Leaving the Sabbat

[Microcuchon]

That's also mentioned in the same section. Some Manchurians get shipments of blood, but if they decide not to complete the Vaulderie, they may find their vinculi decreasing over times. The alternative is to have them sneak off and do the Vaulderie with fellow Sabbat, but that runs the risk of getting caught.

Though, I could see cells of infiltrators meeting in private and doing the Vaulderie with each other, under the guise of some other activity. If the Keeper of Elysium is actually Sabbat, that could be quite interesting.

I haven't even considered the possibility of the Manchurian choosing not to do the Vaulderie but it's definitely a possibility. Meeting in the Elysium to perform Vaulderie is definitely a bold move. Shame that in my game the Guardian of the Elysium is actually a Justicar's agent

[adambeyoncelowe]

Actually, in my games I have ruled that deep cover agents still participate in the Vaulderie, by receiving shipments of blood from their packs back home, and others during big festivals. Detecting these shipments can be s way of unmasking one of these agents

That's also mentioned in the same section. Some Manchurians get shipments of blood, but if they decide not to complete the Vaulderie, they may find their vinculi decreasing over times. The alternative is to have them sneak off and do the Vaulderie with fellow Sabbat, but that runs the risk of getting caught.

Though, I could see cells of infiltrators meeting in private and doing the Vaulderie with each other, under the guise of some other activity. If the Keeper of Elysium is actually Sabbat, that could be quite interesting.

[Microcuchon]

It's also mentioned in the GttS under the bit about Manchurians. Essentially, those in deep cover risk losing their bonds.

My guess is that they mean vinculi won't fade so long as you maintain the Vaulderie regularly (as nearly every Sabbat member is expected to do). If you don't, then they start to fade away.

Vinculi only seem to be permanent because most Cainites don't get a chance to go without the Vaulderie for any length of time.

Actually, in my games I have ruled that deep cover agents still participate in the Vaulderie, by receiving shipments of blood from their packs back home, and others during big festivals. Detecting these shipments can be s way of unmasking one of these agents

[adambeyoncelowe]

That was exactly why I started this thread. My understanding is now that they must fade with time, regardless of what some books may say, for the whole thing to make sense

It's also mentioned in the GttS under the bit about Manchurians. Essentially, those in deep cover risk losing their bonds.

My guess is that they mean vinculi won't fade so long as you maintain the Vaulderie regularly (as nearly every Sabbat member is expected to do). If you don't, then they start to fade away.

Vinculi only seem to be permanent because most Cainites don't get a chance to go without the Vaulderie for any length of time.

[Baaldam]

That was exactly why I started this thread. My understanding is now that they must fade with time, regardless of what some books may say, for the whole thing to make sense

Also as previously pointed out by others, diablerizing someone of far more potent blood can obliterate a weak vinculum, if Monty Coven's tale serves as any indicator.

Though i somehow doubt that would count as a very positive argument toward accepting "ex-Sabbat" into a Cam city's court....

[Microcuchon]

The books are also contradictory on whether vinculi fade with time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

That was exactly why I started this thread. My understanding is now that they must fade with time, regardless of what some books may say, for the whole thing to make sense

[adambeyoncelowe]

I think general feelings of loyalty to the Sabbat are an emergent property of doing the Vaulderie with many members of the Sabbat, especially when so many vaulderies are done in a ritualized way of showcasing everyone's loyalty to the sect. It happens because it is done so often that the mind eventually associates loyalty to the sect to the vinculum one feels to so many of its members. It's like when Pavlov's dog salivates after he hears a bell.

