Malfeas

Malfeas, "He Who Knows All the Answers but Comprehends Not the Question", is the Eidolon of Clan Malfean, an ancient vampire of nigh-unparalleled power only outmatched only by his own insanity.

While it is believed that he is not met with Final Death (much to the grievance of members of his own clan), it is neither believed that he yet maintains a physical form. Rather, Malfean elders claim that they have encountered him as a roiling maelstrom of frenzied confusion within the incorporeal fabric of the Astral Planes.

Malfeas was the second childe to be embraced by Marduk the Seer, and was chosen for the same reason as his brothers Thanatos and Enoch - his brilliance, curiosity and paramount intellect. However, while Marduk hoped that these capabilities would aid his childe in uncovering the secrets key to curing the vampiric condition, they would instead prove to be his undoing.

According to the legends of the Via Sanctum and its mythos, Malfeas made the mistake of asking Caine, the first vampire, why when Abel offered him peace he had chosen murder - why when God commanded him to walk in the light he had trodden instead into shadow. it is said that Caine considered this question for a few short moments, and then proceeded to curse Malfeas that he might forevermore know every answer to every question, but know not the questions themselves. Such mind-twisting horror drove the Eidolon to immediate and irredeemable insanity. Some elders claim that this was the vengeance of Caine upon the hubris of the one who would ask him such a question. Others say that in fact, Caine was simply being as direct and honest as possible, and that Malfeas truly got the answer he was looking for albeit in a format he neither expected or appreciated.

Another, less well circulated theory is that Enoch, the youngest of Marduk's childer, grew jealous of Malfeas and sought his undoing. Having acquired various dreadful knowings of his own, Enoch whispered the right combination of utterances to his brother in the blackest of nights and in so doing shattered the mind of Malfeas irreparably. An even more obscure legend is that these dread words were designed to induce a vision of the Great Old Ones, beings whose ineffable nature would surely break the psyche of anyone not sufficiently prepared to comprehend them. That Enoch himself could possess such words of power is disquieting in itself, and the fact that even an Eidolon would be susceptible to such madness perhaps even more so. Surely such rumours, however, are mere fantasy. And after all, Enoch was destroyed long ago by the Salazar...

The Shattering
The catastrophic breaking of Malfeas' psyche triggered an event in the minds of all his own childer and their childer also. The Shattering sent a shard of the Eidolon's nigh-godlike intellect into the brain of every last Malfean vampire, and this mad brilliance and the accompanying psychosis became embedded in the very blood of his clan. All newly embraced Malfeans inherit this accursed blessing from their sires. Malfeas' presence is intermittently felt by his clan as temporary and erratic episodes of deep break from reality. While most of these incidents result simply in incapacitation, frenzied panic, delusions of grandeur and like afflictions, occasionally a member of Clan Malfean obtains some great piece of the cosmic puzzle from the mind of their Eidolon. Whether they can comprehend and make use of it is another matter entirely. Originally it is believed that the Malfean clan possessed a Discipline of blood granting supreme clairvoyance into the true nature of the universe, but the Shattering corrupted and replaced this ability with their new and terrifying Discipline of Dementation.