These passion-warped shades cannot be relied upon to provide an objective account of anything, but their accounts are entertaining, if nothing else. But I digress. It is my contention that the long-lived nature of the Cainites renders the composition of a concise and accurate Cainite history all the more difficult. Let us take the example of Prince Mithras of London. He claims to be the founder of Mithraism and source of its mysteries. By popular account, he styled himself a living sun god and enjoyed the worship of elites all over the Roman Empire, but evidently grew bored of being a deity and decided to enjoy a bucolic existence in London.
I do not mean to cast doubt upon the formidable Prince Mithras himself. It is an extraordinary claim, but Mithras is a most extraordinary being.
I wish merely to highlight that not only has our history been written and rewritten to suit the victors for millennia, but also that our histories are simultaneously of outlandish scale and yet entirely plausible. I do wonder what they will write of Constantinople in a thousand years. Will they remember it as a glorious paradise ruled by an angel, tragically undone by treacherous outsiders? Will they remember when it was Byzantium, ruled by Cappadocians for a millennium before their arrival?
Will the texts recall the plundering of our libraries, the massacre of our clan at the hands of the Latins? Will Cainites a millennium hence tell a version of history that is utterly unrecognizable to those who lived it? If we could see ourselves a millennium hence, would we even recognize ourselves? It is impossible to say. Our world has many histories. Some are secret. Some are common. Most of them contradict one another. Some of them might even be true. It is the task of the reader, then, to which version of history they will accept, and which lessons they will learn from the past.
Who was it that sent you? Did your sire make you, then realize just how very tiring the whole thing is? How hard it is to raise a fledgling vampire up from the mud? Pay it no mind. No mind at all. You, come sit here at my knee. Count your blessings, aye? A hundred Cainites or more came and sat here to hear this, and now you join a proud tradition. Someone murdered you, childe. Someone decided that your life was to come to an end. You wipe your eyes again with my apron.
Your body, mine, all of us, are made of sin. What a human can do we can do better. We can run faster and see in the dark. For most of us, our bodies become more perfect visions of what we were as humans.
No, not me, childe, but I am a special kind of sinner. You are a creature meant to steal virtue and arouse vice. You drink blood and tempt the holy with your strange secret powers and your allure. What else have you noticed? The heart, aye? Sad, that. Did I say that you are stronger? Throw yourself from a parapet. Get kicked by a horse. Even a well-intended thrust by a man-at-arms will hardly slow you down.
When the stake is removed, he will rise, most likely hungry, mad, and bent on revenge against them that incapacitated him in the first place. Odd, aye? All your memories, your feelings, your attachments are still there. You still feel guilt,. A heavy heart over your first kill? Oh, I see it in your eyes. Does that comfort you? And if you do? You fall to the Beast.
You become a creature not of sin, but a creature of destruction and murder. It moves behind your eyes, testing the confines of your ribcage like your heart is its prison. It needs your body to survive for it to survive, and so, it will keep you alive if you know how to find equilibrium with it.
When you fly into a rage and kill off the competition invading your territory, that is the Beast ensuring you have enough blood to survive. It is your nature, anyway, and nature can be terribly cruel. Midnight Courts and Churchyards nywhere you go in the world, so far as I can tell, you will find vampires. And anywhere you find vampires, A you will find us practicing most of the same customs and.
We meet in pairs or small groups, we wage shadow wars against other small groups, we plot and plan, and we make sure that our downfall, as well as the downfall of our enemies are a sort of spectator sport by those untouched by the drama.
We call this society, though it has as much in common with society as rats fighting over the pickings on a corpse. We align ourselves by family lines, we vie for affection, protection, and power handed down by monsters that are our elders in age and strength. And we bicker, backstab, and collude. In most counties, we give up our rights to murder one another to one final authority.
In this part of the world, we tend to call these leaders Princes. Poor bastards. A hundred years becomes two hundred in the blink of an eye.
For those of us who do not eat and drink at the table of humility like myself, that age flies by and leaves an elder hungry for more than just blood and sin. It leaves them hungry for conquest and the power like unto God. The War of Princes In these modern nights where travel, communication, and mechanical wonders leap forward at such a pace to leave old ladies like myself confused and a touch afraid, we have the War of Princes.
These nights that are so very holy, and yet, they pass without the Voice of God if you follow the Pope, that is; we are without a Pope after all. It is in these nights, that the eldest and most listless of us war endlessly over land and power and esteem and sometimes nothing at all. The Audacity of Youth Was there peace when I was young? Prince demanded I sneak away as fast as my legs could carry me to conduct clandestine war against the Prince of Cardiff.
