Dementation

Dementation does not create madness — it awakens what is already there. Every mind contains cracks, buried fears, suppressed trauma, and the raw material of breakdown. Dementation finds these seams and pries them open. What emerges is something that was always there, now given permission to surface.

The Malkavian perspective: Dementation is not a weapon to the Malkavians who wield it. It is revelation. The madness they transmit is, in their view, a gift — the removal of comfortable illusions, access to a broader perception than sanity permits. Many Malkavians genuinely believe they are helping.

Malkavian exclusive: Dementation is an in-clan Discipline for Malkavian only. Other clans can learn it (at out-of-clan cost) but something is lost in transmission — they get the mechanics without the insight. Non-Malkavian users of Dementation have a chance of developing derangements themselves over time.

Powers

● Passion

Cost: None | Pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs target’s Willpower | Duration: Scene

Amplify an existing emotional state in the target — love becomes obsession, fear becomes paralysis, anger becomes rage, grief becomes despair. The caster cannot implant emotions that aren’t already present; they only turn up the volume.

Each success increases the intensity of the emotion. At 3+ successes, the emotion dominates the target’s behavior for the scene. At 5+, they may act on the amplified emotion compulsively.

●● The Haunting

Cost: None | Pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge, difficulty 7 | Duration: Up to 1 night per success

Cause the target to experience waking hallucinations — not random imagery, but personally significant visions drawn from their subconscious. Old fears, regrets, lost loved ones, traumatic memories. The visions are real to the target’s senses.

The target knows something is wrong. They may function (Willpower rolls, difficulty 6) but all actions outside of responding to the hallucinations are at +2 difficulty. The caster has no direct control over the content — the target’s mind generates the visions.

●●● Eyes of Chaos

Cost: None | Pool: Perception + Occult, difficulty 5 | Duration: Concentration

See the hidden patterns beneath surface reality — the madness that underlies all things. Specifically: the caster reads the flow of a person’s mental state with frightening clarity, identifying their derangements, fears, and psychological vulnerabilities without social interaction.

Secondary effect: The Storyteller provides information about NPCs that normal observation would miss — what they’re hiding, what they fear, what would break them. More successes give deeper information.

●●●● Voice of Madness

Cost: 1 Willpower | Pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs target’s Self-Control | Duration: Instant (Frenzy until passed)

Trigger immediate Frenzy in any target who can hear the caster’s voice. Vampires must resist as normal (Self-Control roll); mortals and animals are overcome by primal terror or rage.

The caster may direct the content of the triggered state: “you fear this person” or “you are enraged at that object” — the frenzy takes a general direction, though control is not precise.

Risk: Botching while using Voice of Madness affects the caster instead.

●●●●● Total Insanity

Cost: 1 Willpower | Pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs target’s Willpower | Duration: Permanent (until treated)

Permanently install up to five derangements into the target. The derangements are drawn from the target’s existing psychological material — the caster finds and opens five doors.

Each success installs one derangement. On five successes, the target is completely and permanently broken, operating under five simultaneous mental conditions.

Treatment: Derangements installed by Total Insanity can be treated by extended therapy (mortal) or supernatural mental healing. They do not automatically heal.

Botch: The caster acquires the derangements instead.

Elder Powers

Shattered Mirror (●●●●● ●)

Cost: 1 Blood Point | Pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs target’s Willpower | Duration: Scene

Reflect the target’s derangements back at them with amplified intensity. If the target has no derangements, this power creates one temporarily for the scene. The reflection is the target’s own psychology distorted through the caster as a lens — they see their own worst self.

Restructure (●●●●● ●)

Cost: 1 Willpower | Pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge vs target’s Willpower | Duration: Permanent

Reshape a target’s personality at the core level — alter their Nature archetype. The new Nature still reflects something latent in the target, but what drives them shifts fundamentally. This is not considered manipulation by most Malkavians — it’s surgery. The target generally does not notice the change; they simply begin acting differently without understanding why.

Babble (●●●●● ●)

Cost: None | Pool: Automatic | Duration: Sustained

Malkavian elder power. Can be taken as Dementation 6 or Auspex 6.

Link multiple minds into a shared telepathic conference. All linked participants communicate by speaking aloud — what they say is heard directly by all others in the link, at the actual ambient sound level of the speaker’s location (a whisper in a library travels as a whisper; a shout on a dance floor travels as a shout to everyone in the link).

The vampire may link a number of targets equal to their permanent Willpower. Malkavians may extend this to Willpower + Empathy if all subjects possess at least one derangement and do not resist. Malkavians with the Time Specialty may use Awareness instead of the default Telepathy skill.

Speak with Malkav (●●●●● ●●)

Cost: 2 Willpower | Pool: Manipulation + Occult, difficulty 8 | Duration: Scene

Commune with the Malkavian Madness Network — the collective psychic link shared by all Malkavians. Access information from any Malkavian anywhere in the world who has witnessed relevant events. The information comes in fragmented, symbolic, frequently useless form — but occasionally a perfect, crystalline truth surfaces from the noise.