Nevertheless, I don't think there is any actual vinculum towards the Sabbat itself. It's more like an esprit de corps artificially created as a result of the vinculum with individuals. Nomadic packs that are insular and rarely show up to the great Sabbat meetings and thus have little vinculum with other members of the Sabbat, should have less general solidarity with the Sabbat as a whole than a pack that routinely travels to Sabbat strongholds and performs the vinculum with lots of other Sabbat. That is why the Sabbat leadership encourages the vaulderie to be done as often as possible, and if you meet another Sabbat who has never done the vaulderie with you yet, it is almost mandated that you perform the vaulderie with them. And its why the vaulderie is performed at functions that are designed to create a common Sabbat identity. (The manner and frequency of how the vaulderie is performed by the Sabbat nowadays is probably very, very different than how the original Anarchs performed it and how it was done early on in the sect's period. It was probably a learning curve that if you really want loyalty to the sect as a whole, you need to perform the vaulderie often and with many different members.)

Unless you keep performing the vaulderie again and again with other members of the Sabbat, I don't think you get that feeling. You just have the specific feelings due to the vinculum.

It's also important to note that loyalty to the Sabbat as a whole also does not translate into non-violence, or that everyone has the same vision of the Sabbat. It is just a bloody shirt to rally people behind against your common enemy. The Sabbat's culture says it is OK to kill and diablerize other vampires, even Sabbat as long as it is done "lawfully" and "for the best wishes of the sect". And Sabbat can have very different ideas and visions of what the Sabbat should be like. Lasombra battle Tzimisce for control of the sect, as do the Loyalists versus the Ultraconservatives, Panders against anyone not in favor of them, and many other divisions.

So I would say what the general feelings or loyalties of individuals towards the Sabbat is more about an "us versus them" mentality, when anyone who is not of the Sabbat are seen as "not us, and therefore dangerous." But within the Sabbat, it's like an "I against my brother; my brother and I against our cousins; my brother, my cousins, and I against the world." The Sabbat is like your extended family, to be sided with against everyone who is not Sabbat.

The less vaulderie you perform with others, and the more time between performing the vaulderie with others, I think there would become a lesser feeling to the sect as a whole.

So I feel I am inbetween Bluecho and adambeyoncelowe and see a lot of valid points in both their posts that I want to incorporate in portraying the vaulderie in my own chronicles.

TBH, I don't read your view as different to mine. I just see it as saying the same thing, only slightly differently.

I don't think there is a vinculum to the sect itself. Except for the one quote I shared upthread from PGttS, where it suggests that vinculi also indicate the strength of loyalty to the sect itself, there is no other evidence that this is the case. That was never my argument.

My point was, as you put it so succinctly, that loyalty to the sect is an emergent property of having ties to many of the sect's members. The sect *is* its members, rather than a distinct entity.

So when you care about a broad range of sect members, that makes you loyal to the sect as a result. As you say, there is always the risk that a nomadic or remote pack which doesn't engage in the Vaulderie with outsiders would put their own pack ahead of the rest of the sect.

The books are also contradictory on whether vinculi fade with time. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

[Black Fox]

I think general feelings of loyalty to the Sabbat are an emergent property of doing the Vaulderie with many members of the Sabbat, especially when so many vaulderies are done in a ritualized way of showcasing everyone's loyalty to the sect. It happens because it is done so often that the mind eventually associates loyalty to the sect to the vinculum one feels to so many of its members. It's like when Pavlov's dog salivates after he hears a bell.

Nevertheless, I don't think there is any actual vinculum towards the Sabbat itself. It's more like an esprit de corps artificially created as a result of the vinculum with individuals. Nomadic packs that are insular and rarely show up to the great Sabbat meetings and thus have little vinculum with other members of the Sabbat, should have less general solidarity with the Sabbat as a whole than a pack that routinely travels to Sabbat strongholds and performs the vinculum with lots of other Sabbat. That is why the Sabbat leadership encourages the vaulderie to be done as often as possible, and if you meet another Sabbat who has never done the vaulderie with you yet, it is almost mandated that you perform the vaulderie with them. And its why the vaulderie is performed at functions that are designed to create a common Sabbat identity. (The manner and frequency of how the vaulderie is performed by the Sabbat nowadays is probably very, very different than how the original Anarchs performed it and how it was done early on in the sect's period. It was probably a learning curve that if you really want loyalty to the sect as a whole, you need to perform the vaulderie often and with many different members.)

