Down with the Sickness ;; The Morbus Clan - OPEN

[bitsie spider]

Get up, come on get down with the sickness

"No, I’ll never cure her, but my attention eases her suffering."

An enigma to bloodline historians and genealogists among the Kindred, the Morbus line thrives like a disease, and is no more respected than a plague.
Their bizarre powers over contagion and rarefied palettes that limit them to feeding on the afflicted make it such that a single Morbus risks the contamination of the herd in the best case, and the Masquerade in the worst.

Index
•Intro - Get up, come on get down with the sickness
•Those who are in our line - Members
•Who we are and what we do - Clan and Bloodline Disciplines
•Even we have guidelines - Rules
•This place is ours - Our Hide-Out
•Where we come from - History
•This is our life - Being, Feeding, and Embracing
•Who we are to them - Covenant
•We try to blend - Appearance
•Where you'll find us - Haven
•We all fall victim - Weakness
•Find us if you can - Organization
•Our little pets - Ghouls
•You know you want to click this
•Information Sites and Such  

[bitsie spider]

Those who are in our line

Disciple: -
Antediluvian: -
Methuselah: -

Elder:
•Ishta Tilenis [icy serenade]°

Ancillae:
•

Neonate:
•Adair Galloway [Shikamaru Silyvant]ϟ
•Crucio [mouselet]°
•Broken Beauty [x pLexio Gatz x]°
•Fatin Hx`hlka [xxR o z e]°
•Rakuyō Kaede [Pixy Max]°
•Dorian Lishner [xxR o z e]°
•

Fledgling:
• Askan Oberon [icy serenade]°
•

Other:
•Amaia Blair [Sylent Nyte]ϟ
•

Ghoul:
•


Mekhet Brethren
•Ace [Sylent Nyte]ϟ
•Zilla [Fatal Irony]ϟ



Key
° Active Members
ϟ Unsure/Inactive Members  

[bitsie spider]

Who we are and what we do

Bloodline Name: Morbus ;; Latin for "sickness"
Clan Symbol: Morbus

Parent Clan: Mekhet

Nickname: Carriers

Covenant: Unaligned

Bloodline Disciplines:
•Auspex ;; Auspex is a powerful asset for any Kindred who chooses to learn it. The Discipline is focused on enhancing the user's senses beyond an average mortals, granting even a measure of psychic abilities not often found among the living. It is also the propietary Discipline of Clan Mekhet, and rightly so, as it is the Clan of Shadows' prime tool for espionage and investigation of both natural and supernatural.

•Cachexy ;; Cachexy is the disease focused discipline unique to the Morbus Bloodline. Vampires skilled in this discipline can discern diseased mortals from normals, infect objects with disease, amplify disease, and directly infect others with disease. Vampires with this ability are plague bearers, and it is very likely a Prince would have any vampire showing knowledge of Cachexy slain as a serious threat to the Masquerade.

Vampires who use Cachexy are likely to be very effective at attacking an entire city, and would be exceptionally useful to anyone that wants to eliminate a rival vampire's Ghouls.

•Celerity ;; The use of Celerity grants Kindred the ability to move at supernatural speeds, increasing their reflexes and improving their reaction time, with each Discipline level granting the user a greater degree of speed. This translates into incredibly faster movement and extra attacks or extended defensive capabilities. It must be noted, though, that this power is blatantly supernatural, as any individual who can move at such speed will often look somewhat blurred and distorted.

•Obfuscate ;; As one of the most common vampiric powers, Obfuscate is a versatile Discipline that gives its user the power to cloud minds so as to become invisible, or better.  

