One reason the Malkavians
are so highly tolerated is summed up in the advice an elder Vampire gave to his
childer: "Listen to the Mad Ones." Despite their insanity, or perhaps because of
it, the Malkavians have the capacity to "see" the future.
Weaknesses
All members of this clan
have some sort of Derangement. The touch of madness is always upon the clan
members
As with all the Vampire
clans, Malkavians suffer from a specific flaw, in this case, they are incurably
insane. However, many Malkavians believe their insanity to be a strength rather
than a weakness. Exactly why they all suffer from insanity is unknown, but
according to the Book of Nod, all third-generation vampires were cursed by Caine
after the second-generation vampires were destroyed. One of these
third-generation vampires was Malkav, from whom Malkavians
come.
According to Malkavian
legend, when Malkav was killed, all his childer came to his corpse and drank the
blood of their father, thus collectively diablerizing Malkav. He is said to
speak inside each and every Malkavian's soul and connects them into one
collective consciousness. This "hive mind" is sometimes called "the Cobweb" or
"the Malkavian Madness Network", which contains each thought and memory that any
Malkavian in the world has ever had.
The Malkavians possess a
rare ability discipline called Dementation, which can alter the way a victim
senses reality. It can be used to increase the Malkavian's own oracular ability
or to induce insanity in others. Most Malkavians are willing to attempt to
educate others in the use of their rare power, but unfortunately, learning
Dementation will often turn a non-Malkavian insane themselves as a result, study
of the Discipline is rare among other Clans and the Malkavians themselves are
often viewed with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.
