Gratiano’s perceived generation

[glamourweaver]

So I know in reality [Lasombra] wasn’t diablerized, as his soul escaped the destruction of his body and entered the Abyss. But Kindred society believes Gratiano ate him, right? And Gratiano was embraced as 4th Gen. So shouldn’t vampiric society believe Gratiano should be a 3rd Gen pseudo-Antedeluvian ala Tremere and Augustus Giovanni?

Seems like the easiest fix would be if Gratiano was a higher Gen Anarch than that and so while’s it’s believed he was the member of the gang eating [Lasombra] who got the soul, it makes sense it didn’t lower him all the way to third himself.

[monteparnas]

It is canon that he didn’t successfully diablerize Lasombra, as we have his stats and he is still 4th Gen.

I may be wrong, but IIRC his sheet came with the caveat that he may stronger and 3rd gen, that being just what he shows.

[glamourweaver]

One thing I see here is that there are some confusion on what is strictly canon or not.

Strictly speaking, nothing was confirmed about [Lasombra] as canon (it is in the part of Gehenna about what they planned, but didn't really committed to canon yet), so Gratiano may in fact have diablerized [Lasombra], and Diablerie may have no further effect.

The only strict rules about Diablerie is to be addictive and lower Generation in 1. The end. Everything else is optional and possibly unreliable, even long term problems with the personality of the victim in your mind. In fact, while we can usually assume that this is a fact, Diablerie does not necessarily has anything to do with souls.

From the in-setting perspective those are all open questions. Even vampires with a lot of experience with Diablerie can't say for sure how a post-Diablerie vampire should look like, because so many factors are at play, that is: the result is inconsistent and ST-dependent. And very few vampires even have enough of a close contact with Gratiano to say anything for sure.

In the end, not everyone believes Gratiano actually did it, and it is entirely possible that he did either way. Who's to say there even was a lot of a personality or soul in [Lasombra] to begin with when Gratiano drank it? Maybe the only mental impression he got was that "Transcending" through the Abyss was bad for your mental health and decided to stay away from this shit.

Just to be clear, this is not my personal canon, but it certainly is a possibility, and the characters in the game know it.

It is canon that he didn’t successfully diablerize Lasombra, as we have his stats and he is still 4th Gen.

[monteparnas]

So I know in reality [Lasombra] wasn’t diablerized, as his soul escaped the destruction of his body and entered the Abyss. But Kindred society believes Gratiano ate him, right? And Gratiano was embraced as 4th Gen. So shouldn’t vampiric society believe Gratiano should be a 3rd Gen pseudo-Antedeluvian ala Tremere and Augustus Giovanni?

One thing I see here is that there are some confusion on what is strictly canon or not.

Strictly speaking, nothing was confirmed about [Lasombra] as canon (it is in the part of Gehenna about what they planned, but didn't really committed to canon yet), so Gratiano may in fact have diablerized [Lasombra], and Diablerie may have no further effect.

The only strict rules about Diablerie is to be addictive and lower Generation in 1. The end. Everything else is optional and possibly unreliable, even long term problems with the personality of the victim in your mind. In fact, while we can usually assume that this is a fact, Diablerie does not necessarily has anything to do with souls.

From the in-setting perspective those are all open questions. Even vampires with a lot of experience with Diablerie can't say for sure how a post-Diablerie vampire should look like, because so many factors are at play, that is: the result is inconsistent and ST-dependent. And very few vampires even have enough of a close contact with Gratiano to say anything for sure.

In the end, not everyone believes Gratiano actually did it, and it is entirely possible that he did either way. Who's to say there even was a lot of a personality or soul in [Lasombra] to begin with when Gratiano drank it? Maybe the only mental impression he got was that "Transcending" through the Abyss was bad for your mental health and decided to stay away from this shit.

Just to be clear, this is not my personal canon, but it certainly is a possibility, and the characters in the game know it.

[Trollroot]

To my mind, Gratiano is believed to have drunk the soul of the founder.

It is never good to be known to be strong blood in an inexperienced vessel. He is very, very interesting to an absolutely horrifying demographic. Many of the oldest of the Fourth Generation would like to elevate themselves to third, and the remnant of the remnants of the original Antediluvian two diableries removed is going to be less difficult than if the vitae was taken straight from the source. So the sharks are circling.

Lamdiel. Ur-Shulgi. Shaitan. Baba Yaga. Kheminitri. Lazarus. Sobek. Elimelech. And more. Of course, the one thing they can all agree on is that they do not want anyone besides themselves to have Gratianos blood, so everytime one of them seem to get close, the others cooperate to fuck it up.

So Gratiano bimbles obliviously through his unlfe, the spoiled manchild of the Sabbat, strange happenings abounding around him to the point where he thinks its normal.

On the diablerie itself, I think it was intended that something went wrong for Lasombra. I think they kind of shifted the intentions there around V20.

In my headcanon:

Lasombra planned Gratianos betrayal, to go undercover or to go incorporeal into the Abyss. But a confounding factor upset his plans.

Goratrix.

He had means, motive, opportunity and it was his established modus operandi. On means, before the diablerie of Saulot, the Tremere researched as much as they could about antediluvians and their defenses before settling on Saulot. They would have had a lot of information on the defenses of one of the most visible Antediluvians. Far more than Gratiano. Goratrix had the thaumaturgy and rites developed for the act. And he had the generation and dominate to cloud the minds, while still being new enough to slip up on the dates. Uniquely, he had experience. It was not his first strike against an Antediluvian. That may have been important in enlisting others.

