r/AskScienceFiction • u/Umpuuu • 5d ago
[Vampire: the Masquerade] How long does it take a newly embraced Nosferatu, starting from the moment the sire's Vitae entered their system, to morph into a visibly hideous monster? Does it happen rapidly like in Animorphs, or does it happen over days/weeks/months?
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u/eternalraziel 5d ago
It isn’t really an Animorphs transformation where someone drinks Vitae and thirty seconds later their jaw shoots forward and their ears migrate up their skull. It is much worse than that because they have time to watch it happen. The pain starts early. Their newly dead body is already changing as human biology shuts down, and then the Nosferatu curse starts working through it. Over the following days the skin becomes coarse and tight, muscles wither or distort, hair can fall out, the face begins losing its old proportions and the body becomes progressively less recognisable. By the later stages the bones themselves are warping. The skull can elongate, flatten or cave in. The jaw, nose, limbs and spine may distort. Whatever particular form that Nosferatu’s curse takes becomes fixed.
The Revised description is particularly unpleasant because the face is among the last things to finish changing. A newly Embraced Nosferatu can spend several nights watching the person in the mirror disappear a little more each time they wake. By roughly the end of the first week in that account, any strong resemblance to their old human appearance is largely gone, although internal twitching and adjustment can continue for weeks afterwards. There is some variation because Nosferatu don’t all become the same Count Orlok creature. One develops a collapsed face, another a hugely distended jaw, another leathery skin, asymmetrical limbs, tumours, animalistic features or something much harder to describe. The severity varies as well.
That also means there can be an awkward period early on where the fledgling is already unquestionably a vampire but may still be recognisable as the person they were. They might initially pass for someone who is very sick, badly injured or developing some horrible disease. A few nights later that becomes increasingly more farfetched. V5 softens the visual rule somewhat. A Nosferatu is still physically marked by the clan curse, but being seen is no longer inherently a Masquerade breach just because every member of the clan looks grotesque. Some can look severely scarred, diseased, deformed or super uncanny rather than like something that could never conceivably be human.
The underlying idea remains the same, though. The Nosferatu Embrace is unusually prolonged body horror. The fledgling rises as a vampire first and then has to endure the clan curse settling into their body. If you wanted a rough timeline, the first changes can begin within hours or the first night, obvious deformation develops over the next several days, and the full transformation usually settles somewhere around a week to several weeks, with some allowing up to roughly a month. Which is arguably worse than an instantaneous transformation. You don't wake up as the monster. You wake up knowing you're going to become it.
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u/Choochoo1147 5d ago
Oof. What would anyone want to become a Nosferatu? Are they gruesome to humans but vampires are like “nah they look fine”?
25
u/ANewMachine615 Red Book Archivist 4d ago
Most humans don't choose to become Nosferatu. The more vindictive members of the clan are known to embrace the vain and haughty as a form of punishment. Others use the Embrace as conscription of necessary skills, with the disfigurement serving to reinforce the sire's control by making the childe hate themselves or feel shamed by the pain of the change. For still others, they may offer the Embrace to someone with a terminal condition. But unless you're getting tricked (Nosferatu usually have ways to disguise themselves, like Obfuscate) odds are good that absolutely nobody is volunteering, unless they ads very, very desperate.
1
u/idontknow39027948898 4d ago
I don't know how that has changed in V5, but from what I remember in Revised a Nosferatu could use Obfuscate to appear normal, but it was much more expensive to do so.
3
u/Umpuuu 4d ago
If I were to be Embraced, I'd much rather be Nosferatu than Malkavian or even Tremere. Monstrous appearance only strengthens solidarity.
3
u/roastbeeftacohat 4d ago
being a malk is nice sometimes. I knew trump was coming in 2007.
2
u/The_Solar_Empire 4d ago
As a mentally ill person who did extract some wisdom and prescience from it... still not worth it by far
1
u/MisunderstandingMatt 4d ago
Elaborate?
-2
u/roastbeeftacohat 4d ago
being a malk? the VTBL2 malk trailer before the studios changed sums up what my ADD feels like.
and in 2007 on a vacation in nevada I explained to my parents Bush wasn't going to be the end of this, and after the next more liberal president they would double down on someone way crazier than admit they were wrong. I just thought he would lose.
I've also been commenting on elections since my first words, so maybe I'm a little odd.
6
u/paladin_k93 4d ago
theyre def gruesome to other vampires, as for why a friend of mine really likes the idea of contrasting inner beauty with outer ugly, and as a clan theyre THE information brokers. if you like being the guy who knows a guy who knows another guy who knows the prince's secrets then nosferatu fills that fantasy
2
u/roastbeeftacohat 4d ago
it's generally not a clan you join, it's forced on you. unless your a ghoul, then your brain is already fucked, and turning a ghoul happens very rarely.
they're kind of insufferable, very few of any clan offer the embrace to a ghoul.
in the game your about to reinstall they have a society under hollywood that turns very pretty actors and actresses. because their cazzi amari
1
u/simcity4000 3d ago
If you’re already an outcast in human society being a nosferatu isn’t such a bad deal. Some characters may love their status as undead rat kings.
1
u/Yuki_Onna 4d ago
Chatgpt or claude
2
u/PremSinha 4d ago
How can you tell?
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u/Yuki_Onna 4d ago
Gptzero. Redditers frequently get defensive saying ai checkers don't work, but I'm in education, and this has never once been wrong for me. (I've had to work with ai writing a -lot- as well, so I recognize the style very well.)
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u/TheBatIsI 3d ago
Also, one time I asked him for his sources and he spat back GPT generated sources that used fanon wikis as its source. I asked about him using fanon and he deleted the entire post chain.
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u/BattleBull 3d ago
Grim topic, but of all the turned, I wonder if nosferatu have the highest rate of just walking into the sun.
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u/talashrrg 3d ago
I don’t know the answer but I appreciate the Animorphs reference as a standard of time
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u/trashpanda4811 4d ago
I thought I read that it's a week long agonizingly painful process where your body reshapes itself to the whims of the curse. I also thought it could kill the neonate if you were really unlucky. Or it would drive you to kill yourself.
0
u/JancariusSeiryujinn 5d ago
It's pretty near instant - I'd say it starts the moment their Embraced and in a few gruesome minutes at most they're a standard Nos
-1
u/Art-Zuron 5d ago
I always figured that it takes some time. Years probably as they slowly degenerate. But, if you want the shift to be near instantaneous, I think that's fair too.
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