“Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can’t be stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed you are.”

The Hospitality in Clay

With the ghoul’s corpse at my feet, I knew I was dead. Because, years ago, the Countess had vowed to end me, and the spirits of the angry earth hear her promises.

Had the Cardinal sent me to die? A gift-wrapped soul to squeeze the juices out of? He said it would be a fine gesture, an old enemy welcoming her to the new world. I was the one, the only survivor of my pack, or any of the other packs for that matter. All that prestige, but it was just dumb luck. My Romanian nights. The bad nights. The kind of hell you can only enter by pissing off an ancient, entrenched Fiend. I still wake to blood sweats in the day, pulling the grave dirt over myself like a safety blanket.

I drove up the long driveway, in disbelief that a creature like the Countess could uproot and move to New England. We never actually beat the crafty Koldun. One night, she offered peace and to play nice with the Sword of Caine. She had a very specific list of demands. We agreed to every one.

Approaching the manor, I caught memory fragments, thought I recognized trees, stones, brickwork, and statues. I could smell it — in the potted plants and garden — soil from the old country, aeons of blood and loam. That’s the thing about earth: it smells like birth and decay, and you take on the dreams of those who died in it. The Countess was the land, and she had brought it with her, piece by piece.

I waited for a servant to formally invite me inside before stepping over the threshold. Old memories haunted the manse. In the dining hall, I found a woman weeping. Mortal. Dinner. Then I found a dead man on the luxuriant carpet, throat vacated. I recognized him, a revenant ghoul, the Countess’s favorite.

A door burst open. “My lady, come quickly!” a voice called out. Another familiar face, Janos. We had flesh-ripping history. We flashed mutual fangs.

“Greetings.”

I flinched. Didn’t see her enter. Just a gust of wind, and then her stark face, cheekbones raised like guillotine blades.

“Countess,” I stammered. When did I learn to bow? She was resplendent in her frock coat. I felt suddenly self-conscious in my leather and body mods. I’m a child of the night. A badass skin-flaying, fang-kicker. Wherefore this fucking shame?

“He killed one of yours, in your own home,” Janos said.

A deadly dark eyebrow arched. The rest of her was statue still, except those long, powerful fingers. Her hands never stop moving. She looked at me. Through me. Dying moths fluttered under my skin.

Then she looked at Janos.

“No,” she said. “That is not what happened.”

“He killed Mircea!”

“That is two lies, Janos.”

Her grandchilde’s mouth opened. Closed. Then he whispered, “I did it for you, Baba. Now we can kill him.”

“That is not what must happen now.”

“No...” Janos looked hurt. “I am your blood. He is the enemy. They killed so many. Him, him, him!” Janos foamed, knife in hand, and leapt at me.

Then the Countess was there, shielding me, the knife in her chest. Her face was still, but the rats raged in the walls, the wind shrieked, and the windows blackened with thousands of leathery wings.

Janos cowered. “No, Baba. Don’t kill me.”

“Shhh,” she said, a finger on Janos’s lips, and he froze. “I honor enemies with death, not trespassers.” She then whispered old words into his ear. I heard the name “Kruchina.” Janos wept, full-bodied sobs, till he was nothing but blood tears and blood snot.

The Countess swallowed Janos with her eyes and said, “Go now and tell Ficko to give you thorough tenderness.”

Janos’s head darted about in terror as his Judas limbs carried him away.

The lady of the manor then gently took my arm, pulled out my chair, and sat me down at the dining table. She placed the living girl before me.

“He was right,” I said. “That was a perfect opportunity to kill me.”

“You are my guest,” the Countess said, as if explaining gravity to a child who dropped a toy down a deep well with no echo. “Perhaps one day we will honor one another, but for tonight, I will sacrifice every drop of my blood and every pound of my flesh to protect you.”

Taking her seat, she opened an ornate music box. It played a twinkling Romanian lullaby. Inside was a handful of the ancient earth. Praying, she opened her wrist and bled upon the soil. Then, she began to eat.

My smartphone vibrated and burned in my pocket, but I dared not answer it. Outside, something howled. Somewhere, Janos screamed. That’s when I knew I was dead. Sooner or later. The Countess keeps every promise.

She looked up from her supper of crimson clay. “Are you not hungry?”

Weaving History

Awaken, interloper.

Awaken.

No need for that. It is already over. You are a joy to work with. Watch as I caress your ribcage… it gapes like a nocturnal flower aching for the pollinator bat. Watch as I pollinate.

Awaken, interloper.

Awaken.

