The Kindred Curse

[Prometheas]

Mage's think that, but it's not actually how vampires work (a vampire that doesn't drink blood for too long doesn't die).

And can we acknowledge that a "cure" for vampirism that in short order kills the subject anyway isn't really a cure? Because really, I have no idea what your point even is now. "There are other ways, but they all suck and don't really do the job" seems a very weird position.

Not necessarily. You can survive pattern bleed by becoming a thaumivore and waiting for the bleed to heal, similar to what happens with mages who try to give themselves easy magic or try to brute-force raise their attributes with magic.

The issue comes with getting a steady supply of Quintessence, so the new human-to-be is stuck under intensive care in the mage's paradigm equivalent to a medical ward until they fully heal.

[Heavy Arms]

They never "heal" they just keep needing a constant supply of quintessence for the rest of their now mortal life. So the vampire traded a curse for being at the mercy of a mage and doesn't actually get anything out of it.

[Prometheas]

They never "heal" they just keep needing a constant supply of quintessence for the rest of their now mortal life. So the vampire traded a curse for being at the mercy of a mage and doesn't actually get anything out of it.

There are rules for healing pattern bleed. For example, pattern bleed caused by permanently raising attributes with magic is healed by paying half that attribute increase's normal cost in XP(which is dumb and absolutely breaks game balance because it basically lets Mages increase their attributes at half cost and without caps, but I don't know what the writers were thinking when they made that rules.)

The former vampire isn't so much stuck that way forever as they are stuck like that for the length of time it would take to recover from a major invasive surgery.

[Heavy Arms]

That only applies to Pattern Bleed that is from something you can work to change your Pattern to meet. The other option is to have the spell lapse or be undone.

[Prometheas]

That only applies to Pattern Bleed that is from something you can work to change your Pattern to meet. The other option is to have the spell lapse or be undone.

And people can't change their pattern to meet "being human" through natural causes, static magic, or treatments administered by a life mage? I find that hard to believe considering spirits, bygons, Bete, fae, and even ghosts have examples where they've done the same without consequence.

Would it just be better to kill the vampire in a ritual so that they come back as a wraith and then resurrect them from there?

[Heavy Arms]

As I believe I said before... mages have different considerations than other supernaturals. Other supernaturals don't deal with Paradox no matter how much mages theorize about how this and that effect is really some sort of minor form of it.

There is no "natural" path for a vampire to become a human. If there was, this would all be very different (including needing mages to do anything in the first place). Mages can endure Pattern Bleed and raise their Attributes because raising Attributes is something there's a natural path towards doing. Giving yourself Strength 6 with magic though (or 7 if you have the right Merit) can't remove things like Pattern Bleed just by spending XP because mages (at least until [pick an edition's rules about mages increasing their Attribute cap above 5]) can't spend XP to raise their Attributes to that level.

All of this is why curing vampirism is a much bigger deal than you seem to think it is (even if perhaps not as big of a deal as some posters have proposed, and even the game designers might have been heavy handed with in Rev.). You're not just making a dead body alive again, you're completely rewriting the vampire's Pattern into something different.

Would it be better to just kill them? That's a moral/ethical question. Practically? Mages can't really force someone that's dying to become a wraith (though they might be able to influence it) and there's all sorts of questions about the vampire's "soul" to address before trying something like reincarnating them. Resurrection isn't exactly easy in the system either.

[Prometheas]

As I believe I said before... mages have different considerations than other supernaturals. Other supernaturals don't deal with Paradox no matter how much mages theorize about how this and that effect is really some sort of minor form of it.

There is no "natural" path for a vampire to become a human. If there was, this would all be very different (including needing mages to do anything in the first place). Mages can endure Pattern Bleed and raise their Attributes because raising Attributes is something there's a natural path towards doing. Giving yourself Strength 6 with magic though (or 7 if you have the right Merit) can't remove things like Pattern Bleed just by spending XP because mages (at least until [pick an edition's rules about mages increasing their Attribute cap above 5]) can't spend XP to raise their Attributes to that level.

Fine, I'll fight the urge to be pedantic. I do think there are magical means of fixing pattern bleed, but I'm not sure what book at the moment, so the point is probably moot.

All of this is why curing vampirism is a much bigger deal than you seem to think it is (even if perhaps not as big of a deal as some posters have proposed, and even the game designers might have been heavy handed with in Rev.). You're not just making a dead body alive again, you're completely rewriting the vampire's Pattern into something different.

