The Rebel – Brujah The philosopher-priestess Troile looks out over the teeming masses of Enoch. Brother killing brother for the profit of another. Slaves to unjust kings. She knows better. She can help them break free. But a lifetime is short and change always requires a sacrifice in blood. Her childer inherited her grand project and poor anger management. If you seek the lipstick trace of the eternal Rebel, look to the slaughter of Carthage, the terror of the French revolution, the Gulags of the Soviet Union, and the sonic scream of the electric guitar. Always at the forefront of the War of Ages, their battle-cry still echoes in the mortal voices of Johnny Rotten and Hunter S. Thompson.
The Usurper – Tremere He is a mortal man. A Mage. Youngest of the progenitors. Awakened just before the first millennium. His understanding of the cosmos is almost boundless. He can move the skies and the earth. He knows the face of God, the history of the Devil, and mysteries older than both. Ultimate truth beckons just out of his reach. But he is growing old. Frail. Confused. Afraid. What is power and knowledge to he who is to die? So, Tremere refuses. Death is a disease and there must be a cure. No price is too high. Or so he thought before he stole Lilith's curse and made our Alchemy his own. It's like Chuck Palahniuk wrote: "to become immortal, first you have to die". And the dead have no true Magick. Desperate to recapture the flame, he founded a tradition of Blood Sorcery, stealing human vital fluid and soul to fuel their rites and find a way back to the sun. But that was long ago. The Pyramid Order they built trapped them in a rigid hierarchy, obscuring their once noble goals with a thirst for pure power. And power built on a theft can only last so long. The Pyramid is broken, and the truth about Tremere is about to be revealed in the Blood of his followers.
The Horror – Nosferatu To the living, he is Abshalom - treasonous son of biblical King David. To us he is Absimilard. It matters little. He is a wound in the Blood and a curse uttered in rage. A plague that eats his own childer and forces them to suffer the same abject humiliation he once did. Most beautiful of royal sons, he masked his entitlement as justice, slaying his sister's defiler -his own half-brother as he bedded his father's concubines freely. How could anyone deny him? So perfect and just he thought himself, that everything was his by right, until he caught the eye of eternity and had a taste of real justice. The price of his immortality – the essence of his rotten soul writ large across his face.
At least we'll never be like you, like our Father. We'll never think of ourselves as kings of anything but rats and shit. You fall apart on the inside, we are broken on the outside. I know which I prefer.
The Diva – Toreador Men and women alike would kill for a moment in the Diva's arms. S/he was a superstar prehistory, a being so beautiful not even God could imagine it growing old and ugly. Just as her tits were starting to sag and his cock began to weaken, the Rose made a deal. It would never fade. Never die. In return, the Diva would be the keeper of love, beauty, and art through the long ages. The devil smiled as it died and rose again - the tyranny of beauty enshrined as immortal murderer.
The Afflicted – Malkavian Their real name is lost, but consider the similarity between Malkav, Moloch, and Malakai. a Cainite, a Biblical demon and an angel of the Lord. That's what people thought the "insane" were in ages past you know - men and women possessed by things beyond human understanding. Old ones still think of the first of the Afflicted as distinctly inhuman. I think it's simpler than that; Malkav was the only one of the ancients who understood what was really going on. They were dead but still hungered, and that realisation shattered their mind. A sensible reaction if you think about it. The lunatics carry this curse of clarity more or less proudly, each one a seer and madman, desperate to drown their condition in the resonant blood of the living. Some nights I fear them, others l want to be them, imagining madness the only sane response to the ridldle of the Beast. One thing is sure: Malkav lives on in all their progeny, speaking with a thousand voices at once. Perhaps a better name for them is Legion.
The Beasts – Gangrel Ennoia cursed her mother Lilith as she birthed her, spat all suitors in the eye, and lived free as a wolf, laying only with the greatest of her kind. From her loins it is said sprung the moon mad Lupines, and she is known as " the female half of God” for hers was the fertility of the earth itself. She had no use for the world of men, their cities, or their customs. So, she set herself apart, died to the world, and rose again in the wilderness. First of outcasts, saint of predators and serial killers. Of all the 13 she alone accepted the Beast as a part of herself. Her descendants inherited her independence and lust for the hunt. In their Blood still awaits long buried animal traits, that once awakened make them devolve slowly until they run on all fours and howl their songs to the starlit sky as once did the pack mates of Ennoia.
The Kings – Ventrue Once upon a time there was a perfect King whose every subject adored him.
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"Les my reign last forever - not for my sake, but for the happiness of my people."
And so, it was. But now the Clan of Kings lord over a kingdom of sorrow, dissent, and fear. Perhaps it is better to serve the devil you know than take your chances with horrors you've yet to discover? In return for their guidance and wisdom, they claim every being on the planet as their vassals or their subjects. With most elders having been raised in a time when blood was power, the clan is fiercely feudal in its outlook, and no equality will come as long as they remain on their thrones.