Vampire the Masquerade and Elder scrolls, playing the mad

The depiction of mental health in fiction has had a long and dark history. Often has mental health been used as a mark of otherness, evil or as comic relief. Maniac killers, sadistic monsters or babbling clowns are often seen in popular media for the last hundred years. Today I will discuss another form of madness in fiction, one that has a long history in many cultures around the world, madness as inspiration.

Setting the stage

The image of the mad or deranged seer is not a new archetype by any sense of the word. Many examples can be found within Greek and Roman mythology, Cassandra the seer being one of the more famous examples of this. A woman with absolute clairvoyance, but cursed to be seen as mad or as a liar by all that hears her. These examples are indeed the basis for my first example, the Malkavian clan of vampires in Vampire the Masquerade. Being that the setting is deeply rooted in Abrahamic traditions, it is not surprising that Roman and Greek tales and fables would be integral to the setting, considering their importance the development of christianity.

The Malkavians are depicted to be blessed, or cursed with a form of sight, to be able to see into the future, past, as well as the realities behind their own. They are furthermore cursed, or gifted by one or several forms of mental illness or neurodivergence. The willing or unwilling followers of Sheagorath is likewise both cursed and blessed. As most if not all of them are artisticly or intelectually talanted in some form or another. While this is not always the case, there is more often then not a tie between artistic and intelectual prowers, and madness. It seems that seeking to deeply or to greedily in to the secrets of the world of Elder scrolls is a sure way to have your mind warped in some way.

The family of the mad and the free

Each bloodline of the vampires, think of them has heradatary lines from one generation to another, has a founder or original creator. In the case of the Malkavian, this original creator was known as Malkov. A seer and wiseman that said to have drunk to deeply from the veins of his master, and gleemed secrets no mortal should witness.

With this wisdom came visions, visions of the future, and the past. This made him feared, and loathed by his simplings and fellow vampires. Their ire grew so large, that one day he was dismembered, and like the god Osiris, burried in seperete points of the earth. But, unlike Osiris, he was never put toghter, he was never saved, but insted left to suffer and rage in his many prisions, for a man of such great power and evil, is not so easily destroyed. Instead of making his body whole, instead his influense spread just as far as his mortal form now had. By infiltrating and connecting all the minds of his children, he was able to be everywhere, and nowhere at once. This connection to Malkov, and between his children is known as the madness network.

The Malkavian vampires of the modern setting of Vampire the masqauarade is directly or indirectly tied in to the madness network, and can use it, concsly or unconcisly to pull forth emoptions, memories and knowlage of other members of the Clan Malkavian. This trade is far from safe tough, and it easy to catch more then you asked for when diving in to the subconcious of hundreds of undead individuals. The madness network is not called for no reason, and each individual inflicted with Malkavian vampyrism is in one way or another afflicted with some sort of mental divergence, or have their old once enhancesd or even replaced. Madness is in the case of the Malkavians directly tied fo the concept of forbidden or esoteric knowlage, and the Malkavians are indeed able to see beyond the mundane dimentions of even the supernatural realms of vampires and ghosts, in to the beyond. So strong is this power that they can even change the very fabric of the world around them, foming it more to fit their own view of how things truly are.

This connection was not always present with the Malkavians, and there was a time that they tried, in an attempt to blend better in with their vampire brethren of the Camarilla they gave up, or at least stemmed some of their more outlandish powers, and they hoped, their neourises. The Camarilla is an organization that thrives on normalcy, tradition and hiding in plain sight, all things that the Malkavians had a dificulty to follow. Unlike their chaotic brothers in the Sabbat, that fully embraced their curse, did the Camarilla Malkavians for a time manage to stem their affliciton, at least outwordily. The act of “blending in” or “acting normal” is one that I am sure that many of my fellow neurodivergent readers recognise. And it was just an act for the Malkavians, an act mostly for themselves, and despite the fact that they had sucesfully cut themselves of from their more strange and disturbing powers, were the same, strangeness or otherness still there, just muted or repressed. The real life allegories here are not hard to spot, and the extremes of either repression or fully embracing once otherness is not uncommon in the real life. I to have been forced to learn certain social codes or behaviours to fit in, or hide my angsiety or obsessive tought patterns to others. and I known many others that have been forced to do the same.

This mask did not hold for long, and the madness of Malkov is back in full force in the modern Malkavian, if not even stranger. Their Sabbat brethren, due to their brutal and cruel ways have intertwined even deeeper in to the Malkavian madness network, to the point where they more resemple collection of hiveminds then individuals.

