On Emotions
For a time, vampires still feel the way a human would. Their hearts love, laugh, hurt, and cry just as though they were mortal. This is the ultimate bane of the vampire, to be a monster by nature and design, but to be human at heart.
They can feel from their first seconds of unlife the truth of what they've become. They can often see it. From those first moments they begin a struggle between their new natures and their old inner selves. The Hunger demands blood, and will kill to get it, but the human within recoils from the horrors that they now find themselves capable of.
Guilt, remorse, regret, horror - these things plague new vampires as they feel the monster within clawing its way to freedom. Murder becomes a temptation and a horrifying inevitability they must wrestle with. They look at former friends and smell the blood in their veins, becoming wracked by disgust that they could think of a friend or lover as food, and a secret terror that comes from the knowledge that if they lose control just once - that friend will die by their hand. If they retain their humanity long enough, they watch people, places, things they love age, rot, and die as their own immortality carries them onward unchanging.
For these reasons many withdraw from human society quickly, but many more struggle with the terrible slide away from being human, and experience pain and heartache like they never suffered in life. Most try to turn to their own kind for comfort, but none can be found there either. Vampires view each other as potential threats, competitors, and enemies. At best there can be alliances, carefully plotted and jealously guarded. The demands and pressures of unlife make no vampire trustworthy, and many other factors, such as the Blood Bond, render them downright suspicious.
This emotional minefield often drives vampires to complex and manipulative ends to try and create some form of lasting security for their dying hearts. They create childer and try to hold them to themselves, sometimes by binding them with the Blood. They will surround themselves with ghouls that have no choice BUT to love their domitor, and they will even trick and seduce other vampires into the Blood Bond.
Ultimately it all fails. In the end the vampire must face the crushing weight of hunger and immortality alone, and make their peace with it whatever way they can. Virtually none of them survive this ordeal with more than a shred of their humanity intact, and the loss is like a surgery without anesthetic that lasted centuries.
To fight this horrible tide, most vampires embrace artificial passions to keep themselves feeling 'alive' inside. This zealous pursuit of stimuli to stave off the death of their human side has become so ingrained in the whole of vampire society that it has overtaken and become the very shape of that society.
Each clan is defined at its heart by which pursuit it's forebears chose to stimulate their passions, every bloodline now chooses its childer on the basis of how well they match the mold of their own version of that battle.
- The Ventrue pursue glory in leadership and success.
- The Toreador quest passion in art and recognition.
- The Brujah seek revitalization in uncontrolled passion and wild abandon.
- The Nosferatu seek attenuation through knowledge and the unveiling of secrets.
And so it goes, through every possible version of human expression, mirrored and refined to a grotesque art by the immortal souls fearing the darkness within - revenge, trickery, deceit, love, madness, the list goes on. In the end, every vampire is defined by what makes them inhuman, and what they do to try a fight that inevitable truth.
On Sexuality
For good reason, vampires are often stylized as highly erotic and sensual creatures. These undead beasts, often with the appearance of the most beautiful of humans, subsist by way of The Kiss], a grossly pleasurable experience for both predator and prey. Who needs the crude pleasures of mortal sex when you have the exquisiteness of The Kiss? Plus, there are certain physical and social impediments to vampires attempting to partake of mortal sex.
The physical impediments to vampire sex arise from the fact that vampires are dead, and their only bodily fluid is blood. With males, vampires cannot achieve an erection and are otherwise impotent. With females, let it suffice it to say that intercourse will reveal their flesh to be unliving. Furthermore, vampires cannot achieve anything like a physical orgasm from anything other than The Kiss].
Physically, an attempt by a vampire to have intercourse with a mortal would not only be futile, it would risk the Masquerade. To maintain a charade of sexual intercourse with a mortal, a female vampire would need at least Masquerade 3, while a male vampire would need Masquerade 4. It would, however, be just that: a charade. There is no Viagra for vampires.
The social impediments to vampire sex are severe. Those very rare vampires who attempt to mimic mortal sex with other vampires are considered at best to be vile perverts. As blood cannot help but be exchanged in such mockeries of mortal sex, such vampires are often branded as members of the inscrutably nefarious Sabbat, for what other manner of beast would engage in such perversions?
As to vampires who attempt mortal sex with mortals beyond the immediate demands of a hunt, such behavior is considered to be a milder perversion. But while a milder perversion, such conduct would be seen as an unnecessary affront to the Masquerade.
Given the prevalence of vampires with Obfuscate and perhaps other methods of divination, vampires who attempt to bypass their physical limitations to pursue the lesser pleasures of mortal sex can reasonably expect to be discovered at some point. The social consequences could be severe. Accordingly, if you are interested in role-playing sexual intercourse, you are advised to play a mortal or ghoul.