I have witnessed, to my sorrow, a generation of childer Embraced for no purpose other than quick sortie and death at the hands of other childer Embraced elsewhere for the same ends. I will tell you all I can in hopes of preparing you, but alas, I weep inside knowing what your fate is so likely to be. Here, I will lower my voice so that we may not be overheard, though such a thing is unlikely. Know that there are youths who have not accepted the endless wars as their only fate.
They reject the Right of Princes and the authority of the eldest. They draw from dark histories and mythologies. They gather even now in the forgotten or forsaken places in London and indeed all over the world. I would not say you should go that way, but it is no more likely a death than the way that was planned for you at your making. Social Distinctions The oldest books, records, and recollections of the eldest tell us that we have done the things we do now since God threw Caine out of Nod.
How our modern minds operate so much like ancient ones tells you this: change is potentially impossible for us as a whole. May I live so long as to see those words proven false. Age Oh the claim of age! See how I lord it about when anyone comes to order me about. But pay my bitterness little mind. Grandmother Penne has always been a Fetch and Carry sort.
Now I am simply an old Fetch and Carry sort. For some, though, for most even, age brings with it a granted and obvious shine of respectability. This is a dangerous world we have all been Damned into, and I would say, surviving in it for any length of time is a thing to consider, if not respect in its own right.
Any vampire who has lived even a year longer than you may have something to teach you, or at least have a thing you can learn on account of them. If they refuse, ah well. You can draw the knowledge out in other ways.
Fledglings A fledgling is a youth, a wee, just-born demon fresh from their bloody end. A calf is born knowing how to walk. You barely know even that. What your instincts fail is telling you how to live, night to night, cursed as you are. You are an afterthought in most Cainite courts; a non-being who has not earned the right to even be called a vampire. You may find that your needs are secondary to every other you meet, and there is little justice for you that is not granted you.
Two things happen in that moment. First, you are awarded a thousand new freedoms. Second, you are tossed to the wolves. Now, you are a vampire in your own right with your own responsibilities and respect. But make no mistake, to many a vampire, a childe so young as a neonate is still disposable. To many, you are, at release from your sire, a new pawn on the board, and one every vampire around you may hope to manipulate to their own end.
Or else, they may simply hope to destroy and consume you for whatever terrible reasons they have. Ancilla So here now is a wretch worth paying attention to, aye?
An ancilla is a member of the Damned who has managed to hang on for a century or two and not gone so insane as to be put down. To the youngest of us, they may be more accessible than elders and saner, so worth listening to. The eldest of us may still see them as disposable, but since they are so much harder to dispose of, better to use than simply abuse. If you need a thing done right — an elder assumes — you get an ancilla to do it.
Never mind that a wise ancilla has lived long enough to know her best bet is to pass along her duties to a neonate to keep her own skin from the fire. Elders Sometimes, we beasts last a long time. Forever maybe, or so it seems to those of us who reach these impossible ages. Most vampires grudgingly agree to call a vampire three hundred years or more an elder, though as with any claim of age, manifestation of great power is more important than documentation and years gone by.
Not so much for this old bird, though. Still, an elder is a terrible thing, a vampire of centuries who must have killed dozens or hundreds of times. Do not think for a second that you are a special exception to them. Methuselah Due to my advanced years and incredible patience, I have myself once met a Methuselah. The encounters are always hair-raising, with palpable fear. These monsters are a thousand years or more, and are barely human in their way of thinking.
They are clever, ancient, and willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want. At that age, few things can stop them from their desires. Do whatever you can, my little fawn, to never be between a Methuselah and what he wants. Or worse, never be the thing a Methuselah wants. Do not cross one.
And should they cross you, flee just as fast as you can. Antediluvians Lastly, we have the Antediluvians, those Damned grandchilder of our mythical founder. If they are real — and that I cannot say — they would be thousands of years old.
They exist only in stories, so far as I can tell, and those stories are as varied as the clans. Each one is said to have founded one of the thirteen clans, though there may be more or less of them now, thanks to ancient blood feuds and betrayal.
We hear rumors of other clans from other parts of the world which throws our understanding to the winds. Sometimes they are said to be all dead. Sometimes they are said to sleep eternally, exhausted by their own age to wake at the end of nights. Clans Both High and Low ye? As with humanity, how we were reborn, and to whom, as well as where and when, can matter more than a lifetime of right unliving.
