The Toreador are one of the thirteen Great Clans which feature in White Wolf Publishing’s World of Darkness setting. The “beautiful people” amongst the Kindred, they are percieved as little more than hedonistic fops by other vampires, but are nevertheless a powerful and influential force within the Camarilla, and one of the pillars on which the organisation is built.
History[]
According to the Toreador, their Clan founder, Arikel, was once a mortal artist who was Embraced under the order of the Caine himself after he saw the beauty in her works. However, once she painted a great mural depicting the past, present and future of the Kindred, Caine saw how terrible the vampire race would come to be, and cursed her to forever be obsessed with the perfection of her art, and to never be content with her works.
After the fall of the First City, the descendants of Arikel, who had come to be known as Clan Toreador, migrated east and settled mostly throughout Ancient Greece and the Aegean. There, they were thought to be responsible for the creation of many of the sagas and grand works of art and architecture that those people have come to be known by. However, their constant bickering and infighting weakened these civilizations, and after their fall to foreign invaders, most Toreador scattered across the Mediterranean, eventually finding shelter in new lands ruled by the the nascent Roman Empire and Carthage.
Whilst the Toreador initially fought on both sides of the conflict between these two states, the growing strength of the Empire, and with them Clans Ventrue and Malkavian, caused most Toreador to end up backing the Romans. There, they proceeded to establish themselves as one of the major players, even holding power after the fall of Rome itself through their connections in Constantinople.
The Dark Ages[]
When Constantinople was sacked during the Fourth Crusade, the Toreador once again jumped ship, this time infiltrating the courts and royal households of European nobility. During this period they also invested heavily in the Catholic Church, as at the time the church was the only organisation which devoted any appreciable effort to the arts. This was a Golden Age for the Clan, and cemented theit position as one of the most powerful groups of vampires in existence.
Possibly the single greatest event in history for the Toreador was the coming of the Renaissance, a time where Western Europe celebrated the arts in all their forms and the Clan was able to truly thrive. Men such as Da Vinci and Michelangelo created wonders, and in the midst of it all were the Toreador, revelling in the sheer artistic talent which the Renaissance brought to mortal society. France in particular became a centre of culture, and the Toreador embraced the movement in all of its many forms. It was however, also a time when the Clan gained the reputation for hedonism and debauchery for which it is most well-known today.
Amongst all of this, the Toreador still found time for other pursuits, and it was during the Dark Ages that the Camarilla was formed; a group created by seven of the vampiric Great Clans which the Toreador played a large part in creating.
Victorian Age[]
The Victorian Age saw yet again an upsurge in the fortunes of Clan Toreador, as this period brought with it something rarely seen throughout history for much of the population: leisure time. The ability for large portions of the mortal world to indulge in activities beyond those necessary to merely survive allowed the Toreador to capitalise even further on the interests of the masses, and once again the arts and crafts which resulted were patronised by the Clan.
Modern Nights[]
The advent of technologies such as the Internet and CGI imagery have been nothing but a boon for the Toreador, with the proliferation of global creative talent and the opening of so many new avenues of artistic expression allowing the Clan a multitude of new outlets. Even such things as graffiti art have seen an enormous increase through the encouragement of savvy Toreador.
Structure and Organisation[]
The Toreador appear to have little outward hierarchy, although nothing could be further from the truth. They are a Clan who function primarily on a self-perpetuating system of prestige, with those who have a genuine talent for something being held in greater esteem than others. The awarding of prestige can be fickle, however, and can even be based upon what cultural fads are in vogue at the time. For example, an artist who sculpts nothing but neo-cubist pieces may be very low in the pecking order one day; the next, neo-cubism is the in-thing with the mortal population, and all of a sudden the sculptor is at the very peak of prestige within his Clan. Of course, neo-cubism will only be the fashion for so long . . .
That being said, there are two distinct groups within the Toreador.
Artistes[]
- The vampires with a talent for an art which transcends either boundaries or the passage of time. These Toreador view themselves as the heart of the Clan, and are the vampires most others think of when asked to describe a Toreador.
Poseurs[]
- These are the Toreador who either lack any appreciable artistic talent themselves, or whose abilities lie in critiquing the work of others. It is this group who is most likely to award Clan prestige, or remove it.
Regardless of the above, it should be noted that art in all its shapes and forms, whether it be painting, poetry, the human form, acting, or something entirely different, is at the heart of everything the Toreador do: a craving to be remembered for something more than their parasitic existence as a vampire.
Embrace[]
(See main article: Vampire (World of Darkness))
As can be guessed, Clan Toreador draws most of its numbers from those who have a demonstrable talent for a particular school of art. This can be literally any field in which the Embracing vampire finds beauty, and more than one molecular biologist or astronomer have been given the gift of unlife by a Kindred enamoured with the work of his new Childe.
However, the Toreador connection to mortals has its drawbacks, and a small yet significant portion of its members were Embraced simply because the vampire felt physically attracted to its progeny. These poor unfortunates tend to be abandoned by their sire as soon as the Kindred grows tired of his or her looks, and is usually left to fend for themselves in an unforgiving vampiric society.
Clan Weakness[]
Their obsession with perfection in all of its forms sometimes overcomes a Toreador at the most inconvenient of times, and they are prone to become immersed in either the creation of their new masterpiece or the appreciation of another. This can cause a Toreador to enter a fugue state, and to lose seconds, hours, or even weeks to such an event. To one of these vampires, even the flash of steel on an opponent’s blade may be enough to distract them at a critical time . . .