Ghede is often portrayed wearing dark sunglasses with one eye out, to symbolize his power in the worlds of the seen and the unseen. During the initiation to become a member of the bloodline, the initiate’s eye is removed from the socket, and the empty hole is filled with the magic of Ghede during possession. The Eye of Ghede looks like a constantly swirling, white mist contained within the Gatekeeper’s eye-socket. Once the “eye” is in place, the new Gatekeeper is able to see, hear and speak with ghosts (but not spirits). Additionally, the Apollinaire can detect their unseen presence, even if they are hiding or have chosen not to reveal themselves.
Finding an unseen ghost is a contested action, pitting the vampire’s Wits + Composure against the ghost’s Finesse + Resistance.
Carrefour
Passed down throughout generations of Gatekeepers, the Discipline of Carrefour grants Kindred the powers of Ghede, the loa of the dead and master of gateways.
As part of the bloodline’s bargain with the loa,
Apol-linaire are granted the ability to converse with the dead, and create and manipulate doorways between life and death, or the fabric of space itself. The Carrefour Dis-cipline represents the magic of Ghede, worked through the Beast of Kindred. Most Gatekeepers practice the Discipline subtly, covering their tracks as they work. All are encouraged to follow the philosophy, “If you open a door, close it behind you, because you never know who or what will come through next.”
On the night of Ghede’s absence, all Carrefour rolls receive a +3 bonus modifier.
• Govi Trap
According to Vodoun tradition, a govi is a small, earthen bottle used to trap a ghost. In modern nights, any con-tainer with a lid may be used (an empty peanut butter jar, medicine bottle, or plastic Tupperware container may serve as a govi). A Gatekeeper can compel a ghost to enter and remain within a govi until such time as it is released.
Cost: —
Dice Pool: Wits + Persuasion + Carrefour versus Finesse + Resistance
Action: Instant and contested
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The attempt fails. Further uses of Govi Trap incur a -1 penalty for the remainder of the scene.
Failure: The attempt fails.
Success: The character succeeds in compelling a specific ghost within range of sight to enter the govi (which may be any small container with a lid), trapping it within. The govi will hold the ghost for a number of hours equal to the Gatekeeper’s dots in Carrefour. If the lid is removed, or the container is broken, the ghost may flee.
Exceptional Success: The attempt succeeds, and the ghost is so intimidated by the Gatekeeper’s power that it agrees to answer one question absolutely honestly, to the best of its knowledge.
Suggested Modifiers Modifier Situation
+2 Discipline is activated is a cemetery or other location related to death.
+1 The character practices Vodoun, and his patron loa is Ghede.
•• Skeleton Key
Gatekeepers of Ghede are able to open any door, despite locks, security systems or barricades. Conversely, they may use the same Discipline power to shut a door, locking it
with magic so powerful that nothing short of destroying the door (or using Skeleton Key upon the door again) will open it.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Presence + Larceny + Carrefour Action: Instant
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The attempt fails. Further uses of Skele-ton Key incur a -1 penalty for the remainder of the scene.
Failure: The attempt fails.
Success: The character can open or shut one door. If, while using Skeleton Key, the character opens a door protected by an alarm, the alarm does not sound, nor is any equipment connected to the door damaged. If the door is barricaded in any other way, the obstructions immediately fall to the side, allowing complete access to the vampire. If a character chooses to close a door, the door cannot be opened again unless the door itself is destroyed, or Skeleton Key is used upon it again. If the character wishes, he may spend an additional point of Vitae so that no other Gatekeeper but himself may open the door again using Skeleton Key.
Exceptional Success: The Apollinaire may name one person who can or cannot use the door, leaving it locked or unlocked to everyone else. This does not prevent the door being opened by Skeleton Key, however, it just allows the vampire to grant more specific access.
Suggested Modifiers Modifier Situation
+1 The character practices Vodoun, and his patron loa is Ghede.
••• Vévé Passageway
Using white chalk, a Gatekeeper can draw the image of a door upon a wall, and instantly create a passageway through any barrier to the nearest room or empty space beyond it.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Wits + Craft + Carrefour Action: Instant
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The door opens, but closes in a few seconds, rather than at the end of the scene. If the vampire is crossing through when this happens, the player rolls Dex-terity + Athletics reflexively. If this roll fails, the character suffers seven points of lethal damage as the wall solidifies around her. The character can attempt to use Skeleton Key to get out (short of destroying the wall, this is in fact her only hope), but the attempt suffers a -3 modifier.
