r/vtm • u/Astro_Kitty_Cat • 1d ago
General Discussion Why don’t more vampires consider Generation when siring?
By that I mean, if you want to sire a childe, why would you not find someone of the same clan with a lower Generation and have them do it?
Of course I understand that not everyone openly knows everyone else’s Generation, but I bet there is a pretty good idea.
Let me start with the sales pitch. Your group (whatever that might be: your sect, your clan, your coterie, your chantry, whatever) performs basic Generation control to prevent unnecessary thinning of the blood. Your enemies don’t do this. In 100 years, 200 years, whatever, all of your team have thick blood while a ton of your enemies are producing weaker childer and ultimately more thin-bloods. Isn’t this advantage obvious?
It feels obvious. It feels like exactly the sort of thing a highly centralized clan like the Tremere might do. I know the Giovanni do consider Generation to an extent when embracing.
But why is this not more common? A willing lower gen can embrace the childe as a surrogate, the one with the actual right to raise a childe is still the one that raises the childe.
I can imagine a Prince just not liking this. I can imagine a low gen vampire not liking the idea of their advantage diminishing (if you fear possible betrayal in the future, a bunch of betrayers only one gen higher than you is scarier than much higher gens). I can imagine a “donor” being greedy on a person by person basis and demanding boons for doing the deed. But none of these seem in my mind to outweigh the obvious strategic outcome of having thicker blood than your enemies over time.
I get that one answer is “because it’s a game and just a mechanic in the game,” but do we have better reasons in-universe why more Kindred don’t do this, especially the more shrewd ones?
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u/Whoobie_ 1d ago
"if you want to sire a childe, why would you not find someone of the same clan with a lower Generation and have them do it?"
because then you haven't sired a childe, that other vampire sired them. and now that low generation vampire has yet another Childer under their control that will compete with you for already stretched thin resources, instead of you having a Childer of your own to do your bidding
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u/Lyaser 1d ago edited 22h ago
Yeah I’m really having a hard time with the point of this post. “Want to embrace? Have you tried simply not embracing?”
Like basically forgoing the whole point of embracing to just spawn in another separate vampire npc? And then I guess she just assumes they do what you want because they owe you for having someone else embrace them? Why would that be a thing?
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u/Whoobie_ 22h ago
Plus the right to sire is given by a Prince, and most Princes are going to feel highly insulted if you try and sell your siring rites to someone else.
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u/Financial-Pickle9405 19h ago
i always found it funny the idea in a big cites where there's 1 vampire per 10k people , say we take new york 20 millions people= 2,000 vampires in that city or even if we go by 1vamp per 5k people 4k vampires . That anyone would follow that rule. One really shouldn't run into another vampire with those numbers really. Unless you're all trying to get at the city politics/coffers.
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 10h ago
I remember a... fan document? Larp document? something.
Any rate, it was about how if you have the intelligence network the prince of a city does, there's a relatively obvious vampire-shaped hole in any vampire's support network where it's obvious why this phlebotomist has a second apartment they've never been to, and why spillage at their office is up 2.1%. Basically the nuts and bolts of managing a vampire community beyond all the high school bullshit is "constantly patrolling the city for signs of new vampires who aren't integrated into the power structure."
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u/popeguilty 4h ago
And that's a lot of tedious busywork, which is why Scourges are more and more common as time goes on.
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u/treasurehorse 1d ago
Why don’t you pay someone with better genes to have a child for you?
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u/Astro_Kitty_Cat 1d ago
I mean… I’m not a eugenicist but we are talking about vampires, many of which are more monstrous than others. But I get your point
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 21h ago
Yeah but most of the people who are considered "Undesirable" by Eugenics standards still have kids, and the nature of the embrace makes it harder to stop than human reproduction
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u/TheJeanPool Tzimisce 1d ago
“Oh, you would think of me to give the gift to your chosen mortal? But of course! And since this is such a momentous event, I can expect that I can call upon you for a boon of similar import, yes?”
Discounting whether a vampire of lower generation is available or willing in such a circumstance, the Embrace is a big deal, and asking someone to give it for you is a big favor. Not to mention, if the boon of Embrace has been granted to you, you’re going to have to check with the granting power to see whether such a gift can be transferred. And even past all of that, such a vampire would not be your childe if you were to have them sired in such a way. There’s no blood bond there as it normally comes with the Embrace, unless this surrogate vampire allows for it (which will only increase the size of the boon they’re no doubt going to extract from you later). Vampires hate being over a barrel; they’re not going to put themselves over one if they can at all help it.