[bitsie spider]

Even we have guidelines

Quick and easy Need-to-Knows
•We are carriers of diseases - VTDs anyone?
They are spread through feeding and through sex
This makes us a clan disrespected by others clans as they don't want us spoiling their food
•We have powers over diseases and can find those with them
This makes us powerful in some ways and also helps us find our next meal
•We are can only feed off those with diseased blood
It is the only kind that replenishes our Vitae as healthy blood turns to ash in our mouths
•We are a puzzlement to historians and genealogist
They can't figure out where exactly our bloodline came from
•Most of us try to hide our Morbus status and blend in with our parent clan, the Mekhet
We are looked down upon as those who can destroy and get no respect
We try to stay hidden and blend in more often than not
•


Morbus to Mekhet relations:
Yes, Morbus is in fact a bloodline of the clan Mekhet for those that are curious.
Fortunately, bloodlines do act as if they're a sub-clan, especially since some of the bloodlines do not get along with their parent clan.
Though the Mekhet do not care for the Morbus, the Morbus can blend in with their parent clan.
The Morbus, in this shop, are more self-sufficient, but they do need and use their parent clan.
For listing purposes, it is indeed a bloodline of a main clan.
[[Written in part by EviLXmasBaby ;; Thanks for the help~]]


Clan Rules Updates come as the thoughts come to mind

General Rules
•Do not out your fellow Morbus clan members!
Some of us prefer to try and be unknown while others just don't give a plagued rat's a**!
Be that the case, or not, do not speak of your fellow clanmates to other vampires, ghouls, or mortals about their particular.. tastes
•

Ghoul Rules
Vampires concerning Ghouls
•No breeding with a ghoul! They are for food and for fun only.
•They are not to be turned!.. not without good reason and permission
They are food after all, and even though some clan members may form an obsession with a particular ghoul
it does not mean that when their mortality comes into play that they will be spared death.
If a good reason [plot] comes into play, we will see about embracing a ghoul.
•
Ghouls concerning Vampires
•Stay true to being a Morbus Ghoul!
Once you have decided to be a Ghoul to the Morbus clan, you should not look to service other vampires/vampire clans
We have trusted you with our secrets, and we can promise you.. they don't want your diseased ridden blood like we do
Do not become our Ghoul if you are not going to stay in service to our clan
•  

[bitsie spider]

This place is ours

Our Hide-Out

After walking through the streets of a nearby town, you decide to veer off on to a smaller dirt road. One that was well traveled, but still seemed a bit… unkempt. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but it was nagging at the back of your mind. Perhaps it was the crisp night air empowering you, but you managed to push those thoughts to the side. The road wound on and on for what seemed to be miles and miles, but soon enough, a smaller cluster of buildings came into sight. It was strange, since it only seemed to be slightly busy hospital and few apartment complexes. There was even a little grocery store slash gas station. Like the ones you’d see out in the middle of nowhere.

Figuring you’d come this far so why stop, you keep going forward. You pass by the few ramshackle housing units, not at all surprised by the mangy, grunge ridden inhabitants that prowled about. You began to notice, though, that closer you got to the hospital, and the largest apartment complex, that things weren’t as grungy. There was fresh paint on the shutters and door, and it looked as if someone had tried to regrout the brick on the outside of the building. There were various tools thrown together in a haphazard pile, like someone had been out here all night working and then just heaved the supplies here until they came back.

Looking around, you could admit, even with the slight creepy vibe this place was throwing off, it was nice to see someone trying to fix up the poor place. However, with the sounds of coughing, hacking, and other general sick noises coming from the near-pristine medical facility in the side yard of the complex, it still gave you the willies. It probably didn’t help that is was unseasonably chilly here, either.

Wrapping your arms about yourself, you were about to turn away until you heard the whine of the complex’s front door sliding open. As it gaped further and further open, you could see into the halls. It was shocking. The few people that wandered around were just as mangy and grungy as the ones on the streets, but they were dressed more decently. A few had blood soaked bandages here and there, but they looked to be handling whatever disease had ridden this tiny cul-de-sac well enough. Though that wasn’t the strangest part. The strangest part was that the interior of that building was rather… nice. It, like its inhabitants' clothes, was very aesthetically pleasing. They were also smiling. Some were even humming. It was true, they did look similar to their little town--slightly creepy, but otherwise rather inviting--you still didn’t know what to think of them, but they did seem to be… enjoying life.