Failure: The attempt fails, and the chalk drawing re-mains upon the wall.
Success: The chalk door becomes a real door that opens to the nearest room or empty space (up to a distance of one mile in the direction directly behind the symbolic drawing). If there is no open space behind the drawn door, a real door still materializes, but it opens to the wall behind it, and goes nowhere (unless Shift Threshold is subsequently performed upon it). The door may be opened and closed once, after which the door vanishes.
Otherwise, it remains for a number of hours equal to the successes rolled, after which it dissolves. Shift Threshold may be used upon a Vévé Passageway, but the door always disappears after it is closed or its dura-tion has expired, and may therefore not become a part of the Eternal Crossroads.
Exceptional Success: Other than the extra time gained, extra successes have no effect.
Suggested Modifiers Modifier Situation
+1 The character practices Vodoun, and his patron loa is Ghede.
•••• Open Bayé
Members of Apollinaire’s bloodline can create a gateway, known as a bayé, to and from the world of the dead, allow-ing traffic in either direction. Anyone who steps through a bayé is transplanted into Twilight. While in Twilight, they can touch ghosts, pick up ghostly objects or read tomes hidden there. They can also engage in physical or magical combat with ghosts, damaging their Corpus.
Conversely, wrathful shades might physically lash out at visitors, causing them harm.
Cost: —
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Carrefour Action: Instant
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The gateway opens, but it doesn’t lead to Twilight. The player rolls the vampire’s Wits + Compo-sure as a reflexive action. If the roll succeeds, the vampire realizes what has happened and stops before entering the gate (which leads to somewhere else — the Underworld, perhaps, or even to Hell). The gateway remains open until dawn, however, and if the vampire doesn’t watch it carefully, something could escape. Ghede would certainly be displeased if this were to happen.
Failure: The attempt fails.
Success: The attempt succeeds, and the character opens a gateway to Twilight. One vampire of Size 5 or less can
pass through the bayé per turn (larger Kindred can spend two turns squeezing through). Each success allows the Gatekeeper to widen the gate so that one additional vam-pire can pass through per turn. Only vamvam-pires may pass through a bayé opened by an Apollinaire, and the gateway cannot be moved. It is impossible to open a Gateway from within Twilight using Open Bayé, making it difficult to return to the material world should a vampire linger too long in Twilight. While there, vampires are only able to feed upon each other, and sunlight is just as dangerous within Twilight as it is in the material world.
Exceptional Success: Extra successes allow for larger gates, but confer no other benefit.
Suggested Modifiers Modifier Situation
+2 Discipline is activated is a cemetery or other location related to death.
+1 The character practices Vodoun, and his patron loa is Ghede.
••••• Shift Threshold
The Apollinaire bloodline has the ability to open any door to any other, linking the two doors together through space, no matter where they both reside. A Gatekeeper may, for example, link a closet door in New York to the door of a flat in London. When the vampire passes through the door in New York, he ends up in the London flat. Gatekeepers have scattered hundreds of these doors across the globe, forming an intricate, secret network across the fabric of space known as the Eternal Crossroads.
The Eternal Crossroads are available for any vampire to use, provided she knows where to look and has been taught the proper way to open the door. A small number of Gatekeepers have taken up the duty of maintaining the Eternal Crossroads, mapping its intricate and ever-shifting passageways, and locking doors (often using Skeleton Key to prevent those outside the bloodline from gaining ac-cess) that have been left ajar to prevent the unaware from stumbling through. Maps of the Eternal Crossroads are available for purchase, at a high price, although they are rarely accurate for long, as old passageways are destroyed and new ones are constantly added.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Occult + Carrefour Action: Instant
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The Gatekeeper creates a connection to a random door, rather than to the intended door.
Failure: The attempt fails.
Success: The Gatekeeper links two doors together creating a passageway in space from one to the other.
The vampire may only create a connection to a door that he has seen and can clearly visualize, and may not link a door to another that is already a part of the Eternal Crossroads. The link exists for a number of hours equal to the successes rolled, unless the player spends an extra Vitae for the character to mark the door with his blood.
If an Apollinaire marks the door, the passageway be-comes a part of the Eternal Crossroads, and the link lasts until one (or both) of the doors is physically destroyed.