Yes, but I'm firmly of the opinion that it should be less difficult than making an entirely new person from nothing save happy thoughts and willpower(which requires "only" requires 3 spheres at 5 and another at 3).

Would it be better to just kill them? That's a moral/ethical question. Practically? Mages can't really force someone that's dying to become a wraith (though they might be able to influence it) and there's all sorts of questions about the vampire's "soul" to address before trying something like reincarnating them. Resurrection isn't exactly easy in the system either.

The wraith part isn't distinctly necessary, just some way of holding the person's soul(we're dealing with life anyway, so maybe store it in a pot-plant while the mage works on the new body).

It takes spirit 5 to effect a soul(in this case, to rip it out like a fatality in mortal combat), and the ritual to place a disembodied spirit into a new human body is life 5, spirit 4, prime 2.

The vampire soul in a brand new human is probably going to have psychological side effects, and may or may not still be a valid target for diablerists, but that's not necessarily too different from the everyday dangers of being human in the world of darkness anyway.

[Aleph]

The vampire soul in a brand new human is probably going to have psychological side effects, and may or may not still be a valid target for diablerists, but that's not necessarily too different from the everyday dangers of being human in the world of darkness anyway.

While Spirit 5 can affect the soul, all the cases of spiritual possesion I know (changing bodies, shifting your soul/consciousness into an object or vice versa) employed Mind 5. One could argue that the result would be a mindless husk w/o at least that. And doing it with Mind and no Spirit?...I'm not so sure (maybe the spirit tags along, maybe the result it's souless)

The vampire soul in a brand new human is probably going to have psychological side effects, and may or may not still be a valid target for diablerists, but that's not necessarily too different from the everyday dangers of being human in the world of darkness anyway.

It may or may not turn into a vampire again, depending if the Curse has ties to the soul or not

---

There's a lot of "may or may not" here because the Curse was left deliberately vague in the books. The idea that you need to "get more successes than god" it's canon, and so are the methods to undo the Curse that most certainly don't require that much effort (albeit one requires Prime 6 , and the other one or several unique artifacts that may or may not be providing you with a 6th dot on a Sphere and/or the 1rst one on the 10th - so, it's a big deal).

The bible certainly do make removing the Curse in a perfect way to be a "big deal", even if not impossible. Removing it for a day or in an incomplete way may be easier

But about it never being done...was Maimonides feat in A World of Darkness ever retconned?

[Haquim]

6 - Whatever the reason, it was never done before. No matter how easy you think it should be, no one ever succeeded, or if did, this was so thoroughly forgotten as to be moot. By canon it isn't a thing yet, despite not being necessarily impossible.

Personally I would never allow the Curse to be erased by mechanical means that said... the above is not true. In the goofy old days we had all manner of gonzo extravaganza and WW had the (not so) brilliant idea of introducing Talaq, a former assamite (embraced 160CE) who was brought back to life by the archmage Moses Maimonides (1515 CE). This Methuselah also retained his vampiric powers and didn't age as normal mortals do... He was killed by Ur-Shulgi most probably as a way for WW to rectify yet another of their Samuel Haight like NPCs. We don't know what kind of magic Maimonides used to reset Talaq's pattern but as far as I'm concerned I rationalized this as Maimonides using a powerful ritual and not simply by having and exceeding amount of arete and sphere dots (part of a chronicle to deal with vampirism could deal with the troupe searching for Maimonides in order to learn how he did what he did).

Btw, as far as mechanics are concerned the Vampire Storytellers Handbook Revised gives it a minimum Sphere rating of Prime 6, Entropy 4, Matter 4, and Life 4 to try reverting the Curse, while occult knowledge should be 6 at the very least. It's also stated that such a spell would be highly vulgar and Paradox inducing. Lastly the difficulty to undo the Curse would be increased by the time the target had spent as a vampire AND the vampire's generation (the older the vampire, the lower its generation the more difficult it would be to break the Curse). Basically if you insist of the mechanical solution to undo the Curse, even in a Mage chronicle you need to be an archmage.

[Heavy Arms]

Yes, but I'm firmly of the opinion that it should be less difficult than making an entirely new person from nothing save happy thoughts and willpower(which requires "only" requires 3 spheres at 5 and another at 3).

OK, but at a certain point you're either going to have to accept that your desires probably don't match the intentions of the books (not even any appeal to what other fans think) and you'll be happier in house-rule territory than debating ways to do it in the rules that still satisfy how you think things should be.