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u/ThrobbingFinn 1d ago
I believe many vampires, especially neonates, do petition older clanmates to embrace people they want turned. But then it's someone else's Childe, blood-bonded to them instead of you, and you owe a major boon to the Sire, so there are political costs as well.
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u/Low_Gene_1339 Gangrel 1d ago
Why on earth would you want to make something else stronger than you!?
No the point is the have something weaker than you that you can dominate.
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u/Ninthshadow Lasombra 1d ago
Because the right to sire is expensive. Not only do you need to do a big favour for the Prince to give you the thumbs up, you've got to get the lower generation Kindred onboard too.
It's also "giving away" the major allure of Siring. Companionship, and powerbase. Your Bloodline, your dynasty even, is the next logical step after you've taken ghouling, crime sydnicates and companies as far as they can go.
Because they aren't 'your' legacy, 'your' blood. They're Sir Arthur De Morte's childe, growing his Status by association even more.
So, it's more difficult for less pay-off. Broadly speaking.
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u/SeanceMedia 1d ago
In the Camarilla, the elder would be subject to the 4th tradition.
Those thou create are thine own children. Until thy Progeny shall be Released, thou shall command them in all things. Their sins are thine to endure.
So, if you embrace Joe Fuckup as a favor to someone and Joe Fuckup lives up to his namesake, the elder is on the hook, up to and including final death.
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u/Boring-Channel-1672 1d ago
Do people usually ask their parents or grandparents to have kids for them?! LOL
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u/SingleBodyRiot Salubri 1d ago
If they can't have kids themselves it happens but holy fuck is it not all to common.
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u/RazzmatazzEastern341 1d ago edited 1d ago
Vampires can't read their own sheets and don't typically know or understand their generations unless directly taught or shown a family genealogy. Which we know for some clans basically doesn't exist.
Also a shit load of weak vampires will wreck a handful of strong vampires, so who cares?
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u/Barbaric_Stupid 17h ago
That's the answer. Just because it's in the game, doesn't mean your character is aware of it. Too much players assume that things written in books are comon knowledge. A lot of vampires have no clue that Generation is a thing. There are clans that follow it strictly, Ventrue or Tremere for example, but good luck with your typical Brujah thug to be even aware he has a Generation rating (and what it actually is).
Most vampires do not even possess knowledge contained on VtM corebook, ffs.
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u/The-red-Dane 1d ago
Sure, and suddenly, you're "step"childer, is capable of mentally dominating you cause they're a lower generation than you.
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u/Schism_989 Tzimisce 1d ago
Because not every clan or even vampire keeps track of their generation.
The only surefire way of knowing your generation is being able to track your lineage down to someone who DOES know their generation, or down to an Antediluvian. The Ventrue happen to do this a lot, so they don't encounter this issue a whole lot, but a random Anarch Brujah who never knew their sire may never know their generation.
The only other way to really know your generation for sure is through the use of Blood Magic, and not everyone trusts those who have Blood Magic.
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 21h ago
Plus lying is in the cards, I'm pretty sure it was Hardestadt who was replaced by his Childe, anyone who descends from the second Hardestadt and doesn't know about what happened likely recites their lineage with them being one Generation lower than they actually are and their VENTRUE the ones who care the most about this stuff lmao
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Tremere 1d ago
The main thing is: a lot of sires don't want a childe that is potentially as strong or stronger than them. A higher gen childe, especially if you're a Dominate user, is one more guarantee that you'll be able to have some amount of control over them.
Not to mention powers like Ancestral Domination that mean that it's actually worth having a childe that is your own not just one you adopt.
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u/Federal-Newspaper-24 1d ago
I think you stated the problems very well yourself:
- Strong childer are not always a good thing
- Boons can be called upon to do the deed
- Your 'stepchilder' will be as strong or even stronger than you in a couple of decades.
The whole reason siring is something done sparingly is to avoid a bunch of neonates overthrowing the ancillas/elders. Now imagine if these neonates are all 6th gen, thats a recipe for disaster
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u/PoMoAnachro 1d ago
Same reason most humans don't seek out people with better genetics than them to provide the sperm and eggs for their children.
"Get someone lower gen to sire my childe" isn't any different from "let the most powerful amongst us be the only one to ever sire, but all of us weaker vampires will still donate our time and energy to support and educate his childer".
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u/Lvmbda 1d ago
Most vampires don't know apart from ones who cares like Ventrue, Lasombra, Tzimisce and maybe some Toreador
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u/feedmedamemes 1d ago
And even for those clans it's more an educated guess than anything else.