Much of your eternity was decided for you by the actions of your sire and his ancestors. And it is these sins before you that color all your nights before you. Let me explain. We come from families, all of us, you and I and that Prince in her tower.
These families, round about thirteen in number, each manifest their damnation in special ways. The Curse gives each family a way of survival. To further the example, my accursed blood was granted the ability to hide from sight so as not to frighten my prey.
There is a family of serpents that can make you love them with a smile and a gesture. The list goes on. These are clans. Your clan is as much the shackle that punishes you during your damnation as it is the freedom and power you wield and the politics you will have to dance around forever.
They have rights granted to them without earning them. They bear privi-. Usually, who is considered High and who is considered Low becomes a tradition in an area. Fact is, there tends to be reasons why the High and Low is what it is, and each city has its own justification for those positions. The Roads I know, my little love, I see that sadness in your eyes as you soak in what I have to tell you. While the majority of the Damned spiral down and burn up in the first ten years or so, some of us hang on to who we are or what we someday hope to become.
We find a sort of spiritual map to guide us away from giving in to the Beast and the oblivion that promises. These maps are highly personal, but certain schools of thinking are followed with their own guidelines for what makes a smart vampire, or at least what makes a moral one.
We call these Roads, and they vary from the familiar to the inconceivable. Your grandmother is what they call a Prodigal, because I follow a Road very similar to my morals in life. There are those whose morals align themselves with the rights of gentry and kings, or those who follow Roads that seek knowledge above all else. I know a Gangrel barbarian of considerable age who functions, thrives even, by following a Road that makes peace with the Beast rather than holding it at bay.
I have seen that it works, even if I cannot fathom it myself. There are dark Roads, and Roads practiced by people from cultures so far from what even I know that they seem alien, but we must be careful what we label evil when it comes to surviving the night.
Evil is highly subjective when it comes to a culture of murderers, and sometimes, anything that helps you hold on another night is worth almost any cost. You are lucky, because Grandmother Penne will tell not only what they are, but why they are what they are. They are the Traditions, but which ones, I wonder, are the right ones? My curse is thine, and my salvation is thine. I stand before and above thee as god-regent.
I am the way, my Traditions my covenant. Renounce me and Renounce all hope. You are cursed, and it is only through obedience that you survive. Why does this matter?
Maybe not much to you, but this Tradition is how most Princes establish their authority. Caine tells us, in most translations, that those closest to him are those with the most authority, and so age is the right of authority.
Thou art its master, and all will respect this or suffer thy wrath. All will present themselves when entering, and thou shall protect them in turn. By right, thou art allowed to hunt within the bounds of thy domain, its blood thine own.
Accept its responsibility, minister thy domain, and pay others the same respect thou expect. If you can keep it, it is yours. If you can take it, it becomes yours. If you can do neither, you submit to those who can and call them elder. Often, and due to the Covenant, a Prince declares a city as his domain alone, and his ability to hold and maintain that domain is the reality behind his power base.
Age be damned; if he cannot maintain his city, he will lose it. A Prince also knows well that he can claim a city as his domain, but he must divvy up its management as well as provide feeding rights to his subjects. Some cities, like my fine London, are divided up into fiefdoms under the Prince Regent, with his favored friends and childer holding domain over these fiefdoms. To create is the providence of those closest to me, for they shall be accountable. Break this, and both thee and thy progeny shall be slain.
One obtains the advice and guidance of ones foremothers and sisters. To celebrate the sacrament without such blessings is to blaspheme and forfeit all that the Mother has given you. Just as it is with mortals, aye?
Everyone is so very concerned with who is whose heir and who has the right to leave heirs. The struggles of kings and emperors are not so different than the struggles of we, the Damned. Is there a spiritual aspect to this particular Tradition? To me, the Third Tradition is a practical and pragmatic one.
And to the elders, of course, who they let Embrace and who they refuse helps to stack the city and the Court with vampires in debt to them. Though the wording in many translations suggests that sire and childer are destroyed, this is not actually a common practice from my understanding.
I have myself been wet nurse to many a childe whose sire was destroyed for an illegal Embrace. Serve me loyally and live. Until that moment, their sins, their blood and their punishments are thine. Their blood and their punishment are yours. I will admit, of any of the Traditions, this is the one that perplexes me the most. From a purely selfish beast point of view, why this practice would become so common is beyond me.
