Your Tzimisce Experiences?

[Nyrufa]

SO, obviously, we all know that the Tzimisce are pretty fucked up due to their whole flesh crafting thing and wanting to achieve their own twisted version of perfection. They make great antagonists, but what about protagonists?

Basically, I want to hear some stories from people who've used the Tzimisce either as PC's or NPC's. What kind of fun / twisted scenes were you or your friends subjected to during their run?

[Chesh]

I haven't written a Tzimisce myself, but my ST has an NPC who's part of an antitribu triad along with a Lasombra and a Kiasyd. When one of the other PCs was Embraced as the Kiasyd's childe, the Tzimisce fleshcrafted him functional legs (he required a wheelchair as a mortal). That was lovely of her.

[Yossarian]

This was for a homebrew setting, but one of my favourite characters ever was a Tzimisce I played for a Dark Ages game. He was a Norwegian monk who'd been Embraced as a cruel experiment when he and his brothers unsuccessfully tried to establish a monastery in Slavic Eastern Europe. He somehow managed to crawl his way back to Oslo, and met a religious Lasombra who became his surrogate sire. He ended up following Road of Night and using Vicissitude as a rather punishment on sinners. The wraiths of his compatriots occasionally haunted him for being the one to escape; his immense survivor's guilt drove him to be a paragon of Lasombra-style Catholicism, partially in penance, and partially our of frustration for being embraced into the "wrong" clan.

[No One of Consequence]

Hmm. There was the Dark Ages/Wolves of the Sea game were I was a Finnish weather wizard. Also the "Pulp Era" game when I was a mad scientist specializing in eugenics. Modern nights, I always seemed to skew toward Bratovitch or Obertus who played heavily into the family stereotype to some degree or another. Though my very first Tzimisce character was, IIRC, a modern day voivode of the getto housing projects.

[bob275]

I had a Tzmiche in a game i was in. He managed to stay hidden for about 10 sessions. Crazy stuff. He flesh crafted himself to have 5 points of appearance and then made everyone as ugly as he could. Unfortunately he did steal my ghoul and flesh crafted it into something so hideous i dare not describe it

[Boneguard]

In one game (Dark Age) I had a Bulgarian Boyar embraced by an Old Clan Tzimisce which had some Koldunic powers. He was quite fun to play, I was really working the Aristocratic angle and he was quite strict on proper decorum.

[SandCarlyle]

In the coming weeks I'll be playing a character I'd written a short fiction about that's a Tzimisce antitribu doctor with Asperger's. He doesn't have the really alien qualities that make Tzimisce disturbing, but his extreme awkwardness combined with obsession with medicine makes him uncomfortable in a more subtle way. This is most obvious in how he views people as subjects, rather than patients, despite trying his best to cling to Humanity. He tries to be a good man, such as operating on the ghouls of friends and allies for relatively low cost, but he also forgets important things, like the necessity of anesthesia.

[monteparnas]

In the coming weeks I'll be playing a character I'd written a short fiction about that's a Tzimisce antitribu doctor with Asperger's. He doesn't have the really alien qualities that make Tzimisce disturbing, but his extreme awkwardness combined with obsession with medicine makes him uncomfortable in a more subtle way. This is most obvious in how he views people as subjects, rather than patients, despite trying his best to cling to Humanity. He tries to be a good man, such as operating on the ghouls of friends and allies for relatively low cost, but he also forgets important things, like the necessity of anesthesia.

I'm not sure of what to think of it, but I can say that I'm really curious. I would love to read this fiction of yours.

My first Sabbat character, and to date one of my favorites, was a XIX century medic. I avoided much of the stereotype on the Tzimisce, and he kept to Humanity in secret for not being really able to adopt another Path. He saw the fleshcrafting style of most of the clan not so much as disturbing, but primarily as a poor work. He leaned toward subtler methods, with minimum effort for maximum effectiveness, mixing fleshcrafting with other medical techniques, and focusing on the scientific approach of studying anatomy. He was not an artist, and for art preferred classic sculpture and painting, done by other people.

You could say this character also was Asperger, but just because I am Asperger, so I never actually achieved to play a character that wasn't an Aspie.

As ST I specially enjoyed giving my touch to two official Tzimisce NPCs, Lambach Ruthven and Danika Ruthven (on separate, non-related, occasions).

