Ghouls - Servants, Guardians, and Burdens

[Tami]

The life of a ghoul is a harsh, dangerous, miserable one. As long as a ghoul gets their monthly installment of vampire blood, they're in business: they don't age, they can fuel what meager disciplines they have, and can advance their healing with the blood of their vampiric donator. They also have more of a struggle with their inner beast, may develop derangements around their blood consumption, and are in constant danger of having the vampire in question turn on them with lethal intentions.

Ghouls also happen to be a cornerstone of vampiric power, due to their mobility: they can move around by day when the vampire is forced to sleep (although with time Setite ghouls may take on the clan weakness and get supersensitive to light). They can also be controlled through numerous ways (manipulation of emotions, thoughts, and physical condition by disciplines, argument, or the Blood Bond). A vampire can promise the Embrace forever and the luster of immortality dies hard. A vampire can seduce a ghoul and promise more pleasure if obedience is given. A vampire can use love as the cruellest weapon in their arsenal, and thus keep an otherwise decent human being enthralled. A vampire can utilize Dominate on a ghoul to manipulate their very thoughts, or to possess them. A vampire can use the dreaded Blood Bond to tie the ghoul to them with a love so false it could only have been discovered by vampires.

Unlike embraced childer, ghouls don't need to be taught very much, although a vampire may choose to tutor their ghouls in certain duties. Ghouls can be created rather easily and a vampire can surround himself with a virtual flock of them. Ghouls, because of their weakness, their status, and their lack of invested tutoring, are much easier to lose than valued childer. They are the daylight guards and cannon fodder of the World of Darkness. While some ghouls manage to come up with some reasons for not being disposed of, that is not by any means the norm.

There should be more ghouls and mortals in a game than there are vampires. Why? Simple statistics and function. While vampires are the puppetmasters, there are far less of them than mortals and ghouls, and they must sleep the day away. The world goes on while vampires slumber. Holdings may be won or lost as ghouls are sent to war on each other by the orders of their sleeping masters. A vampire can wake up to find himself being scorched by the sun, courtesy of a ghoul he wronged for a few decades. Ghouls and mortals can be the hands and the bane of vampires during the daylight hours. They are simply too numerous and have too many uses to be ignored.

It can be interesting to play the underling. What is it like to depend on the source of your deepest suffering for your deepest pleasure, and your very life? What is it like to serve a vampire in base and corrupt ways at night, and go home to your unknowing mortal family for the day? (Threats against a ghoul's family is another way to keep them flying straight.) What is it like to watch the power of a vampire, and wonder how you can get it for yourself? What is it like to be neither mortal or a child of Caine? What kinds of torture does that cause? How does a mind dare to try to cope? What sort of downward spiral might start for your morals? While I don't recommend that anyone play a ghoul that is going to be used only as cannon fodder for a fulfilling roleplaying experience, I do think that longer-term tools - errr, ghouls, can be quite satisfying.

The book on ghouls goes over how the clans at large choose ghouls, view them, and treat them. I've seen too many lovey-dovey domitors to be ungrateful for my iron stomach. It is possible for a vampire to treat a ghoul well but as time wears on, it is so unlikely and unseemly that it makes what I've seen that much more ridiculous. Vampires can theoretically live forever. Most mortals tend to get bored with the world at large in their puny lifetimes. For a vampire that has seen cruelty and terrors as a matter of course (and all vampires do, in some form, regardless of whether they're Camarilla or Sabbat), amusement starts to come from cruelty and terrors. Ghouls are ripe for their master's games and ventings.

Think of Elizabeth Bathory, the Countess of Csjethe. She supposedly killed around 600 girls during her lifetime in the 1500s. There are many accounts of her casually abusing her numerous servants, poking them with needles, applying hot irons, boxing their ears, and eventually killing them. She drank blood and reveled in frenzies of torture. Elizabeth was a lot like the vampires of Vampire: the Masquerade. As ghouls are very commonly servants in a vampire's haven, they are always around for abuse. As vampires drink blood and commit atrocities every night they exist, the casual abuse just illustrated should be completely common.