On motive, when he fell out with Tremere himself, he fled in terror. Gaining power equal to Tremere, doing a risky, spectacular coup was his character. And diablerie was an established solution for him. The actual dates do not line up precisely, but the dating of these events are so confused anyway.

Then he sired House Goratrix, the Tremere Antitribu and surrounded himself with the Sabbat. Auspex, dominate and thaumaturgy, let him subtly manipulate events. The Sabbat were always the cloak of an Antediluvian, the parasite coiling in the heart of their sect. Unlike the Camarilla they were the direct pawns of a member of the third generation.

[Gangrel44]

In the words of Montano,

"Gratiano boasts of his strength, but if he could do what the founder did, he would, and he does not."

That's because Gratiano's talking out of both sides of his fanged mouth...

[glamourweaver]

My handling on Augustus and the ghost of Cappadocius is that Augustus did complete the diablerie and lower his Gen in full, but Cappadocius had a backup plan and through his influence from within Augustus completed a work of necromancy he had set up in advance as an escape plan if his original plan failed, that eventually transferred his soul back out again to escape into the Underworld. So Augustus’ secret is he dropped back to fourth gen after he had already created the 4th gen Giovanni to propagate the Clan further, and so he’s chasing Cappadocius’ wraith in the underworld while his body is in torpor to get “his” full power back.

[Mister_Dunpeal]

Diablerie as depicted can be kinda weird sometimes when it comes to drop in generation or gaining power. I mean we know incomplete Diablerie is a thing (you can gain power from draining the vitae even if you don't absorb the soul - Augustus Giovanni is proof of that) and you have stuff like 'Higher generation vampire drinks blood of lower generation vampire' and also gaining a decrease in generation (like in Giovanni Chronicles 3)

It does seem rather 'in character' that no matter what Gratiano may claim or others perceive he still ends up failing to achieve that goal and be far less than he set out to be... and enough people who really know him likely realize that as noted previously in the thread. At the same time it doesn't mean he *didn't* gain power from the process, either. Just not necessarily enough to make a major difference compared to any other low-generation vampire.

[CTPhipps]

It's because of this contradiction that I made Gratiano claim that he destroyed Lasombra by rending his body rather than diablerie.

Either that or having his entire coven (what would later be called a pack) drink with him.

[Amethyst]

Thanks guys.

[Black Fox]

I heard a rumor on the Internet about something called the Ritual of the Bitter Rose that a group of Kindred to share in one Diablerie. Could that have been what happened to Lasombra?

The Ritual of the Bitter Rose was introduced in the book Diablerie: Mexico. It was specifically stated that it was discovered by a group of Tremere in the late 19th century. It was supposed to be kept secret, but word got out, and the Camarilla forced the Tremere to destroy all records of its existence and research. Still information on the ritual somehow escaped, and the book says that fewer than a dozen vampires worldwide knows this forbidden secret. Part of the research needed to create the ritual possibly involved the Codex of the Damned, the thaumaturgical research of the Wanderer in Mesoamerica.

The real reason for its existence, of course, is that if you are going to have an adventure about diablerie for a coterie, you don't want the PCs fighting over which one, and only one, gets to benefit. Hence the adventure allows the PCs to discover how to recreate the ritual so all could benefit.

So as written, the Ritual of the Bitter Rose could not be used by Gratiano because his diablerie predates the ritual by half a millennium.

[glamourweaver]

I heard a rumor on the Internet about something called the Ritual of the Bitter Rose that a group of Kindred to share in one Diablerie. Could that have been what happened to Lasombra?

Canonically no, because actually [Lasombra]’s soul escaped into the Abyss, but that is an interesting idea as to what Kindred society THINK happened!

[Amethyst]

I heard a rumor on the Internet about something called the Ritual of the Bitter Rose that a group of Kindred to share in one Diablerie. Could that have been what happened to Lasombra?

[Haquim]

Well with Ilyes agreed things are up in the air because nothing necessarily happened in a linear order for him. It is in fact plausible that Troile diablerized Ilyes in the First City, survived the flood and founded Clan Brujah after, and Ilyes just time traveled from before his diablerie to a later point to create the “True Brujah” (making the True Brujah younger than the Brujah but still created by the site that Troile diablerized).

But anyone else, I stand by if they died in the First City they were never an Antedeluvians in the first place since they didn’t survive the flood and create the 4th Gen after.

Canonical lore states that the first city ended with the flood. The second city is when the antediluvians killed their sires, were cursed by Caine and turned on each other. If you merge this lore with DtF lore things become more complex

[glamourweaver]

This really depends. In Gehenna one of the scenarios has Ilyes (Brujah) travel in time from 2000s earth right from the second city. Generally speaking the fates and actions of the Brujah, Ventrue and Toreador antes were less developed than tthose of their fellow 3rd gens

Well with Ilyes agreed things are up in the air because nothing necessarily happened in a linear order for him. It is in fact plausible that Troile diablerized Ilyes in the First City, survived the flood and founded Clan Brujah after, and Ilyes just time traveled from before his diablerie to a later point to create the “True Brujah” (making the True Brujah younger than the Brujah but still created by the site that Troile diablerized).

But anyone else, I stand by if they died in the First City they were never an Antedeluvians in the first place since they didn’t survive the flood and create the 4th Gen after.