Kendall Howe Character in Chronicles of Dorkness | World Anvil

Kendall Howe

Kendall Howe

Physical Description

Special abilities

Dhampyr Powers

Doom

When a vampire tastes a dhampir’s blood, she suffers a Doom based on the dhampir’s parent clan. Destiny protects its wards, and dhampir blood still contains a trace of the power of the blood bond, though twisted and warped. Each dhampir lineage is protected by a specific Doom, a cracked mirror of the clan’s curse that gives the dhampir power over those who partake of her semi-Vitae.

A Doom may be invoked when a vampire tastes the blood of a dhampir. The dhampir in question may then reflexively spend a Willpower point to place the assailant under the effect of his Doom, inflicting something akin to but different from the Vinculum upon her. The repercussion the vampire suffers depends on the dhampir’s lineage:

Mekhet: Hidden mysteries whisper in the vampire’s mind, but are then snuffed out like a candle. Shadowy cobwebs infiltrate her memories, and make them secret to her. The character who drank the blood gains the Confused Condition (Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition, p. 301).

Blood Sense

Dhampir can sense monsters, and especially Kindred. How this sense manifests is personal, and partially based on parent clan. Dhampir with Mekhet parentage see it in the monster’s eyes and body language.

Blood Lust

Hunger is a vampire’s companion, and their children inherit it, though not in full. Though dhampir are no more capable of stomaching raw blood than regular people are — blood, being an irritant, comes back up if consumed in significant amounts — they still feel the craving. Once ignited, it kicks in and stays.

They jones for it, they want it bad, they can never shake it completely again, but they can’t really drink much… unless it’s Kindred blood. Dhampir cannot become ghouls, but they can be blood bonded like anyone else, and they become addicted to Kindred Vitae just like vampires do.

Blood Sympathy

Dhampir also suffer blood sympathy to their parents. A dhampir is as close in the Blood as a childe, and is subject to tracking or targeted blood sorcery just like Kindred blood relations are. However, unlike Kindred, dhampir have no way to turn it around in their favor — they lack the tools to take advantage of it, and have no knowledge of their blood sympathy unless told. It can come as a nasty surprise.

Destiny

Powerful Friend — make a specific, particularly influential group or Storyteller character into your ally; make them into an enemy instead.

Insomnia

The dhampir are children of twilight, day and night existing together in an uneasy combination. Sometimes, curses and tainted blood shows itself in subtle and sinister ways, or in flashy and destructive ways. But sometimes, it just gives you something tedious and mundane to struggle against, something you could possibly have had anyway but now there’s no chance you won’t. That’s the case with dhampir and sleep. Very few dhampir manage to sleep soundly. Most have insomnia, or the opposite problem, sleeping far too long. Day and night affects them strangely — their sleep cycle is detached from the world around them, independent and in motion. The innate human sleep clock is individual, ranging from somewhere just short of 24 hours up to 26 at the extreme. It’s kept in check by the natural cycle of night and day, the morning light and evening darkness. This natural cycle does nothing to dhampir, at all. They are disconnected from it, their bodies setting their own paces, and if that pace does not roughly match the day–night cycle, then they are not going to match it, either. As a result, dhampir can have trouble keeping down a nine-to-five job, always miserably tired and sleepy throughout their days. They can have trouble setting schedules, knowing that there is no way to know when they will be awake. Conversely, many have trouble getting to sleep at all, feeling naturally wakeful in day and at night equally.

Themes & Twists

The Kindred and their half-damned children call the dhampir’s subtler powers Twists — more unnatural instinct than natural talent, they’re strokes of fortune and assertions of her heritage expressed through the Curse of her vampiric parent’s clan.Twists manifest instead in broad strokes, running along the general themes of her parent’s clan. Unless otherwise specified, using a Twist is a reflexive action and has no cost.

Themes

Mekhet Themes: Identity, Paranoia, Secrets

  • Identity: 1
  • Paranoia: 1
  • Secrets: 1
  • Twists
  • Inside Job
  • Mekhet Twist: The dhampir creates and discards relationships like changing clothes. By acting like a friend, rival, brother, or other obvious relation to a mortal present, he automatically convinces her and all mortal onlookers that the relationship is real until anyone has a reason to roll Wits + Empathy, contested by the dhampir’s Manipulation + (highest-rated Mekhet Theme), to realize otherwise. Out of character behavior or not knowing a particular fact can trigger such rolls. This effect lasts until the dhampir is out of sight or fails a contested roll as above.

  • Foreboding:
  • Spend a Willpower point to declare that some dreadful and momentous event that falls under the Theme is about to occur.The dhampir feels it in his blood like someone walking over his grave. He may turn a number of normal failures during the current scene into dramatic ones equal to his dots in the Theme, rolled by anyone present, as long as the action relates to the doom he foretold. These dramatic failures grant no Beats.

  • Bestial Echo:
  • The dhampir gains a predatory aura like a vampire’s. Kindred characters perceive him as something vampire-like when he uses it, but they know he isn’t one of them. He can lash out with his aura, but only to emulate the one type of Beast that best reflects the Theme. Substitute the dhampir’s dots in the Theme for Blood Potency.

  • Blood's Call:
  • The dhampir can sense his kinship with another dhampir from the Theme’s clan on sight. He may not know what it means unless he’s already familiar with his own nature, but he knows that something about her makes them the same. This Twist also automatically provokes a Clash of Wills against powers that would conceal a vampire of the Theme’s clan from his Blood Sense (p. 33).

    Mental characteristics

    Personal history

    Since the Events of The Breach

    After Gregory died and John was exiled, Kendall became obsessed with collecting knowledge on the supernatural, after realizing she didn't know nearly as much as she thought she did. She started collecting books and talking to people, desperately trying to understand the things outside her boundaries as a dhampyr. She sought knowledge on werewolves and mages and changelings, any piece she could get her hands on.

    She started investigating and collecting books and knowledge as she could. She used her social skill to talk to people and recorded her gained knowledge in multiple journals and notebooks. She spent time collecting and learning what she could get her hands on, and as a result gained surface knowledge on what she was looking for, stored in her library.

    Children