When a party, ball or showing is arranged in Cainite society, it is most likely a Toreador organizing the event, and it is certain that the clan will bring out its most glittering members in force. In cramped artists’ studios or opulent manors, the Toreador surround themselves

with the trappings with art in all forms, and carry that elegance wherever they travel and meet. The common desire to indulge in the

elevation of art draws the clan together. Even when sniping over matters of status and prestige, these vampires respect the prowess of true creative genius. As the guardians of culture, the Toreador pass judgment on what victories constitute genius or what gaffes make a fool.

Currying Toreador favor can do much to assist any career in Elysium.

Obviously, the Toreador are quick to Embrace those mortals with great artistic talents, the better to preserve those talents for all eternity. In some cases, members of the clan also Embrace from passion, and they are the most likely to Embrace for companionship. Though the Toreador are not uniformly beautiful, a disproportionate number are goodlooking — works of physical art to some thinking.

Time, however, is often unkind to the Toreador. Many become jaded with the passing years, seeing works fall to ruins or mortal beauty crumble with age. Consequently, they seek greater thrills and experiences to whet their palates, often falling into hedonism and decadence. Most Kindred agree that few things are more disturbing than a Toreador needing a new hobby. Even worse is the Toreador who has become bored. Like decadent, pleasure-loving nobility, they snipe and disparage those who do not meet their exacting standards. For every hostess with the mostest or inspired artist, there is a catty preener whose only interest is destroying others.

 

Roleplaying Hints:

You are a creature of eternal magnificence. You may have an artistic talent (or talents), or you may yourself be a work of art. Either way, it is your duty and your pleasure to raise awareness and culture through the spread of art, both its creation and its patronage. You want people to strive for higher ideals and to experience new heights of feeling due to art, so you encourage others to indulge in works of passion. After all, a great artist must be immersed in art.

 

 

Disciplines:

 

Auspex, Celerity, Presence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advantage:

With their predilection for artistic skills, the Toreador all have some sort of unique talents. Even those Toreador who have no real artistic ability learn to become patrons of the arts, to engage in social sniping and to buy what they can’t create. Every Toreador vampire begins with Academics, Crafts, Performance or Subterfuge Abilities (one Trait each of any two, or two Traits of one).

A Toreador can also call on artistic talents to hunt and feed. Though she may have a stable Herd like any other Cainite, a Toreador can also find willing mortal victims by use of artistic ability or patronage (“Would you like to come upstairs and see my etchings?”). A Toreador can gain one Blood Trait for each level possessed in the aforementioned Abilities; each Blood Trait gained in this fashion requires 15 minutes out of play. Gaining Blood Traits in this fashion does use up the Abilities in question, so the Toreador may be limited in her feeding if she has already used some of her Abilities.

 

Disadvantage:

The Toreador are easily entranced by beauty. Every work of art is a key to insight, whether in the form of sculpture, poetry, a lovely face, even a clear sky spangled with stars. As such, beauty draws the attention of Toreador, often to the exclusion of all else. When presented with a work of great art (generally, one executed with the equivalent of three levels of Crafts or Performance Traits, though some special cases may require more or less), a Toreador becomes absorbed in the task of examining and understanding the work, lost in a fugue state. The Toreador can only break from this state willingly by expending a Mental Trait, although injury or other distractions (such as attack or being elbowed by a neighbor) can break this enthrallment.

 

Bloodlines:

The Toreador clan has no offshoot bloodlines; the antitribu of the Sabbat share the predilections and capabilities of their Camarilla brethren, although they find their pleasure and artistic expression in horror as much as beauty. These antitribu, instead of becoming paralyzed with fascination, instead have a disturbing tendency to act out their sociopathic tendencies on whomever is at hand through socially cutting remarks, intellectual dominance or physical torture. A Toreador antitribu given a chance to act out such tendencies must expend a Mental Trait if the player wishes to resist the urge, though such an expenditure need only be made once in any given scene.

 

History:

It is said that the Clan's founder, Arikel was a mortal painter or sculptress in the First City. Famed throughout the lands for her work, after her Embrace she painted a mural on which the past, present and future of Kindred society was depicted. When Caine saw a terrible future for his race, he cursed her with the affliction that affects Toreador today - the art that she loved most dearly would now be her obsession and distraction above all things.

The Toreador had a strong presence in the early minoic cultures of Greece. The Toreador attribute many of the classic tales as distorted versions of actual interference of mortals and Cainites (such as the tale of the Minotaur or the tale of Tantalus and Pelops). Their squabbling, however, weakened the first  civilization of Mycenae, as childer drew their substenance from the population, who in turn became to weak to defend themselves from foreign invaders. After the fall of Mycenae to the Dorians, the Toreador wandered across the Mediterranean, often seeking shelter by theroman Ventrue or the carthaginian Brujah.

At first, the Toreador supported both sides in their struggle, but when it became clear that Carthage would lose, many Toreador abandoned the city and joined the Roman forces, bringing with them tales of debauchery and infernalism that propelled the Ventrue to completly raze the city to the ground. The Toreador began to insituate themselves into the city, often competing with the Ventrue and Malkavians. When Romes glory began to fade, one of them, the Toreador Mi-Ka-Il, deserted Rome to follow Constantine into Nova Roma, to construct the Dream that had failed in Rome, much to the shock of many Toreador Elders. Constantinople remained a beacon of Cainite power and glory, until the city was sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and original Cainite population either had fled or was destroyed.