While any vampire can cross through a passageway formed using Shift Threshold, only an Apollinaire can see the mark upon a door designating it as a gateway of the Eternal Crossroads.
When a Gatekeeper creates a door to the Eternal Cross-roads, he also invents a “key,” a special way of accessing the door to cause it to open to the linked destination,
rather than to wherever it would usually lead. This “key”
is usually a simple ritual: a special knock, a symbol to be drawn on the door or a quick phrase. An Apollinaire who forgets which key goes to which door might be in for embarrassment (at least), but nothing stops the character from using the same key for multiple doors. Then all he has to do is remember where each of the doors goes.
Exceptional Success: The vampire can make the door part of the Eternal Crossroads without further expen-diture. All Carrefour rolls for the next hour gain a +1, as Ghede looks upon the intricacy of the Crossroads with pleasure.
Suggested Modifiers Modifier Situation
+2 The vampire is attempting to connect to a door in his haven, or another location with which he is intimately familiar.
+1 The character practices Vodoun, and his patron loa is Ghede.
Those of Les Gens Libres bloodline believe in freedom above all else. Members of the bloodline are Embraced from those who were subject to a cruel or unjust exercise of authority or power. Among their ranks might be a former slave, an ex-criminal, a pris-oner of war, a man who has suffered a life of poverty in the hands of a corrupt govern-ment, or a battered woman trapped in an abusive relationship. In death, those chosen to become a part of Les Gens Libres finally find freedom. The Gens Libres are a rebellious lot, and they revel in their vampiric powers, seeing their abilities as tools that can be utilized to turn the tables on their oppressors and liberate those who are still oppressed.
Members of the Gens Libres bloodline typically belong to no covenant, finding the very notion of an organized hierarchy oppressive. They operate independently of established systems, sometimes alone, but more often in groups, to further their cause. Les Gens Libres are vigilante freedom fighters — self-proclaimed defenders of those who are oppressed by authority. To Les Gens Libres, the world quivers in anticipation each night, waiting for revolution.
Parent Clan: Gangrel
Bloodline Disciplines: Obfuscate, Animalism, Resil-ience, Celerity
Nickname: Freedmen
Weakness: Members of the Gens Libres bloodline possess the weakness of their parent clan (see p. 107 of Vampire: The Requiem).
Additionally, Les Gens Libres are incapable of forming a blood bond, and vampires who drink the blood of a Freedman are never subject to the Vinculum. This suits members of the bloodline perfectly well, however, as the majority of Freedmen view the Vinculum as simply an-other unjust form of slavery. Members of the bloodline believe that this weakness is not a detriment at all; rather, it is a proudly-worn badge of their continued commitment to the proliferation of Freedom.
History and Culture: Bloodline historians have never been able to pinpoint who exactly was the founder of
the bloodline, but it is widely believed that the line is relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. The bloodline clearly originated in Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti), sometime shortly before or during the Haitian Revolution at the end of the 18th century. Originally, members of the bloodline were Kindred turned from Haitian slaves, still burning with unforgotten hatred remaining from their mortal lives held in bondage. As the years passed, the bloodline grew to encompass a much wider range of cultural backgrounds — any of those among the masses who have been op-pressed, and who believe in freedom above all else. Freedmen often choose to belong to no covenant, wishing instead to devote themselves utterly to their cause.
With the European tradition no longer threatened by the blasphemous practices of the Kindred of the first wave, there was very little left to do in Saint Domingue but systematically destroy those who remained. According to most records, that is precisely what happened.
But the truth is far more sinister where Les Gens Libres are concerned. Rather than kill the remaining Kindred slaves, the elders of the second wave corralled those who remained and developed a means of tracking their blood and the blood of any childe they sired. They bred out the Gangrel’s troublesome tendency to grow horrific claws, and instead they purposefully developed in the line an affinity for staying hidden — at least, from anyone who didn’t know how to find them. After the bloodline ce-mented itself, the founders of Les Gens Libres bloodline were set loose in the world to multiply. The elders of the second wave did this so that a new, relatively weak bloodline could serve as a food source for vampires who had grown too powerful to sustain themselves on human blood. Even tonight, certain vampires know how to use the tracking method devised by the Kindred of the second wave. The information on how to find Kindred of the Gens Libres bloodline can be bought for a high price by those influential enough to acquire it. The unpleasant truth of the Freedmen’s origins has, thus far, not come to light — or at least, no Freedmen still extant seem to know this truth.