Unless you keep performing the vaulderie again and again with other members of the Sabbat, I don't think you get that feeling. You just have the specific feelings due to the vinculum.

It's also important to note that loyalty to the Sabbat as a whole also does not translate into non-violence, or that everyone has the same vision of the Sabbat. It is just a bloody shirt to rally people behind against your common enemy. The Sabbat's culture says it is OK to kill and diablerize other vampires, even Sabbat as long as it is done "lawfully" and "for the best wishes of the sect". And Sabbat can have very different ideas and visions of what the Sabbat should be like. Lasombra battle Tzimisce for control of the sect, as do the Loyalists versus the Ultraconservatives, Panders against anyone not in favor of them, and many other divisions.

So I would say what the general feelings or loyalties of individuals towards the Sabbat is more about an "us versus them" mentality, when anyone who is not of the Sabbat are seen as "not us, and therefore dangerous." But within the Sabbat, it's like an "I against my brother; my brother and I against our cousins; my brother, my cousins, and I against the world." The Sabbat is like your extended family, to be sided with against everyone who is not Sabbat.

The less vaulderie you perform with others, and the more time between performing the vaulderie with others, I think there would become a lesser feeling to the sect as a whole.

So I feel I am inbetween Bluecho and adambeyoncelowe and see a lot of valid points in both their posts that I want to incorporate in portraying the vaulderie in my own chronicles.

[Muad'Dib]

THAT, arguably more than even the Vinculum, keeps Cainites in the Sword of Caine.

I think it has to be noted that the Clan cultures of Lasombra Vampires and Tzimisce Vampires might be an important and interesting factor in regard to leadership, organization, and teamwork of Sabbat Cainites.

Moreover, nothing stops a whole pack from leaving together. Though that requires more convincing to get them all on board. If it happens, though, it could explain a PC Coterie switching sects, either during or before play. The Anarchs have a minority of folks who practice the Vaulderie, so we know it happens there.

Did Anarch Vampiresses and Vampires perform the Vaulderie (and perhaps other Ritae?) before V5 was released?

[adambeyoncelowe]

My reading is that it's the exact opposite. The Vinculum ties you to individuals, but does nothing to engender particular loyalties to the sect as a whole.

What is a sect but the sum total of its members, as bound together through shared aims and ideology?

The Sabbat books are pretty clear that the Vaulderie is what holds it together, however.

Guide to the Sabbat, p.155: "Without the Vaulderie, the Sabbat would probably collapse under its own weight and dogma -- the chaos and anarchy that follows the sect endemically would erode what little organisation it has without the loyalty and sympathy created by the ritus."

V20 copies this text on p.288-9.

In PGttS, p.46: "Through it [the Vaulderie], they gain loyalty to the Sabbat beyond any human understanding of the word."

"They swear the Sabbat Oath of Fealty, pledging their heart, mind and soul to the sect."

On p.47: "The Vaulderie is a powerful tool to keep sect members loyal and provide them with supernatural bravery. Without the Vaulderie, the Sabbat would probably collapse. The innate anarchism of Sabbat ideology is held in balance only through this means of ensured loyalty."

"This rating system applies to the way Sabbat vampires feel about the sect itself in addition to the way they feel about individual vampires."

If it did, you wouldn't need to perform the Vaulderie with packs you meet or at gatherings.

You perform the Vaulderie with Sabbat you know and many of those you don't, even if you're never going to see those people again. Why bother, if it's just about maintaining individual ties? Why is it pretty much mandatory?

Because it isn't about those individual ties, per se, but keeping you bound and loyal to the *sum total of all those individuals* (i.e., the sect).

That's why Sabbat members have lots of bonds with a really wide range of people, many of whom they may never see again. Those people *are* the Sabbat.

It's harder to betray your sect when you have to think about your loyalty to Jim, James, Paul and Tyrone.

If you also have bonds to the Bishops, Archbishop, Cardinal, and all those nomadic packs you've met over the years, then it becomes that much harder.