The vampire soul in a brand new human is probably going to have psychological side effects, and may or may not still be a valid target for diablerists, but that's not necessarily too different from the everyday dangers of being human in the world of darkness anyway.

Without Mind, taking a soul and putting it into a new body gets you a completely blank slate new individual. Mages (and perhaps the new person if they develop the right traits) might be able to tap into the history of that soul, but the soul doesn't bring the mind, personality, and memories along with it.

Beyond that though, we don't know what happens if you take a vampire soul and try to stick it into a human body with Sphere magic. Is that even possible to do permanently (as opposed to it just being a short lived vessel)? Do you get a human, a vampire, or something not quite either?

The implications from the books are that this fails (either outright or over time) because vampire souls and human bodies aren't compatible. Even vampires powerful enough to transfer their souls to other bodies end up in other vampires rather than human bodies.

[monteparnas]

Aleph and Haquim, Maimonides has the problem that the specific method used was never mentioned. We can't even know if he can do it consistently or what. So that plays again in the line: canonically, it never happened that we know. It may have happened, but we have no indication that any of the times a Vampire became mortal Sphere Magic was involved.

I do think there are magical means of fixing pattern bleed, but I'm not sure what book at the moment, so the point is probably moot.

Personally I think that the whole Thaumivore perspective is perfectly valid for a Mage game, even if you're using actual V:tM rules for Vampires. But it would still be a Mage game.

The fact stands that this is a crossover question, and as much sense as it can make, Mage's metaphysics can't be taken at face value here. They don't make more sense or have more reason to be valid, or are more likely to be true, in any sense, shape or form. Taking any, both or none as true is equally valid because their clash demands so.

Yes, but I'm firmly of the opinion that it should be less difficult than making an entirely new person from nothing save happy thoughts and willpower(which requires "only" requires 3 spheres at 5 and another at 3).

While it is a valid opinion, it is just not necessarily true. The same way that making, lets say, a new phone from scratch isn't necessarily harder than repairing a broken one, depending on how it broke. You're still using a soul that was touched by an extremely powerful Curse, and so the demands for cleansing it may be higher than creating a new human being, soul included.

The game usually starts from this assumption, even letting aside Revised's unnecessarily strict requirements. The Curse Damned the Soul, you're not just fighting a disease, a physical condition, but something intrinsically linked to that person and carrying the weight of ages. The underlining assumption is that breaking the Curse should be an epic feat and the crowning of an extremely meaningful story arc or, better yet, an entire chronicle.

It takes spirit 5 to effect a soul(in this case, to rip it out like a fatality in mortal combat), and the ritual to place a disembodied spirit into a new human body is life 5, spirit 4, prime 2.

Diablerie, Auspex and some other factors make me think that this would still result in a Vampire. Without breaking the Curse, this vampiric soul will simply transform the new body as it transformed the previous one. After all, it also began as a mortal. My opinion is that this would just increase the requirement in Life from 4 to 5 to reduce or eliminate the requirement in Time, but the others would still be as high as the ST decided based on previous assumptions, like the official Prime 6, or my suggestion of Prime 5 and several other Spheres.

And as Heavy Arms said it may need also Mind to avoid making an amnesiac. Although a Vampire with Auspex could be able to solve that themselves, at least for their own sake.

[Prometheas]

Okay, that's a Lot of replies while I was AFK. I guess I'll try to organize them by subject?

Personally I would never allow the Curse to be erased by mechanical means that said... the above is not true. In the goofy old days we had all manner of gonzo extravaganza and WW had the (not so) brilliant idea of introducing Talaq, a former assamite (embraced 160CE) who was brought back to life by the archmage Moses Maimonides (1515 CE). This Methuselah also retained his vampiric powers and didn't age as normal mortals do... He was killed by Ur-Shulgi most probably as a way for WW to rectify yet another of their Samuel Haight like NPCs. We don't know what kind of magic Maimonides used to reset Talaq's pattern but as far as I'm concerned I rationalized this as Maimonides using a powerful ritual and not simply by having and exceeding amount of arete and sphere dots (part of a chronicle to deal with vampirism could deal with the troupe searching for Maimonides in order to learn how he did what he did).

This puts it in the weirdo-samuel-height territory then.

