While yes, an Embrace requires the mortal be contaminated in life, sullied by the touch of the Damned, this does not have to be immediately before death. Sometimes, those fed by, or fed from Kindred at some point in their lives die and come in contact with Kindred Vitae. Sometimes, they awaken.

A sire must choose to commit the Embrace, and that choice comes at the price of a Humanity dot. Posthumous Embraces break that rule.

If a mortal has fed from a vampire in at any point in her lifetime, she is a candidate for the posthumous Embrace regardless of her cause of death. Within a week of her death, before significant decomposition sets in, contact with Kindred Vitae could mean she awakens as Kindred. The donor rolls his Blood Potency. If the roll is successful, the corpse rises in seven nights, minus one for every success on the Blood Potency roll. This costs the donor a Humanity dot only if he makes a deliberate choice to attempt an Embrace. (The troupe should exercise some common sense and avoid “accidental” Embraces achieved through ridiculous contortions of events.)

Generally, Kindred deride and mock the posthumous Embrace. Known posthumous sires are branded “grave robbers,” and their childer are seen as dirty and incomplete. Functionally, they’re identical to any other Kindred. Some Mekhet favor the posthumous method for spiritual reasons; they believe it helps the vampire transition into the Requiem quicker.

Revenants

Sometimes, those contaminated by the Kindred bite or Kindred blood die, but don’t stay dead. Victims of violent feedings and ghouls will sometimes rise as revenants shortly after their deaths. The possibility of revenants, like other mutations of the Embrace, is widely rumored but not widely known or understood.

Revenants are not-quite-Kindred vampires. They often lead tragic and brief existences. However, any knowledgeable Kindred can uplift them to become full Kindred. Uplifting a revenant requires that the surrogate sire feed the revenant his Vitae, and invest a point of Humanity. At that point, the revenant becomes Kindred, and of the surrogate sire’s clan.

When a vampire exsanguinates a contaminated mortal, roll the vampire’s Humanity + 2. If the roll succeeds, the death occurs as expected. If the roll fails, the corpse rises as a revenant at some unpredictable time during the following week.

When a ghoul dies, roll their regnant’s Blood Potency. If successful, the ghoul rises as a revenant after seven nights minus the successes rolled.

Kindred aware of the possibility of revenants often destroy the corpses of the dead in ways that prevent them from rising as vampires. Some feed with needles or other accouterments to avoid contaminating their victims.

While neither of these phenomena cause the vampire direct Humanity loss like an Embrace, being responsible for a revenant’s creation is a breaking point for Kindred with Humanity 3 or more.

Rules for Revenants

Unless noted below, revenants function identically to Kindred.

• Blood Potency: Consider a revenant’s Blood Potency 1, and it may not increase.
• Vitae: Revenants can store a number of Vitae equal to five plus their Stamina. Each night upon waking, they lose all their stored Vitae, and awaken starved. Often, the loss of Vitae takes the form of sweating out their stolen blood as they sleep.
• Clan: Revenants have no clan, so they have no clan banes.
• Disciplines: Revenants may only learn Disciplines as out-of-clan, and cannot learn clan-specific Disciplines without a teacher. They may never learn Devotions, blood sorcery, or Coils or Scales of the Dragon.
• Humanity: A Revenant starts with Humanity 7.
• The Embrace: Revenants can create neither revenants nor Kindred.
• Contamination: Revenant blood cannot sustain ghouls or establish blood bonds.
• Diablerie: While they do not gain the normal benefits of diablerie, Amaranth will uplift a revenant into a vampire of the victim’s clan.
• Blood Sympathy: Revenants have a +5 die bonus to all blood sympathy rolls to their sires, instead of +3. Often, city officials use revenants as bloodhounds to find their illegitimate sires.