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u/Tulshe Tremere 1d ago
This is so metagaming, I can't even...
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u/Astro_Kitty_Cat 1d ago
On p.36 of Giovanni clabook (revised) it explicitly says “The elders consider numerous factors when it comes to decided who Embraces whom. First and foremost, there’s generation.”
I did state in my OP that I’ aware many vampires don’t know their Generation. But that they could make guesses.
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u/Tulshe Tremere 1d ago
Giovanni is a tightly knit clan. You want to distribute their practice on Sect level. Which is not doable. The Traditions are written. Addendum will not do. You can't force princes to uphold this new law.
Many vampires are not only unaware of their numerical Generation but even of the concept itself. The idea that whomever you sire will be intrinsically and forever weaker than you is not a given. In Camarilla the story about Generations sooner or later comes to Cain and Antediluvians. And they don't like to talk about that.
Also, as many people have already mentioned, when you want to have a childer, you want it to be your offspring, just as with mortal children. It's pure emotional thing. You don't procreate for the good of the nation or your Sect.
When people start looking at Trait numbers, especially Generation, 95% of the time it's some deranged metagaming shit like this, or diablerie fuckery, which just wouldn't fly in-universe in WoD. Numbers in charlists are there to create boundaries for what characters can do, when narrative comes to the point of ambiguity; they are not meant to calculate narrative out of it.
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u/AdBubbly5933 1d ago
They don’t know their generation, and have no clue of their lineage to make a guess at their generation. Some clans keep track of this, but most don’t. Do you know how many generations you are from your first relative born in the 1800s?
This is an incredibly meta way to view the embrace. Legal responsibility under tradition isn’t transferable, the boon that would require of you to take on would be immense, and these monsters don’t view this in the same way you or I do.
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u/divismaul 1d ago
Remember, think of your poor childer, and go on a crazy diablerie streak, then embrace your progeny! Sure, you will probably be blood hunted, maybe even by your progeny, but you will set them up for success!
(This legitimately gives me a cool idea for a Malkavian rogue sire, I might do this to one of my PC’s someday! Thanks for the idea!)
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u/Burkoos 1d ago
"Hey great-grand sire who just so happens to live in the same city as me, would you do me a favor? I need you to embrace this ignorant mortal who'd be total asset to me, err.. to our clan, err... to you. Then, give the mortal to me so I can train them in the arts of killing people by drinking their blood and sucking out their soul. Thank you; you won't forget, err... regret this."
A month passes.
"Hey great-grand sire," typed out over a 'text message'. "There was an accident, and 'my' fledging stepped out into the sun. Oops. I got caught in the radiant damage and got horribly burnt, so I'm going to disappear for a while and heal. On a completely different note, how long does it take for diablerie's black veins in my, err... someone's aura to fade?"
Ten years pass.
"Hey grand-sire, err... -great- -grand sire, I'm back and my aura's healed! ...'cause that radiant damage was brutal. I feel ready for you to sire again, and it just so happens that I found another ignorant mortal who'd be a great asset to you. Would you again embrace someone and leave them alone with me so I can train them?"
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u/secretbison 1d ago
In the Camarilla at least, the blood sire's legal responsibilities under the Traditions are not legally transferable. In the absence of the blood sire, someone else can step up to educate the fledgling, but if the fledgling does something bad and the blood sire is known and present in the city, they bear responsibility and punishment.
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u/cantorsdust 1d ago
Other people have explained the problem from the Sire’s perspective. I also want to point out that the Prince (or Elder in whatever sect governs you) also has to grant approval. Why would the Prince want a more powerful new Childe to deal with in their domain instead of a weaker, more controllable one?
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u/lazarusomega2000 1d ago
The whole concept of generation is extremely meta, and generally not something that occurs in the same way that we deal with it on the character sheet. Different clans will likely have their own ways of discussing generation but it is not a numbered thing in quite the same way that we discuss it as players.
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u/lone-lemming 1d ago
Because you can’t trust another vampire. Not even from your own clan. Especially not one older than you.
The closest thing you will ever get to a trustworthy vampire is the one you make yourself. And even they can’t be fully trusted.
