Depending on whom you ask, Gehenna will soon befall the Kindred, or it’s happening right now, or it’s happened already and vampires are just play-acting in the crumbling ruins of their unlives while the world comes apart at the seams. While some deride the notion of Gehenna as an invention for duping the guileless, a feverish millenarianism has gripped many Kindred with the belief that these are indeed the Final Nights, one way or another. Blood cults and heresies spring up from the shadows in ever-growing numbers. The creeds of these new blood cults come in a dizzying variety of hatreds, anxieties, and hungers. The most successful spread their black wings from one city to the next, forming something like a cohesive doctrine even as feuding Kindred splinter off new schisms and heresies. Charting out the spread of such subversive elements requires an agile mind to keep track of the shifting tapestry, not to mention a strong stomach even by vampire standards. All too many Gehenna cults delve into stomach-churning practices.
• Mark the Bloody Trail: Once per session when you begin investigating or researching the presence of a blood cult you’ve not previously used this lore for, the Storyteller gives you one free clue to help locate the cult or to understand their current plans.
•• Faithful Bloodhound: You’re a proven investigator; you’ve exposed and taken down at least one Gehenna cult already, and shown your mettle in the eyes of the sects. Either the Camarilla or the Anarchs trust you as an expert on Gehenna cults. You wield three dots of Status while taking action to investigate or persecute a cult on behalf of that sect.
••• Dogma: You’re steeped in the lore of Gehenna, and you’ve learned many permutations of warped faiths that your fellow Kindred wrap themselves in. Once per session, when you discuss a vampire’s faith with them or observe them practicing their faith, you can extrapolate the rough nature of the doctrines, Convictions, or code that the religion focuses on. The Storyteller does not need to give you the exact wording, but must convey the primary themes, limitations, and beliefs, even those that are not evident in what the vampire has said or done.
•••• Cult Breaker: The charlatans and demagogues of millenarian cults rely on charisma and their followers’ desperate need for someone else to provide answers, direction, and justification for their dark indulgences. Such self-deception is hard to overcome, but you know how to shatter their illusions and tear apart the foundations of their faith. Once per story for a scene, while socially interacting with you, cult members do not benefit from any dots in Status they may have within their own cult. If they are unable to overcome you in a conflict, they lose any such Status dots for the rest of the story as you shake the cult’s faith in them to the core.
••••• Red Truths: Investigating the rising tide of blood cults and Gehenna worshipers has put you in a prime position to sift a few precious grains of truth from the bloated clot of lies that sits at the heart of most of these misbegotten faiths. Whether you want to believe it or not, you can’t deny the evidence you’ve gathered — and why not exploit it for yourself, rather than leaving it in the bloodstained hands of frothing zealots? Once you have studied the practices or texts of any blood cult, you are able to learn any Rituals or other unusual supernatural capabilities they possess without need of a teacher, although you must pay any experience point costs as normal.