So I’ve been reading this and, so far, I haven’t finished…but here I feel there’s a big clash between how White Wolf sees the Daeva and how they’re actually portrayed.
This critique of mine makes no sense if you assume that the tone of Chronicles of Darkness is eternal horror or whatever, but does make sense if you sit and think about the world for a minute – like for Writing Notes for Vampires.
The book is split into two big parts. The first part is all lore/story and the second part is actual mechanics. The framing device is that the first part is composed of a bunch of papers that were left by a vampire guy – who I call the ‘Collector’ – after he disappeared. So besides the stuff he found/wrote/collected together, we also have some notes written by others looking at these materials.

It isn’t entirely clear who is going thru the notes, though there’s at least one ghoul/boy-toy^A) involved. I say this because it’s all a bit ambiguous. There are notes written in the margins and occasionally some sticky notes. It took a while for me to realize who was writing each sticky note.^B)
The way the book is written is a bit disorienting. I thought I was paying a lot of attention, yet I ended up getting confused very fast.

In this book, the Daeva are usually portrayed as ‘punk-ish’ and ‘whore-ish’. That’s how I’d summarize it. There’s a ‘tape’ that was recorded by a Sire to his new Childe where he states that the best strategy for long-term survival is to engage in a lot of casual sex and to find some guy who’s willing to cheat on his girlfriend/wife because they make the best blood bags long-term.
Now, putting aside my own moral views on this (it’s a bit silly to bring in morality for a horror game about monsters), this advice (and the portrayal) don’t actually make a lot of sense when you consider the ‘necrology’ of the vampires and how their societies function.
A vampire cannot possibly conclude that the best target for long-term sucking is someone who is in a relationship. And this, more than anything, suggests to me that White Wolf’s writers really weren’t thinking. I go over why in Succubus Writing Notes so I recommend reading that so I don’t have to repeat myself.

I’d say that what we see in this book is like 50/50 in terms of quality. I haven’t finished it yet, though, so I might change my mind by the end. On the one hand, I find the writing style quite pleasant (the main reason I’m reading). On the other, there are very clear worldbuilding hiccups and most of the characters are not very sympathetic.

The first major story in the clanbook is the one that really showcases this mix of quality. We have Kevin (the asshole) and we can see exactly how his life got hijacked by this vampire. That is really compelling, especially after she leaves and he doesn’t know where she went.

Then you read the ‘flirting’ and you think about a lot of what this vampire seductress (Madael, Mad) is doing and you get clinical depression.

Anyway, this story also has the (so far) best part of the entire book: the 10 places that Kevin found vampires.
Basically, after losing his vampire GF, Kevin starts looking around town to try to find other vampires.
I find this part the most interesting because (at least for a bit) it manages to go away from SEX VAMPIRE SEX VAMPIRE SEX to more subtle and interesting portrayals of the Daeva. The main downside being that Kevin (and the writers – at this point I’m sure of it) still interprets all of this thru sex. Guys…the Daeva’s theme is ‘passion’ not ‘lust’.
Anyway, the 10 vampires are: gay bar; gym girl; teen-looking vampire at high school dance; nerd girl in game lounge; a senior center; waitress at American Diner; NARCANON; art class teacher; home improvement store; megachurch.
Kevin claims that the vampires were using Majesty in most of those situations, but I don’t buy it.
What makes these so interesting is…well, putting aside that there’s a lot of sex talk (and a lot of it is uncomfortable), it’s showing Daeva in various states of morality and various states of doing stuff. Some of those are obvious (gay bar; gym girl (waiting to be picked up)) but others are not: and those are the fun ones.
The nerd girl in the game lounge has basically positioned herself as the Queen Bee. All the guys in that center look to her as a sort-of goddess. Kevin doesn’t even observe her doing anything explicitly sexual, so she might just enjoy the attention.
The waitress at the American Diner confused Kevin at first, because she didn’t give any customers her number. After hours, he finds out that she’s making out with the cook, who looks pale. So a monogamous vampire, basically.
NARCANON is the one that is strangest and, when I was first skimming this book, was what made me assume it would be mostly stuff like that. The vampire is the organizer/psychologist in the group and she appears to have used Majesty for the express purpose of helping the guys in the group get over their addictions. What ruins it is that Kevin (and the writer) seems to assume she bangs these guys after the meetings, but outside of hugs and touching-but-not-actually and stares into eyes…she doesn’t do anything. I have no doubt she sucks but doubt that she fucks.
The art class teacher is somehow more uncomfortable to read than the senior center because, again, the vampire doesn’t actually seem to do anything besides preside over an art class. Where they’re painting a nude fat guy with a full erection (that is seriously what it says).
The home improvement store is the one where Kevin almost died, so he called the police on the vamp.
The megachurch is the most bizarre of them all, because there’s a vampire among the new people in the church (together with Kevin). He had assumed it was the pastor, until he had to shake hands with the vampire. Kevin ran away like a coward because that’s what he is. It’s perplexing because it’s not clear what is even going on here. The vampire only appeared to want to shake Kevin’s hand. We don’t get a description of his expression, just that he’s apparently using Majesty.