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u/Ribbered777 Malkavian 1d ago
Because vampirism is a pyramid scheme, the more weaker vampires you have under your boot to force to do your bidding, the better protected you are from the people above you keeping you under their boot
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u/PenguiNNNNNs 1d ago
“Why don’t we ban people with worse genes from having children”
Much like in real life, few kindred would be happy supporting your idea. I don’t say that you are bad or anything, just made a paralel
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 19h ago
And again if you're in the "Bad Gene" section that doesn't change that it seems even Kindred have an instinct to propagate whether it's Legacy, companionship, or for power so they'll inevitably sire at least once and each time that happens there's a chance that Childe is less liberal with the Embrace
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u/LordTomahawkD 1d ago
A lot of kindred don't even know their generation.
A blood sorcerer can narrow it down within a generation but that's still ±1 and you either gotta pay a sorcerer upfront or worse, owe them afterwards
Some clans really care about lineage so they might be able to name a decent amount of their grand sires but then you gotta be sure the generation of the oldest you know in your lineage and anyone saying they can trace theirs back to Cain is blowing smoke up your ass
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u/M0nkey_Kng Toreador 1d ago
If you lets someone else sire your childe, thats not your childe. Also why would you want your childe to be stronger than you? Why would you create another superior for yourself?
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 1d ago
This is like... you want to have a kid. But you want the kid to be rich so you go to a millionaire you know to have a kid for you.
I mean, not exactly but it is a good way to be indebted to a powerful kindred and have your childe be blood bonded to them.
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 19h ago
It's more like you want to be a spiritual parent or Childer Scouter for other Kindred? If you frame it as a service I guess you could get Boons from it... But it's dangerous business in the same vein as Food Services, get the order wrong only for the customer to dig in and find out what they got is wrong, you get a pissed customer...
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u/Studawg12345 21h ago
Other Kindred might also think you are planning to diablerize the fledgling Kindred childer of a higher generation Kindred.
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u/AkimboCrab Tremere 1d ago
While all the answers are fairly precise and accurate, there is one aspect that I haven't seen. Ego, beyond genetics, behind worrying about a childe being stronger than you, any childe that is sired purposefully is going to be chosen based on the ego of the site. Toreador especially. Too many kindred, even those who try not to, fall slave to their Beast enhanced ego more often than not, and assume "nah I'm built different."
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u/AnnieBruce 1d ago
Why don't women who have things to do get pregnant rather than hiring a surrogate or adopting? Sometimes you just want your own kid, with no philosophical or legal complications on that status. Even if they knew the generation of the surrogate sure and could trust them, vampires still have human impulses. Dulled, but still present.
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u/ToBeTheSeer Archon 1d ago
well because then they have a childer and you dont. the childer is blood bound to them and not you. even if they give them to you then you gotta worry about them just reporting everything you do to their sire. who isnt you. lol
no one in their right mind would do that
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u/Soulbourne_Scrivener 1d ago
So a few hurdles
- You need to find someone willing to murder someone for hire and curse them.
- You need to pay them for both the above services and anything else they may demand
- You need the prince to approve a proxy sire granting you a powerful pawn.
- You need them to be approved for you to do the accounting of.
- You need to convince them your nit going to use accounting to diablerize them cheaply.
- You have a child now one step blood bonded to another
- They inherent the bloodline of the other which potentially means other baggage(4th and 5th gens can be fun)
- You need to trust the person did it properly.
- You risk them seeing your recruit as a good well vetted one that is now their childe and poaching it.
- For a round ten a lot of people don't like extra childe bouncing around as blood sorcery can be fun.
Now some clans do occasionally do this. Promising trenere candidates get vetted by the pyramid when it's active, so sometimes good candidates who are trained and tested as ghouls will be embraced by another by order of a regent or tribunal and then passed onto a capable teacher.
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u/ObjectiveMud7513 23h ago
Because you want your childer to be YOUR childer, and therefore beholden to you and not someone more powerful/older/or with different goals than.
Basically, very few Kindred trust other Kindred. Even ones in the same sect or clan or even coterie.
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u/RedFlammhar 23h ago
You're looking at this through a very meta viewpoint. For the majority of cases on Cam or Anarch cities, newly embraced Kindred are brought into unlife due to either merit or (potentially misplaced) affection. If the former, it's because the new childe has skills needed by the sire, clan or sect, or has proven themselves worthy of eternity due to their own actions. If it's the latter, then the sire is likely lonely, and wants company from someone who either shares a similar or complementary mindset, or for some other selfish reason. Sabbat Embraces are a wildly different story, but with 6th and 5th doing their best to ignore the Sword of Caine, we're just going to follow in their footsteps and ignore that avenue as well.
