The hunger

To live as a vampire is to live with horror. Always squatting on one's shoulder like a warlock's fiend is the knowledge of the Hunger. And always does it approach -- sometimes slowly and surreptitiously, sometimes with great haste, but always ravenously. The Hunger can never fully be satiated. Hunger we call it, but the term is woefully inadequate. Mortals know hunger, even starvation, ut this is as nothing.

The Hunger replaces almost every need, every drive known to the living -- food, drink, reproduction, ambition, security -- and it is more compelling than all of them combined. More than a drive, it is a drug, one to which we are born with a hopeless addiction. In the taking of blood lies not only our survival, but also a pleasure beyond description. The Hunger is a physical, mental and spiritual ecstacy which throws all the pleasures of mortal life into shadow. To be a vampire is to be trapped by the Hunger.

The Beast may only be kept subdued by the greatest effort of will; to deny the Hunger enrages the Beast, until nothing may keep it in check. Thus we must commit monstrous acts to stop ourselves from becoming monsters. -- That is the Riddle... That is the paradox of our life. It is the curse of my own.

The Beast rages constantly for releasem and only the strongest will may hold it back. Sometimes it breaks its bonds, and runs riotous until it is recaptured. The strain of self-control, and the shameful memories of failed control, are hard enough to bear. Worse still is the knowledge, constant as teh hunger, that these things wil surely happen again.

Over the decades and centuries this awareness gnaws at the mind like a rat at a ship's cable.To be a vampire is to live on the edge of madness. Obsissive devotion to some self-appointed task can help keep despair from the mind, and if the task is one of great goodness, it is possible to reason that the end justfies the means. Some deliberatly cultivate addictions, such as gambling or collecting art.

Others shut themselves away and confine their hunting to a small, sparsely populated area, tellingthemselvs that they are protecting the rest of the world. These things can perhaps delay the onset of madness, but they can also provide it with its first foothold. Ultimately, hard as we may strive against it, madness awaits us. The flame of humanity ebbs and sputters until finally it is extinquished. Then the Beast is victorious, and monsters we become in truth.

The Beast resides within the heart, and directs us towards evil, but when it overtakes he halls of the soul, then shall we be evil. Some speak of Golconda, the Vampire's Salvation. Both mortal and Kindred lore deny us Heaven's grace, but in Golconda we look for surcease from the Riddle. It is a stasis, where an individual may balance the Man and the Beast against each other so that striving is no longer needful. The descent into madness is halted, and although the individual is no longer recofnizable as human in his thoughts and deeds, what remains of Humanity is safe. In almost five centuries, I have met a meager few Kindred who have reached this blessed state, but all desire it as mortals desire Heaven.

We are as the most cursory steudent of folklore knows, ageless and immortal. In this case, lore and tradition have the right of it. Once made, a vampire lives until actively destroyed, or until the Beast wins over the Man, or until, after countless millenia, the Blood is exhausted.

Down the centuries, mortals have hungered for the secret of immortality, thinking it would give them great power. From the priests of heathen times trough the alchemists of my own breathing days, and down to the physicians of the present, mortals ahve expanded more wealth and effort in the war against aging and death than in the cause of any religion or trade.

Many newly made Kindred -- myself included -- rejoice in the thought of immortality when they first overcome the shock of the Chage and begin to reconcile themselves to their new situation. Yet it is a barbed gift, and another door by which madness may enter in. Consider for example, having to watch your loved ones -- even your children and grandchildren -- grow old and die, while you remain strong and vigorous. There is a necessity to live completely outside mortal society, or at least to move on every decade or so, lest it be noticed that you do not age. The tide of history flows over you like a stream, leaving you unchanged. The longer one lives as a vampire, the greater the snse of detachment from mortal affairs. It can be an advantage at first, helping to deaden the guilt of killing and the pain of losing one's mortal family to remorseless Time.

But as detachment grows, humanity wanes, and the Beast grows stronger. The most terrible of mortal serial killers often are detached from their kind. It is the same face on a different coin, as the Turks would say.

There are other reasons for our nocturnal life besides the need to avoid the sun's rays. It is so much easier to stalk and hunt in the ours of darkness. The prey is usually dulled by fatique -- and at times drunk -- and can see little in the poor light. The hunter on the other hand, is normally fresh and fully rested, and can often see as well as a mortaldoes at noonday. The hous of darkness are less populous, and promise fewer interuptions. Feeding is a vulnerable time; hte Beast is near the surface, and may stand at bay rather than leave a kill. This has been the undoing of more than one Neonate.

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