Embrace (World of Darkness)

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World of Darkness Vampire series

Settings Dark Ages Victorian Age Masquerade Eternal Struggle Requiem

Vampirism Blood bond · Blood point · Bloodline · Clan · Childe · Dhampir · Diablerie · Discipline · Embrace · Frenzy · Ghoul · Revenant · Rötschreck · Vitae · Wassail

Masquerade society Anarchs · Antitribu · Autarkis · Black Hand · Blood hunt · Bloodline · Caitiff · Camarilla · Clan · Inconnu · Laibon · Kuej-jin · Masquerade · Sabbat · Tal'mahe'Ra

Masquerade Mythology Caine · Lilith · Antediluvians · Book of Nod · Revelations of the Dark Mother · The Erciyes Fragments ·

Masquerade History Cainite Heresy · Time of Thin Blood · Gehenna

Requiem Requiem Clans · Requiem Bloodlines · Carthian Movement · Circle of the Crone · Invictus · Lancea Sanctum · Ordo Dracul This box: view • talk • edit

In White Wolf Game Studio's role-playing games about vampires, the Embrace is the act of passing on the curse of vampirism to a mortal human being.

Although different clans and bloodlines of vampires (for example, the Baali) have special variations on the act, the Embrace always involves draining the target of blood, before allowing them to drink the blood of the Embracing vampire. If he does not drain the target, a ghoul is created instead.

The vampire that Embraces is known as the sire, while the new vampire created is known as the childe (plural childer). The childe's blood is more diluted than that of his sire's, because it is one generation farther from the original vampire, Caine.

It is always possible that the Embrace fails, since the vampire might accidentally kill the target or simply have a weak blood. Accordingly, higher-generation vampires tend to fail more often. Already in the Dark Ages, a 12th-generation vampire usually cannot complete the Embrace; in the modern era most players are 13th-generation, and the chances of Embrace success are close to none.

The Camarilla leadership imposes strict control on the Embrace, which is formally conceded as a privilege by the princeps; a vampire who creates childer without permission will be punished. This is done both as a means of population control and as a means to control the balance of power between the often feuding vampire clans. Having too many vampires around would increase the number of clan-less Caitiff and weak Thin Bloods, and endanger the Masquerade.

The Sabbat does not enforce such a restriction, instead regularly creating large amounts of high-generation vampires to serve as cannon fodder.

In Vampire: The Requiem, the Embrace is much more taxing (in game terms, requiring the sacrifice of a permanent point of Willpower, which can only be increased through spending experience points). This is specifically to prevent the "vampire hordes" seen in the prior edition, and to make the siring of a vampire more meaningful an event.