation on the Tzimisce psyches. The Gestalt remember nothing of their Balkan heritage, and would not recognize a Tzimisce as such if a Zulo sat on them.

The main effects of this ignorance are these: Holocaust, as an 8th-level Atomos power, cannot be reached by any save the lowest generations. Very few Gestalt are lower than 8th Gen (the captured Tzimisce were 7th at the lowest). Also, the Gestalt remain largely ignorant of the Diablerie, or even the possibility of lowering their generations by drinking an elder dry. A few have figured this out, but since the Gestalt never diablerize their own clan, and rarely encounter any other vampires...the possibility is remote at best. Thus, any Gestalt manifesting Levels 7-8 of Atomos are unlikely.

2. Unbeknownst to the Gestalt, there is a small sept of Glass Walker Garou who know of these vampire's existence, even if only barely. These werewolves actively hunt the radioactive vampires as an enemy of Gaia. While the hunters don't know everything about the Gestalt, they do have a rough idea of their powers and their link to unnatural radiation...a Wyrm-agent if ever there was one.

3. The Manifest calls for 100,000 Gestalt to master Holocaust before they can purge the world of imperfections. As of 1996, there are about 70 or so of these vampires...and they don't Embrace just anyone.

4. Even though the Tremere refuse to acknowledge to the rest of the Camarilla that the Gestalt exist, they are still very concerned about this wayward creation of theirs. There are several covert groups of Warlocks combing the Earth for the Gestalt, for the purpose of staking them and bringing them back to Vienna for further study. If this cannot be accomplished, then destruction of the Gestalt is imperative.