Deciding not to push your luck any further, you turned and started the trek back to civilization that didn’t wasn‘t as confusingly creepy-but-not-creepy (how did that even work, anyways?). Perhaps you’d come back later… sate your curiosity over the rest of that looming building with up to date fashion wearing, sickly looking, happy people. (Again, what?)


[[Written up by: xxR o z e ;; Thank you my love~ <3]]  

[bitsie spider]

Where we come from

History

For as long as the Kindred have been aware of the existence of the Morbus, bloodline historians and vampiric genealogists have been frustrated by them. Owing largely to the rarity of extensive records cataloging Mekhet lineage over the centuries, no one can pin down exactly who the founder of this bloodline might have been or where the first niche was in which the Morbus began to thrive. The idea of constructing a truly inclusive history of the Kindred (especially as regards the Mekhet clan) from which one might solve this mystery conclusively is a pipe dream at best, but some aspire to it nonetheless. Those Morbus who choose to concern themselves with the subject consider this ongoing failure a relief and a legitimization of their entire existence. They see themselves as simply Mekhet who are afflicted or cursed with a singular variety of rarefied tastes.

The particular preference to which the Morbus are all suspect is that they must feed on the blood of the ailing and diseased in order to sustain their vital undead state. In fact, the name Morbus comes from a Latin root meaning “diseased,” which was ascribed to afflicted Mekhet by non-afflicted ones during the reign of Justinian in the sixth century AD. According to records from that period unearthed centuries later by Kindred archaeologists, the Morbus were suspected of either spreading or helping to spread a virulent plague across the Mediterranean in one domain after another. Less solvent data has linked named Morbus from Roman records with Mekhet who were active in Greece and Egypt as far back as 430 BC, a year in which plague was said to have struck Athens. The connection this data implies is tenuous as best, and possibly wholly fabricated as propaganda against the Morbus. Nonetheless, it might have been possible for the Kindred to accept the Morbus condition as just a peculiar feeding preference if it were not for records recovered from Constantinople dating back to AD 1334. At that time, one of the most widespread plagues in history swept across Europe and Asia, aided by large numbers of soldiers and captives returning from the Crusades. The records in question describe the “righteous wrath” of a Mekhet pilgrim who traveled in secret with the Christian army. He returned to his domain once the campaign was ended to find his Kindred subjects in rebellion and his mortal herds mired hopelessly in sin. To punish them, records say, he blighted his people with a wasting sickness from within him that killed everyone for miles within a matter of days. This incident blended in with concurrent reports of blight and plague that swept the continent at the time, but Kindred historians pin it down as the first known instance of the use of the Morbus Discipline known as Cachexy.

When captured and put to the question by Kindred Inquisitors for the act, this Kindred denied being the founder of a bloodline at all. He claimed that he had learned his unusual abilities from his sire, who had long since succumbed to the sleep of ages. When he awoke much later, the Kindred’s sire also denied developing the Discipline or founding a bloodline, but his memories of his own sire or brood brethren were too hazy to offer any more definitive leads. These records are the closest any historian has come to finding the bloodline's true founder or tracing its evolution. Tonight, most Morbus are not as concerned with their origins as they are with survival. Once they discover their condition and the unique power that derives from it (or they have both explained to them by an older Morbus), they must decide whether to hide it or admit what they are and try to redefine their niche. Their ability to do either varies by domain, but if nothing else, periodic outbreaks of severe infectious diseases throughout history and all over the world provide sufficient vessels on which to thrive. All they have to do is keep informed and be willing to risk travel to areas in which untreated strains of infectious disease defy the cutting edge of First-World medicine.  

