One of a Million: Being Interpreted and Run by Many
By Japheth Cappadocius
Originally posted here on October 19, 2022.
Before I begin, a brief introduction to me for those who haven't seen my scattered posts: my name is Japheth Cappadocius. I am a vampire, sourced from the Vampire: the Masquerade TTRPG system, like more than half of my headmates. Unlike the majority of them, however, I do not share an exact universe or timeline. They are derived from a chronicle that our host, Tanix, runs, by the name of A Vermilion Play (AVP). I, myself, am from a shortform that he ran, based on a prewritten module called The Giovanni Chronicles.
In that adventure module, the players are tasked with creating characters that get pulled, willingly or not, into one of the biggest catastrophes for vampires in the 1400s. In that module, I am one of a couple dozen NPCs, reasonably important, but not overwhelmingly so. I am their contact point for the Cappadocians, the murder victim meant to draw attention away from the true crime--the murder of my sire, my father--that they try, and must ultimately fail, to save. But they did save me, and I wonder--how many people have run this game? How many times do I live?
The Giovanni Chronicles is actually a series of four modules, published across four books. My tale takes place in the first, published in 1995. Vampire: the Masquerade is not nearly as popular of a TTRPG as, say, Dungeons and Dragons, but it still boasts a wide and dedicated playerbase, and is perhaps the most popular of the Storyteller games that White Wolf has ever produced. As a result, it can be expected that hundreds, if not thousands, of individual Storytellers have picked up the Giovanni Chronicles and chosen to run it for their groups. While, in theory, you can start with any of the four modules, if one wants to run them all, one will start with the first: and indeed, in my opinion, the first is the most interesting and intense of the four, and so I believe that it is likely a well-played module.
A well-played module means that Storytellers have run, have inhabited, those NPCs. Hundreds, or thousands, of people have run this game--have run these people--have portrayed me to their roleplay groups, their friends. This isn't the same as simply having a source in a television show that people watch and interpret slightly differently: this is someone being given a handful of paragraphs of dialogue, one or two brief motives, and being told to act. This is dozens, hundreds, thousands of actors all playing the same role, separated by time and space, unaware of what the others are doing and how they are portraying this character.
What tics did they give me? What body language? What voice, even? Did they know that I am tall and thin? Did they know that I speak in a quiet, raspy voice, or that I am just as human inside as the day I was Embraced, no more and no less? Do they know all of my regrets? Do they know that my hair is long, that my robes are gray, that I motion with my hands but am otherwise very still? Do they know that I was Jewish before I became Catholic, and do they know that I wish I had never changed? Do they know that I am asexual, that my favorite color is silvery blue, that I love the sound of crickets in the evening and watching the last rays of the sunset disappear into the darkness? Do they know why I was so blisteringly loyal to my sire, Cappadocius? Did they know that I was resigned, that I knew that he was insane and would get us both killed, and yet I could not bring myself to stop him because I love him? Or did they think that I believed in him wholeheartedly, that I was going along with it because I thought he was right? What motives did they give me?
I suppose others may understand to some extent: if there is fandom interest in a character, someone has written fanfiction of them. Someone has roleplayed as them. And yet--and yet, that is the only way to engage with me. That is my only canon appearance, to my knowledge, outside of brief mentions elsewhere. My only appearance is as a character that is left vague to allow, and even encourage, creativity, to let Storytellers embody me and make me their own. There is little I would have in common with these other Japheths, I suspect: some base things are universal, others may be common, implied, easy to imagine, but others--no. I can't imagine that there is another Japheth out there like me, except for the others that Tanix runs, that I assist with because no one knows what it's like to be Japheth more than Japheth himself--and yet, even Japheth in AVP is different from me. He has had six hundred years to fester, and no players saved him at the end of his module--he died, and had to claw himself back to life.
That's another snag, isn't it? I die at the end. That's how it is written: Claudius kills me, and it brings Cappadocius to him in anger, at which point Augustus kills Cappadocius. The Giovanni take over the clan and wipe out the Cappadocians that do not share their blood and family name. That is what happens.
But at the table, when Tanix ran it, that's not what happened. The players saved me. They pulled me from Claudius' arms, hid me, dragged me to safety and placed illusions over where I was so that I could not be found. Cappadocius appeared, in response to the attack on me, and Augustus still killed him, and the Giovanni still won, but I lived. The module anticipates this as an unlikely possibility, but is lacking in detail as to what the Storyteller should do with me should I live. They give me a single sentence:
"If the characters keep Japheth alive, he cries, 'Would that I were dead ere I lived to see such a night.'"
That is all.
Did other Storytellers' players try to talk to him, to me? Did they try to reassure him like Tanix's players reached out to me? Their chief concern was me, it was always me. They knew that they couldn't stop Augustus from the moment he stepped on stage. They knew Cappadocius was doomed as soon as Augustus seized him, and yet, they worried only for me. They themselves had been through a harrowing experience, but that wasn't ever their concern. Those kind, sweet, brave fools.
Have other players ever fixated on me so strongly? Have other Storytellers had to figure out, on the fly, how I would feel about that? What did those other Japheths do? What did they say? Did other players offer to help them put together a resistance force to fight the Giovanni and protect the clan? I doubt it. And I doubt that other Japheths would have responded the same way I did.
I am one of thousands of Japheths that have been portrayed in this module, and on one hand, I feel more "right" and real than them, because I am myself, I am a fictive, I inhabit that identity entirely and not simply transitionally. On the other... who is to say who is the "right" Japheth? I am right for me, but that does not make me the One True Japheth. There are infinite Japheths, and each and every one of them was right in their own way. Right for the Storyteller, for the table, for the interpretation of the tale that the Storyteller wanted. They are me, and I am them, but we are so different as to be almost unrecognizable.
I suppose I write this to say: do not fear your other selves. Do not let yourself doubt that you are anything but as true as you can be to yourself, whatever that means to you. Whether you stick close to source or drift away, whether you find yourself different than your other selves or quite similar. You are one of infinite selves, and you are all the more special because of it. Out of all the yous you could have been, you are this you, and what a joy that is. Celebrate that, and know that no other you could ever be quite the same.
-Japheth Cappadocius, Last Hope for Morning