Daeva

*Those you'd die for*

*"I'm the siren song and I'm the jagged rocks, too. Crash into me."*

He warns you. You’re going to do it anyway. You both know that. Eyes like TV ads that enslave you to debt. Voice like the fast food jingle talking you into suicide by tiny bites. The wanting. Every happiness you already have turns to bile. You smile. “Yes,” you say. “More,” you say. “Anything.” Something dead approaches. It isn’t dangerous because it’s strong — and it’s ungodly strong. It isn’t dangerous because it’s fast — and, oh Christ, it’s fast! It’s dangerous because the prey see something beautiful in it. The prey want to be devoured. These dead things sway, as fascinating as bioluminescence in the endless dark. They are the smoking mirror. They are the glowing orb at the end of a stalk, dangling over a great, glassfanged mouth.

The Daeva are all allure and objectification. They embody the social horror of vampirism more elementally than any other clan, because they exploit mortal hungers to feed their immortal ones. They are exploitation. They do not hide so much as clothe themselves in the images we’ve constructed — of beauty and charm. They co-opt all the things we want to be and want to fuck.

The Succubi arose from the sticky musk of the ancient world. River tides teased the gaping valleys to frothing fertility. The elder nights throbbed with temple music. Priests and priestesses practiced their love arts for coin — communion of the cunt and the cock. There was no difference between god and demon or sex and worship. In that space between, the Daeva curse gestated. They reveled in that time and place where deities cared enough to do horrible things to you directly. But the world turned. The capital “G” God changed the paradigm. When they could no longer be gods, the Daeva became succubi and incubi. The world turned again. Tonight, when it is no longer practical to be a demon, the Daeva become zeitgeists. They are the walking dead personifications of the future bias. “I’ll resist tomorrow.”

See the prom queen. A teenage White Lady. She floats from prom to prom, a resplendent urban myth in the adolescent court. At the end of the night, she chooses one lucky king or coqueen. She could be an allegory of the dangers and anxieties of budding teenage sexuality…if she bothered with such abstracts. Her dress is soaked in Scotchgard.

See the Byronic poet. He perches at the edges of open mic nights and writer workshops. He’s a whirl of burnt coffee smells, half-smirks, and raggedy charm. He always knows the right thing to say, the right critique or input that melts all your creative blocks. When he says you have potential, all the doubting voices die. You’re an artist! But insecurity creeps back in whenever he’s away. You dread disappointing him.

See the social media specter. It swims in the nutrient rich waters of personal ads and dating sites. It can detect a drop of despair across vast distances, from screen to screen. It wears usernames like masks. Having grown bored of bombarding the living with supernatural influence, it now plucks those strings with words from afar. It always types what they need. It gives good text. Meet-ups inevitably occur, and who is there to notice if another Internet profile goes dormant? See the pantheon. How did you get into the VIP room?

Everything’s surreal. Dizzy. Nostalgia tickles like a phantom limb. All these vaguely familiar faces. Not people. Archetypes. Visages from magazine ads, pinups, and billboards going back a century. When did the music stop? The Marlboro Man, the American Dreamgirl, Rosie the Riveter, and all the rest stare at you, motionless and eternal.

Let the other clans skulk and lope. The Daeva strut through their damnation. They’ve danced down the centuries as both Madonna and Babylon whore. The thing we want is the thing we shun. They are the perfect predators. They are paragons. If only it didn’t get harder and harder to enjoy. Stimulus fills the hole, but also erodes it wider. Yet the Succubi will never stop striving. They know that if you’re not the one doing, then you’re the one being done. The Daeva are never done.

***Why you want to be us***

You move wicked quick. You look great doing it. You get to go to all the best parties, whether that means being a charismatic cult leader, a rock star, or motherfucking Bruce Wayne. You have the power of everyone who ever turned you down in life. You roll human frailties and smoke them like cloves. You don’t even have to take, because everyone’s giving. But you can still take if you want to. Just knowing you can pull someone apart with your bare hands is all the rush one needs. Usually.

***Why you should fear us***
The Succubi offer the thing you want, but their real evil is that they actually give it to you. Had a rough breakup, need to cry on somebody’s shoulder? A Daeva will offer you hers. Desperately want to nail that guy with the long hair? He’ll sleep with you, don’t worry. All she wants in exchange is her teeth on your neck. The Daeva control one of the keystones of human misery: wanting, and the hollow curse of getting what we once wanted.

***Why we should fear ourselves***

Like people who hunt sex to the deliberate exclusion of love, the Daeva are ultimately broken by their singlemindedness. They pursue things that make them feel alive (blood, sex, food they have to puke up later) at the expense of the things that give living people meaning and stable happiness. Gods should not envy the worshippers.

### Clan Origins

• Inanna, goddess of war, murdered her handmaiden, Lilith — who was called Stranger and Scorned and Serpent of Eden. Then Inanna knew regret. She ransomed Lilith back from the owls of the underworld. Yet there are those who say the trade was a trick. In their Plutonian slumber, the progeny of Lilith can hear the screech-owls keen: “We are owed. We are coming.”

• The Dancing Plague swept through Europe for centuries. The documentation is most complete: official reports and affidavits from surgeons, priests, and magistrates. The contagion spread on unknown vectors. One dancer soon became tens and hundreds. They danced for days, until collapsing in ecstasy. Some danced until their ribs broke. Some danced until they died from heart failure or stroke. Throughout, they screamed, laughed, or cried. Some sang. Witnesses claimed they “wore strange, colorful attire” and “held wooden sticks.” Some paraded naked, made obscene gestures, and even committed sexual intercourse in the streets. Some became agitated by those who refused to dance. They reacted violently to the color red and pointed shoes. Some claimed they had been stung, and the dancing separated the venom from the blood. The clergy exorcised. Physicians bled patients. Mass hysteria? Ergot poisoning? One village claimed as many as 50 fatalities, but they had not counted the bodies that kept dancing after death. They did not hear the feverish beat tapping from shallow graves. There is a woman in a monastery outside of Strasbourg. The color red excites her so. She has been dancing since 1518.

