Souleaters

By Adam Solis (ajsolis@aol.com)

Vampire-like

Souleaters are psychic vampires, no matter their host. Therefore, every souleater has a generation, vitae pool, and disciplines. Their natural disciplines are Vicissitude, Sanguinus, and Metamorphics. Like the Sleepwalkers, their vitae pool has nothing to do with the token exchange of blood, rather they feed off the life force directly.

Carriers

Being a sentient virus, Souleaters require a host. They can infect others through bodily fluids, and have the option of infecting another with a new virus, or with themselves. In other words, the Souleater can change bodies by leaving a higher generation virus in its place. Example: Bud the Souleater is 8th generation and in a obertosa, its original host. A Vampire attacks him and feeds off the host's blood. Bud can enter the vampire and leave a 9th generation souleater in the obertosa or infect the vampire with its 9th generation progeny. Souleaters retain their own willpower, mental attributes, and social attributes other than appearance. If the host's willpower, mental, or social attributes are larger, then the souleater has the option of "remembering" them.

Genetic memory

The Souleaters forget nothing, e;ch and every one of them can recall the experiences of its souleater ancestors and its hosts and its ancestors' hosts. Therefore, instead of having skills, talents, and knowledges, Souleaters have memory points. When creating the souleater character, assign abilities as normal. If the souleater merges with another Souleater, or takes a new host, tally up the number of knowledges, skills, and talents. The souleater can then reassign those points as it sees fit among the abilities of the old template and the new host or the first and second Souleaters who merged. If the new host or other souleater has more memory points than the souleater, the souleater gains a bonus to match the difference. Also, if the host's Willpower, Mental, or Social attributes are higher than the Souleater's, then the Souleater may spend Memory points to increase its stats to the host's level.

Character Creation

The Souleater is created normally concerning Willpower, social and mental attributes, generation, and abilities (or rather beginning memory point allocation), but physical and other traits are limited by the host. Since the host can be changed at any time, simply design the host as a separate character with ST supervision. The starting host is a background, with the various levels being determined by the campaign. After all, a campaign with horizon style Mages or Elysium/Black Hand style Vampires would merit a vastly different range than a Changeling campaign. Souleaters can also purchase Past Lives to represent their genetic memory and use the Angel: The Rapture rules for "remembering" past hosts' powers, although they have all of the current host's traits as well.

Different Hosts: Or Relations with other Supernaturals

Vampires: Our natural hosts, they are powerful and inhuman.

Revenants: Good hosts, they have most of the vampire's advantages with none of their weaknesses.

Werewolves: Powerful, but beware being targeted by sense Wyrm.

Mages: Excellent hosts for their powers but are still mere humans.

Fomori: Disgusting; they do not live long enough to be worth possessing.

Wraiths: Some have been infected, but their immortality has some definite drawbacks. Risen are a lot of fun though. Souleaters with a weak grasp of reality should not try to pretend to be a Risen who is pretending to be a Vampire though. Many so called Doppelgangers are really Souleaters.

Changelings: Usually not worth the trouble, but we can easily pass as Dauntain or Bedlamites.

Daemon: They claim to be our origin; never let them know how different we have become.

Others: You probably get the message by now.

Options

Infestation: For ST who want concrete rules for when a host is taken over may want to try adapting the Anne Rice style vampire rules of Spirit, blood, and power points. When the souleater's vitae level equals or exceeds the host's, the host is taken over. These rules are appropriate because Souleaters are spirits in physical form, and would allow puny hosts to be controlled instantly while stronger ones would take a while. A non controlled host would be controlled indirectly when the host loses control: vampires' frenzy, Lupines' becoming "enthralled by the Wyrm," Mages' Quiet, Changelings' Bedlam, and Wraiths' Shadow, etc.