(Crúac •, Auspex ••, Kinnaree) In their role as hunters who hide among their prey, Kinnaree use this Devotion to pinpoint a demon at the center of its network. With a taste of a mortal’s blood, the Kinnaree are able to see if that mortal is under su-pernatural influence.
Cost: —
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Auspex Action: Instant
With success, the player receives a simple “yes” or “no” to indicate blood addiction, Dominate, Majesty, possession, or even more exotic influences such as being ensorcelled or actively influenced by magic. With an exceptional success, the Kinnaree is able to get a small glimpse of the demon behind the influence, and enjoys a bonus of two dice to rolls relating to identification of that demon.
This Devotion costs nine experience points to learn.
The path to Nibbana, or Enlightenment, is paved with far more steps than meditation and denial.
It is more complicated than putting on a robe and feeding less often than Kindred would like. It is largely about making merit, making right choices and leading the type of unlife a vampire’s Dharma demands. No lineage of Kindred understands this better than the Mayarap, descendants of the Naga King forever bound to pay for his deeds, and indeed, the deeds of
Weakness: As with their parent clan, the Mayarap suffer from a quality of ‘otherness’
that is so palpable that they have great difficulty
dealing with social situations (see p. 111 of Vampire:
The Requiem).
However, unlike the Nosferatu, it is no simple night-marish monstrosity that sets them apart. Perhaps it is the constant restraint, their detachment from desire, or payment for their predecessor’s sins, but the Mayarap all come across as cold and heartless — even for one of the Kindred. While they are able to superficially empathize, they are not able to express any understanding in the feelings of others. At first blush they appear aloof, deeper interaction and they seem to be sociopaths.
Indeed, even their Beasts seem different. The Mayarap are incapable of feeling the deep anger common to Kin-dred; in fact, when anger frenzy is provoked the Mayarap instead enters fear frenzy with all the negative effects that follow. Suffice to say, the Mayarap cannot ride the wave of frenzy.
History and Culture: After Asira, the Naga King, took up robes and became the Naga Monk, he fell into a deep meditative state, only stirring to dictate thoughts from his internal study to his closest and most devoted childer.
While much of Asira’s Dharma was already determined by the time he converted, his childe Suna was not so
restricted and was able to hone his blood to what he considered highly spiritual ends.
Suna spent 20 years walking the woods of Thailand (then still called Sukhothai), contemplating his sire’s words and the secondhand lessons he’d heard of the Mae Ji. He slept in the soil, always under fig trees, and battled with his Beast and many demons in the woods. At the end of his danger-ous walking meditation, he saw a change in himself he could not fathom. Gone were the ravages of his demonic appearance and the mortals’ wise fear of him. Gone too was the bubbling rage that had under-lain most of his unlife. Once changed, he returned to the Wat Ning to share all that he had learned and all the growth that he had accomplished.
Asira, his sire, nodded almost sadly as he listened to what Suna had to say. It was then that Suna noticed that his sire’s face was still the terrible visage it had been in his old unlife. He saw that for all his time in contemplation and skillful thought, Asira’s Beast still sat close and nearly in control of his every action.
Horrified, Suna asked his sire, “I do not understand. I practiced the Eightfold Path that you have taught me. I have followed all the precepts as you perform them and I would not know meditation except that you showed it to me. Why is it then that I have changed so much and you remain the same?”
Asira thought on this at his childe’s side for three nights before he spoke with a forked tongue. He answered: “I have a great debt to the world in my karma, my childe.
The crimes I have committed are many and perverse over hundreds of years. It might be that one lifetime of following the right path and doing the right thing is not enough. Perhaps a thousand lifetimes would be required for me to reach Nibbana. Perhaps a thousand family members making merit in my name would be enough for me to reach Nibbana. I do not worry, though. This, too, is impermanent.”
M ayarap
Forget the words of your priests. Forget the love of your mother. Forget the feel of your sire. Even these things are an illusion. Now, stop crying and sweep up what’s left of your leg.
Suna marveled to see his sire content with his fate of suffering, and wondered at the paradox of peace found in affliction. He meditated on this paradox for a month before deciding that it was a koan, a problem without a logical answer. Knowing this, he meditated further, and his intuition finally answered the puzzle.
In order for the Naga Monk to continue on in his path he needed a great many others seeking Nibbana to share their merit with him. Sharing merit makes merit, and so by suffering, Asira was able to offer many others the chance to make more merit, which was itself a merit-making act.
With this flash of insight, Suna understood his Dharma and how it tied into Asira’s. From that night on, Suna spent his unlife turning over rocks and seeking in gutters the lowest of the low — murderers, pimps and drug addicts, crooked politicians and actresses so vain that they believed their own lies. Suna, his childer, and his childer’s childer sought the most despicable among the mortal world, the people so very lost in illusion and ego that they did not even realize they were suffering. People whose crimes were so great a hundred lives serving under the Mae Ji herself would not grant them peace.
Once found, Suna and his growing family would strip them of mortal ties, Embrace them, and set them back on the path to right thought and right deed.
Sometimes new Mayarap want neither enlighten-ment nor all the responsibility that comes with it.