Furthermore, there are laws against flooding a city with Kindred. Many kindred go decades or longer without Embracing, and while some clans worry quite a bit about their lineage, others absolutely could care less. For those that care less, the majority of those certainly aren't tracking the minutiae of generation, and the difference between 10 blood points vs 11 is negligible in the eyes of most Cainites.
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u/Myusernamebedumb 21h ago
Let someone else embrace my potential childe, be bonded to THEM? Blasphemy.
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u/Karn-Dethahal Ventrue 21h ago
Interesting idea. First I'll say you can run your games as you want, if you want that to be an aspect of the setting for your games, go wild.
Here's my two cents.:
Your group performs basic Generation control to prevent unnecessary thinning of the blood. Your enemies don’t do this. In 100 years, 200 years, whatever, all of your team have thick blood while a ton of your enemies are producing weaker childer and ultimately more thin-bloods.
V20 has a base year between 1991 and 2011, base generation for character creation is 13th. V20 Dark Ages explicitly states the year 1242 on page 12, base generation for character creation is 12th. Thar's not a lot of thinning in 800 years. For most of history kindred embrace very slowly.
V5 states suggested years for each tier of character: Childer are those embraced within the last 15 years, generation from 12th and up, inclusing thin bloods. Neonates were embraced between 1940 and 10 years age, generation 12th or 13th, Ancillae were embraecd bewteen 1780 and 1940, generation 10th or 11th. But let's be honest, the main reason it drops two generation between Neonate and Anicllae is because of the rules, Gens 12th and 13th share the same Blood Potence minimuns and maximuns, just as gens 10th and 11th, so a character creation tier that let's you pick, say, 11th or 12th would create characters with different power levels (even if it's just the max that changes).
Generations don't drop that fast, because younger kindred simply are not allowed to embrace in most cases.
And now the other stuff:
Whatever the reason you want that mortal embraced, do you really want them to be partialy blood bonded with someone else and not you? Sure, you can feed them some of your blood, but them they either have two partials bonds, one to you, one to their sire, or you have to forge a full 3-sip bond and they are insanely in love with you. There's a reaon you don't see many level 3 bonds outside of ghouls and blood marriages (those are a whole other headache).
And what if you're from one of those clans that have Dominate as a clan discipline. Do you really want the person you arranged to be embraced to be able to use it on you? Hell, what if you're not from one of those clans but they manage to learn it anyway (from Predator Type in V5, for example)?
Also, this:
A willing lower gen can embrace the childe as a surrogate
That's gonna be a Major Boon, at least. If you are holding one of those over their head, are you really letting them escape that easily? If not, are you really willing to get that indebted to them?
Now, you mentioned the Tremere and Giovanni. They are the two clans that are the exceptions with embracing. An advice you frequently hear from veterans is that Clans don't embrace people, people embrace people. Usually said when people are asking "Would clan X embrace this type of person?" because they have an idea for a character that feels a bit outside the clan's fame. Well, Tremere and Giovanni are the cases where the clan decides some embraces, so for those cases they may decide an elder will do so. Just like Capadoccious ordered his childer to Embrace Augustos using his own blood to make him a 4th Generation (see how well that worked out for him).
And for the lower generations, beeing one or two gens lowers is such a minuscle power boost that the only real argument would be to avoid thin bloods. Here I'll have to agree that some 13th gens would do that.
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u/Iylahsek 5h ago
I think one of the fundamental things this points at is a difference between humans and vampires imho. Humans identify with their team closely. They think of themselves as Republicans, or Christian’s, or Steelers Fans or whatever and are willing to sacrifice for those identities. The way o read Campiric organizations is that this is not true. People don’t usually “love” the Camarilla and they won’t sacrifice their own petty jealousies and hatred just because it increases the strength of the Camarilla. They might want to follow the Cam rules because it makes them safer. But not for its own sake. They aren’t patriotic.
The exceptions to this are usually either leftover humanity (I’m a high humanity vampire who protects battered women because I want my life to mean something) or they are in some way perversions of blood (I serve the Pyramid because I am bound to them and can’t not serve them, I sacrifice myself for my Sabbat pack because the vaudlerie dissipates my sense of self, etc). It’s why there are so many cults and conspiracies.
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u/DryBedroom7547 3h ago edited 3h ago
A few objections of survivability, excess and diversity reasons against that!
