Session Summaries

It is curious, if not unfitting, that the most common name for unlife among vampires is a musical reference, the Requiem. The word itself means a mass or musical composition for the dead. In some cases, a requiem is a dirge. In other cases it is a chant intended for the dead’s repose. In still others, it is a gesture of respect. No surprise, then, that the word has taken on its own meaning among the vampires who call themselves Kindred. The word has connotations of its own, suggesting that the Kindred must have adopted it in a more enlightened or sophisticated time. Tonight, however, all but the most cloistered Kindred know that the word bears its own specialized meaning. The Requiem is the Kindred’s unlife, the grand, doomed waltz through which every one of their kind dances every night, urged on by metaphorical strains of music that represent the hidden powers that guide, manipulate and inspire them.

Every night stands out as singularly as each separate note in a composer’s opus. When we hear the composition, though, we do not examine each and every note. Rather we experience it in sum. This is the key to avoiding the malaise of eternity. Let each night, each note, stand out in the greater body of the Requiem your life has become.

—Charlotte Gaudibert, Aequitas Fatalis