In essence, the Fourth Tradition makes a sire accountable for who they have Embraced. While that will result in some abuse of these whelps, it also means that the sire must be wise in their actions, their education, and in some ways, reminds them that the other vampires of their city are watching what they choose to do.
Creating a childe and destroying it before it can be released is suspect behavior to be sure. I have seen this Tradition used as grounds for punishing a vampire who has created a wayward ghoul. Though it not a popular political maneuver, it can be argued effec-. This right belongs only to the closest to me and none other. It is forbidden for those of weaker blood to rise against their elders. This is my final covenant. All blood, no matter the source, must be used and useful, blood in the soil is an unforgivable waste.
Do I surely need to spell this out for you, love? We are all told that killing other vampire is wrong. I can understand the wisdom of that, aye? Most would agree that killing your own stains your soul, no matter the reasons you take your own, and most people have rules or laws about to remind them all that no matter how irritating or troublesome your neighbor might be, taking a hoe to his head is a foul act. Perhaps with vampires, we need a stronger reminder, as the Beast drives us to kill anything and everything we can.
I showed you a variant wording of the Tradition there, an ancient one, that focused on the waste of the Blood. Talking to greater experts on this, scholars, I understand that this is not an isolated reading of this Tradition. It allows for any means to preserve the blood, not killing, but retaining the blood in other ways, darker ways. And cultures travel. The Phoenicians, for example, may have brought their dark interpretations to Spain. Doing so shall renounce thy claims to my covenants.
In many cities, this puts you outside of the protection of the Fifth Tradition and so, revealing your nature to mortals or whatever lurks in the shadows of the night, means anyone with the fangs to do it can bring you down. Usually, a Prince will still expect to reside over some kind of court to determine how much you revealed, but not always.
I cannot myself say for sure, but I know this: intent is everything. Hunters of the Church are almost everywhere, and no matter how you practice the Tradition, letting our secrets out gets us killed. A wise leader, or a selfish one, no matter their religious beliefs, knows that. Dead Cities o matter what it may look like from the outside, there are not two cities in the world that operate in the same N ways.
While there exist some common themes, they never. And even these commonalities are only so common by region. Prince In my London and in many of the cities that neighbor the area, we are ruled a Prince Regent, a vampire of considerable age and power who rules the lot of us with as tight a fist as he can get away with. Tradition, and the Traditions, say that the Prince ought to be the eldest of all the vampires in a city. I suppose the idea is that the oldest is the closest to Caine, the most powerful, and therefore the most fit to rule.
Even in traditional cities like London, the Prince is rarely the actual eldest Cainite. The true eldest lost his mind some fifty years back or more.
There is a value in having the oldest, most horrific monster amongst you as the figurehead of the city. Otherwise, you face a short life constantly under constant attack by youthful vampires hoping steal your power, elders disgusted with your petulance, other Princes bent on expanding their regency, and who knows what else.
According to my friend the Greek, Athens is not ruled by a Prince. They have long practiced a form of classical democracy in which vampires who control domain may vote for one of three Triumvirate members.
Keeper Sometimes I think that the Keeper is meant to die. Their job seems simple: to keep and maintain the Elysia throughout the city. That is, places of peace where vampires may gather and show our teeth to one another without biting.
Suffice to say, these places are tinder on top of coal. Any place where two or more vampires meet, you will have the potential for violence. That may well be violence by the knife or word or deed.
In those rare cases where a Keeper is good at her job, it is because she has an eye for architecture and art as well as security and secrecy. Pay What You Want. Follow Your Favorites!
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Start Over Advanced Search. Have fun doing so but there is one major rule. Clear away the routine and make documents online. Recently the v20 edition of dark ages vampire came out. Submit instantly to the receiver. Pages of collected charts and tables selected to make your Storyteller job a bit easier This PDF is great.
Welcome to The Cainite Conspiracies. Click on Done to confirm the changes. Save the data file or print your PDF version. Vampire to center on the War of the PrincesPublisher blurb. A seperate download containing three Featuring 13 clans and 19 bloodlines this volume spans the Dark Medieval World.
You become a creature not of sin, but a parapet. Get kicked by a horse. Even a well-intended a creature of destruction and murder. When the stake is removed, he will rise, most your Beast. It needs your body to survive for it to survive, that incapacitated him in the first place. Odd, aye? You may still be in the town where you but it is nature, after a fashion. You still feel guilt, and nature can be terribly cruel. I have witnessed, to my sorrow, a generation of childer Em- and Churchyards braced for no purpose other than quick sortie and death at the hands of other childer Embraced elsewhere for the same ends.