The real life allegories here are not hard to spot, and the extremes of either repression or fully embracing once otherness is not uncommon in the real life. I to have been forced to learn certain social codes or behaviours to fit in, or hide my angsiety or obsessive tought patterns to others. and I known many others that have been forced to do the same. Likewise is the Sabbat Malkavians an example of how destructive and manipulative social structures can make such mental ilnesses and divergences even worse, and in some cases lead to co-dependenices.

One of the more striking features of playing a Malkavinan is that you can not choose, not to be “mad” in some form or another. Every player can choose to have have negative traits, one of them being what the game calls Derangements, but a Malkavian can not choose, they Have to take at least one of these derangement. The Malkavian is in other words forced in to the roll of a form of other via the mental divergence of their blood. This divergence also comes with higntened senses, intuison or artisitc abilities they did not have as a mortal. This consept does make the Malkavians very dificult to play, and even more dificult to play well, as it is easy to fall in to clyshes or turn your character in to a comedic parody. Thankfully the player handbook does a good job of introducing the players that may not have had a personal experience of mental divergence, and sheperds them trough the process of seeing the world trough another view. For as the proverb goes, “the mirror is cracked, but surprisingly clear”.

To become madness, and to witness the mad

Elder scrolls take a different route when it comes to its relationship to madness, as it is often represented by a god, in the form of Sheogorath, the god of madness but also the patron of poets, artists and intellectuals to some extent. Sheogorath himself is shown to be arbitrary, petty and childish, but also frighteningly intelligent and quick witted. He often plays an antagonistic role, and seems to take great pleasure in humbling the proud and arrogant, a trait he also shares with the Malkavians.

In this chapter I will focus on the expansion adventure to Elder Scrolls Oblivion called The Shivering Isles, where the player not only aims to save the realm of the mad god, but eventually to become the mad god themselves. Through this adventure the player is confronted with many facets of what the game calls madness, primarily divided into Mania, the land of excess, euphoria and mania, and dementia, representing depression, paranoia and dysphoria. The tale is filled with subtle and not so subtle references to mental health, medication as well as creativity and obsessive creation.

The leader of Dementia is a cruel woman driven by her paranoia that makes her jump at every shadow, and see evil and ruin everywhere. The leader of Mania is on the other hand a man addicted to powerful drugs that helps with his manic depressive moods. While many of the examples of madness are written off as a joke, are there some genuinely interesting or tragic characters in the Isles. One example is a man in Dementia that wishes you to kill him, as committing suicide would lead him to have to endure great torments from the land itself, as Sheagoorath himself has instructed. If you agree to help this man, you will gain access to his house, where you find his journal as well as a Ring of happiness. Here the man describes how he has dissociative episodes, and suffers from grave depression. He later describes how a mage nade him the ring of happiness, and while it did make him feel less empty and hollow, it also made him feel less of himself, numb and strange, as a result he stopped wearing it. This is a clear allegory to antidepressants, and how it is not uncommon for individuals to feel that something of themselves is lost in the use of them.

What makes this take on madness so different then the Malkavian example, is the fact that the player, from the very start is told that, You do not belong. Your character is not seen as one of the true citizens of the isles, and is as a result coded as, for the lack of a better word, sane. Note that you are, as a player, still put in the role of an outsider, but for very different reasons. Instead of being pulled into the role of the mad or manic is the player instead presented as the one sane individual in a land of the mad. Here it is worth noting that the act of any open world rpg character, can in no way be described as sane or normal for that matter, but that is a discussion for another time.

What is interesting is that, despite the player being given this label of sanity, do you still turn into the god of madness at the end. Despite your status as an outsider, are you quite forcefully pressed into the role of not only leading the game’s idea of madness, but to fully embody it. While the Elder scrolls series takes a lighter and more shallow approach to mental health and mental health struggles, is it still worthy to take up as an example here. One of the reasons being the more traditional and shallow approach that the work takes.

Conclusions

The biggest differences, besides tone and depth, is the player characters’ relationship to the other in the form of the mad. Elder scrolls series, and many other media forms presents the player as a spectator or outside observer to mad or divergent, even after becoming the Mad god, you are never truly a part of it. Playing a Malkavian on the other hand, forces you into the mind of the other, you become the mad, you become the other. Few pieces of media have, in my opinion, managed to toe the line of forcing the reader into the mindspace of the other and the divergent, without needing to resort to images of illusions and hallucinations.

The madness of Elder scrolls is loud and external, and something you encounter and interact with. The madness of Malkov is often silent, internal, and something you have to face and either accept and internalize, or fight and suppress.