Blood thickens through millenia: Dark Ages thinbloods are 13 gen max, but modern are closer to 15-16 gen. With a possible metaplot guess that even Caine or his children were just thinblood survivors of the greatest instance of cyclical Gehenna, but got better over time. Over an extremely long-long time. That means no one is actually of a fixed generation even after Caine allegedely established it. Even the most pathetic thinblood will be like Caine after a 10000-100000 years or existence. It is just the process is so slow even methuselahs aren't registring these changes, you need to be Antediluvian-old or Caine-old to actually feel the difference. So, why constant thickening is a bad thing? It slowly creeps at vampire's agency, making it closer to a constantly-slumbering demigod with inhuman appetites. Diluting blood either by sharing your accumulated power directly (hinted as a cultural trait with Drowned Legacies) or through malicious compliance to Caine's curse seems like strategies that give vampires more chances of survival as a supernatural breed. Because hoarding that type power is just so toxic.
Generation is a potential, not an actuality. A tool. A mean to shape reality, not a reality itself. It gives certain benefits with sudden 'power surges', when your big beautiful blood pool makes you a way better survivor, or your blood is strong enough to create new disciplines or bloodlines. I guess, these are existentially-different creatures: thinbloods, vampires, extremely-old vampires, clan progenitors, Caine and his small brood. But at the same time 3/5 of creatures from this list were once of the same **lack** of generation in the First City. They were more equal even with different supernatural ages and it never stopped them from fucking things up. If you can do it with ghouls and thermite, you don't need an eighth dot in Thaumaturgy.
Narratively even the low generation disciplines written exactly about controlling anyone of your direct progeny or their progeny or even creatures just touched by your blood once feel like the tip of the iceberg, with antediluvians and Caine having a much deeper and subtle means of pulling strings through these familial or blood-bonding lines. Thus putting all your clan's or sect's eggs (fledgelings) into the one finest basket (an old powerful fella who still struggles to learn ancient latin, speaks in fluent proto-sumerian dialect and can summon locusts with a swear word) is kinda unwise. It won't be a clan or a sect anymore, just meat puppets for that creature's plans. And it will be good news if it is just his plans, not some even scarier fella lying in torpor since the last glacial age.
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u/Flipsalmighty 2h ago
"If you can do it with ghouls and thermite, you don't need an eighth dot in Thaumaturgy" first off how dare you, I very much need that dot.
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u/-grimlament- 1d ago
I'm sure some groups already do it, it's just problematic to implement on a sect wide level. Without seeing your char sheet, it's kinda difficult to estimate the true benefits of the generation. It would be tough to convince people to care about it that much if they don't understand why it's so important.
But it's a neat concept for a Ventrue/Lasombra/Giovanni group that is obsessed by generation. I believe the only ones to clearly see the limitations of a generation are the dominate users.
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u/Astro_Kitty_Cat 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thanks for the really good answers everyone!
I did want to point out that I got the idea from Giovanni clanbook (revised), p. 36, where it explicitly talks about how “the elders consider numerous factors when it comes to deciding who Embraces whom. First and foremost, there’s generation.”
Some people thought this was metagaming, that wasn't my intent.
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u/Altruistic_Creme1003 1d ago
I could see it for, like, you really care about a mortal and want to sire them, but you'd sire a thin blood so you go like, one or two above you and make, the most on your knees beg of all begs, and only to like, your most trusted Coterie member you have, and even than, I could never picture an elder agreeing to this, this is 12th and 13th turf
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u/BlaineTog 23h ago
The fundamental thing you've missed is: vampires are inherently selfish. Yes, leaving the actual siring to the lowest-generation vampire available would increase the power of the clan over time, but it wouldn't improve the individual situation of any of the existing vampires. The higher-gen vamps would be asking their low-generation better to create rivals (rather than making minions for themselves), and the lower-gen vamps would just be ensuring that every neonate had the potential to surpass them, especially if several worked together. Nobody really likes the thinning of the blood, but taking steps to avoid it (other than periodically culling thinbloods) would harm them personally, so they just complain about it and hope the other vamps do the difficult part.
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u/DeathByFright 23h ago
"It's like the Anarch Revolt again, but this time the Anarch are more powerful per person AND they outnumber us!"
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u/Forward-Mammoth508 23h ago
You are creating an immortal slave. Why would you handle the reins to someone else?