Even the dead can faint, it seems. That is a physiological impossibility, but you and I are so far beyond impossible.

No need to struggle. Your bones have already been removed. No structure or ego to resist the humiliation of gravity. I find the sensation like a dull nostalgia, the ghost memory of some distant mollusk ancestor — dreams of gills and tentacles floating in the womb.

Do not flinch from the lamprey mouths. Their kisses will cleanse.

These muscles… no longer necessary. Your eyes and ears remain. You must witness. I will teach you what it means to be Tzimisce. We are the wisdom of the dark earth, and we do such things! We travel to the furthest regions of experience, places more than demonic, more than divine. We slough off our humanity to achieve something wondrous. We alone among the dead can achieve change. We can become yesterday, now, and tomorrow.

Let me put you upright. You look so fitting, hung upon the wall. This face — I shall smooth it over. Let me liberate you from identity, like looking into a mirror so long your face becomes a stranger, like repeating a word until it is an alien thing crawling on the tongue.

You are not alone. I have grafted you to your fellows. To each of you, I teach interlocking fragments of our lore. Do you see? I weave a historical tapestry. When complete, it will sing the layered chronicle back to me as I walk down the hall.

I will illumine your flesh. Are you Blue Blood stock? Such fine vellum. Does this tickle? I scrawl names upon your flesh, and the letters rise in bas-relief. See? I recite the old names:

• Yorak
• Byelobog
• Gallod
• Demdemeh
• Triglav the Three-Headed
• Kartarirya
• The Dracon

What? You have forgotten your name? That is because I took it. I ate it. You have no need of it anymore. You are the Tapestry. Now, I will teach you your vertical slice of history. I write these words: “The Primordial Nights.”

The Primordial Nights

His name. Her name. Its name. Lost. Names are as useful to it as tombstones are to the dead. The names are only for our benefit. We call it the Eldest. We call it the Shaper.

Some say our history begins in the Carpathians. The misty glens. The pine-shrouded crags. That is not the history for you to absorb.

Focus on the sun-blasted south — betwixt the Tigris and the Euphrates. There the Eldest dwelt as a mortal. It was a seer and dream interpreter of some repute. In the realm of lucid dreams, the Eldest first learned to shape itself and the world, first gained the title of Shaper.

Ynosh the Lawgiver, first childe of Caine, desired to rid himself of the chaotic impurities that fettered him to the Beast. Ynosh called for this mortal oneiromancer, one who had interpreted the dreams of kings, to be his vessel. Ynosh focused the most protean and primordial seeds of his flesh and spat them into the Shaper. The first great experiment. Ynosh had planned to immediately destroy his creation, but, on further inspection, saw nothing outwardly monstrous. The Shaper was no more debased than any of its undead siblings. The Shaper had been internally fluid, and now found its flesh too ran like hot wax. From the Beast, it took the gifts of intuition, whim, expression, imagination, and growth.

The Shaper was welcomed, but kept apart from its siblings. It saw that they were static. Doomed. It had a vision, saw that mortals, though weak, could grow, would eventually overtake these so-called demigods, this stagnant afterbirth of Caine. It also foresaw how its hunger would worsen. Animals, humans, Cainites — eventually nothing would sate it. This disturbed the Shaper. It must unshackle itself from the Hunger.

The Eldest wandered the earth, spent a mortal age in meditated seclusion, flying through shapes both fantastic and terrifying. It developed the core ideas that evolved into our transhuman philosophy. It Embraced childer, not out of loneliness — in itself it contained all the company it needed — but to create more eyes to witness the mysteries of creation. It invested itself in its progeny. It became legion.

Then came the Deluge. Others of the blood will say the Eldest hid up in the mountain crags during the Flood. They are wrong. What did the Eldest have to fear of water? Into the depths it dove. Its body changed. Its mind changed. It learned to glide through the blackness, adapted to survive the crushing depths that strangle the sun. It learned to catch prey, to summon the creatures it could not catch, and commune with the creatures it could not kill. It discovered new levels of insight from the things that live at the bottom of the abyss. In that fathomless womb, it gestated, and it emerged changed. I saw this in dreams.

Eventually, the Shaper came to the Land Beyond the Forest. It Embraced Yorak, who was not the first childe of the Eldest, but who was first among Fiends in the Carpathians. We wove our spells among the early Phyriges, Illyrians, Thracians, Avars, Wends, and other inhabitants of the Baltics, the Balkans, and Russia. The Slavs worshiped us.

What happened next? Sweet interloper, that is for another slice of the Tapestry to know. For now, focus on the name Kupala.

