Can a Sabbat vampire leave its sect and join the Camarilla?

Question

I thought about this question after dreaming I was a Sabbat vampire and for some reason I rebelled against them and allied myself with Camarilla (yes, I have crazy dreams). Thinking about this, I found this question, which talks about the possibility of a vampire being a sleeper agent inside the other faction, but that is different than my case - I'm talking about one actually leaving Sabbat to join Camarilla.

For what I remembered, Sabbat vampires have a kind of blood bond after being embraced - according to White Wolf wikia, there is a kind of weak communal blood bond called Vinculum, which "generally makes pack members supportive of and loyal to each other, though it does not produce the extreme reactions of a full blood bond". The Vinculum can happens during the Vaulderie, a "blood rite practiced by the Sabbat to break any existing blood bonds and unite the pack members closely together"; Vaulderie happens immediately after the Creation Rites to turn someone into a True Sabbat.

So, for what I understood, this means that any True Sabbat will have a kind of blood bond with other Sabbat members (i.e., it's pack). Since Vaulderie break former blood bonds, theoretically a Camarilla member can join Sabbat.

But what about the opposite? How can I justify a Sabbat Vampire leaving its sect to join Camarilla, if it's even possible, both in mechanical and setting aspects?

Answer 1

While researching for writing my question, I found a few possibilities:

• False Sabbat: A newly created Sabbat Vampire who have not participated in the Creation Rites is still a False Sabbat, and so he's not bond to any Vinculum. So at least the Vinculum bond will not be a problem when changing sides.
• The Severed Hand: According to this thread exists a high-level Thaumaturgy ritual (Severed Hand, Level 7 Thaumaturgy Ritual, Archons and Templars pg. 147) which can break the Vinculi bonds, but only very high-level Sabbat know about it:

Known only to a very select few among the Sabbat Inquisitors, the Ritual of the Severed Hand is employed in the breaking of Vinculi. Inquisitors use it to recover spies and agents they have inserted into Sabbat packs suspected of heresy. Because of the ritual's questionable origins, it is rarely used in the modern nights, and some Inquisitors have even suggested destroying all known copies of the formula, lest it fall into the hands of the Camarilla.

Since these vampires fear that the ritual can be discovered by Camarilla, it's not impossible that it happens, although, since it's a high-level Thaumaturgy ritual, it will hardly be of use in low-level chronicles.

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P.S.: I thought a Lasombra Antitribu can work, but if I take what is wrote in their description in the Guide to the Camarilla (p. 58) they're not an example of conversion from Sabbat, since they are either vampires who "are older than the Camarilla itself" and turned their backs on the nascent Sabbat or are the children of these old vampires (in both cases they never were Sabbat members in the start).

Answer 2

The Camarilla and the Sabbat are political organizations, so a Vampire could potentially leave either one and join the other sect (arguably, Ecaterina has done that already in the Modern Nights), although there certainly be consequences for doing such an action:

1. The former organization would likely remember the defector and either hunt them down and/or blackmail the defector for some advantage.
2. The new affiliated organization would be foolish to trust the defector. A loyalty test would be expected and even then trust takes time to develop.

The Viniculum would present a problem to a would-be defector because its purpose is to ensure loyalty (and a Cainite who regularly misses or refuses to participate in the Vaulderie starts attracting Black Hand attention).

Personally, I would not rule out a Lasombra antitribu defector, even in the Modern Nights, but the Lasombra would especially take offense to such an action (because it would mean the defector is also rejecting the clan's beliefs which matters more to the Lasombra than Sabbat membership; the clan's priorities are clan first, sect second); a strong justification would be needed for why the would-be defector would even defect. It should also be noted the Camarilla doesn't really trust the Lasombra antitribu but they can prove useful.

Another item to note: becoming a Vampire is bit like being born: you emerge into a world not knowing anything and people along the way teach you. If you are born into the Sabbat, you are explicitly taught their world-view and implicitly taught their biases, so defecting to Camarilla would seem an abhorrent action because the Camarilla is far beneath the Sabbat (or at least most Sabbat believe; the old and/or high-ranking Cainites may think or know otherwise, but they have other reasons for staying); a similar argument can be made for a Kindred Embraced into the Camarilla.

Answer 3

so your options are either being a shovelhead or being pretty old.

Shovelheads don't actually like the sabbat, they are either just fodder causing mayhem because the Sabbat planned that to happen, or they are sticking near their Sabbat mentors in hopes of living through this ordeal. They would make the best converts to play as a PC because you are actually nerfing yourself both stat wise and politics wise.

Older vampires have options, but are a harder sell to a GM. For instance Tzimice can get a merit where they make pouches in their throat to put the vaulderie in which they can hold for long periods until they can spit it out later. But there are veteran vampires who have been drinking the cool aid along with the vaulderie, so wouldn't really want to join the camarilla, then there's elders who would but it is hard to start the game as one.

Answer 4

There are ways to leave your sect but do rememeber that ever Childe embraced by one side or the other has qualities they would prefer. So someone who was turned into a Sabbat vampire would more than likely be unwilling to confirm to the Camarilla's more strict set of laws and order. And some Clans even have special personality traits carried in their blood like a Malkavian's insanity (stronger in the Sabbat because they originally had the better power based solely of Malkav) or the unnatural connection between Blood Brothers. So many Camarilla would be very untrusting of a former Sabbat Kindred