There’s a point where Kevin explains that vampires experience “one long night” and thus have trouble telling what day it is and whatnot. His reasoning is that they don’t experience the day at all, which messes with their internal sense of time. The lack of natural pauses in their schedule means it’s all one long stretch of time. He even notes that Mad uses showers as the pauses in her schedule. So, to her, a day starts and ends with a shower. This is very interesting and makes you think about what it’s like to be a vampire.
Except that, no, that makes zero sense. Vampires enter an involuntary sleep during the day. So they do have a natural pause. Whether they dream or not is kinda irrelevant, because they still drop dead (literally) and wake up in the morning. And based on how the lore is written, the process of waking up is also not entirely trivial, so it would be a natural pause in their schedule.

The book is filled with these kinds of weird inconsistencies. You can see what the writers intended and then also see what they didn’t intend.

Madael herself is meant to be this super seductress, except that the first time she met Kevin (our guy) she didn’t really do anything explicitly to seduce him. It isn’t even clear if she used Majesty. The way she acts and phrases things seriously suggest she was giving Kevin an out constantly until he guesses she’s a vampire.
Now, Kevin claims she used Majesty and I can tell the writers intended for that to happen (and the ‘tape’ later suggests this too), but it’s just as likely that Kevin was giving in just because. I tend to go for the latter, because he is portrayed as an asshole.
Mad herself actually tends to act pretty normal all things considered.
If you have trouble believing me, I would recommend you read back thru their initial interaction (and I think it’s fine to skip over the ‘flirting’ because that is pain) and count every moment where Kevin had the opportunity to back off or not do something stupid. It’s notable to me that Kevin decided to lie to his girlfriend and turn off his phone notifications of his own free will. And Mad mentions multiple times that he lied to his girlfriend, which is a very unusual thing to say if you’re intending to seduce this man.

There’s another thing that I think is notable, though this isn’t criticism, it’s just an observation. It’s pretty obvious that Mad doesn’t hate Kevin, but she doesn’t love him either. Kevin thinks she does, but his own words on the matter fail to get that across. And I can’t tell if this is intentional or not on the part of the writers.
Basically, Mad and Kevin’s relationship can be summarized as them engaging in sexual activities several times a week. And that’s about all that they do. There are only two-ish moments where Kevin and Mad don’t engage in anything sexual (he and her watch a TV show in-between the sex; she and him go to a dance). She cares for him, but not that much. I don’t think she had him mentally categorized as a boyfriend at all.
Also, he would have died from blood-loss considering how often she drank from him.

The other thing that’s weird about the book is the emphasis put on sex. Now, putting aside the fact that it’s suggesting vampires aren’t fully ‘dead’^C) this still doesn’t make sense because, to a vampire, the Kiss (the slurp/suck/bite) is the sex. So far (I’m not at the mechanics/storyteller stuff yet), the book hasn’t actually done a good job explaining why a vampire would even bother. It’s just kinda assuming that vampires would want to.
This is even assumed in the comic tracts (which I love and would have wanted to see more of) which are written by vampires for vampires.
Why do Daeva want sex? Why would they ever even bother with the act? It’s mostly a waste of blood to them because they have to warm up to do it. I guess it could be tied into their clan weakness in the First Edition, but that still doesn’t really explain it, because not every Daeva necessarily has ‘Lust’ as their vice.

There’s a ‘tape’ – a transcript of a tape recording – made by a sire to his new childe before he ditched her. I already mentioned it in Kevin’s story. It’s filled with information to help her survive her new unlife. I think this is one of the better parts of the book, because it actually communicates the worldbuilding well.
The issue is that, again, there’s a lot of unusual emphasis placed on sex. And it’s where the bizarre line about adultery comes from.

Basically a vampire gets caught in a sting operation and then he sounds like a crazy Boomer talking about the power of television whilst justifying his breaking of the Masquerade.

I’m not sure whether White Wolf intended for me to hate this vampire, but that’s what I ended up getting out of it.