[Khanwulf]

In one of the best chronicles (Dark Ages) I've played in the primary antagonist was a mad Tzimisce elder and his brood of mixed nuts. One of the PCs was embraced by this chap, precipitating the rest of the group to transition into the Dark, and for her to escape the Tzimisce. The focus of fleshcrafting was on its disturbing utility: highlights included watching the PC literally wriggle out of her skin to escape her "dad", adventures as a pool of blood, using it to grab and rend, and the like. Another PC learned it from her and took himself well into uncanny valley appearance-ville after some experimentation.

Other NPCs used Vicc to enable flight, fleshcraft a series of extremely tough ghouls, and to disguise and infiltrate.

Good times.

--Khanwulf

[Shawarbaaz]

Tzimisce is the one Clan that is really hard to imagine as modern, though if your character is a territorial stuck-up mofo who is really picky about etiquette and proper behavior it flies in my book

[Nyrufa]

Tzimisce is the one Clan that is really hard to imagine as modern, though if your character is a territorial stuck-up mofo who is really picky about etiquette and proper behavior it flies in my book

I'm pretty sure the vampires in Fright Night sleep in the soil, if you want to take inspiration from that.

[Thoth]

Tzimisce is the one Clan that is really hard to imagine as modern, though if your character is a territorial stuck-up mofo who is really picky about etiquette and proper behavior it flies in my book

I think one of the best behavioral examples we have for a modern take on Tzimisce is Hannibal Lecter from the TV series. His artistic mutilation and display of victims is in line with a lot Tzimisce concepts. Most victims were people who were rude or corrupt, their deaths and displays were public shaming's of the sort that were used by middle ages lords to promote order, and finally vast amounts of what Hannibal does is informed by a very well educated understanding of art and history.

Just imagine dozens if not hundreds of Hannibals all operating at the same time in different cities, all trying to politely out do each other.

[Theodrim]

One of the vampires inhabiting Kronstadt in my TC game is a Szantovich. The party thinks she's a Toreador or a Malkavian, because she's purported to have Presence and Auspex, but on the other hand she's utterly batshit insane and completely harmless to the city's other vampires. It's known to at least one or two of the PC's she used to be the city's Prince (Voivode), but her declining mental health gave Nova cause to oust her in favor of a Ventrue pawn who didn't live long.

She has domain over a brothel within the city, all her whores are beautiful (which the party quickly wrote off as carefully curating ghouls over the course of years, but really it's fleshcrafting), and she's obsessed with...babies. Yes, babies. Any of the very rare times she leaves the brothel, she's always seen with a baby on her teat. Let that sink in a minute.

What the party doesn't know, is she has in her haven dozens of babies under her care, all of which she wet nurses. And all she wants is for her babies to grow up big, strong, and beautiful, and have all the good things in life on which she loses out due to being a vampire. And, when they don't grow up (they never seem to, and she doesn't understand why) it makes her very...very...angry, and the Beast takes over. So, she has to get all new babies to care for and love, but at least she has a whole brothel full of potential mothers under a constant cycle of entrancement and the blood oath!

Reality is, decades prior she pissed off Ilias cel Frumos by fucking around with his pagan flock, and he put the good old-fashioned koldunic whammy on her. Kupala got its claws in her, and has been driving her insane ever since (as Kupala do). Radu realized having a nutso Tzimisce in the Siebenburgen is a Really Bad Idea, so he actually engineered her ouster with Nova (she dicked him over in the end by installing a Ventrue, and Radu arranged for their considerably more-violent ouster in turn). I figure come around 1314 if this NPC is still alive, due to the geomantic web being completed she gets loose of Kupala's influence, and the party then has to contend with a very angry, very vengeful, Szantovich in their city.

[Beriorn]

The last Tzimisce I played always carried a couple of stakes, just in case. Whenever our pack had to stay somewhere he would always present the stakes to their host, requesting that if they violated the sanctity of the rules of hospitality they would be staked with those stakes and be left out for the sun. Upon their departure he would receive them back to be presented to the next host.

[Ana Mizuki]

My VtM experiences are fairly limited, but I have few Tzimisce characters for art purposes. Quillaq the Carver is an fairly low Generation Cardinal of Sabbat, originally from Greenland. He is monstrous and fairly inhuman, but he also isn't a transhumanist. Qui believes that nature all ready has created perfection and it is for Tzimisce to find and mimic such greatness. Typically looks like a hairless seal-headed long clawed -thing-, though he has other forms. Has ghouled sled dogs, hasn't fleshcrafted them.