PONGO

By Brian Connors (connorbd@bc.edu)

Description

A Malkavian and a Ravnos traveling through Africa cooked up this bloodline in 1774. Most Kindred who have heard of it give a reaction to the effect of "You ran into a WHAT?!"

You see, the Pongo are chimpanzees. Seems these two vampires had a knack for experimenting with the Embrace, and would often play with the idea that animals could be Embraced as well as humans. It worked occasionally; rats usually survived the Embrace, only to have the sire find the next evening a suspicious pile of ashes not far from said rat's burrow. Pigs generally survived. The result always seemed to be a good deal more intelligent than the original creature. But until these two went to work on a chimp population, no primate had ever survived.

The Pongo are thought to survive because of chimps' genetic proximity to humans. They do gain some measure of intelligence (one "prince" is said to have the intelligence of a human 10 year old), but they do have the advantage of being able to survive in the sunlight where most vampires can't.

Nickname

Monkeys

Appearance

They look like dead chimps.

Haven

Those who bother to make havens generally have burrows. Most don't, seeing as how they're just different enough from human vampires to be immune to sunlight (though fire is just as nasty).

Background

What little is understood of the Monkeys is that most are dominant males (similar to Silverbacks) that are Embraced when they get too old to wield power. However, chimpanzee politics are so alien to even African Kindred that any observation is necessarily extremely subjective.

Character Creation

Pongo don't know jack about paths, and archetypes are liable to be more towards the frivolous. Just wipe the whole path/humanity thing off the character sheet and act like a chimp.

Disciplines

(such as they are): Fortitude, Dominate

Weaknesses

Being chimps, they cannot take Mental attributes as primary. They cannot speak (though sign language is possible), although a Kindred with Auspex might be able to make something useful out of their thoughts.

Quote

[Cannot trust men or darkwalkers. Ever.]