I will tell you all I can in hopes of preparing you, but A nywhere you go in the world, so far as I can tell, you will find vampires. And anywhere you find vampires, you will find us practicing most of the same customs and alas, I weep inside knowing what your fate is so likely to be.
Here, I will lower my voice so that we may not be overheard, though such a thing is unlikely. Know that idle pastimes. We meet in pairs or small groups, we wage there are youths who have not accepted the endless wars shadow wars against other small groups, we plot and as their only fate. They reject the Right of Princes and the plan, and we make sure that our downfall, as well as the authority of the eldest. They draw from dark histories and downfall of our enemies are a sort of spectator sport by mythologies.
They gather even now in the forgotten or those untouched by the drama. We call this society, though it has as much in common I would not say you should go that way, but it is no with society as rats fighting over the pickings on a corpse.
And we bicker, backstab, and collude. In most counties, we give up our eldest tell us that we have done the things we do now rights to murder one another to one final authority.
In this since God threw Caine out of Nod. How our modern part of the world, we tend to call these leaders Princes. May I and sometimes, very different ways of doing things. Poor Oh the claim of age! See how I lord it about when bastards. Sooner or later, ten years dead turns to a hun- anyone comes to order me about. But pay my bitterness little mind. Grandmother Penne A hundred years becomes two hundred in the blink of has always been a Fetch and Carry sort. Now I am simply an eye. For those of us who do not eat and drink at the an old Fetch and Carry sort.
It leaves For some, though, for most even, age brings with it them hungry for conquest and the power like unto God. This is a dangerous world we have all been Damned into, and I The War of Princes would say, surviving in it for any length of time is a thing to consider, if not respect in its own right. Any vampire In these modern nights where travel, communication, who has lived even a year longer than you may have and mechanical wonders leap forward at such a pace to something to teach you, or at least have a thing you can leave old ladies like myself confused and a touch afraid, learn on account of them.
While you have no reason to we have the War of Princes. If they refuse, ah well. You can draw sometimes nothing at all. You barely know even than I am at throwing around his potency and creating that. Not so much for this old you to fear fire and sunlight, and that you need to feed bird, though. Still, an elder is a terrible thing, a vampire to live.
What your instincts fail is telling you how to live, of centuries who must have killed dozens or hundreds of night to night, cursed as you are. You are exception to them. You Methuselah may find that your needs are secondary to every other Due to my advanced years and incredible patience, you meet, and there is little justice for you that is not I have myself once met a Methuselah. The encounters granted you. These monsters are a thousand years or more, and are barely human Neonates in their way of thinking.
Two things happen Methuselah and what he wants. Or worse, never be the in that moment. First, you are awarded a thousand new thing a Methuselah wants. Second, you are tossed to the wolves. Now, you unknowable, and often only rumored. Do not cross one. But make no mistake, to many a vampire, a childe so young as a neonate is still disposable.
Antediluvians To many, you are, at release from your sire, a new pawn on Lastly, we have the Antediluvians, those Damned the board, and one every vampire around you may hope grandchilder of our mythical founder. If they are real — and to manipulate to their own end. Or else, they may simply that I cannot say — they would be thousands of years old. Each one is said to have founded one of the thirteen clans, though there may be Ancilla more or less of them now, thanks to ancient blood feuds So here now is a wretch worth paying attention to, aye?
We hear rumors of other clans from other An ancilla is a member of the Damned who has managed parts of the world which throws our understanding to the to hang on for a century or two and not gone so insane winds. Sometimes they are said to be all dead. Sometimes as to be put down. To the youngest of us, they may be they are said to sleep eternally, exhausted by their own more accessible than elders and saner, so worth listening age to wake at the end of nights. Sometimes they are said to. If you need a thing done right — an elder assumes — you get an ancilla to do it.
Never mind that a wise ancilla has lived long enough to know her best bet is to pass along her duties to a neonate to keep her Clans Both own skin from the fire.
High and Low Elders Sometimes, we beasts last a long time. Forever maybe, or so it seems to those of us who reach these impossible A ye? We are all of us, reborn into these nights according to the whims of our sires and perhaps, the will ages. As with humanity, how we were reborn, three hundred years or more an elder, though as with any and to whom, as well as where and when, can matter more claim of age, manifestation of great power is more important than a lifetime of right unliving.