Guide to the Sabbat, p.154: "...they tolerate no dissent in their ranks. From the lowliest new recruit to the most exalted priscus, the Sabbat ensure loyalty to one another through a bloody ritus known as the Vaulderie."

"...the Sabbat swear the Vaulderie to each other, bonding themselves to the pack instead of an individual, and thus, to the Sabbat's greater cause."

"This ritus is perhaps the foundation of the sect's ritae, and it is afforded the most reverent status."

Nor would there be Sabbat Civil Wars or factional conflicts.

Factional conflicts and Civil Wars are usually about winning the right to direct the sect at large. They're fought precisely *because* of loyalty to the sect.

Moreover, it's individual Cainites (or groups of individuals) you go up against in a Civil War -- not the sect itself. The Black Hand isn't trying to topple the Sabbat; it wants to guide it towards its own ends. It may want to get rid of the Inquisition (and vice versa), but the Inquisition isn't the whole sect, it's just some guys like them.

Finally, Rites of the Blood says the Auctoritas Ritae weren't formalised until the Third Sabbat Civil War was already well underway, and this was part of the Regent's plan to prevent civil war happening again. So practice of the Vaulderie may have been less central to the Sabbat prior to this -- the Auctoritas Ritae border on requirements in the Modern Nights, however.

The idea of "Sect First" emotional ties is more a feature of the Tremere Pyramid and drinking from the cup. It creates loyalty to the Pyramid, or at least to its leadership and the ephemeral "idea" of Clan & House Tremere. Nonetheless, Tremere plot and scheme against one another all the time, despite the partial Blood Bond to the hierarchy. So long as a Tremere can rationalize it as being for the good of the Clan, they feel nothing at engineering the downfall of their superiors or rivals. All of this is by design.

The Sabbat just lie to themselves more. All the ritae they practice, and most of the paths they teach, are supposed to make you a better soldier for the Sabbat (at least in part).

For example, STHttS, p.11: "Ritualism was instituted to heighten the sect's secrecy... It provides common bonds by which all Sabbat are united, it promotes pack pride, and it gives the sect methods of security against spies, traitors, defectors and weaklings."

And: "The Sabbat considers its rituals a sacred part of its heritage and culture. Rituals are not carried out in mockery, but with a sense of reverence..."

In Sins of the Blood, it's explained that paths were created, in part, to ensure greater loyalty to the sect. That's why the Path of Blood becomes the Path of Caine, for instance, since the Path of Blood encourages worship of Haqim (an Antediluvian) and the Path of Caine encourages worship of Caine.

Rites of the Blood also calls out the ritae as magic of faith as well as blood. This is important, because they're empowered in part by a pack's faith in the sect. Ritae thus create a feedback loop where they feed faith in the sect and feed upon that faith in turn.

The Sabbat, by contrast, is highly cellular and nodal. Vinculum ties are forged by the Vaulderie, to the Cainites one shares blood. There's no supernaturally enforced loyalty to the Sabbat as a sect. It simply doesn't square with how the sect operates, or with how the Vinculum mechanic is presented to us.

Exactly. The Vaulderie holds all the cells and nodes together, even when they don't see each other for years.

Out of character, the Vaulderie was probably also created as a way to explain why the Sabbat's secrets aren't well known to everyone else. Though that seems to have been quietly dropped.

PGttS says as much in a sidebar on p.13: "Sabbat vampires accept Final Death over the revelation of their sect's mysteries... This fanaticism, which stretches far beyond the bounds of loyalty, is a primary reason for the Sabbat's rapidly expanding power. All within the Sabbat are Blood Bound* to one another for the protection of the sect."

*This term was used interchangeably with the vinculum in this book and the STHttS.

THAT, arguably more than even the Vinculum, keeps Cainites in the Sword of Caine.

I agree that it's part of a whole range of tactics designed to keep you a zealot, but the books disagree with you here. They repeatedly state that the Vaulderie is the key thing holding the sect together.

