Toreador
Contents
"Long after you die, I will still be young, beautiful and adored by everyone whose life I touch."
The Toreador are called many things - "degenerates", "artistes", "poseurs" and "hedonists" being but a few. But any such lumpen categorization does the clan a disservice. Depending on the individual and her mood, Toreador are alternately elegant and flamboyant, brilliant and ludicrous, visionary and dissipated. Perhaps the only truism that can be applied to the clan is its members aesthetic zeal. Whatever a Toreador does, she does with passion. Whatever a Toreador is, she is with passion. To the Toreador, eternal life is to be savored.
Many Toreador were artists, musicians or poets in life; many more have spent frustrating centuries producing laughable attempts at art, music or poetry Toreador tout themselves as cultivators of all that is best about humanity... Occasionally, a particularly gifted or inspired creator is Embraced into the clan, to preserve her talent for eternity. In this manner, Clan Toreador has inducted some of humanity's greatest artists, poets and musicians into its ranks. Of course, if one thing can be said about the Toreador, it is that no two of them agree on precisely what "gifted" or "inspired" means.
Active PCs
Organization
Toreador have little practical organization, though their cliquishness and social networks are legendary . The clan meets frequently, but more as an excuse to host lavish parties and showings than to accomplish anything. Status among the Toreador is a tempestuous whirlwind in which one subtle smile or catty critique can lead to fortune or disaster; a prodigy may be adored one night, commit a barely perceptible faux pas, and be ostracized the next.
Toreador put a fair degree of stock in lineage; a vampire fortunate enough to descend from a favored sire is lavished with adoration (to her face, anyway), while childer of a sire "on the outs" suffer social humiliation. Few of these lines deviate from the main clan in any significant way. The Toreador antitribu of the Sabbat are a notable exception, for they take equal aesthetic delight in great beauty or great ugliness.
Society
Most Toreador are in the Camarilla, as only that august organization promotes "culture" and allows the Toreador to live among the mortals they so favor. Those in the Sabbat pursue bizarre "artistic" pastimes, such as torture and blood-painting, or are the rulers of the most decadent underground movements.