Much of your eternity was than documentation and years gone by. Matters of clan, and therefore mat- mind when it beat for the last. Let me explain. Your clan is as much the shackle that generations upon generations of sinners to answer for. We punishes you during your damnation as it is the freedom come from families, all of us, you and I and that Prince in and power you wield and the politics you will have to her tower.
These families, round about thirteen in number, dance around forever. To further the example, my accursed come with it, aye? The family of kings and lords can put a said. There is a family of serpents done the most wrong and been caught in recent memory.
They have rights and turn into bats. The list goes on. They bear privi-. To most vampires, they are things tossed Ventrue on top here in London thanks to the Romans. This is why most vampires Low Clan. Fact is, there tends to be reasons why the High and Low is what it The First Tradition: is, and each city has its own justification for those positions.
My curse is thine, and my salvation is thine. I stand before and I know, my little love, I see that sadness in your eyes above thee as god-regent. I am the way, my Traditions my cov- as you soak in what I have to tell you.
Damnation and sin enant. Renounce me and Renounce all hope. While the majority in His image. You are cursed, and it is only through obedience of the Damned spiral down and burn up in the first ten that you survive.
This that promises. We call these Roads, and they vary from the was also the first of us, and all power as well as all curses flow familiar to the inconceivable. Why does this matter? Maybe not much Your grandmother is what they call a Prodigal, because to you, but this Tradition is how most Princes establish their I follow a Road very similar to my morals in life.
There authority. Caine tells us, in most translations, that those closest are those whose morals align themselves with the rights to him are those with the most authority, and so age is the of gentry and kings, or those who follow Roads that seek right of authority.
I know a Gangrel barbarian of until you consider the oldest vampire in a city may not be the considerable age who functions, thrives even, by following a most willing to rule, or able, and those who take power may Road that makes peace with the Beast rather than holding use their age to hold a rule they cannot manage. There are dark Roads, and Roads practiced by to sit down with me, I have come to realize that not all people from cultures so far from what even I know that vampires see Caine as the first of us.
Evil is highly hero, and even those who believe there is no First, or at subjective when it comes to a culture of murderers, and least, no single First. Everyone is so very The Second Tradition: concerned with who is whose heir and who has the right The Domain to leave heirs. Is Thou art its master, and all will respect this or suffer thy there a spiritual aspect to this particular Tradition? Oh, wrath. To me, the Third shall protect them in turn.
By right, thou art allowed to hunt Tradition is a practical and pragmatic one. If we could all within the bounds of thy domain, its blood thine own. And to the elders, of course, who they let - The God-Regent Translations Embrace and who they refuse helps to stack the city and The herd and the land that they inhabit are the domain. If you the Court with vampires in debt to them. If you can take it, it becomes yours.
If you Though the wording in many translations suggests can do neither, you submit to those who can and call them elder. I have myself The territory where you bed down and where you can been wet nurse to many a childe whose sire was destroyed feed is the night-to-night affairs of all of us, and at least so for an illegal Embrace.
Often, and due to the Covenant, a by my benevolence. Serve me loyally and live. From there, the likes of you charge. Until that moment, their sins, their blood and their punish- and me beg for scraps and hope we can get permission ments are thine. From a purely selfish beast point of view, why this practice would become so common The Third Tradition: is beyond me. While that will result in some thine elder. To create is the providence of those closest to me, for they abuse of these whelps, it also means that the sire must shall be accountable.
Break this, and both thee and thy progeny be wise in their actions, their education, and in some shall be slain. Creating a childe One obtains the advice and guidance of ones foremothers and and destroying it before it can be released is suspect sisters. To celebrate the sacrament without such blessings is to behavior to be sure. I have seen this Tradition used as grounds for punishing - Traditsiya, as collected by Duras the Dacian a vampire who has created a wayward ghoul. Though it not a popular political maneuver, it can be argued effec-.
This right belongs only to the closest to me and none other. It is forbidden for those of weaker blood to rise against their elders. This is my final covenant. All blood, no matter the source, must be used and useful, blood in the soil is an unforgiv- able waste. We are all told that killing other vampire is wrong. I can understand the wisdom of that, aye? Most would agree that killing your own stains your soul, no matter the reasons you take your own, and most people have rules or laws about to remind them all that no matter how irritating or troublesome your neighbor might be, taking a hoe to his head is a foul act.