Sometimes, newcomers simply aren’t cut out for the monastic unlife among the Sakadagami. Sometimes they resist, and sometimes their souls are just too dark to be able to change. At its most mild, resistance is met with the patience of the Bodhisattva. Time and kindness (a merit in itself) go a long way with most of the saddest dredges. In more extreme cases, older and more experienced members of the line are called in to inflict real and legitimate cruelty on the neonate, with acceptance of her role as the only out. (The Mayarap do not consider this a violation of free will because the neonate is still making a choice. The most important choices tend to be the hardest ones.)
At its worst, usually only a problem among converts to the line or late bloomers, those who are far too close to their final frenzy or utterly unrepentant monsters, the only solution is a tragic one. Not often, but when it is right to do so, the line will gather at a private temple deep in the woods, a Wat with no name built on the site where Suna first saw the change in himself. Once there, they take the irredeemable to a pit seven meters by seven meters by seven meters. He is asked once more if he would like to enter the stream and one night reach Nibbana. If he
once more refuses or proves false, he is dropped down into the pit, shackled and unable to escape. The pit is covered with a grating of iron locked to the floor. The Mayarap say prayers and blessings to the unfortunate and leave him to his fate.
The roof of the temple there has a hole in it just large enough to fill the pit with sunlight not long after dawn.
One elder, far along in his understanding of the Treasure of Anicca, stays behind in the room for as long as he can in order to observe the unfortunate’s Final Death. It is thought that at worst, the creature will reincarnate in Hell where he can fulfill his Dharma in another way.
In addition to the normal duties of all ordained, the Mayarap are expected to make as much merit as possible so that it may all be shared with their greatest ancestor, the Naga Monk. Great acts of charity, teaching Dharma, and providing blood for other Ordained is expected to such extremes that some find it impossible to satisfy the needs of others and maintain themselves and their own
contemplation and meditation. Without the rigors of meditation and training, they are more likely to slip up and fall to their Beasts. Falling to the Beast is failure, and all members of the line know exactly where failures end up.
Reputation: Those who choose to take refuge and join the temple find they are often held in high regard by the rest of the Sakadagami for their noble Embrace, but they are also tested the most vigorously in all aspects of their philosophy, duty and action. The stakes are higher for the Coiled Snakes and failure ends in a pit full of sunlight. Success, if such a thing is possible, ends in a pyre of flames, and so to an outsider, it may seem like a lose/lose situation. The faithful Mayarap rarely see it as such, and believe that the unfaithful rarely see anything for what it truly is.
In fact, since the Sakadagami and even the laity outside of the temples never truly see a Mayarap in a state of
gracelessness, they are largely attributed with a level of supernatural influence they simply do not have. In more rural temples, they are given saint-like status, and some few do take advantage and cultivate that reputation.
To those heathens and nonbelievers, the Acolytes, the Mayarap are often considered “the problem” as it was their ancestor’s dogma that drove them underground.
Laity who have had their less-than-enlightened endeavors interrupted or stopped by these do-gooders tend to seek first to discredit them, then to destroy them. The pressures to the Mayarap are endless.
Concepts: Politically driven priest, sadistic teacher, hippy guru, former drug addict, farmer-cum-defender,
‘reformed’ Acolyte, doomed perfectionist, serial killer,
‘fair-minded’ blood merchant, guilt-ridden son
Bhumisparsa
When the Buddha was tormented by all the demons of Evil that Mara had at his disposal, the Shinning One remained calm and in meditation. He
per-formed the Bhumisparsa Mudra, and called the earth goddess to his aid. Because of his good life, she rose from the earth and wrung the water from her hair, which created a tide that drowned all the demons so that the Buddha was safe.
The Mayarap are not as blessed and not as good as the Great One, but they can still feel the earth’s protection through their blood. It is traditional for a Coiled Snake to point one hand at the ground or even touch it while she is under attack and seeking protection.
Bhumisparsa has an inherent limitation. During any night when the Mayarap has gained sustenance from an unwilling vessel, Bhumisparsa refuses to function.
Cost: 1 Vitae per scene
Dice Pool: Bhumisparsa is unlike many Disciplines in that it is not actively rolled. Each dot of Bhumisparsa subtracts one die from all incoming attacks directed at the character, so long as the character is aware of them. Against damage that does not stem from a direct attack (such as a car crash), the vampire enjoys the benefits of armor equal to his dots in Bhumisparsa. This Disci-pline does not protect against the legendary weaknesses of Kindred — fire or sunlight.
Once activated, the effects of the Discipline last for one scene.
Action: Reflexive
Not all Kindred relish the endless hunger and violence the Embrace leaves in its wake. Many seek loopholes in the undead condition, whether through divine intervention or infernal bargaining. Before the teachings of Dracula and the Ordo Dracul, no group of Kindred worked together to seek an end to their suffering from within, through thought and experience, or so Western undead culture would have it.
In this belief, though, Western Kindred are wrong. Within the insular sect of Thai Kindred lays a somewhat older philosophical practice that, an aspirant would hope, is able to free them from the toils of Kindred desire. Deep in the sect’s stories and practices may even be the deepest roots of the much younger Ordo Dracul.