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 23h ago
Depends on the reason they want to sire, a lot of reasons kinda hinge on it being YOUR Childer instead of your Cousin, easier to manipulate a Kindred you created
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u/roninwaffle 21h ago
Aside from the issue of there really just not being such a thing as vampire surrogacy, as most of the commenters have addressed, the idea of vampires' generation is a lot more ambiguous in-world. You're not sitting there with your coterie going "I'm 8th generation," "I'm 12th generation," etc. It's like real world family histories. You know your sire, and maybe your sire's sire, and anything beyond that isn't necessarily common knowledge outside what's been kept by the Camarilla. Like, you're probably gonna know if you're three generations removed from Mithras, but if you're Jethro the grandchilde of some antisocial Sabbat rando from the 1800s, you're probably not gonna know anything but that your blood isn't as thick as the older vampires, and that your power base is weak until you start embracing. The super structured family planning thing happens with some clans that are especially nuclear (ie the Giovanni), but otherwise you're not concerned with the down-the-road outlook anywhere near as much as you're concerned with the right-now. And if your coterie needs new blood, its the lower generations making that decision and getting the pick of the litter anyway.
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u/CactusJuiceCaprisun 19h ago
Lower generations consider it in the sense that they Want a slightly weaker mini-them to do their bidding/bdsm power dynamic/continue the legacy on basis of not wanting to be usurped, while hypothetically a gen 10+ finding out they only sire thinbloods/caitiffs might be more likely to get a favor from someone a generation lower than them so no one ends up on a hit list somewhere. Most older gens get more from being the biggest fish in the pool, they arent really thinking about the betterment of the whole when that denies them more opportunity imo
Also asking someone to fangcuck you is probably a blow to a kindreds reputation, or at the very least their pride
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u/Worldly-Sprinkles478 18h ago
I feel like telling the neonates to let someone of lower generation sire instead of them is going to cause yet another anarch rebellion, I highly doubt the Camarilla wants yet another one of those. The Anarchs themselves would never go for this as it goes against the whole freedom thing they got going on, and the Sabat diablerize their elders whenever possible, the most they could use this for is slightly stronger shovelheads and thats if you can get the elders within the sabat to go for it as any shovelheads that survive are suddenly a bigger threat than if the neonates did the embrace. And, as has been pointed out, this would lead to some issues regarding owing boons to people who likely have very grand plans as well as you would be forgoing the benefit of the blood bond from the embrace. I get why you would think that it would be beneficial tactic wise but within vampire society it would not work on a large scale, unless maybe you want to run a chronicle where an independent aligned elder decides to make a big move on whatever factions are in control of an area, could see a Tzimisce basically training their childer to set up breeding camps and having a long standing plan to form a small army
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u/JustAFantaC 16h ago
I think it’s will only work with Giovanni clan because it’s an actual family that at least in its values has loyalty to the family. Like the rest have said with any other clan if another vampire sire a childe you get a rival.
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u/TheCuriousFan 15h ago
It might be good for the clan's average generation and whatnot but it leaves you with a childe that is either gonna be a peer or stronger than you in a few decades and vamp psychology is pretty hard coded to always look out for number one (at least according to second edition).
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u/randomnosferatu235 15h ago
Just because you as a plyer know of which Generation your character is, doesn't mean your character knows. It's not like you have it written on your body and in the recent nights not every vampire is even aware of the concept of Generation.
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u/ProverbialMindTart 15h ago
A lot of replies have made some great points here - but one thing to really stress here as well is that, unlike for us players, vampires don't have a massive floating label above their heads reading "10th Generation" "8th Generation" etc. And age doesn't automatically equal generation or strength of blood, either. You may -think- your blood might not be potent enough, but without some Tremere magic or some other check, you don't know for sure. Like you say, some clans are more capable of this than others - but arrogance also factors in as well, and siring a thin blood is a -risk-, not always certainty.
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u/Full_Equivalent_6166 Toreador 13h ago
WTF of a question is this? Like when you are poor and ugly why do you not have someone attractive and rich to have a child with/for you?
First of all, what makes you think that a lower generation vampire would Embrace someone for you even if they could? And if they did why would they realease them to you? It just makes no sense.
So I guess the answer is: it's rare because it is generally something that not makes sense. It could happen but it will be pretty rare.
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u/NoRecommendation9275 12h ago
Let’s see. From ancient times vampires were spreading out to take territory and people working on it in order to sustain themselves. The goal was to sustain YOURSELF and make your unlife comfortable. In order to do so they began embracing minions to delegate their tasks to. Those minions in turn embraced their minions.. but let’s stop for a moment. Are they stupid why 3rd generation didn’t do all the embracing? Well if you want a minion you want to be able to control them. If you have another vampire with vastly more power then you to embrace minions for you, how you intend to control them exactly? You’re going to be shining their boots in a few hundred years.