Perhaps with vampires, we need a stronger reminder, as the Beast drives us to kill anything and everything we can. I showed you a variant wording of the Tradition there, an ancient one, that focused on the waste of the Blood.
Talking to greater experts on this, scholars, I understand that this is not an isolated reading of this Tradition. It allows for any means to preserve the blood, not killing, but retaining the blood in other ways, darker ways. And cultures travel. The Phoenicians, for example, may have brought their dark interpretations to Spain.
Doing so shall renounce thy claims to my covenants. According to my friend the Greek, Athens is not ruled In many cities, this puts you outside of the protection of the by a Prince. They have long practiced a form of classical Fifth Tradition and so, revealing your nature to mortals or democracy in which vampires who control domain may whatever lurks in the shadows of the night, means anyone vote for one of three Triumvirate members. Usually, a Prince unusually large vampire population is a thing that con- will still expect to reside over some kind of court to determine stantly strains order in the system, and so it does them how much you revealed, but not always.
I cannot myself say for sure, but I know this: intent is everything. Hunters of the Church are almost Keeper everywhere, and no matter how you practice the Tradition, Sometimes I think that the Keeper is meant to die. A wise leader, or a Their job seems simple: to keep and maintain the selfish one, no matter their religious beliefs, knows that. Elysia throughout the city.
That is, places of peace where vampires may gather and show our teeth to one another. Dead Cities without biting. Suffice to say, these places are tinder on top of coal. Any place where two or more vampires meet, you will have the potential for violence. That may well N o matter what it may look like from the outside, there are not two cities in the world that operate in the same ways. While there exist some common themes, they never be violence by the knife or word or deed.
In those rare cases where a Keeper is good at her job, it is because she has flesh out in the same way. And even these commonalities an eye for architecture and art as well as security and secrecy. Or to put it another way, she provides cities operate in the way they do these nights.
I wonder a distraction from the backbiting, if you ask me. A clever thing, really, In my London and in many of the cities that neighbor the to give a position of prestige and power to an enemy you area, we are ruled a Prince Regent, a vampire of considerable want close, then watch him crumble under the weight age and power who rules the lot of us with as tight a fist as of it.
The late Prince of London offered me the position he can get away with. Tradition, and the Traditions, say that once.
Even in neonates. That communal eldest Cainite. The true eldest lost his mind some fifty years back or more. Chamberlain There is a value in having the oldest, most horrific Beside the Prince at least, beside the wise Prince monster amongst you as the figurehead of the city. The is his Chamberlain. If the Prince is a force of might and Prince has a target on their head most of the time, and power, then the Chamberlain is finesse.
If the Prince is it is best that to hold the position and rule for long, you above the mud and stain, granted his position by power,. He told In London and the surrounding areas, only the most me that in his court, the council of elders had their own formidable elders speak to the Prince. Harpies, Scourges, And she may well be. I know of a Chamberlain in Ire- and Others land who has carefully maintained her power base through seven different Princes. When the Prince begins to reach Each Domain has needs unlike any other.
In smaller for too much power, she simply arranges for rebellion and Domains without so many of us lurking about, one city overthrows him. Then, she returns to her job. In pire, or maybe the Chamberlain keeps himself busy making London, that mostly entails having a full understanding of the sure the right people hear the right stories.
In cities with complicated common laws that make the London Domain incredible populations, like Quanzhou far east of here, what it is. I spent many a night arguing law and procedure I hear that the court elects a group of socially deadly with the Rabble as well as the Lords in hopes of keeping the gossips to maintain social order.
Most cities have a crew of deeds. In London, we itching for a fight. We see no movement, no message, no evidence way. Sometimes that job is called Sheriff, but not always.
We just know that sometimes, an enemy of Sheriffs, like Chamberlains, can sometimes outlive the Prince simply vanishes. When the of titles and duties. Always in secret. No matter which way you read it, if there are old monsters in your home, they will meet.
From there he And rest assured, there are old monsters in your home, wanders, and suffers, and meets many strange and terrible wherever you live. When word gets back to London town beings, and many awesome beings. While he wandered, about great sweeping changes in a city or even a region, he made childer; the First Generation of the Damned, know that old monsters met in the hoary darkness and if you believe the stories. They say he sleeps now, and either struck a deal or declared war.
