Malkavian

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The Malkavians are a fictional clan of vampires from White Wolf Game Studio's books, role-playing games Vampire: The Masquerade and, Vampire: The Dark Ages. In modern times, they are associated with the Camarilla. Their symbol is a broken mirror. White Wolf states, "Stories speak of an epidemic of contagious dementia exploding among those of Malkav's blood." (VtM3 -- p.72) Malkavians frequently haunt asylums, hospitals, and slums.

As with all the vampire clans in the World of Darkness setting, Malkavians suffer from a specific flaw: in this case, they are incurably insane. However, many Malkavians believe their insanity to be a strength rather than a weakness. Exactly why they all suffer from insanity is unknown, but according to the Book of Nod, all third-generation vampires were cursed by Caine after the second-generation vampires were destroyed. One of these third-generation vampires was Malkav, the one Malkavians come from.

According to Malkavian legend, when Malkav was killed, all his childer came to his corpse and drank the blood of their father, thus collectively diablerizing Malkav. He is said to speak inside each and every Malkavian's soul and connects them into one collective consciousness. This "hive mind" is sometimes called "the Cobweb" or "the Malkavian Madness Network", which contains each thought and memory that any Malkavian in the world has ever had (and sometimes is about to have).

The Malkavians possess a rare ability (Discipline) called Dementation, which can alter the way a victim senses reality. It can be used to increase the Malkavian's own oracular ability or to induce insanity in others. Most Malkavians are willing to attempt to educate others of their rare power, but they are often neglected as it is believed among other vampires that the knowledge of Dementation drives the user insane. Originally, this power was the initial province of the Malkavian antitribu, but now can be found in the vast majority of the clan's membership. Some Sabbat Tzimisce elders endeavor to learn Dementation, however, to gain insight in the great ways of the Jyhad if they succeed. Unfortunately, learning Dementation will often turn a non-Malkavian insane themselves.

With the formation of the Camarilla, the Malkavian elders came to the conclusion for the clan to survive they would have to remove Dementation, instead taking up the commonly-known mental Discipline Dominate. According to the Malkavian Clanbook, Dementation was blocked by a small group of elder Malkavians who called for a gathering of the entire clan through the Malkavian Madness Network. Strangely, no one else noticed that the Malkavians were gone. When almost all the Malkavians had been collected, they were changed.

Roughly one-tenth of Malkavians did not attend for whatever reason, and as a result the clan was split into two parts - the changed and the unchanged. Those who had their grasp of Dementation blocked remained part of the main clan, while those who refused to do so became known as the antitribu - most of whom later joined the Sabbat. The Malkavian antitribu continue to practice Dementation, growing steadily more insane due to the brutal conditions of Sabbat unlife, while the more "stable" Malkavians remained part of the Camarilla. This division lasted for centuries until the Final Nights, when the "ban" was released and Dementation surged back into the minds of Malkavians everywhere.