Gangrel (World of Darkness)

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The Gangrel are a fictional clan of vampires, often associated with the Camarilla, from White Wolf Game Studio's Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, and Vampire: The Requiem books and role-playing games.

1 Vampire: The Masquerade
2 Vampire: The Dark Ages
3 Vampire: The Requiem
4 Gangrel
5 Other appearances
6 References
7 Links

[edit] Vampire: The Masquerade

The Logo of surviving Clan Gangrel.

The Gangrel are associated with Gypsies, transmogrification, and vagrants. As a symbol, Gangrel often use a wolf's head. The Gangrel clan's magical Discipline, Protean, allows them to assume partial or complete animal forms. Their mastery of Protean is so much greater than any other Clan that Gangrel can assume virtually any animal form, providing it is a scavenger or a predator. Other vampires with the Protean Discipline are limited to the forms of Wolf and Bat; no one (not even the Gangrel) know why this is so.

According to Second Edition sourcebooks, the Gangrel, despite living in the wilderness, are attacked much less often by werewolves than other vampires; some speculate that the werewolves and Gangrel have a shared origin. This, however, was retconned in Revised edition.

In the Dark Ages, the Gangrel were the vampires most commonly associated with the Road of the Beast, which dictates a life based on instinct, similar to that of an animal (living in the immediate present, having no morality, killing whenever necessary but only then).

In the modern setting, Gangrel are commonly allies of the Brujah and enemies of the Ravnos. The Gangrel severed its ties with the Camarilla in 1998, when the Camarilla's ruling body refused to lend aid to the clan's Justicar to fight a creature he identified as an Antediluvian (the god-like progenitors of the vampire clans).

Disciplines:
• Animalism
• Fortitude
• Protean

[edit] Vampire: The Dark Ages

Unlike their brethren, Gangrel spurn the trappings of civilization, preferring to roam the deep wilds of solitude. The Grangrel is a clan only in the loosest sense; its members tend to be rugged individualists, indifferent to the protocols of either mortal or vampire. They are the bestial ones, the closest to losing themselves to the wild.

Many Gangrel appear as, and dress in the manner of, barbarian people. Furs, plaids, deerskin clothing and similar garb predominate. Some, emulating the Highland Picts, go about in woad and little else.

Of course, those unfortunate Gangrel who have fallen prey to the Beast one too many times have a look all their own. Tufted ears, horns, coats of fur, razor talons, gleaming catlike eyes, even feathers and scales adorn (deform?) these bêtes noires, and feral musk wafts from them.

[edit] Vampire: The Requiem

In Vampire: The Requiem the Gangrel, also known as "Savages", are the oldest clan among the five clans. They are also known as the least organized, with most Gangrel being uninterested in clan politics, a marked change from other clans.

The Gangrel’s favorite character attributes are Stamina and Composure. This often results in Gangrel characters having high health and willpower scores.

Most of Gangrel tend to join to Circle of the Crone, The Unaligned and some belong to the Ordo Dracul. A few Gangrel may follow elders and will find themselves in the Lancea Sanctum and the Invictus, and those beasts are among the most frightening Kindred. However, these are few on the grounds that the generally disorganised nature of the gangrel plays heavily against structured covenants, and any Gangrel that submits to such an organisation generally has another motive.

Part of the Gangrel's powers include shifting their appearance into a natural soil and blending into the ground, but it is no replacement for a haven; even the most savage will appreciate such a place of respite. However, their natural talents with Protean means that they are the clan most likely to travel from domain to domain.

Disciplines:
• Animalism - Control over the beasts of nature and the Beast within a vampire's soul
• Resilience - Supernatural toughness
• Protean - Shapeshifting

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[edit] Gangrel

The Gangrel clan from Vampire: The Masquerade was recreated for Vampire: The Requiem as one of the five major clans. In Vampire: The Requiem, their close connection with the Beast has left some members becoming animalistic and barbaric, to the point where some are unable to interact with mortals other than to feed. These members have left members of the other clans as viewing them as dim-witted and coarse.

Gangrel favor the Disciplines of Animalism (control over the beasts of nature and the Beast within a vampire's soul), Resilience (supernatural toughness), and Protean (shapeshifting). Gangrels have a unique weakness caused by their close connection to the Beast; their animalistic instincts are drawn close to their surface, clouding more reasoned thought. This is represented mechanically by preventing Gangrel characters from re-rolling tens on rolls requiring Mental attributes, and subtracting ones from the total successes rolled.

While the stereotypical Gangrel is savage and socially unsophisticated, there have been many upstanding and respectable Gangrels in Vampire society who resist the touch of the beast through self-discipline. This is represented mechanically by placing several dots in the Gangrel character's Resolve and Compose stats to compensate for their inability to re-roll 10s.

As indicated by their preferred disciplines, Gangrels tend to be more physically oriented than other clans.

Unlike the Gangrel of the Masquerade, Requiem's Gangrel have no ties at all to Werewolves, and are not "in touch with nature" any deeper than being in touch with their inner Beast.

One of the Gangrel's bloodlines is the Bruja, a collection of bikers and thugs loosely based on Vampire: The Masquerade's Brujah.

The symbol of the Gangrel is a stylized brush-stroke rendition of a predator's eye, seemingly made up of various animal parts.

[edit] Other appearances

Gangrel was also the ring-name of a wrestler, played by wrestler David Heath. He performed for the World Wrestling Federation in the late 1990s. His gimmick was that of a Gothic Vampire. Gangrel was also the Clan origins of Julian Luna's bodyguard Cash (Channon Roe) in the television series Kindred: the Embraced. Cash was also the Primogen or leader of the local Gangrels of a fictional San Francisco, California.