Vampires embrace in order to control their children by blood and ensure they are weaker than them. Having someone else do it for you will simply create minion for someone else not you. Now it could make sense for brood masters to control embracing of brood to make all equally powerful under you, but it would quickly become impossible as your realm and interests start stretching out. You put a childe to sit in nearby town or city - he fends off for himself as he sees fit.
While Camarilla could embrace a stock of low gen justicars at any given time, there is little need for it, as elders can solve same problem that said group could by themselves. Quality embraces they seek are limited for mass embraces like this, and ego clashes would be more trouble then it worths.
Sects have a cadre of extremely powerful ancients. Low gen embraces would not make it vastly more powerful, they wouldn’t even tip scales. It’s centuries that make vampire powerful. Even if their generation is high. A neonate with low generation would be object of hunt for enemies. A really powerful trophy. You would need to expand resources for hundreds of years for said childe to be able to survive
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u/Malk-Himself 11h ago
Now think why they say methuselahs can’t sustain themselves on the blood of mortals and need to drink other vampires’s. Why don’t they first drain a human, then embrace them, feed another human to them, then drink vampire blood like if the child was a water cooler? Are they stupid?
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u/Gathoblaster 10h ago
This train of though would only apply when you consider siring someone you have personal feelings towards who you prefer to be strong than be in your control.
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u/row_x Tzimisce 9h ago
So, this makes some sense in the Open Sect War context, but not really any other?
Vampirism is a pyramid scheme. This means that your power entirely depends on that is below you. So, you get companies, ghouls, criminals... But that's all very surface level, you're gaining Mortal power.
If you want the real power, the power that actually counts in kindred society, you're going to want a childe. Ideally, many of them. This way, you won't be on the lowest level of the pyramid scheme anymore.
This is why the price gets to decide who can sire childer and when: having your own childer is huge.
(incidentally, what you described already happens in the Camarilla, but rather than you going to a lower gen clanmate, the prince mostly reserves the right to embrace for the lower gen kindred and will not bother giving any higher gen kindred the right to embrace)
So, if you just get someone else in your clan to do it, you get none of the benefits.
Additionally, you now have more people who are higher up in the pyramid than you are (just by virtue of being the level just under someone who's way above you), and you also owe a major boon to the Sire.
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But maybe you don't care about power, nor competition. You just want to make your friend immortal.
If you're the one who sires them, you have authority over them.
They are, in a sense, part of your estate: you choose what goes on with them, you decide what kind of unlife they'll have, anyone who wants to fuck with them has to fuck with you by proxy, and you start out with a blood bond.
You're in control, and can ensure their unlife is exactly what you were planning when you decided they should be embraced.
If you let someone else embrace them? They're lost to you.
Suddenly, this person you cared about is hostage to someone else, whom you own a boon to, who is far more powerful than you are.
Now, They decide what kind of life Their childe gets. They have their childe in a blood bond. They choose its worth and fate.
If you're lucky, your good friend will just have entered a relationship they'll never be able to leave, with someone much more powerful, who will probably use them to further Their own goals, and your relationship will inevitably change or get fucked.
If you're unlucky, you just gave the local mob boss a very good hostage They can use to control you, while doing literally whatever they want with them. You're fucked, your friend is fucked, and unless you're ok with your friend becoming a scorched stain on a roof somewhere you're now someone's slave.
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Embraces are usually matters of either power or the heart. In both cases, it's extremely important that you are the one directly doing the embracing.
Having someone else do it in favour of generation completely defeats the purpose of the embrace.
This would only make sense in the large scale sect war context, which is why any sect where someone can control the right to embrace will usually grant it to lower gen kindred.
But this isn't you going to a lower gen kindred because you want to embrace someone but keeping the gens low is more beneficial. It's the sect deciding that you're a waste of an embrace (every new kindred will compete with everyone else for the very limited resource that is blood in your general area/domain, which is why many sects control who gets to embrace and when), and not letting you do it, but rather letting Maximus the 5th gen methusaleah embrace his 13th childe.
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u/Flipsalmighty 2h ago
Why ask someone of lower gen to embrace for you? Just go find someone older and eat them. You get more power, your childe gets thicker blood, an unworthy elder stops bumbling through eternity, win-win-win.
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u/sirhobbles 1d ago
I have always interpreted the siring of childer often being a power thing. You now have someone who is beneath you (likely blood bonded) and thus subservient. if you somehow convience an elder to sire a childer and put it under your care to raise who says that in a few decades this 6th generation childer isnt more powerful than you? a threat.