[bitsie spider]

This is our life

Being, Feeding, and Embracing

Morbus: in Latin, it means "sickness." A fair appellation for this unhappy bloodline, for the Morbus are cursed to feed only on the tainted blood of diseased kine. What's more, they inevitably become infected carriers of disease themselves. A single Morbus can be infected with dozens of strains of varying diseases, yet they display none of the signs or symptoms. They are immune. Not so their victim who suffers not only from being the source of a vampire's nourishment but, if allowed to live, will almost certainly die horribly from a disease passed on by her Morbus assailant.

It is a more frequent for a Mekhet to Embrace a childer who then realizes he is a Morbus than it is for a confirmed Morbus to Embrace a childe. Most Morbus childer therefore have the same backgrounds as non-afflicted Mekhet. When the Morbus do Embrace deliberately, they tend to choose doctors (whom they vainly hope can help cure them), dying vessels to whom they’ve formed obsessive attachments, or people with influence over policymakers.

Also
So the Morbus aren't completely dependent on their parent clan to embrace and wait in hopes that the childer will come to the realization they are a Morbus; they have changed their way of thinking and have accepted the responsibility of embracing those to their liking and taste into the clan.  

[bitsie spider]

Who we are to them

Covenant

Many Carriers find it difficult to make a respected name or to carve out a fruitful place among the undead of the Invictus or the Lancea Sanctum once their affliction becomes known. Kindred consider them threats to the Traditions and claim that hundred-fold damnation awaits any Morbus who breaks the Third Tradition. Princes of the Invictus simply don't want Carriers polluting their domains and weakening the mortal pillars of their power structure with careless feeding. Some Morbus take perverse pleasure in testing the limits of Carthian egalitarian tolerance, but most would just as soon cultivate as much power and influence as they can and tell the Carthians to go to hell. Repentant or remorseful Carriers turn to members of the Circle of the Crone in hopes of finding some way to undo the curse they've wrought upon themselves, but no member of the bloodline or the covenant in general has yet uncovered any hope that such is possible. Others join the Ordo Dracul in an attempt to progress beyond the weakness that their blood inflicts, but no Morbus has yet achieved the true transcendence that the Order espouses. The rest of the bloodline hide out among the Kindred of the Invictus or the Lancea Sanctum — guarding the secret of their heritage for all their unlives are worth— or go it alone among the unaligned.  

[bitsie spider]

We try to blend

Appearance

Most Morbus adopt attire based on how they intend to interact with Kindred society vis-à-vis their condition. Those who try to pass as "normal" often play to the stereotypes that they feel are expected of their clan in their chosen covenant and domain. In-fact, they often overdo said stereotypes and give themselves away. Those whose nature is fairly common knowledge try to keep a low profile in "urban camouflage" (i.e. plain, baggy, off-brand clothes in neutral colors), so as to not stand out and risk being social lightning rods. Those who are outright cavalier about their bloodline — and have found acceptance in a Prince's domain — often play to Mekhet stereotypes. They do so out of a desire to show how successful they can be despite their condition.  

[bitsie spider]

Where you'll find us

Haven

Whether they're covert or open about what they are, Morbus make just as much of an effort to make their havens a reflection of their personal purposes as other Mekhet do. The only way in which they choose havens that differs is they look for ones among or offering easy access to diseased mortal vessels.  

[bitsie spider]

We all fall victim

Weakness

The Morbus are slaves to a highly rarefied palate. Only the blood of diseased and dying mortals sustains them, while healthy blood turns to ash in their mouths (though they may take Kindred Vitae and be nourished by it as normal). They can feed from other vessels only when frenzying, but doing so does not replenish their Vitae to any degree whatsoever. Some Morbus feel compelled to drink blood infected with only one specific disease, but this restriction is only a matter of taste or a psychological limitation. Should such a member be brave or desperate enough to drink from a victim with a different affliction than his preferred one, he suffers no penalty. While these diseases don't adversely affect the Morbus themselves (usually), they can occasionally be transmitted when the Kindred feed, share blood with their ghouls or have sex.