The Collector shows his empathy yet again by saying he feels bad about reading this, because his own daughter is part of the Cacophany,^D) so it could have happened to her.

There are other stories and materials interrupting the main stories, or placed in-between.
I’m naming these out-of-order to be clear.

For example, there’s one in which a vampire is talking to his (presumed) sire about his ‘sister’: the American Dreamgirl. While I think this story is pretty meh overall (her being the basis of all of those 50s/60s girls is a bit implausible), I think the ending is pretty great.
Basically, our vampire narrator/protagonist was sent by his sire to talk to her (presumably an interview of some kind) and she implies that she needs vampire blood to drink because human blood is “too thin”. So his sire sent him to her as a snack. He runs away (and then, dumbass that he is, goes back to her). The ending involves him explaining to his sire that he’s going back to meet her and he tells him a secret: “She knows who you are.”
Very nice.

Sometimes the actual writings don’t make a lot of sense. Ayesha’s diary is written with dialog and descriptions. Why? That’s not how you write a diary. It’s more like a transcript than a diary and is thus very unnatural.

Ah, I guess it’s time to get to Ayesha.

Ayesha is a punk journalist and probably one of the bigger asshole characters in the book. I say this unironically after seeing Kevin. And I’m not just saying that because it’s strongly implied she’s a lesbian.
Ayesha is a journalist (the real reason I’m saying she’s a bitch) who was tasked by her ‘father’ to perform a job. Her ‘father’ is the same one who is collecting all the materials that we’re reading from and it’s somewhat implied that Ayesha is one of the two or three people going thru them after he disappeared somewhere.^E)
The details of the job aren’t that important, but what is important to note is that she kills a lot of people. We never see her killing directly (we’re reading her diary) but during the course of the story she kills at least three and implies she killed several others in the past. This is her playing with her Humanity.
The reasons why she kills someone are pretty benign too. One of them she kills because he calls her a prostitute. I guess this could imply her Vice is Wrath?
Now, her killing people isn’t much of an issue (putting aside why she does it) and the bigger issue is that she seems uninterested in the Masquerade, which raises questions about how she’s even still alive.

That’s the other thing: the Cacophany. I’m not 100% sure what it is (I’ve gotta read more of this lore man…), but its existence is kinda troubling in a worldbuilding sense. They are teetering on the edge and downright violating the Masquerade as a concept, so why they exist in the first place is a big question.
They claim that the Baby Boom in the 40s-60s led to an increase in illegal Embraces which resulted in a lot of vampires who needed help surviving…so the Cacophany formed as a way of distributing information among them. Ayesha is a journalist who worked for them to help distribute information to vampires.
Sounds pretty noble on the surface, except that this kind of operation would be noticed and crushed pretty quickly if we are to assume vampires are competent enough to run a society that has lasted centuries.

That is the other big problem with White Wolf’s writings: you can’t have punk/whore vampires as the significant majority live alongside the Masquerade and societies. Vampires live a long time. Let’s use Ayesha as an example.
She was probably Embraced in the late 60s or early 70s.^F) By the time we see her, it’s the modern day (around 2008 I’d say). That means that she’s been a vampire for approximately 30-40 years. It’s unusual that, in all that time she’s been unalive, she’s somehow maintained her “fight the power” and punk attitude. She probably adopted the punk aesthetic in the 80s.
I’m not saying she’d become a straight conservative good girl, but it’s still weird that she’s seemingly exactly the same.

See my Writing Notes for Vampires article for details. To sum it up though: vampires would be primarily conservative, cautious and so on. This applies more strongly in Requiem than in my writing notes, because Requiem confirms that the Covenants have been around for centuries. Even if vampires keep forgetting important details, they’d still prioritze stability. And thus a vampire like Ayesha would be locked up somewhere, executed or wouldn’t have been embraced in the first place. If she’s alive and still a punk, she’d be actively “re-educated” until she submitted.

Actually, I realized the thing that makes this feel off. She’s acting like a Brujah. From Masquerade. But she’s supposed to be a Daeva, so that’s probably one of the reasons it feels wrong.

Oh yeah, I suddenly remembered something that I actually quite liked here. Ayesha gets captured (and subsequently tortured) by Colonel Alvarez^G) who is stabbing Ayesha with a knife. After her favorite rib (heh) gets shattered by it, Ayesha activates the Blush of Life…which causes blood to go thru her veins again, which causes her to bleed. She then uses her own blood as lubrication to slip out of the Colonel’s grip and consequently kills her.
That is a very creative use of the Blush of Life. It’s just a shame that it’s hidden in this book.

