Vampire Gehenna (2004) [Hardcover]

Dean Shomshak (Author), Travis-Jason Feldstein (Author), Christopher Kobar (Author), Bjorn T Boe (Co-editor), Ari Marmell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2004

The End of the World...
The prophecies of Gehenna were true. The world teeters on the brink of an undead apocalypse, the night when the progenitors of the vampire race rise to consume their childer amid a rain of blood and fire. As the fated Armageddon for the Kindred arises, what can they do?
FOR THE DAMNED
Drawing the Vampire Line to a close, GEHENNA brings about the conclusion of Vampire's World of Darkness. Featuring a sliding scale which Storytellers can custom-tailer the events of The End to their own chronicles, this book places the final accounting for the curse of Cain in the hands of the players' characters. Part of the Time of Judgement series. Hardcover.

See also: Vampire: Gehenna, The Final Night (ISBN 1588468550).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (January 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588462463
• ISBN-13: 978-1588462466
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #520,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Gaming > Vampire

More About the Author

On March 22, 1974, Ari Marmell was hatched out of an egg laid by a rooster on the night of the full moon. Due a mix-up, he wound up in the infant ward at a hospital in New York, where he was claimed as a (relatively) normal human and taken home. He and his family fled New York barely a year later, either because his father received a job offer in Houston, or because they were chased by angry mobs with pitchforks; reports are unclear.

For the next 27 years, Ari lived in Houston. His father told him bedtime stories when he was in preschool and kindergarten, stories without which he might never have become a writer. He received his first roleplaying game--the red Dungeons & Dragons boxed set--at age 9, and the AD&D Players Handbook followed less than a year later. He spent very little time on class work or studies for the next, oh, 13 years, instead spending his efforts on far more important things like fighting orcs, riding dragons, and rescuing extremely beautiful princesses.

Ari went to college at the University of Houston. He began in the Psychology program, but quickly changed his major to Creative Writing. It was in the first week of class that he met his wife-to-be, who goes by the name of George. (No, it's not short for Georgia, Georgette, Georgiana, or anything else that could possibly make sense.) It was also in college that he wrote his first novel, one that he is now determined will never see the light of day, and charitably calls a "learning experience."

In short, Ari graduated in late '96, married George in March of 1997, honeymooned in New Orleans, worked several jobs he hated for the next several years, and quit the last of them in 2000 due to ongoing health issues. During this time, he wrote four more novels, two of which are actually pretty decent. It was also during this time that he managed to break into the roleplaying industry, having attracted the attention of Justin Achilli (developer of Vampire: The Masquerade) with a project submission inspired by his trip to New Orleans.

He and George moved to Austin in mid-2001 so George could attend graduate school while Ari continued to work as a freelance writer. They live there today, along with a large orange cat named Leloo and a smaller gray cat named Pippin who seems unable to grasp the notion that strings, ribbons, and plastic bags do not make up a viable part of the food chain. His first published novel, Gehenna: The Final Night, appeared on shelves in January of 2004.

Today, Ari is shifting his focus from freelancing to more fiction and novel-writing. His second novel, Agents of Artifice, was released by Wizards of the Coast in February of '09. His third novel, The Conqueror's Shadow, was released by Spectra in February 2010. (This was his first published non-tie-in novel.)

Ari's forthcoming novels include The Warlord's Legacy (Spectra, early 2011), the Goblin Corps (Pyr Books mid- to late 2011), and Household Gods (Pyr Books, 2012). You can learn more about him, and keep up with his news and release schedule, at www.mouseferatu.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The End..., March 2, 2004

By 

Zekeriyah (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Vampire Gehenna (2004) (Hardcover)

This book is the final book for Vampire: the Masquerade and covers Gehenna, the end of the world for all intents and purposes. A novel new concept, this book provides multiple scenarios which you can tailor to your needs based on your own needs and likes. No canon, no specifics. Just suggestions, and its a VERY cool concept.

The book starts out with a great piece of fiction using the characters from Cairo by Night, and then gives some general info about Gehenna with stuff like the Red Star, the shattering of the Black Hand and how the sects react. The whereabouts of the Antedilluvians are given (though some are rather disappointing, others are what we've expected all along), though these can be changed to suit your needs. Then the book gives a whole chapter on general setting info for Gehenna. The prophecies and Antedilluvians are examined, including others beyond the 13 "known" ones (though these may or may not just be rumors). Also info on the Inconnu, Jyhad and last daughters of eve, some news clippings from around the world showing how the mortal world is affected and the system for the withering, a new weakness afflicting Cainites in the Final Nights. Info on other supernaturals is largely avoided, but it is mentioned that depending on how it ends it could be a huge spectacle to a quiet bang unnoticed by the mortal world.