The Morbus bloodline is a shameful aberration in the eyes of most Mekhet, which makes it all but impossible for a confirmed Morbus to gain any Status Merit or clan offices among the non-afflicted. What's more, a surviving descendent of a confirmed Morbus who is not a member of the bloodline stands to lose standing by association, both from Mekhet who expect him to follow in his ancestor’s footsteps and from other Morbus who wonder why he’s afraid to do so.


Also
Being a bloodline of the Mekhet, Morbus suffer from the weakness of their parent clan as well
As creatures of darkness, the Mekhet suffer certain banes of vampiric existence more acutely than their fellow Kindred do. Whenever Mekhet suffer damage from sunlight or fire, they take an additional point of aggravated damage from that source.  

[bitsie spider]

Find us if you can

Organization

The tradition among certain elders and Kindred genealogists of tracking descent and lineage both informs and works against the Morbus. A few members trace lineage and determine intra-bloodline status based on the relative fame or notoriety of sires and grandsires. Some consider the achievements of only their confirmed Morbus forebears worthy of consideration, while others uphold any Mekhet ancestors’ accomplishments. Morbus who manage to keep their membership in this bloodline a secret, and earn status and respect from other Mekhet, earn the same again (and more) from their Morbus peers for their cleverness.  

[bitsie spider]

Our little pets

Ghouls
To the Morbus clan, Ghouls are very important. They thrive on a very specific type of blood, the blood of the diseased, and therefore feel the need to keep those as such close. Since most Morbus clan vampires feel shame and a need to hide their bloodline, the only sort of ghoul they will accept are those that are Vassals or Revenants with diseased blood. They dare not trust independent Ghouls with their secret.

Mechanics
Ghouls are created when a vampire feeds vitae to a living creature. Mechanically, this vitae is treated as a single point - for one lunar month, the ghoul has a point of vampiric blood in his system and acquires all the benefits (and drawbacks) of ghouling. Ghouls can hold multiple blood points in their system, but if they try to hold more than a human capacity, it has unpleasant side effects until the vitae replaces their normal blood. As long as a ghoul has vitae in his system, he remains a ghoul: vitae is lost at the rate of one point per month, and when used to power Disciplines. While a ghoul has blood in his system, he will not age.

Ghouls can learn vampiric Disciplines, but at a much slower rate than vampires. In addition, the maximum level learn-able by a ghoul is a function of their domitor's Generation. Most ghouls cannot learn more than the first or second level of a Discipline. However, ghouls automatically get a dot of Potence for free.

Enough of the benefits, now the drawbacks. Ghouls are prone to frenzy, although not as strongly as a vampire. In addition, they are addicted to vitae - apart from the deleterious effects of the blood bond, Ghouls are subject to horrible side effects when the supply dries up. Without vitae, a ghoul will rapidly age physically to his actual chronological age, and ghouls over a century will crumble to dust quickly.

As Slaves
Ghouls are addicted to blood, and the control of blood is the primary way that ghouls are managed by their domintors - in addition to more traditional techniques like Dominate. The nastiest part of being a ghoul, of course, is that one is a slave to an inhuman monster that treats humans as chesspieces or the occasional light snack.

Factions
Ghouls tend to fall into three major factions: Vassals, who are the stereotypical blood-addicted servant of a vampire; independent ghouls, who eke out an existence trading favors for blood, and revenants, the hereditary ghoul families.  

[bitsie spider]

You know you want to click this


^--- Click ---^

 

[bitsie spider]

All information from:
•http://nwod.org
•http://whitewolf.wikia.com
•http://wiki.white-wolf.com
•http://wiki.white-wolf.com part 2
•Ghouls
•Kine
•


Other Links:
• The Support Group - Recruiting Thread #1


Random Notes:
The following races cannot become vampires:
Ottsels, Banshees, Faelon, Fae'jinn, Simba, and any "Elite" or "Special" races


•Morbus Clan PB Folder
Note: If you would like your kat removed from this just let me know.
This is just to keep all graphics and members in one place so they don't get lost