Dark Ages:

In the middle age, the Toreador were a member of the High Clans, and their numbers were made up of the same types that are common in the modern nights - minstrels, painters, poets and actors. Many Toreador insituated themselves into the structures of the Catholic Church, primary because the Church was the only supporter of art in these dark times. The Courts of Love, which encompassed much ofFrance, were firmly under their control and the Toreador.

Following the formation of the Camarilla thanks to the efforts of the Toreador Rafael de Corazon, some of the members left the Clan proper upon the formation of the Sabbat, most famously Arianne of Esztergom. Toreador antitribu are the dark reflection of their Camarilla cousins - while they are beautiful social butterflies, their weakness has twisted so that all antitribu derive joy from the emotional, physical and mental suffering of others.

The Renaissance is well remembered as a Golden Age of the Clan among the Elders. As one of the most powerful Clans within Europe, the Toreador prospered in France as Europe's cultural nexus, enjoying the works of various new artists as Michelangelo and DaVinci as well as the works of Shakespeare and the invention of the mirror. Many Toreador began to turn away from spiritually motivated preservationism to a self-serving hedonism that plagues them today.

Victorian Age:

The Toreador reveled in the Victorian age. The Industrial Revolution led to a phenomenon that only the rich had been previously afforded - leisure time. A heyday of theatre, music and art began in cultural nexuses like New York, London and Paris and spread throughout the globe. While the influence of the Church in people's lives (and consequently, the influence Toreador held over the church) waned, those Kindred that latched themselves onto businessmen prospered. Possibly the one thing most Toreador love with the exception of beauty is money, and it was now accessible from places other than the landed gentry of the time. While the Clan has had peaks and troughs, this was a time that cemented them as a true power in the Camarilla.

Final Nights:

The Toreador play their games as they always have, albeit at a slightly more frantic pace due to the upheaval of the various skirmishes the Camarilla have fought. The recent innovations of cinema, television and the internet means that new forms of art and expression are being discovered almost daily, meaning the Toreador have become even more varied.

However, the Toreador are still a noble and aristocratic clan, and many perceive the Embrace of graffiti artists, Wall Street Wizards and CGI technicians as a pollution of the vaunted ideals that the Clan used to stand for. Many nights are filled with one Toreador bickering with another over what can be considered true art, and each Toreador's opinion is as varied as the definition of art itself.

 

Organization:

The Toreador of a city organise themselves into Guilds. While this has something of an artistic ring to it, most Toreador in the city are members, whether they are Poseurs or Artistes (see below). The head of the Guild is typically the oldest and most influential Toreador within the city, with the other members forming a complicated stratified social system, the rules of which boggle many an outsider.

The clan itself has two divisions. The Artistes consist of the sculptors, the painters, the musicians and the writers. They consider themselves to be the 'real' Toreador as inheritors of the Clan's original values and goals. The Poseurs make up the other faction - they can include the failed artists (or those that happened to be Embraced while their sire was riding a particular fad), as well as the professional critics and those who consider their bodies to be their life's masterpiece. It should be noticed that neither group has a nickname for themselves - they tend to be only flung at the opposing faction as a derisive epithet.

 

Cultures:

It is said that while the Ventrue are the mind of the Camarilla, the Toreador are its soul. It was one of their number, Rafael de Corazon, who was instrumental in its formation. The Toreador are the greatest supporters of many of the Camarilla's traditions, most notably that of Elysium. This is where the Toreador are in their element, showcasing their latest pieces and practicing their highly effective (and sometimes deadly) form of social manouevreing. From the outside, most other Clans think of one face of the Toreador, but see another. When speaking of them to another, most envision Toreador as the Artistes - billowy shirted, frock-coated fops who crow about the beauty of the ages and lamenting their lost humanity. In reality, outsiders are less likely to meet such characters, given as they are to sequestering themselves away to work on their latest masterpiece. Far more often encountered are those Toreador whose unlives have become dedicated to the Kindred social scene - Toreador are often a large contingent of the city's Harpies, and having spent years with their bitchy and conniving clan-mates they are more than capable of ruining someone's reputation with a pithy comeback or a damning piece of gossip whispered in just the right ear.

The Toreador portray themselves as the vampires closest to the living, breathing pulse of the humans around them (though this honour might be shared with the Brujah). They claim that this is what keeps them so vital and modern. Indeed, Clan members are often the first ones to be aware of what mortals are wearing, eating, buying and sleeping with. While a Malkavian elder might be found in his 1800's finery, the Toreador is much more likely to be wearing something from this year's Paris catwalks. Many Toreador are fond of having mortal "families" or assuming mortal identities, in order to capture the breath of life that is denied to them. The constant pressure that the proximity to mortals can elicit, however, can cause a Toreador to break down, losing all of their creativity and motivation in the process, resulting in a debauched individual that desperately searches for the next kick to experience the feeling of being mortal again, eventually turning to mortal vices like drugs in order to feel just this one aspect. The older a Toreador gets and the more mortal associates he has watches dying, the more likely a "burnout" is to occur. Other vampires have to deal with it, too, but no Clan suffers so uniformly under this aspect of their existence than the Toreador.