Now, remember, there are some vampires that were ghouls before their embrace. All Giovanni vampires (and I mean each and every one) were ghouls before being embraced. Some Tzimisce were embraced out of the revenant families of the Sabbat. One can imagine that after the helplessness, abuse, and danger of being a ghoul, one would be only too happy with being a vampire. Hell, I know I'd be grateful for the crack at gaining real power, and I'd work that much harder to get it. Ghouls that have been embraced may very well make some of the most zealous childer, and perhaps the most loyal.

I feel that it is completely natural for ghouls to catch onto the inherent disciplines. Ghouls usually only have the first or second level of any discipline, considering they aren't generally taught about what disciplines are and how to use them. Depending on what their function is, they may cultivate a discipline to make them better at their work (a Brujah bodyguard having Potence would make perfect sense). Due to the disease-like nature of Vicissitude and Dementation, a ghoul may have access to those disciplines, although being comfortable with using them would be something else altogether.

The other clan disciplines, I feel, are too alien to regular human nature to be utilized by ghouls. Ghouls are not children of Caine, and have not undergone the great changes such rebirth entails. Clan Baali made a special note of instantly killing any ghoul that so much as hinted of having the clan discipline Daimoinon, and I think that other clans would do the same thing. The clans don't like having their unique disciplines get out to other clans. Why would they stand for ghouls cultivating them? All of the clans have at least two of the inherent disciplines available, and that's enough for a ghoul to work on.

A tip on playing a ghoul (be they vassal, revenant, or independent): survival is the first goal. You can't serve your master if you're dead (unless your master is a Giovanni, but we won't get into that). You can't try to get away, and you can't stick it to Kindred society by living and taking their blood without their wish if you're dead, either. Anything that will help you stay alive is of the essence to obtain, be it the favor of others, knowledge, secrets, what have you. Pleasing your master (for vassals and revenants) will generally keep you alive for a while. The hunger for power and the embrace takes a distant back seat to survival - always.

[Tami]

One of the fundamental differences between the Camarilla and the Sabbat is the former policy on working, whenever possible, through mortals, and not running rough shod over them. A literal manifestation of that is the Camarilla’s reliance upon the half-human class of creatures called ghouls.
Whereas the Sabbat (save the tradition-minded Tzimisce) shuns and despises ghouls, the Camarilla regards them as vital cogs in the sect’s machinery. Without the still living ghouls who would oversee the Masquerade in the daylight hours? Who would take care of the thousand dangling details that plague a vampire’s existence? And who would move against the sect’s enemies, external and internal, during those hours when all Kindred sleep, if not for the ghouls?

What is a ghoul? In brief, it is a mortal who has ingested Kindred vitae. While the term “ghoul” usually refers to human beings, animals of any sort can be ghouled. (Witness the horrific swarms of ghouled mosquitoes and flies that swarm around a Nosferatu). Odds are, however, that if someone uses the term ghoul they are referring to a human ghoul –more or less.

The Camarilla uses ghouls for a wide variety of tasks, usually those too menial, repetitive or dangerous for the Kindred themselves to attend to. While ghouls of particular expertise are handled with kid gloves – no Toreador wants her pet sculptor having a jealous pique with a blow torch in hand – the ruck and run of the “half-bloods” are treated like the vampire equivalent of the hired help.

Invaluable yet inferior – that dichotomy sums up a ghouls place in the Camarilla. The sect would crumble literally over night were it to be deprived of its half human servants, but the fact is they are servants – lesser beings by definition and blood. Ghouls have no rights under the Camarilla save what their regents choose to give them, and the right of destruction can be invoked at any time.

Thus begins an intricate dance of status and favor. In theory, a ghoul has no place or standing within the sect, but the trusted and ancient ghoul of a respected elder may carry more weight in council than a blood-on-the chin ranting neonate. Complicating matters is the fact that most ghouls are indeed blood bound to their masters, and get both enthusiastic and inventive in those masters defenses. Such zealotry often pits ghouls against other Kindred who pose a threat to their masters, and can lead to embarrassing moments for the vampires in question. The choice between setting the precedent of allowing a favorite ghoul to attack a Kindred and get away with it, or sacrificing a favorite ghoul to appease a hated rival is a particularly unappealing one.

In the end, ghouls are held to a double standard – despised as a class but valued individually. No vampire – and no ghoul – should ever forget it. The consequences of a poor memory, on anyone’s part, are invariably both fatal and brief.