Misterio del Ascendente
The Mystery of the Ascendant follows one strict doctrine: The sun is the enemy; to overcome its rays is to overcome all adversity. Initiates of the Mystery believe that by overcoming the banes of fire and sunlight a Dragon can in turn defeat her every infirmity. This is not to be mistaken with a return to mortality. Such a change would be seen as an exchange of weaknesses, rather than true transcendence, and would be likely to get a vampire laughed at and his research ignored.
Scales of the Ascendant manipulate the boundary between life and death, pushing subject’s minds and bodies to their limits in an attempt to find the perfect “near life” state. Direct exposure to sunlight and fire, sleep deprivation, and medically induced death are common practices. All experiments have but one aim: To cure the vampire of his vulnerability to sunlight and allow the Dragon to walk in the day; lucid, unafraid, and uninjured.
Coil of the Ascendant
Surmounting the Daysleep •
A Dragon will not be held down by the distant rays of the dawning sun, nor made weak by its celestial body. So long as she benefits from the blush of life (p. 90) the Dragon need not roll to resist her daily slumber, nor will she gain the Lethargic Condition (p. 305) for remaining active during the day.
The Warm Face ••
Before she can overcome the sun a Dragon must first make herself as she was when she walked beneath it. The blush of life now lasts 24 hours, instead of just one scene.
Conquer the Red Fear •••
The uninitiated may fear the light, but the Dragon does not. A Dragon who has learned this Coil no longer risks frenzy from exposure to fire or sunlight (p. 103). She may stand next to a blazing bonfire or stare into the rising sun and retain total selfcontrol (though the latter will still be quite painful).
Peace with the Flame ••••
To conquer the bane of fire is one of the most significant victories a Dragon can achieve on her path to ascension. So long as she benefits from the blush of life she takes only lethal damage from fire, not aggravated. If she also has dots in the Resilience Discipline (p. 141) it further magnifies her endurance, with each dot reducing one point of fire damage from lethal to bashing.
Sun’s Forgotten Kiss •••••
This Coil represents the closest the Mystery of the Ascendant has ever come to achieving Dracula’s defeat of the sun. When activating the blush of life the Dragon may spend additional Vitae. For each extra Vitae she spends the Dragon counts her Blood Potency as one dot lower, to a minimum of one dot, for determining the interval at which sunlight harms her (p. 102).
Sample Scales of the Ascendant
Day-Wake Conditioning
Prerequisite Coil: Surmounting the Daysleep
Procedure: The subject, a vampire, must resist the Daysleep until the compounding penalties of the Lethargic Condition (p. 305) reduce his resistance roll to a chance die. He may then slumber, but only at dusk, and only in a brightly lit chamber.
Traditionally this was accomplished with large quantities of candles, but recent practitioners have found high-wattage incandescent lights to be just as effective.
Outcome: This subject’s sleep cycle is reversed — he wakes at dawn at though it were dusk, and slumbers at night instead of during the day. The condition persists indefinitely, so long as the subject continues to slumber in a brightly lit location every night. Failure to do so for more than two days consecutively undoes the Scale’s effects.
Epidermal Shielding Bath
Prerequisite Coil: Sun’s Forgotten Kiss
Procedure: The Dragon fills a large vessel, generally a bathtub, with an alchemical mixture of blood, salt, pulped human fat, and other arcane ingredients. A Kindred subject is then submerged completely in the bath, and must remain submerged for a full hour while the Dragon slowly bleeds Vitae into the mixture. This last step may be performed while submerged if the subject is the Dragon herself.
Outcome: For every point of Vitae spilled into the bath increase the subject’s effective Humanity by one when determining damage dealt by sunlight (p. 102). This boon lasts for 24 hours, beginning the moment the subject emerges.
Flesh Graft Treatment
Prerequisite Coil: Peace with the Flame
Procedure: Using a system of skin grafts and mortal blood transfusions the Dragon coaxes dead flesh into an almost-living state, allowing for the rapid recovery of grievous wounds. Skin grafts are prepared 24 hours in advance, and allowed to soak in fresh human blood during that time. To begin the treatment, she wraps the grafts tightly around damaged regions, then injects them with human blood no more than a minute old.
Outcome: The subject’s flesh is briefly reinvigorated to a near living state. In Kindred this allows for aggravated damage to be healed with Vitae as though it were lethal (p. 91). Mortals become able to recover lethal damage with the expenditure of Vitae. Of course, since most humans do not possess Vitae to expend, the Dragon must include it in the injection. In this case the Scale also induces a stage-two blood bond (p. 99) in the subject, and may also use the process to create a ghoul.