Out of love. These elders may act as a governing body on their own, support the current Domain, or act as vassals in a line of Generation lieges and lords. Well, perhaps even more than age, or at singularly powerful creature to make that sort of demand. If two elders find themselves in of your Beast. Then their childer, and their I shudder to think of how. This, of course, is rumor and hearsay. Nothing to concern yourself with too greatly. A ye, where did we come from? Perhaps the most painful question for any of us to ask, and here you are, cheeks red with blood, and you ask it so innocently.
If only what stories are told and treated as gospel inside we are sin in flesh, then this is the thing that even the Christendom. Outside of that, the stories are different. As wickedest of us shies from. I would rather not tell you you go about your unlife, you will likely be surrounded by about it; I dread to say the word out loud.
But it is vital those who believe the story of the First Murder. Always you know about it so that you remain very careful who question, my little bird. This most vile act we call the Amaranth, and to Brother Slays Brother commit it is to drink the blood of another vampire. But not just his blood, the whole of him, even drinking his I am supposed to tell you that the first vampire and soul and destroying all that he ever was so that you can the first biblical murderer are one and the same.
Or out of fear of than the alternative. Believe me. If you so will it, if you his terrible father, depending on what translation you read. It strengthens the Beast. Is your And what we do to you if we find out is very simple: sire cruel to you? He was probably made that way as a we destroy you. Did your Prince suddenly declare open war with a Prince nearby who had yet been her ally for a Understanding century? They meddle and they interfere and they the Generations manipulate out of a need for power and to perhaps, to destroy one another.
Nothing is ever that simple with the likes of us. No, Generation also confers a sort of position and, in some beings. If there are any who are seeking redemption and found it, it is likely that they are Antediluvians. Most human understanding any more. One, they say, was an impossibly beautiful woman, and the others are up for debate. Wiser minds than Fourth and Fifth Generation mine look back over the history and assume that these first If we are barely pawns in the games the Antediluvians childer and Second Generation were destroyed in the flood play, the Fourth and Fifth Generation are the Knights.
If you believe that dangerous holders of domain in Christendom come from the world will end when Caine and the Antediluvians rise these Generations, and we call them Methuselahs. Because they are the most of them have survived?
Common wisdom is that the childer powerful waking monster any of us should hope to see, of the Second Generation went on to form the clans as we their power and their lives are under constant threat. The Third Generation, they say, is the start of us, the start of the Sixth and thirteen clans of vampires. We hear in stories that the first Seventh Generation thing the Antediluvians did was get into blood feuds with each other and wrestle one another for power.
There was killing, These, my dove, are your elders, and you should steer mayhem, and maybe the first cases of Final Death and the clear of us whenever you can. While the rare Methuselah Amaranth in the streets of Enoch. Is it any wonder we fear may rule a large and ancient city, most domains belong to them, when so many of the stories are of powerful madmen the Sixth or Seventh Generation.
Remember, dove, even who seem to know only war and destruction? If the end of now, I may be your enemy, because I am old and I am hungry nights is the rise of these monsters, the Antediluvians, then in ways you cannot yet imagine.
Stay on my good side, stay those nights will be beyond terrible. For us, the only way to satisfy the scarcely be called a vampire at all. Tragic wretches, one hunger is to feed on you. For the eldest, sometimes it is and all. We call them Thin Blooded and watch for signs the vampire that is prey.
If you find one of us has suddenly that they need to be put down. When a vampire entirely loses themselves to the Beast, when the man or woman Eighth, Ninth, and they once were is gone forever, there is one final frenzy Tenth Generation as the Beast seeks to destroy as much and as fast as it can manage. These monsters may and in that time, becomes more powerful and dangerous well be your sires, and they are lean and hungry. There blood necessary to rule. Though from every ancilla I have is probably no return.
We put these plagued animals down ever met, they seem to think they all have some greater, as soon as we find them. That is the only sure way to stop better way.
There is not a vampire in all the world more the destruction. That said, recall that most of them monster in the cold north woods that is a vampire in a are young enough to remember being human, and may come constant state of frenzy.
It is old and powerful and can close to your way of thinking. If anyone can intercede on seem to plan and reason. It chooses its battles to ensure your behalf against the dangers of the night, he may be an its survival. Is this what comes of a long period of Wassail, ancilla. That is, until he turns around and uses you against or a unique expression of the Beast?
Who can say? Murdered by a These are your kin and your rivals, my dove, and there fellow? Soul eaten by a nemesis? Become a wild animal to are a great number of them. I should say that the young, be put down?
Fall asleep and never wake? You have and find a balance between animal and human that grants numbers. You have strong intimate ties with humanity as you a state of beautification.
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