Kupala

Kupala is the name, and the name has a thousand mouths, and the mouths jabber blasphemies and secrets in the soil. The Eldest favored the lands of Yorak, but it did not know why. Something whispered to it. Something caressed its dreams, tickled its atrophied gifts as a seer. The Shaper practiced its old mortal oneiromancy and learned to talk back to the spirit of the mountains, the great beast known as Kupala.

There are legends that gods, or perhaps the shapeshifting wolves, did battle with the demon, folded the very earth over it. The Carpathians formed the gargantuan sarcophagus that contained Kupala. The being taught the Eldest sorcery, and the Eldest taught its childer, and so rose the kolduns. And whether that magic bound or freed Kupala is still a point of vicious contention in our Clan. Is it a demon, a dead god, an alien intelligence, or the ghost of one of the Eldest’s personalities, evacuated and birthed under a mountain? The argument continues, and the Sabbat Inquisition waits in the wings, ravenous for even a sign of infernalism. Yet they dare not make the accusation above a whisper, for it was the Kupala’s Night that allowed our Sect to exist at all.

Immaculate Conception and the Holy Ghost

Another section of the tapestry contains the prayer of a Child of the Dracon, offering that religious faction’s perspective on Kupala and koldunism. I shall read it now.

“I pray to you, O Dracon, the First Childe, the Holy Ghost.

“The third mouth of Azi Dahaka whispers to me the Dream of Constantinople. I have read the books of the Library of the Forgotten and fear the Keeper of the Faith and her Watchers. I keep the icons of the Akoimetai.

“Holy Ghost, ignite my blood, inspire my soul — my flesh, your flesh — my tongue, your tongue — as I speak the story of the Immaculate Conception. Samiel, childe of Saulot, of the warrior line, did declare holy war upon all black magic and demon-kind. In his hubris, he mistook our Progenitor as something merely infernal. They did battle. Samiel slaughtered the Eldest with flaming sword, and the Eldest tore Samiel’s skull from his head. Both perished.

“The Shaper did not fall into torpor, did not fake its demise; these are the words of unbelievers. For the one who walks the Way of All Flesh, there is no death. The progenitor survives in the seed implanted in its progeny. The Dracon was chosen, first among childer, and on Cyprus, he felt the Eldest awaken and grow within his belly. After birthing it, the Dracon nurtured the fetal Antediluvian and smuggled it back to the Carpathians.

He placed it in the care of the Methuselah Yorak, who wrapped the babe in swaddling viscera, deep within the bowels of the mountains.

“The torpid embryo slept and grew in the befouled soil, and the demon Kupala whispered in the Eldest’s ear. Centuries of that poison whisper. And our wayward Clan siblings’ mastery of koldunic ways became stronger. That is why the Children of Dracon do not touch the fetid magics of Kupala. They are not a gift of the Shaper.

“Holy Ghost, ignite my blood and show me the Divinity Within. Holy Ghost, inspire my hands to mold Heaven on Earth. O flesh everlasting, O flesh ever changing, confirm me, for the Dracon. Amen.”

Split With the Old Clan

At an indeterminate point in our history, prodigals among the ancient line rejected the way of metamorphosis. They avoided all use of the fleshcrafting art, and even claim to have predated it. They called themselves the “Pure Clan” or the “Old Clan,” depending on the translation.

One story says that they discovered the Discipline of mutable flesh was itself a sentient disease, a demonic, possessing force from some incomprehensible dimension. Nonsense. Tripe.

The story I believe — that is to say, the story I believe they believe — is that these prodigals discovered that the Way of All Flesh was not a secret taught to us by the Eldest, but was the Eldest itself. We are the flesh of its flesh.

This is heresy among the Sabbat, but an entertaining historical perspective, no matter how deluded. According to the Old Clan, the Eldest placed its seed in us, could reap the knowledge gained from any of us, devouring us from afar. The ancient Metamorphosists would have said that this is not a loss but a blessing, to return to the gestalt of One Flesh. To use the art was to commune with the Shaper and receive its wisdom. Whosoever of the Fiends should attain a new breakthrough, in the understanding of our existence, might cause the Eldest to rise within and take form.

That is why the Old Clan tiptoes away from the mutable art. They felt something staring from behind their eyes. They startled at the phantom tingle and rogue twitches in their limbs. Fearfully, they avoid triggering the enlightenment that they believe will stir a sleeping Antediluvian within their breast.

My apologies, interloper. I laugh. I laugh! You do not comprehend. Within our history, we know that the Tremere took their first vitae from the Tzimisce. If the Old Clan’s fanciful paranoia is true, then the Eldest swims beneath their skin too. They the apple, and it the Conquering Worm.

