Year Embraced: 1992

Apparent age: 30

Sire: Alexander Maxwell (Geheim bloodline), NY, NY

Fate Card: 0 The Fool

Merits to take: Driving Style: High Performance Driving: *-*****, Wheelman: **

Description: dark blond hair (usually bleached and worn short and spikey, ice-blue eyes, 6'3” tall, 185 lbs. Large hands and an expressive face. His Danish accent is obvious when he speaks.

Vox usually wears his hair bleached and/or colored some just slightly unnatural color. When riding, which is usually, he wears tailored riding suits of brightly colored patent leather and aviator's goggles. At other times, he cleans up reasonably well and attempts to dress with some artsy, though now a bit out-dated, (Euro-trash) taste. When he works in a shop, he wears coveralls or a white lab coat.

Personality Characteristics: Distant, Driven, Focused, Eccentric, Hedonistic, Restless, Sarcastic

While at times, Vox can be cold and distant, this is due to his focus and so, when he focuses on the moment, on having fun, he can also be a lot of fun to be with.

Background: Vox was a man troubled by life's traumas that he was unable to forget. He remembered each with crystal clarity and heart-rending pain, and was tormented by them whenever he allowed himself the dreams that come with normal, healthy sleep, or even a few moments of relaxation. His solution to this was to avoid natural sleep, only chemically induced sleep allowed him any peace and during his days, he would work himself with few breaks. Over the years, this led to a serious deterioration of his health and it was his embrace that saved him.

Vox was embraced because his family has money, because he is brilliant and because of his potential. If he was lord over anything in life, it was pushing himself into oblivion to escape painful memories. His embrace was a release from that. Now his days are blissful stretches of unperceived nothingness. The unknown of Torpor frightens him, however.

Old habits die hard, and he is still prone to self indulgences... But the upside is that he's been able to accept trading one curse for another rather well. The Beast for his Nightmares, it's a trade he can live with.

After his embrace, he did as he was told and learned what he could. However, he chafed under the rigid structure of the Invictus and has since turned into quite a rebel. His sire lost some prestige for choosing such a willful childe, but both are hopeful some satisfactory arrangement can be made in the future.

In the meantime, he has hit the road and befriended Gene. They ride their motorcycles up and down the Southwest.

His mentor is William Rolfe Bolling, an elder Gangrel, who stays holed up in his vast desert demesne with Vox running errands and delivering messages for him. They met after the Cyrus and Oblong debacle and the arrangement has been pleasant and mutually beneficial, as Vox still has a lot to learn about surviving as a Vampire.

Tenure
• Whispers of the Chamber
A student of Tenure starts by gaining a mystical knowledge of a small area. If she concentrates on some known or well-defined object, she knows where it is and whether
it’s lost, hidden or disguised. To the Kindred, it’s as if a tiny voice in her mind says, “Here I am!”


This is good for more than finding lost car keys. Whispers of the Chamber reveals the presence of intruders or another person’s hidden valuables. Only other mystic
powers can hide someone or something from a vampire with Tenure. The better a character can define the target she seeks, the greater her chance of detecting it.


As a final benefit, a vampire who knows Whispers of the Chamber automatically knows if an unauthorized person enters her haven, at least while she herself is in it. She
won’t track the comings and goings of Retainers (unless she wants to), but becomes instantly aware of intruders.
Cost: Whispers of the Chamber does not cost Vitae if used within the character’s own haven. Anywhere else, it costs 1 Vitae to search for one person or object.


Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation + Tenure
Action: Instant. (Reflexive for detecting intruders within the Annunaku’s haven.)


Roll Results


Dramatic Failure: The character receives a false indication of the target object’s location or believes the object is not present at all.


Failure: The character cannot sense the target object’s location.


Success: The character knows the exact location of the target object if it is within a distance defined by the successes achieved. (See below.)


