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End of a Golden Era

The Tzimisce Clan’s golden age was doomed to crumble eventually. The Clan’s downfall did not happen overnight, however, and slowly occurred over the course of a few centuries. Several factors, including the rise of the Tremere Clan in the Dark Ages, irrevocably changed everything in the lands beyond the forests, and the revenant families were unable to stop these powerful newcomers. Clan Tremere stopped at nothing to crush the revenants when they discovered them, and these attacks were deadly to the mighty Fiends and their families.

Weakened by constant battles with the Tremere Clan, the once proud Tzimisce Clan and their revenants soon found that their troubles were not exclusively vampire-related. In the thirteenth century, the Mongols invaded Europe and found the revenants hungry for what they assumed would be an easy victory over barbarians. Instead, the Golden Horde swept through every revenant family’s army and slaughtered their soldiers, including a number of revenants to the north of Transylvania who had managed to avoid the brunt of Clan Tremere’s attacks.

Not long afterward, the Ottoman Turks began to inch their way deeper into Eastern Europe and, in time, conquered much of Transylvania and Hungary, only to be thwarted by the Tremere again in Vienna. Even those European revenant families who had managed to avoid these aggressors were still not safe, for the fires of the Inquisition did not die out as quickly as the Clans hoped. Some vampires believe that, if it wasn’t for the plagues sweeping across Europe and the push to colonize the Americas, revenants would have fallen back to the shadows along with their masters, hoping to be forgotten.

Toward the end of the fifteen century, the surviving Carpathian revenant families ceased being stately rulers and faded into obscurity, doomed to lurk among the ruins of grand estates and dark forests. Meanwhile, their Lords were also suffering, and eventually fell from their lofty position never to regain their former glory. First, the Fiends were overthrown by their own childer who became the new Lords of their estates. Then, toward at the end of the century, the Anarchs’ loss to the Camarilla utterly destroyed any last, remaining tendrils of power and influence that members of Clan Tzimisce had left. Gone were the nights ruling vast tracts of land from lofty castles for both liege and lackey. Thus, the revenant families that were once prized and lauded by their patron Clan withdrew into isolation.

Despite the turbulence most revenant families experienced up to this point, nothing compared to the rising tides of war and disease. Revenant families, who pledged to remain by their masters’ sides, understood that their survival often depended on the whims of the vampire. Many revenants scattered and spread out across the globe, sailing away on great ships or traveling to the east, ever watchful, ever vigilant for the vampires they protected. While some revenants remained in Europe, to serve powerful masters that dared to stay behind and fight, others went into hiding to regroup and replenish their numbers.

Eventually, revenants faded from memory, and had it not been for a renewed interest in their worth to the Clans, they would have been forgotten.