The Dark Ages

Yorak changed the game. The wise Metamorphosist realized that politics and kingly matters lay outside his expertise. The other Cainite Clans intruded upon the Land Beyond the Forest with their own mortal catspaws, but rather than stemming the tide of the incursion, Yorak and the koldun chose to Embrace the influential members of regional tribes and tasked them with the duties that they themselves had no interest in.

Yorak understood that the wandering Hunnic, Slavic, and Gothic tribes would eventually become the new landholders. He had seen the pattern play out in ages past. By Yorak’s direction, Triglav the Three-Headed Embraced Shaagra, and she heralded the Tzimisce practice of claiming stock from noble families and tribal leaders. She was the first of the new breed, Fiends like Radu, Vladymir Rustovitch, and Dracula. Fiends who played the game of crown and scepter better than their sires. The other Clans came expecting cackling sorcerers and incomprehensible Metamorphosists, but we had shattered that mold.

The Dark Ages begot our golden age. Rome crumbled, and we stalked the shadowed wreckage openly. We sat in our castles unafraid and proud, lords and ladies of the night. Our experiments reached new heights. We bred revenant families, and our influence waxed even in the midday sun.

Imagine us then, striding boldly over the land. The kine hung garlic, made wards, and said their prayers. All useless against us. Imagine us. Princes and monsters. Majestic. Terrible. The kine sent us blood offerings. Imagine those nights, the heady nights, the nights of plenty, when all of our bellies were distended. We had to bleed ourselves to make more room! But just as adversity can sharpen, prosperousness can dull. Complacency was the doom of our elders.

The elders spawned too many childer to take care of the tasks deemed mundane. Brood clashed with brood. Domains ruthlessly violated — one of the few transgressions we bother to call a sin. When the elders went to war, they sent the young, chained by the blood bond.

Then came the ash-sucking Usurpers. Covetous of our blood, envious of the magic humming in our land, the Tremere stole immortality and power. The elder Fiends foamed. The elders sent the young.

Enemies came from all sides. Ventrue from the West. Mongols and Gangrel from the East. Assamites and Turks from the South. Teutonic Knights from the North, who brought the burning faith that inspired the kine to renounce the old gods.

Again and again, the elders threw more of their progeny at a problem until it was solved. They cowered in their castles while we fought. They gorged on blood while we spilled vitae. In their decadence, they abused kine until even their cowed, mortal thoughts turned to fire. In their neglect, they stretched the blood bonds that held us until they strained.

Slowly, our resentment built. The elders anchored loyalty with many hooks, and freedom took a long time in the planning.

Kupala’s Night

It happened on a night of a swollen, pregnant moon. The sky was ready to burst. Conditions were just right. The fire of the Inquisition burned. Patricia’s Anarch Revolt raged. News of the diablerie of the Lasombra Antediluvian spread. The Methuselah Byelobog, weakened from a battle with mortal witch hunters, fell to the fangs of Lugoj Blood-breaker, the first voice of Tzimisce dissent. With all of these events aligned aright, and the maddeningly potent heart’s blood boiling in his belly, Lugoj hatched a plot of maximum audacity.

It was a perfect night. Kupala’s Eve. Night of immemorial sanctity. Lugoj and his ally Velya the Flayer (later called the Vivisectionist) summoned the Clan’s youth to a festivity. Their memories grown feeble, the elders could not recall the night’s full significance, and they acquiesced.

We met in the Carpathians. There was a great bonfire. Scores of sacrifice stood bound, like a writhing forest. We all wore our zulo forms, camaraderie in the transcendental flesh. Lugoj stood, with his back to the fire, and held aloft something precious. He said these words:

“This is Kupala’s sacred fire-flower, just as the legends say. The search was long and teeming with perils, but the night has no peril as great as we. I found it. Deep amid a holy place of the shapeshifters, I found it. Do you remember what the legends say of this flower?”

We remembered. On that night, of all nights, the sacred flower gave one the authority to bind or free spirits. We howled its name. Kupala! Kupala! We asked but for one favor. Freedom. Bathed in blood, Lugoj leapt through the fire. We all followed after.

The blood bond shattered. When it becomes necessary to utter four words, can you even grasp their significance?

The blood bond shattered. That was the first of the auctoritas ritae. Though the Sect would not form for some time thereafter, that was the night the soul of the Sabbat was born.