I was thinking more along the lines that the spell would just make you vanilla human. No powers, nothing special, save maybe a colorful mental illness. Being able to become a vampire-like human with no drawbacks is kind of out-there, only made worse by the fact that it's canon.

Reminds me of those old european boards that had packs of Abomination players running around with no consequences, like it was a normal tuesday.

The implications from the books are that this fails (either outright or over time) because vampire souls and human bodies aren't compatible. Even vampires powerful enough to transfer their souls to other bodies end up in other vampires rather than human bodies.

Above example makes this kind of untrue. Apparently, immortal humans running around with full-on methusela powers and no vampire weaknesses is part of the canon metaplot. That is Several tiers worse than what I'm proposing.

While Spirit 5 can affect the soul, all the cases of spiritual possesion I know (changing bodies, shifting your soul/consciousness into an object or vice versa) employed Mind 5. One could argue that the result would be a mindless husk w/o at least that. And doing it with Mind and no Spirit?...I'm not so sure (maybe the spirit tags along, maybe the result it's souless)

Without Mind, taking a soul and putting it into a new body gets you a completely blank slate new individual. Mages (and perhaps the new person if they develop the right traits) might be able to tap into the history of that soul, but the soul doesn't bring the mind, personality, and memories along with it.

And as Heavy Arms said it may need also Mind to avoid making an amnesiac. Although a Vampire with Auspex could be able to solve that themselves, at least for their own sake.

As per the ritual in "How do You do that"(an M20 book), you only need mind if you're trying to create a new mind or make the resulting creation loyal to you. Putting a disembodied spirit into a new body without the mind sphere works, but puts it squarely in the control of the new spirit and outside the mage's control.

It may or may not turn into a vampire again, depending if the Curse has ties to the soul or not

---

There's a lot of "may or may not" here because the Curse was left deliberately vague in the books. The idea that you need to "get more successes than god" it's canon, and so are the methods to undo the Curse that most certainly don't require that much effort (albeit one requires Prime 6 , and the other one or several unique artifacts that may or may not be providing you with a 6th dot on a Sphere and/or the 1rst one on the 10th - so, it's a big deal).

The bible certainly do make removing the Curse in a perfect way to be a "big deal", even if not impossible. Removing it for a day or in an incomplete way may be easier

But about it never being done...was Maimonides feat in A World of Darkness ever retconned?

Btw, as far as mechanics are concerned the Vampire Storytellers Handbook Revised gives it a minimum Sphere rating of Prime 6, Entropy 4, Matter 4, and Life 4 to try reverting the Curse, while occult knowledge should be 6 at the very least. It's also stated that such a spell would be highly vulgar and Paradox inducing. Lastly the difficulty to undo the Curse would be increased by the time the target had spent as a vampire AND the vampire's generation (the older the vampire, the lower its generation the more difficult it would be to break the Curse). Basically if you insist of the mechanical solution to undo the Curse, even in a Mage chronicle you need to be an archmage.

The game usually starts from this assumption, even letting aside Revised's unnecessarily strict requirements. The Curse Damned the Soul, you're not just fighting a disease, a physical condition, but something intrinsically linked to that person and carrying the weight of ages. The underlining assumption is that breaking the Curse should be an epic feat and the crowning of an extremely meaningful story arc or, better yet, an entire chronicle.


Diablerie, Auspex and some other factors make me think that this would still result in a Vampire. Without breaking the Curse, this vampiric soul will simply transform the new body as it transformed the previous one. After all, it also began as a mortal. My opinion is that this would just increase the requirement in Life from 4 to 5 to reduce or eliminate the requirement in Time, but the others would still be as high as the ST decided based on previous assumptions, like the official Prime 6, or my suggestion of Prime 5 and several other Spheres.

All good points. Even the top example, which presumably used the prime 6 ritual, had the resulting "human" keep their vampire powers. So the vampire soul is definitely going have more side effects than "colorful mental illness".

Aleph and Haquim, Maimonides has the problem that the specific method used was never mentioned. We can't even know if he can do it consistently or what. So that plays again in the line: canonically, it never happened that we know. It may have happened, but we have no indication that any of the times a Vampire became mortal Sphere Magic was involved.

Perhaps not, but if static magic is capable of it, it's still theoretically possible for sphere magic at least. The core theme of mage has always been about "Yes, you 100% can, But Should You" and the effects of hubris.

