# From Life to Unlife
From Life to Unlife
of Note
A candidate who remains driven and active despite adversity at least meets his sire. He probably doesn’t learn at that time how much of his suffering is the sire’s fault. She generally lies like mad, saying whatever she deems likely to make the candidate accept vampirism.
She demonstrates her powers and offers them to the candidate.
Some Lasombra prefer to tell the truth to their childer: “Yes, I set about blighting your life. You’ve proven enduring, so now I offer you power.” Most sires find this too risky and prefer to spin fables about how they’ve noticed the miseries afflicting their childer and how the powers they offer can let them redress the situation. The shock of Embrace leaves many childer a little deranged anyway — random slaughter followed by sober realization cuts new Lasombra adrift from humanity.
After the childe undertakes his initial period of revenge or otherwise deals with the misery of his mortal life, his sire brings him into Sabbat society, and the usual process of training and Creation Rites begins.
Note that revenge is not the defining neonate passion in all or even most cases. Andrew Emory accepted the Embrace (see The Darkness Claims You) in large measure for revenge on people he hated, but that’s at least in part just how Demba’s lineage chooses its Clanbook: Lasombra childer. Lasombra offer the Embrace with all sorts of emphases, including the following.
• Ambition: Dominate and Potence make very attractive offers to mortals who yearn for prestige or physical achievement otherwise denied to them.
Thus the ranks of Lasombra recruits include people who begin unlife as suddenly successful boxers and managers, before they turn away from their mortal lives altogether.
• Inquisitiveness: The driving desire to understand everything about the world and how people work often produces first-rate paladins and scholars.
• Belligerence: This category includes bruisers and soldiers, but isn’t limited to them. The Sabbat’s various crusades require tacticians and strategists, spies and saboteurs, and many other kinds of warriors besides the obvious. The Lasombra like to seek out those who show a willingness to keep up martial efforts beyond the boundaries of a mortal lifetime.
• Specialized Expertise: As with warriors, so with programmers, accountants, publicists and other sorts of specialists. The Lasombra need people who understand the modern world. An attentive elder can learn to function perfectly well in an unfamiliar culture, but it always helps to have a freshly informed perspective.
Access to the clan’s resources and opportunities for working outside the limits of human law and morality draw specialists.