The next chapters detail four possible scenarios (which you can adapt for your own use), which I have no intentions of spoiling for you. The first, Wormwood, seems to be the most popular and has God himself taking out his wrath on all vampires. Fair is Foul, probably my favorite, involves Lilith taking her revenge on Caine and his childer amidst the struggles of the Antedilluvians. The next scenario, Nightshade, involves the awakening of the Antedilluvians and may be the "canon" ending to the metaplot from what I've heard on forums. And the final scenario, the Crucible of God, shows what happens when vampires openly take control of human society. And it has a REALLY funny ending if you like ironic justice....

The book closes out with some more stuff, including a Storyteller's guide to running games set in the end times, Stats and profiles for some of the characters presented (which were nice, but some are already presented elsewhere and I guess the space could have been better used in other ways), and finally a last look at Caine himself. Overall, this is a very useful and innovative book. Definately worth running any one of the scenarios presented. The book largely accepts the Caine mythos and Abrahamic religious beliefs (sorry for all those Setites, Laibon, Bahari, Einherjar, etc) BUT makes a big point on how you can change it if you choose. In fact, one of the scenarios includes the Lilith Mythos as I mentioned, which I think is cool. Still, the game is based of the Biblical kinslayer, and it makes sense that the Jewish/Christian/Muslim view of God holds in the game. Overall, just get the book. You and your players will enjoy it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "This is the way the world ends...", January 19, 2004

By 

Daniel Saults (Rolla, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vampire Gehenna (2004) (Hardcover)

For those who don't know, this book is the final publication for White Wolf's flagship RPG "Vampire: The Masquerade". "Gehenna" ties together all the last loose ends of the plotline of the previous publications, tying together all the ancient myths and disparate legends regarding Gehenna, the vampiric apocalypse, in which (in short) Caine, father of all vampires, and his Grandchilder will rise up to consume the world. The depth is substancially greater than this, of course, but I would hate to spoil the depths of plot available.

Needless to say, it's difficult to custom-tailor such a story to a group, particularly one with different tastes, roles, histories and religious outlooks (the latter of which can seriously flavor any V:tM storyline). White Wolf has worked this through, providing several possible scenarios for Gehenna, all incorporating different elements of, and angles on, in-game history and metaplot. Possibilities are provided from divine and ultimate redemption in a "secret apocalypse" all the way up to the true and total end of the world. Though somewhat messily organized, even the most rigid of writers would have a difficult time getting a lasso around all this material, and Ari Marmell does a decent job of it. Though not all the plots will be to everyone's taste, and some might not enjoy any of them, all have at least -some- ideas that any Storyteller would be able to wring a great deal of personal horror out of. The amount of metaplot and canon knowledge required was surprisingly minimal, as I haven't shelled out an overwhelming amount of cash on peripheral materials. Whether you want the end to be a battered but optimistic upbeat or the orgiastic, carniverous, final irony of the human and Cainite races, this book should have something for you. Though at times messy, at others a bit tepid, and in most cases a bit unfortunately predictable, I still feel it would have been difficult to do a much better job. With a little Storyteller ingenuity, the end to all things could also become the story to end all stories.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fitting end for a fantastic game., January 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Vampire Gehenna (2004) (Hardcover)

Vampire: the Masquerade was released in 1991 shaking the roleplaying community upside down with it's inovative take on horror gaming and storytelling in general. By putting more emphasis on character and story, and less on die rolling and rules systems WW forever changed the standard of the industry by pressing foward with mature concepts and shifting the resposibility of telling a story beyond that of just the dungeon master into the hands of all those involved; gamemasters and players both. For those well versed in Vampire; there is no further need for an introduction. This past August White Wolf Game Studio shocked the industry and fans alike by announcing that they would be ending the World of Darkness with their "Time of Judgment" campaign. Each WoD gameline has been working towards an individual end for 13 years now. WW has decided to pay up on this build up. The ToJ was recieved with mixed feelings. Fans were either happy or outraged by this turn of events; either way the Time of Judgment was in motion and that was the bottom line. The WoD would come to an end with several sourcebooks[rather, toolkits] to aid the Storyteller and players in telling their own tales of the end. This title, Gehenna, is the final book to be released for the game Vampire: the Masquerade. Gehenna is split up into a few different sections discussing various ways to bring your own Vampire chronicle to an end. There are a number of sections that can be described as "toolkits" for tailoring your own interpretation of Gehenna. There are also four stories[adventures if you will] which detail four possible endings for the gameline. Nothing is written in stone nor is anything claiming itself as canon[the dreaded word metaplot comes to mind; not really any of that here]Simply said Gehenna is a satisfying book that offers numerous possibilities for running a Gehenna themed game. As a fan for the last 11 years; I am happy with the end result; I am confident that many fans will also feel the same.