Introduction

　Power is the great aphrodisiac.

　— Henry Kissinger, January 19, 1971


　Elysium: The Elder Wars brings you into the cloying, rarefied air inhabited only by the elders of the Camarilla. The secrets of these mysterious, frightening, volatile creatures are here for Storytellers to use to spice up their games and for players to use in chronicles where their characters are the elders.

　This book brings you the opportunity for some advanced storytelling. Playing an elder is far more challenging than playing an anarch or ancilla. It requires a strong knowledge of the World of Darkness and a good deal of preparation, but the rewards are great. The might of the most powerful vampires is in your hands.

How to Use this Book

　This book is designed for use by both players and Storytellers. It penetrates the cloistered chambers of the elders and provides useful hooks for fleshing out those characters and making them more menacing. Creating conflicts between elders gives the players more to do and gives them more points of connection to the world. The rules given here will also make it easier to keep track of the details in administrating an elder's holdings.


lmagery

　Elders embody massive contradictions. Though they are among the oldest sentient creatures on the planet, they often look younger than the anarchs they fight, sometimes appearing no older than children. The mortal world, in which old men hold the bulk of temporal power, gets turned on its head. This creates an incongruous image when a gang of 30- or 40-year-old Caitiff or anarchs are called before a prince who appears 20- something but is actually 400 years old. Some elders look old and wizened, but they are an exception.

　However, vampires can start to look "older" over time. Though Kindred do not age, some begin to weaken and slow down under the great weight of years and thickening blood. A slowness of movement and speech and a dullness of eye or mind creates an aura of age in the body of the youth.


Theme

　The theme is tainted authority and spoiled love. While human elders stand for continuity of leadership and the transmission of community values to a new generation, vampire elders seek to pervert that equation. Since they seldom step down and cannot lose power through a natural death, they stand as an undying obstruction to the ascent of new generations. To continue their unholy grasp on the levers of control, they must eternally frustrate the ambitions of their progeny.

　Kindred elders hold onto power for power's sake, even when their communities begin to decay as a result. This reflects the very worst in human political systems, which are often loath to allow new generations a place at the table. Whenever an entrenched ruling class uses its influence to cling to power, political rot sets in.

　For example, the autocratic regime of the P******* R******* of C**** is composed exclusively of aged men who thwart any attempts at power-sharing with new generations of leaders. This gerontocracy has little connection to the needs of the nation. They resist much-needed reforms and are reduced to keeping order by slaughtering dissenters. It is an instructive lesson for Storytellers, since the B****** regime is a fine example of the paranoia, isolation, arrogance and desperation that mark vampire elders.

　Even democracies are not immune to fears of passing authority to a new generation. Politicians who came of age during World War ll kept a lock on the U.S. presidency for an unprecedented two generations because many voters were loath to allow younger leaders to take over the White House from World War Il era leaders. This generational imbalance created a tilt toward autocratic, imperial administrations that were remote from those they governed.

　A society that does not routinely refresh its leadership is a society doomed to stagnation and repression. This is made especially clear in the vampire Elysium.

　Worse than political decay is the inner damage done when the old withhold the birthright of the young. Parents who fear their own aging often subvert the attempts of their children to fly free, poisoning the love and trust between generations. The young become either weak-willed or wildly rebellious, while reducing the elders to stingy, fearful wrecks, prisoners of the very power to which they desperately cling.

　Human parents have an overwhelming impulse to give their lives for their children. Many act without hesitation, abandoning caution and self-protection to protect their young at the first sign of danger. But elder Kindred are very different. The selfless, all-encompassing love of a mortal parent for a child is lost on the immortal vampires. Like congressmen assured of reelection, they paradoxically become more cautious, not more courageous. Elders take fewer chances, and not many would risk their immortal necks to save the skin of their progeny.

　When the flow of life and love ceases to move forward through time and through generations, decay sets in. The elders are rotting in their own accumulated power, but are terrified of letting go or doing anything else. They suffer from overaccumulation. The ancillae suffer from lack. And so it goes.

　By pouring vast amounts of energy into its internecine struggle, the vampiric family has little left for the larger battle against outside enemies. To break this soul-decaying dead-lock, elders attempt to betray their ambitious young before the young can topple them through betrayal. Treachery is the tragic condition of the Kindred community, and anarchs only see it getting worse.


