If blood is an addiction for the Kindred, then it’s no surprise that some vampires try to kick the habit. Of course, you can’t just go cold turkey; that’s a quick route to torpor, or ravenous frenzy and waking up covered in someone else’s blood. Those who take this endeavor seriously model themselves on mortal ascetics, trying to slowly starve their Beast into submission or to reduce their reliance on the red stuff over years or even centuries. Some see it as a potential path to Golconda. Blood asceticism is a harsh path to follow, demanding the vampire reject the satisfaction and pleasure of sanguine satiation. This requires great willpower, and practitioners often resort to distracting their hungry Beast through the agony of self-mortification or fully embrace isolation and privation. Most Kindred reject such asceticism out of hand, since those who succeed are usually starving hermits and those who fail serve as fearsome lessons in the folly of denying your hunger when they snap and go on a rampage.
• The Starveling Path: You’re not quiet about your dedication to blood asceticism and your desire to conquer the red thirst. Other Kindred may think you’re mad or a fool, but they can’t doubt your devotion. Once per session, providing you’ve not fed that night, you may add two dice to any roll to prove your strength of will, or to convince others of your dedication.
•• Glade of the Sleeping Beast: You have found a place of quiet solitude to contemplate the shackles of your immortal hunger. It may be your haven, if you have one, or it may be a more remote location. While in your place of contemplation, as long as you are alone, you can re-roll one Rouse Check per scene.
••• Lesser Vessels: To subdue your thirst for human blood, you have learned to subsist on the lesser vitae of base animals. While you are alone, feeding from animals rather than humans slakes one more point of Hunger than it usually would for you, but never more than one level per scene. However, you also gain the Infamy Flaw: (•) Animal Drinker (Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 187) if news of your reliance on animal vitae gets out. Some Kindred may not care, but plenty will look down on you with contempt for being more like one of the kine than a real vampire.
•••• Bloodless Pedestal: Whether or not you’ve really managed to conquer your hunger, your displays of ascetic self-denial have attracted other Kindred who desperately want your claims to be true. This provides you with the equivalent of five dots of Status solely among vampires who see you as some sort of holy figure. You lose the benefits of these dots for the duration of any scene in which they witness you drinking blood, and the following scene thereafter.
••••• Leash the Beast: You’ve starved your Beast so often that it’s a weakened, feeble thing, bound beneath the chains of your willpower. Few other Kindred possess this level of self-control. The Difficulty of your Hunger frenzy rolls is always 2, regardless of the provocation.