There’s a letter written by one of the relatives of the collector vampire, who is basically saying “I’m not crazy, I’m just gonna have a drink and also I miss you mom.” which is more Daeva-like, but in the overly poetic and annoying way.

Following Ayesha’s story, there’s an article for a vampire magazine written by a guy who was talking about his ‘friend’ (Aubrey, a conspiracy nut in his eyes) and the Masquerade. I think it’s an interesting article, though (just like with Ayesha) I don’t have much sympathy for the writer because he’s a journalist.
It’s implied that he screwed up and is gonna be executed because someone caught him.
The more important thing to me here is the implication that most vampires don’t like each-other. And that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. This impression is there in a lot of the other stories, but it’s here that it’s most obvious. This guy has a vampire friend named Aubrey and the way he talks about her implies that he doesn’t actually like her at all. He thinks she’s hot (and he gets turned on by the way she speaks), but otherwise he doesn’t like her.
The other vampires thruout the book also have similar attitudes. The one vampire who doesn’t seem to dislike any other vampire – excluding Mad, who never interacts with another one – is the collector. Seriously. He’s the only one who never comes off as hating any other vampire and, in fact, he is the most empathetic of the vampires. He even feels bad for Kevin.
I think this is another White Wolf moment because vampires logically wouldn’t hate each-other: they can’t afford to if they want to live for centuries. I’m not saying that hatred is impossible, just that it wouldn’t be as widespread as it seems to be depicted.

The next major story/thing is related to Carmilla. Yeah, that Carmilla.
This one is actually a bit more interesting in a meta sense, because it’s presented as an essay about Carmilla which is commented on by the Collector (and one other person, though I don’t know who^H)). It also has some lore that intrigues, rather than confuses.

I don’t really know where to rank this one, because I was mostly rolling my eyes at the HEY, SHE’S A LESBIAN, CARMILLA’S A LESBIAN AND IT’S SO AWFUL THAT LE FANU DIDN’T LIKE LESBIANS, which is written in-character, but it’s still annoying to read.
The essay/thing is presented (in-universe) as an analysis of the historical character (who nobody apparently knows anything about) but is actually written by a vampire lady who likes the idea of Carmilla as a lesbian. It feels very White Wolf in that sense. The Collector sorta agrees that it’s a bit weird.

The lore bit that I alluded to is that Carmilla was supposedly partially responsible for trying to revive the Camarilla – the ‘New Camarilla’. The author of the essay suggests that Carmilla is thus just a corruption of Camarilla (but doesn’t spend time on what that might mean).

The author of the essay (and the Collector seems to agree) that Carmilla doesn’t actually exist, but is more of a folklore/myth/idea.

The next part of the book, which is written by the Collector about the history of the Daeva clan. I had assumed it was longer when I started writing this section only for it to be comparable in length to the smaller ones. Ah, well, I’ll reorganize all of this at some point.

There’s a green sticky note here which refers to the Collector as ‘dad’ which suggests the green notes were written by one of his children. I would have to check again, but I’m pretty sure this is either Ayeshe or one of the others. Ayeshe explicitly calls him ‘dad’ and one of the others (though I’m not sure which, I’ll have to check ugh) calls him ‘old bat’.^I)
The green sticky calls him racist, which is actually understandable. Not a White Wolf moment.^J) Though it could be argued to be.^K)

The Collector claims that Kindred started in the city of Ur and his Childer disagree. It’s kinda amusing.

Basically, it starts off with an origin myth. All Daeva supposedly descend from Lilith who worked for Inanna who killed her and brought her back to life. Lilith apparently did a thing with Inanna’s husband (Tammuz). Lilith was left behind when Inanna left.
Also, Inanna was God’s daughter. And God is named ‘Sin’ by the Collector. Sure, why not.

The next part involves emails between the Collector and a ‘scholar’ (the guy who calls him ‘Old Bat’^L) and is named Nic) and it’s here again that the sex thing comes up again. But now it’s just kinda uncomfortable.

Basically, the scholar explains that he’s living with three other vampire ladies. Two (Mat/Lishan) of them have admitted to being lovers and he (Nic) assumes that the last one (Katy) joins in with them. What do they do together? Drink each-other’s blood^M) and, according to his own speculations…‘circle-lick’.^N) Yeah, I think I finally understand how White Wolf failed to go big even after going Chronicles of Darkness.
Nic also clarifies that he has sex with Katy. But he makes it clear that that’s as far as it goes.

