Pyramid Pick
Victorian Age Vampire (for Vampire: The Masquerade)
Published by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.
Written by J. Achilli, Kraig Blackwelder, Brian Campbell, Will Hindmarch, and Ari Marmell
Illustrated by Mike Danza, Guy Davis, Rebecca Guay, Vince Locke, Matt Mitchell, Christopher Shy, Richard Thomas and Andy Trabbold
224-page b&w hardcover; $26.95
Victorian Age Vampire ushers in the opportunity to play in a time when the Ivory Tower of the Camarilla is at its highest: a time when Queen Victoria and the bureaucrats of her government administer the furthest reaches of the British Empire by day, while the Kindred attempt to rule it by night. It is only through the efforts of the late William Gull's agents that Vampiric influence does not reach as far as the Imperial seat. It is an age of contrasts and hypocrisy: between the high idealism of the moneyed and landed classes and the squalor of those beneath them; between the façade of correct propriety and the attractive allure of all that is exotic, forbidden, and taboo; between a fascination for the exactitude of scientific endeavor and the inability to explain its answers that makes everyone look back to the supernatural. It is an age when everything is seen in black and white, and not in the shades of gray of the early 21st century.
All this applies to the undead as it does to mortal society. To the Camarilla of the Empire, the mere name of the Sabbat is too strong a taboo that none dare mention them in polite society . . . so strong . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 23, 2003
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