[Bluecho]

But I get the feeling that the intent is that the Vaulderie keeps you tied to the Sabbat, not individuals -- so individual vinculi may fall to one, but only if you keep practising the very same ritus that keeps you tied to the sect.

My reading is that it's the exact opposite. The Vinculum ties you to individuals, but does nothing to engender particular loyalties to the sect as a whole.

If it did, you wouldn't need to perform the Vaulderie with packs you meet or at gatherings. Nor would there be Sabbat Civil Wars or factional conflicts.

The idea of "Sect First" emotional ties is more a feature of the Tremere Pyramid and drinking from the cup. It creates loyalty to the Pyramid, or at least to its leadership and the ephemeral "idea" of Clan & House Tremere. Nonetheless, Tremere plot and scheme against one another all the time, despite the partial Blood Bond to the hierarchy. So long as a Tremere can rationalize it as being for the good of the Clan, they feel nothing at engineering the downfall of their superiors or rivals. All of this is by design.

The Sabbat, by contrast, is highly cellular and nodal. Vinculum ties are forged by the Vaulderie, to the Cainites one shares blood with. There's no supernaturally enforced loyalty to the Sabbat as a sect. It simply doesn't square with how the sect operates, or with how the Vinculum mechanic is presented to us.

What holds the Sabbat together as a big sect, if anything, is good old propaganda, ideology, and brainwashing. When you're ripped from your mortal life, have to dig yourself from the grave half-mad and starving, and then are told what you are and what the score is by religious extremists, you're going to have skewed ideas about vampiric existence. When you, under no uncertain terms, are disallowed to return to that mortal life or hear alternative ideas from a different sect, you'll stay inside your community because it's the only one you have left.

THAT, arguably more than even the Vinculum, keeps Cainites in the Sword of Caine. They are not equipped to imagine leaving, much less successfully ingratiate themselves elsewhere if they wanted to. Like the Tremere, all of this is by design. The difference is that instead of being centralized, the supernatural bonds that reinforce mental conditioning are designed around individual connections. With the hope that if different Cainites share blood enough, inter-pack and inter-faction conflict will be kept to a minimum. (It's a high minimum, because it's a collection of loosely connected religious extremists, each with their own versions of Caine's truth, and most of whom consider savage, predatory violence and cannibalism to be virtues.)

All of this illustrates, I think, how a member of the Sabbat might leave the sect. They may have little loyalty to the sect, its ideology, or its mission. The Vinculum doesn't care about that. It cares about whose blood they've shared. If the strongest ones are cut, leaving only weak ones, it's not impossible that vampire might bounce for lack of strong ties. If nothing else, weak ties mean they may harbor no ill will towards individuals, yet they rationalize they just won't fight those particular guys if they come into conflict in the future. If all your weak ties are in Mexico, and you move to Florida to join the Camarilla or the California to join the Anarchs, you may never meet your weak ties ever again.

Moreover, nothing stops a whole pack from leaving together. Though that requires more convincing to get them all on board. If it happens, though, it could explain a PC Coterie switching sects, either during or before play. The Anarchs have a minority of folks who practice the Vaulderie, so we know it happens there.

[Muad'Dib]

I can bet that most of the Sabbat leadership knows this Muad"Dib and keep it quiet lest the younger members learn this and decide to rebel and choose there own path.

There might be a few (or more than a few) Ritae - whether Auctoritas or Ignobilis - that could sort out such an issue (if it would be na issue at at, that is) directly or indirectly.

[Lysander]

I can bet that most of the Sabbat leadership knows this Muad"Dib and keep it quiet lest the younger members learn this and decide to rebel and choose there own path.

[Muad'Dib]

So it go to show that the Sabbat methods are not infallible and such bonds can be overcome.

It also has to be noted that some Sabbat Vampires can end up with low Vinculi rating towards other Sabbat Vampires.This does not have to be immediately obvious, clear, or discerniable.

[Lysander]

I also seem to remember that when Monty Coven consumed Mithras that his Vinculim was shattered instantly. So it go to show that the Sabbat methods are not infallible and such bonds can be overcome.