• Once upon a midnight darkly, a snowy-skinned princess, the fairest in the land, awoke with a wet scream. Her stepmother cut out and ate her heart. But the princess rose again on the following eve, just as her descendants rise every night. Always, they are consumed by the need to fill the aching void in their chests — hungrily ever after.

Nickname: Succubi

### Stereotypes

• Gangrel: It’s so precious, how relentlessly theychase the prey. Must be exhausting.

• Mekhet: They call us shallow. We call them concave.

• Nosferatu: All in all, and I have to think that strumming love is more cruel than tickling fear.

• Ventrue: Give them a series of puerile achievements to attain, and they’ll actually think they’re winning.

### Clan Bane

(The Wanton Curse): You taste the romance in all things, but none so much as blood. Mortals are not just food. They are your obsession, and that fixation grows with every sip. Drink more than once, from any mortal, and you risk becoming emotionally dependent on your prey.

On their second and further drinks from the same source, roll Humanity. Failure causes the Persistent Dependent Condition toward the mortal (see p.302). The Condition only goes away with the mortal’s death.

### How to Make a Monster

Whatever the Daeva pursue, they pursue with a prodigious lust. That pursuit is often social, but can be physical or intellectual just as easily. Regardless, it will require an audience. A Serpent need not be overtly social, but he will need eyes to frame his fearful symmetry. The aloof, puzzle-solving genius, who hungers for riddles, will need that genius recognized. The Daeva thrive in the crush of humanity. They are not so graceful in a vacuum. Their damnation requires a feedback loop, more so than the other clans, as a general thing.

As with Attributes, so too with Skills. Take a care when selecting Skill Specialities, as one of these touches of brilliance is likely the thing that attracted your character’s sire. The back-story of that relationship can easily blossom from that one trait. Social Skills are rarely the tertiary category, as Daeva keep in practice in dealing with the kine.

They rarely lose the Man to the Beast through isolation. They are the vampires most likely to cultivate Empathy. However, they have a tendency to pick up the worst habits of humanity. More so than other Kindred, they understand the subtle nuances of the pain their social predation causes. That’s just another road to the Beast.

Ask how much your character will rely on Majesty. If he’s going to do it heavily, then you’ll want Presence and Manipulation, as well as Empathy. Celerity requires no specific Attribute or Skill choices, but effects like Vigor’s jumping ability benefit from Strength.

Many Daeva affect striking appearances, the better to attract the eye. These birds of Hermes glory in their peacock splendor. Unlike most other dead predators, they function best when seen. Yet through their command of Majesty, a Daeva can make any look work — plain clothes become glamorous — weatherworn garb becomes grungy and hip. Some Daeva stop worrying about their appearances, and somehow that not caring makes them even more attractive. Some go so far as to purposefully challenge themselves with clashing bits of clothing hastily snatched from the thrift store, amping their supernatural auras, and becoming beacons of incongruous Tyler Durden cool. Regardless of dress, a practiced eye might be able to identify a Daeva by the way she moves. They are always moving. Even the most clumsy mortal might awaken to sinuous grace as a Serpent.

### In the Covenants

The Carthian Movement: The Daeva are the mouths of the Revolution. Their tongues turn ethos into contagion, stoke mobs into wildfire. The Succubi are the recruiters of the Revolution. The Firebrands of other clans know that you need at least one Daeva around. The feeding is good for the Succubi among the Carthians, as they swallow blood and fervor in equal measure. And the feeding for everyone else is better when they’re around. And when violence must carry the politics of change, who else is so terrifyingly fast and bone-crunchingly strong?

The Circle of the Crone: Some of the most important voices in the Crone’s choir belong to the Succubi. It is the wise hierophant who keeps them close. The Daeva’s presence makes rituals grander, the spirituality more real, the air of a wild hunt more tangible. It’s easier to believe. They are the maenads who inspire orgiastic revel. They put the romance back into sparagmos. Who better to lead by example in the ecstatic emulation of the perfect vampire?

The Invictus: The Daeva function well in the middle of a web. They know just how to pluck the strands. They know all the right vibrations. Their grandeur adds an air of legitimacy to the polite rituals and courtly behavior of the First Estate, making it all a better misdirection for the blackmail and backstabbing behind the velvet curtains. Who are the masters of the tyrannous emotions that control us all? Who looks more fetching in a crown?

The Lancea et Sanctum: The immortal passions of the Daeva can bend into religious ecstasy of a frightful intensity. Their sermons wash over the laity like a tidal wave. They have perched for so long on both the right and the left shoulders of humanity. Who, in motion, are more like angels or succubi? Who knows the exact point where divinity and perversion bisect? Who knows the sinners so intimately? Who better to tempt the mortals than the Succubi?

The Ordo Dracul: The Order is an ill fit for many Daeva. Yet those who get a taste for it become hooked, like mortals addicted to cosmetic surgery. The pain and danger and transcendence. More! Always more. These Succubi want to shed their skins and see what holy blasphemies may come. They are the charismatic gurus who underground fighting rings materialize around. They are the cult leaders who can convince their followers to do unspeakable things for knowledge. Who so envies the humans, yet clutches her own immorality? Who would do anything to have it both ways?