That's also why I hate running it in crossovers. Other splats have more limitations because they have different central themes, so mages either need to get hit with nerf-by-paradox hammer(which stomps all over its central theme) or mages stomp all over the themes and horror elements of other game lines.

Personally I think that the whole Thaumivore perspective is perfectly valid for a Mage game, even if you're using actual V:tM rules for Vampires. But it would still be a Mage game.

The fact stands that this is a crossover question, and as much sense as it can make, Mage's metaphysics can't be taken at face value here. They don't make more sense or have more reason to be valid, or are more likely to be true, in any sense, shape or form. Taking any, both or none as true is equally valid because their clash demands so.

And like many crossover questions, the answer is usually one of thousands and so self-contradictory that you'd be wrong even if you were right. Especially if you're right.

While it is a valid opinion, it is just not necessarily true. The same way that making, lets say, a new phone from scratch isn't necessarily harder than repairing a broken one, depending on how it broke. You're still using a soul that was touched by an extremely powerful Curse, and so the demands for cleansing it may be higher than creating a new human being, soul included.

That's a good point.

Vampires in the metaplot still have their souls to Some extent given the examples we have that can call their soul for a conversation, even out of a diablerist's body, or in how they can still become a wraith after death if they're strong willed enough. I guess I assumed that they still had all the major components, like how you can replace a crack phone screen rather easily.

OK, but at a certain point you're either going to have to accept that your desires probably don't match the intentions of the books (not even any appeal to what other fans think) and you'll be happier in house-rule territory than debating ways to do it in the rules that still satisfy how you think things should be.

Oof, cool down there. The intentions of the books change every edition and with every new writer brought in. Besides, what the writers intend for the game is going to be thrown out by the time an ST runs it, for no other reason than everyone has their own interpretation of how the games "should" run.

Me stating how I believe on how things line up is not an attack on your way of running the game.

Beyond that though, we don't know what happens if you take a vampire soul and try to stick it into a human body with Sphere magic. Is that even possible to do permanently (as opposed to it just being a short lived vessel)? Do you get a human, a vampire, or something not quite either?

Canonically, it's option number 3 it seems.

[Heavy Arms]

Canonically, it's option number 3 it seems.

Except, of course, that was an archmage using methods we have no idea of what was actually done. Option 3 happened in a circumstance, not officially using the method you outlined.

[monteparnas]

This puts it in the weirdo-samuel-height territory then.

That's why I don't work with the Maimonides example. I'm not personally as offended by t as Revised was, but it is a heavy package of nonsense wrapped in "how the hell he did that?"

For all intents and purposes it doesn't actually advances much in our question.

As per the ritual in "How do You do that"(an M20 book)

To be very honest, HDYDT isn't considered the most useful book in M20 because of how much it actually goes against the assumptions from all previous books, including the very M20 core. And its purpose is to exemplify mechanics, not update them, so most players I heard about it effectively treat HDYDT as being objectively wrong instead of changing the game.

But given, it is an official M20 supplement and you can use it as argument, just lets be clear for both sides that we're stepping on weird territory when talking about it, especially when it directly or indirectly contradicts the rules as presented elsewhere.

And for the Spirit question, IIRC it still presents as example using a Spirit, not an actual soul. That's a point to be considered, even if the same Sphere is used, they're not the same thing.

That's also why I hate running it in crossovers. Other splats have more limitations because they have different central themes, so mages either need to get hit with nerf-by-paradox hammer(which stomps all over its central theme) or mages stomp all over the themes and horror elements of other game lines.

The Big Crossover Conundrum, and why we can't just answer those questions with "Sphere Magic Can Do It", despite I otherwise agreeing.

Personally I don't hate crossovers, I just learned to accept that they're their own thing: if you want to go that route, set aside all the usual themes of the games involved and decide what are the themes of your own chronicle. Be clear about it with the players and bend whatever you need on the other games to adapt.

On the same vein I think you can use other splats and rules in your game, even let the PCs do it, just by assuming that your main themes take precedence. I would use your main assumptions in a Mage-centered game even if the PCs themselves aren't Mages, as long as the players are warned about that beforehand. Likewise, a player that decides to play a Mage in a Vampire game just have to be warned that the themes and metaphysics of this other game take precedence, and so things may not work like in Mage.

The intentions of the books change every edition and with every new writer brought in.

That's infuriatingly true, especially for Mage and even more for Revised. The problem with HDYDT runs almost entirely around this. But I guess Heavy Arms' argument has merit in the sense that in a discussion board there's a distinct weight between author intent and our own, just because we need common ground for argument. Here in particular the OP question is about canonical answers, so this caveat stays mostly true.