Exceptional Success: An exceptional success grants no special benefits other than an extended range of insight. If this power is used within the vampire’s haven, an exceptional success automatically results in awareness of all the space within the haven, regardless of its Size.
Successes Radius
1 success 1-yard radius
2 successes 2-yard radius
3 successes 5-yard radius
4 successes 10-yard radius
5 successes 30-yard radius


Suggested Modifiers
Modifier Situation
+2 The target is very well known or precisely definable, such as “my car keys,” “a golden ring with two square-cut diamonds,” “Jacob
Fenster’s will” or “Loki.”
— The target is fairly well known or definable, such as “any car keys,” “a diamond ring,” “a will” or “a Mekhet.”
–2 The target is in motion.
–2 The target is a vaguely defined class, such as “jewelry,” “documents” or “a ghoul.”
Anything more vaguely or abstractly defined, such as “valuables” or “people” has no chance of success at all.

•• Home Ground

Annunaku are well known for the ease with which they act under conditions other Kindred find difficult. Students of Tenure never seem to trip on roots and stones, slip on ice or lose their prey in darkness, fog or clutter. Their enemies, on the other hand, may suffer such impediments to an uncanny degree. A vampire runs down a hall after an Annunaku, and the carpet slips underfoot; the vampire tries to hide in shrubbery, and a stray beam of light picks him out. Wise Kindred know not to challenge an Annunaku on his home turf, where this effect seems strongest and most omnipresent, but Annunaku can show this uncanny mastery of their surroundings almost anywhere.

Cost: Home Ground does not cost Vitae if used within a character’s haven. If used within his Demesne, the special territory he claims and rules (see sidebar), Home Ground costs 1 Vitae. The effects of this power last for a scene.

Dice Pool: Wits + Survival + Tenure

Action: Instant

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: For the rest of the scene, the character suffers a –3 penalty on every Physical action he attempts, if there is any way his surroundings could impede him. Storytellers are encouraged to be generous in devising environmental penalties. For instance, slippery floors, smoke or fog, rain, burnt-out bulbs and other such penalties can come into play almost anywhere.

Failure: Nothing happens. All actions for the next scene receive normal dice pools, with whatever modifiers the Storyteller has already defined for the environment.

Success: Each success rolled reduces an environmental penalty to the Annunaku’s actions by one. For instance, trying to run on wet ice might call for a Dexterity + Athletics roll with a –3 penalty. A player who scored two successes on her activation roll could spend successes to cancel out some of that penalty, reducing it to –1.

Alternately, the player can also increase environment- based modifiers that favor her character. For instance, a clump of shrubbery might normally grant a +2 bonus to attempts to hide. The player could raise this to +4 for her Tenure-using character, or even increase her chances of spotting another character hidden behind similar shrubbery.

Modifiers from Home Ground apply to just one action, such as running through a garbage-packed alley, finding a concealed person, terrorizing someone in a park or making an attack. Applying Home Ground to another action requires the power to be activated again. Note that this power does not have to be activated for each roll in an extended action.

This power cannot generate any effect without environmental factors to interact with. A featureless room, for example, gives the Annunaku little to work with.

Exceptional Success: Per a normal success, though the character has a remarkable ability to act despite the environment. For instance, with five or more successes, a character might be able to accurately fire a gun in a hurricane.

Suggested Modifiers

The environment itself can make Home Ground more difficult, by giving the power less to work with. Simple or empty surroundings just don’t supply many factors that could affect a task. For instance, an empty basketball court offers little or nothing suitable for taking cover. If the Storyteller thinks an environment is simply too bare or empty to help or hinder a particular task, he can impose up to a –5 dice penalty on the Home Ground roll or just decide the power cannot work at all. Players should be encouraged, however, to suggest ways a location could offer a Home Ground advantage to characters.


*CZ Skorpion vz.82
Damage: 2, Range: 15/30/60 Magazine: 20+1 Strength: 2(3/4/5) Concealment: 1/J •••
CZ Skorpion (.38 ACP): The vz.61 “Skorpion” is a popular machine pistol among Eastern European and North African security forces and criminals alike. The Skorpion’s underpowered cartridge makes this gun more controllable than most machine pistols, especially with its folding stock extended, and this combines with the Skorpion’s high rate of fire to render this pistol nightmarishly lethal at point blank range. The Skorpion is also available in the vz.82 and vz.83 models (.380 ACP and 9x18mm Soviet, respectively: Damage 2, Strength 2 [3/4/5]).