Mood

　The mood in the elegant marble halls of Elysium is dignified desperation and stifled paranoia. The elders have had centuries to master the art of insincerity, and they have reached levels of perfection rarely glimpsed among mortals. They are smiling on the outside, but inside they are screaming, and Elysium reverberates with the piercing, silent echoes. The elders have compromised their own integrity to such a profound degree that many of them have lost their inner stability and have fragmented their sense of self. This profound disconnection from the core of existence is a painful experience for sentient beings. Dangerously unbalanced, the elders lash out from a lonely anger only briefly seen by the rest of us in our most desperate moments. When confronted by their own contradictions and transgressions, their first impulse is to destroy.

References

　Anything by George Bemard Shaw (Man and Superman, The Devil's Disciple, Major Barbara), anything by Voltaire (Candide), Shakespeare's tragedies (Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear), classics like George Eliot's Silas Mamer and movies from Wall Street to Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.


Mood Music

　Music has great power to stir the emotions during a game. It can add excitement, tension and a real sense of creeping dread. It is hard to use other art forms to convey age and mood in a game, but music works wonders. The elitist elders keep Elysium stocked with great art of the centuries, which they hold with a miser's grasp, seeking to possess rather than enjoy it. Thus, haunting melodies often sound through the halls, played by Dominated mortal musicians. If you do not currently use music, experiment with adding it to the background for added dimensions of play.

　Elders are partial to music that neonates consider stuffy, pompous and old. Operas and symphonies by Handel, Wagner and Elgar predominate, though Mozart and Bach are also well represented. Try Orf's Carmina Burana for wild power and grandeur. Moody, mysterious themes by Debussy, Ravel, Mussorgsky and Mahler play when the elders are feeling grim and self-pitying. Try Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Storytellers can play almost any classical music to set a mood, but these examples will yield special results.

　Many elders are romantics at heart, superstitious refugees from a Byronic era who are forced to live in an age of cold science. As a result, many turn to exquisitely beautiful, passionate music for comfort and solace. It should come as a shock to enter the inner sanctum a venomous, corrupt old vampire and hear the haunting music of Beethoven or Brahms. Syrupy tunes like Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Themeby Paganini or Pachelbel's "Canon" will sound unnerving in a Ventrue boardroom and frightening in a Nosferatu sewer. The only music to avoid is selections that are light, airy and sprightly in nature. Only Malkavians and some Toreador are attracted to such styles. The rest of the elders find it unbearable to be so reminded of the lightness of being that is forever denied to their undying spirits.

　Storytellers can also assign special "theme songs" to key elders. For example, a certain elder may always have Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King" playing whenever the characters visit. Once the players have linked the music and the elder, playing that tune when he's not around can unnerve them by making his invisible presence felt.

　Many elders only enjoy music that was popular during their lifetime. One subtle way to show differences in age is to play themes specifically keyed to the elder's birth era. Western civilization has very little surviving music from before the Middle Ages, so the oldest vampires may prefer Asian or Indian compositions, which significantly predate those of the West.

　Elders born in pre-Christian Europe may favor neo-pagan artists like Loreena McKennitt. European vampires born during the early Christian era and the Middle Ages may favor medieval music, like plainsong and Gregorian chants. These have become very popular recently and are quite easy to find. They instantly create an eerie, otherworldly mood. Minstrel ballads can also give the impression of antiquity.

　Elders born in Europe between 1450 and 1600 favor Renaissance music, like that of des Prez and Palestrina. Protestants may favor Luther's chorales, while Catholics may prefer hymns. To evoke the ornate quality of the 1600-1750 Baroque era, try Handel, Monteverdi, harpsichord music by Scarlatti and anything by the Baroque master, Bach. Those who date from between 1750 and 1820 will favor Classical music by Haydn and Mozart, as well as Beethoven's early works. Many of the vampires born in the Romantic era of 1820 to 1910 are unabashed in their love of the explosion of music created by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi and Beethoven. This is the last musical period in which true elders were born. Most born after that time are Pretenders (see Chapter Four) who deliberately surround themselves with the air of antiquity.

　Some elders make a point of changing with the times. Brujah are intent on staying not only current in contemporary tastes, but ahead of the curve. They will always try to play cutting-edge music that is cacophonous and popular with disaffected youth. However, many of them also get stuck in the past, favoring revolutionary music of earlier eras. A Brujah elder who remained active in the early 20th century may secretly favor atonal compositions by Schoenberg or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which caused riots during its premiere but which to many modern ears is indistinguishable from much older classical works.

　Gangrel often disdain "snob" music, and prefer more rustic melodies played on acoustic instruments, or jazz and blues. Tremere like clean, technical precision and embrace electronic music. Malkavians’ musical tastes are at best eclectic and at worst disorienting. Their elders are likely to play old favorites by Frank Zappa, high-speed Schubert and sea chanteys, often at the same time.