[Prometheas]

That's why I don't work with the Maimonides example. I'm not personally as offended by t as Revised was, but it is a heavy package of nonsense wrapped in "how the hell he did that?"

For all intents and purposes it doesn't actually advances much in our question.

Yeah, I'll wholeheartedly agree to ignoring the super-methusela.

To be very honest, HDYDT isn't considered the most useful book in M20 because of how much it actually goes against the assumptions from all previous books, including the very M20 core. And its purpose is to exemplify mechanics, not update them, so most players I heard about it effectively treat HDYDT as being objectively wrong instead of changing the game.

But given, it is an official M20 supplement and you can use it as argument, just lets be clear for both sides that we're stepping on weird territory when talking about it, especially when it directly or indirectly contradicts the rules as presented elsewhere.

I can feel this intimately. I'm only bringing HDYDT to the table because it's the "official" perspective on the argument at hand, even though I personally throw out most of the book in question.

I was attempting to argue from both sides of "Official" sources and in in my person experience to try to get my point across.

And for the Spirit question, IIRC it still presents as example using a Spirit, not an actual soul. That's a point to be considered, even if the same Sphere is used, they're not the same thing.

That's a good point. It was an assumption on my part that a soul alone would be enough, but like the vampire-soul thing, Mileage may vary.

If you could finagle the vampire soul into transforming into a wraith, which would likely take another complex ritual involving high levels of spirit and entropy(Or a lower level ritual by a vampire necromancer, they have an easier time of it than mages), Then you could probably satisfy the "Spirit" part of that equation. Granted, it's still the same problems as having supernatural spirit in a human body, it's just moving the goal-posts from vampire to wraith.

The Big Crossover Conundrum, and why we can't just answer those questions with "Sphere Magic Can Do It", despite I otherwise agreeing.

Personally I don't hate crossovers, I just learned to accept that they're their own thing: if you want to go that route, set aside all the usual themes of the games involved and decide what are the themes of your own chronicle. Be clear about it with the players and bend whatever you need on the other games to adapt.

On the same vein I think you can use other splats and rules in your game, even let the PCs do it, just by assuming that your main themes take precedence. I would use your main assumptions in a Mage-centered game even if the PCs themselves aren't Mages, as long as the players are warned about that beforehand. Likewise, a player that decides to play a Mage in a Vampire game just have to be warned that the themes and metaphysics of this other game take precedence, and so things may not work like in Mage.

My personal solution has always been to just replace mages with sorcerers(and beef them up to make them in line with other splats). They don't carry the same metaphysical baggage as mages and can thematically fit much easier(their themes follow more along the lines of "discovering the unknown" and "the dangers of curiosity"). It then frees me up to treat Mages as plot devices more like Oracles rather than an every-day splat, which works Beautifully in my experience with their free-form mechanics.

Now if only the writers would stop trying to nerf sorcerers into the ground in an attempt kick them into the backstage with ghouls and kinfolk...

That's infuriatingly true, especially for Mage and even more for Revised. The problem with HDYDT runs almost entirely around this. But I guess Heavy Arms' argument has merit in the sense that in a discussion board there's a distinct weight between author intent and our own, just because we need common ground for argument. Here in particular the OP question is about canonical answers, so this caveat stays mostly true.

I can hear that side of it yeah. The weirdest part of this is books like HDYDT is the common ground, despite it breaking the conventions laid out by other books. How do we find common ground when every table is different and the Books themselves disagree on what the common setting should be?

Personally, I just go with how the previous editions handled it, Heavy emphasis of unreliable narrator and the idea that the books only give you a small glimpse of One perspective of how the world of darkness actually works. Every table is valid since it could be taking place in an alternate dimension, a reality zone, during a cosmic alignment, or what-have you, because magic in CWOD is inconsistent and the rules sometimes act more like guidelines than hard and fast rules(something that becomes painfully evident when reading an official crossover adventure and the writers want to do something they think is cool, but breaks the rules of a previous book).

Which is why I take issue with the idea that things can't happen or that players or ST's can be "playing wrong" when they lean into the campy, self-aware weirdness that used to be common pre-revised. I will 100% defend a player or ST doing something weird with the mechanics, like using sphere magic to cure a vampire rather than relegating it to "plot-device only".