Seriously guys. Why are the vampires having sex? Nothing beats the Kiss^O) and having sex is difficult considering they’re supposedly all corpses. Meaning that requires warming up.
I suddenly remembered that Ayeshe wrote in her diary that she didn’t want to warm up for a hug with the Colonel in her segment. That implies that Kindred warm up to hug each-other? While I think that’s weird, that’s also something I think is very interesting and could tell us a lot about Kindred social dynamics. And it’s treated super casually.
Anyway, back to reading about awkward sex. If we assume that they aren’t fully dead (and can thus sex without warming up) then that would make a little more sense, but the problem is that they would still likely feel way more numb. I’m not sure a male vampire can penetrate period, because that requires blood flow.^P) Female vampires engaging in oral sex? M-maybe…?
If you think this is awkward to read, just remember that I’m the one reading the original. Though I’ll admit that I’m the only one here thinking about logistics.
I think it could be done but, again, they’d feel numb. They’re already supposedly drinking each-others’ blood so why are they bothering with the sex?

That also indicates to me that it’s the author’s poorly-disguised sexual-fantasy. Three sexy vampires in a circle. And the only guy is sexing one of them. Because it’s just so uncomfortable.

After that, Nic goes back to focusing on the history of the Daeva clan and this part is legitimately interesting to read. He’s explaining what sources he found, how trustworthy they are, what’s in them (vaguely) and some extra details surrounding them. The ones he found were ballads collecting stories written in English and Welsh and he doesn’t know who wrote them and who the sources of those ballads are.
He concludes that these ‘Blood Ballads’ were an attempted reconstruction of the old myths, gathered based on the testimony of several elders.

He adds in a later email that the Lancae et Sanctum had elders who memorized the Testament of Longinus (basically vampire Bible) which is also super interesting.
These elders would recount the Testament to others and then, eventually, flayed themselves to use their own skin to write it down. Most copies of the Testament of Longinus are based on these original Bibles (though Nic says that he’s never seen one).

Nic explains that he thinks that ‘Sin’ is linked to Mount Sinai. Interesting theory, I guess.

Basically, following that initially uncomfortable bit about lesbian vampires, the rest of the emails are actually concerned completely with speculating about the history of the Daeva.

Nic adds that there’s a Roman historian who mentioned the ‘Julii’ but he doesn’t know who they are and he doesn’t think they’re Daeva.
Then he explains that a separate historian mentioned ‘degenerates’ who are prostitutes and whatnot. Yay, a connection!

The emails end with Nic being unethical by sharing scans of the ‘Gospel of James’. The gist of it is that Mary had several dead children before Jesus (the first named James) who ended up growing up despite being dead. They then saw Jesus die and were to speak to Longinus at some point.
Nic suggests this as an alternative origin point for the Daeva.

That’s the end of this bit. The next is a film script.

So, first thing to be noticed: it’s not written like a film script. What a shocker. The script itself is for Black Blood which is an adaptation of an in-universe book.
It’s speculated by the characters that the book was probably written by ‘Felix’ (one of the ‘children’ of the Collector) and they’re all bewildered that nobody prevented it from entering Hollywood. Apparently Michael Bay is set to direct. That would have been awesome to see, actually.

It’s here that I hit the first bit of meta-irony that made me snicker and completely took me out of the book. At this point I think that the green sticky notes must be Ayeshe because there’s a note written in the script that fits that characterization.
Basically, there’s a complaint about ‘Adrian’ – fictional vampire lady in the film script – and how she’s a ‘ninja-stripper’ in one scene and ‘romance-starved girl’ the next. Thus Ayeshe concludes it must have been written by a man.
The irony here is that both of the authors of this entire book – Kiss of the Succubus – are male.^Q) And they’re probably of the SocJus variety too. It perfectly explains all of the uncomfortable sex stuff – which includes a bit earlier (I’ll re-write the whole thing, don’t worry) where Ayeshe lists an example of one of her previous sex exploits to sneak into a concert by letting someone perform cunnilingus on her; she may have been a teenager at the time too – as well as why a lot of the female vampires are depicted as lesbians/bisexual/hedonistic. Even Kevin (who claims he’s straight) felt good in the gay club.
Book, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t give us Ayeshe, Madael and ‘circle lick’ and then go “lol, men can’t women”.

I actually read the quote that note is commenting on, wanna know what it is? I’ll reuse them here directly (I’ll add a proper ‘citation’ later):

Where is her appearance commented on here? I get that this note is referring to the cover, but it still doesn’t really apply.

More to be written later.