Product Description

The Daeva Clan Book for Vampire: The Requiem
Love them or hate them, the Daeva are the ones you die for. Tempters and priests, madonnas and horrors, these vampires feed on the blood and vices of the World of Darkness - and feed well. From the best parties to the worst parts of town, be seduced by the beautiful among the Damned. For the Succubi, a good-looking corpse is only the first step in the Danse Macabre.
A Clan book for Vampire: The Requiem
Trace the history of the Daeva - from their first chilling nights in Sumeria to the sticky heat of modern cities.
Tune into the Cacophony, the underground journalism of the Kindred. Find out what it takes to stay on the cutting edge of the Masquerade... and why that edge is cutting deeper than ever.
Experience the Daeva through the "writing" of the living and the dead from around the world. Players and readers are drawn into a World of Darkness that's more frighten-ing every night.
New Merits, bloodlines, Discipline powers, and clan secrets that every Vampire: The Requiem player will want to have.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #494771 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

An astonishing read
There is an old saying about storytelling, "show, don't tell". This Clan Book is all about showing instead of telling. (Come to think of it, the saying applies to the Daeva themselves, too.) It is almost entirely a collection of autobiographical stories either by a Daeva, or about a Daeva. The variety is incredible. It starts off with an account of a mortal's mutual obsession with a Daeva, and also features cartoons and a movie script.

The themes of this clan come through crystal clear in this book,as Ventrue did not manage to do. The major theme is love. Are the Daeva capable of inspiring and feeling true love, or are they dead hearts manipulating human erotic programming? Does the past matter, or is the present all there is? It's basically a hundred pages of Daeva showing the choices they make, and how these shape their Requiems. The writing is generally excellent, although the movie script is deliberately written in an over-blown style that almost overshadows what it shows.

The artwork also works to show the Daeva off. On the White Wolf forums, their Q&A about this book explicitly states that the artwork was intended to treat the Daeva as sex objects. It works. We view them as sex objects ... and they view us as blood banks. Both may get what they want, but we end up dead as a result. That's what the art shows even before you get to the text.

Technically, the only books you need to read to follow this are the corebooks. Obviously, you will get much more from it the more Vampire books you have read. However, there are so many ties to the Ventrue Clan Book that I think you would have to read it in addition to this for this to have full value. This book also seems to tie in with the upcoming Hunter: the Vigil, too. It mentions the neo-Masquerade, which seems to be that Kindred can take advantage of the popularity of vampire fiction to communicate almost openly. (It uses the term without telling exactly what it means.) On the flip side, the game is about individuals. The issue isn't whether the Masquerade falls, it's whether an individual Kindred gets identified by witch finders.

The Appendix features one new bloodline and a few new merits and devotions. Rather surprisingly, it also contains a section on role playing the Daeva. It talks about how to treat the Daeva focus on Vices and bringing that into the game. It also directly states that gamers must respect the limits of other gamers when it comes to sensitive topics.

In explaining why they chose to do Clan Books, one of White Wolf's reasons was to create books that were more accessible than the corebooks to people new to the World of Darkness style and perhaps even to role playing. That is the one failure I would say the book has. This is for mature role players in every sense of the word.

Incredible Read
I'm starting to think that a lot of people have misconceptions of what the clan books are all about. They aren't rule books, they are a collection of writings and short stories that are all 'in character', even the index is written in character on this book.

As a source book the game fails. It only contains a few pages comparatively that actually pertains to game play. From rules to bloodlines to new disciplines and devotions. But these rules are just the icing on the cake. The appendix to the real valuable information.

This book is about the Daeva clan. Not in game rules. Not supplementary game play mechanics. But about the vampires of this clan. The writings in this book, the short stories, the collections of past history, are of the highest caliber of Pen & Paper 'fluff' as some would call it, I have ever seen.

What this book does is give an incredibly powerful and intimate view of the clans history, their current struggles and daily life. It's less a book the games ST would need for rules, and much more about how the Daeva 'live' and how they spend their nights. The information within can be invaluable to any player wishing to flesh out their Daeva character or getting some insight on the mood and feel of the Daeva clan.

Everyone knows, (or should know), that Mood and Theme are amongst the most important mechanics in any World of Darkness game. The Daeva 'clan book' exudes more Mood and sets such a dark and horrifying Theme I've ever seen in any World of Darkness book I own. The writing is simply amazing and can help you 'feel' your Daeva on a level you could never imagine.

When I first picked this up I had seen mixed reviews, and just simply after the first story, entitled Kevin, drew me into the world of the Daeva and wouldn't let me go. When I finally finished reading it, the sun was starting to rise. It set the mood for the entire book which lived up to that first story in an amazing way and gave me such an amazing insight into the Daeva that any characters of the Clan I make from now on will have a depth I simply couldn't have attained before buying and reading this 'clan book.'

So in the end, if your looking for a book of rules... of supliments, you won't find it here. However if your after finding an intimate, murderous, passionate and absolutely intense idea of the daily un-lives of the Daeva, their past and the over-arching Theme and Mood of the clan, you can find no better source than this book.

White Wolf is done with producing games
This is an excellent read, if you are just looking to be entertained. If you are looking to expand on a gaming system, it is a total waste of time. There is less than 3 pages, total, of anything that you can add (mechanically) to your game. It could have been done as a $7.99 novel, and saved customers a great deal of disappointment.