Diablerie of the Eldest

Did I say audacity earlier? I invite you to consider true, elemental audacity — the act of reaching out and eating one’s own mythology. Imagine swallowing a star. What did it taste like, Lugoj? I would like to ask that, but he lays in the sleep of ages somewhere.

A tome titled Librum Terram mentions an ancient monastery that lies far above the town of Sernog, between two spurs of the eastern Carpathians. Cryptic passages mention a “great beast” with “dreams made of flesh and flesh made of dreams.” It was here, on the desecrated grounds of the Sernog Monastery, that Lugoj Blood-breaker and his band of ravening Anarchs came hunting for the Eldest.

Down they went, through a trap door beneath the altar, below the monastery and into incarnate nightmare. The shapes they must have seen. Servants wrought by the hands of the Shaper itself. The battle was vicious, but in the end, Lugoj drank the heart’s blood of the Eldest, childe of Ynosh, childe of Caine.

I can only imagine the scene. I was not there, though I have conversed with a few Fiends who were, including Velya and Lambach Ruthven. In point of fact, he was there on Kupala’s night. He was there for many things, many great moments. Yet he rarely speaks of any of it. Ask Velya about the Anarch Revolt, and he will pontificate the night away. Ask Lambach about it, and the craven stammers, shivers, and mutters, “I’m being a good lad,” as though his tongue might betray him. He travels the world with no purpose, as though chased. A mind decayed by time and turbulence. Historic greatness wasted on a wretch.

Formation of the Sabbat

I must grudgingly admit that the Camarilla was effective in its earliest iteration. It is a surprise they did not wipe us out in the first nights of our newly achieved freedom. We did it to ourselves. We had hunted our elders too effectively, killing or driving away the most powerful members of our Clan. Enemies poured in to fill that vacuum.

Fortunately, another Clan faced similar troubles. We met with the Lasombra on the island of Mallorca. Ideology was discussed, plans made, and, in the end, the Sabbat was formed. Where the Lasombra brought structure and cohesion, the Tzimisce gave the Sabbat its soul. We shared our rites and developed new ones. We refined the Vaulderie and stitched this monstrous Sect together.

The Fiends learned from their earlier mistake and invited what elders remained into the new Sect. A few even joined. Others remained independent, buying off their privacy by giving their revenant families to the Sabbat. We ceased hunting our own elders. We had so many other targets, after all.

Who Was Dracula?

Vlad Tepes. The Impaler Prince. Son of the Dragon. Son of the Devil. Voivode, hero, mass-murderer, romantic figure, savage noble, infernal beast, celluloid villain, Fiend. A thousand faces. Were he of another blood, those faces would be too incongruous to exist in the same person. But he is one of us. Every version of him might be true.

He rose from the seed of the eldest of revenant lines, the Basarab, the lineage of Dacian royalty and Roman legionnaires. Brilliant warriors, ruthless strategists; they were beautiful. Even in breathing, they were near equals to a Cainite. Then came Dracula. He murdered several of us on his road to power, forced the Embrace through torture. The ingenious mortal who taught immortals fear. We had to wipe out his entire revenant line as a lesson. A controversial figure among the Tzimisce, the perfect vampire and the frightful aberration. We admire his audacity, and we condemn it.

Did he know what he was doing, whispering into an Irish author’s ear, that night on the dying end of the nineteenth century? Was it boredom, impulse, or methodical design? Whatever his purpose, he worked a subtle and potent art. He broke the shackles of his identity. He tore away the fetters of his homeland and made the entire world his haven. He ascended from a hungry corpse to a devouring zeitgeist and gave birth to the modern age of Cainites.

The Modern Fiend

Azi Dahaka

As a rule, with a few notable exceptions, Tzimisce do not tend toward devoted piety. Why worship some distant god when you can craft yourself into one? Not really a deity. Not really a dogma. Azi Dahaka is the symbol, fetish, and focus of the Clan’s transcendentalism.

From the Dracon to Illuyankas, Dracula to the Leviathan, dragons are woven deeply into our mythology. What the kine fear, we aspire towards — not the literal, physical form, but what the dragon represents as harbinger of transformation. We quest for the transcendental, walking the sinuous spiral of Azi Dahaka’s coils, gazing into its many mouths and eyes. Where chaos and forever meet in motion, that is where we will find the dragon’s beating heart, and we will drink deep.

Metaphor made manifest. Riddle made flesh. Azi Dahaka is the chiropteran cherub of our godless, alien spirituality

Two Handfuls

We are the Tzimisce. We are the deathless lords of man and beast. Spirits tremble at our evocation. Yet, we pay fealty to two handfuls of dirt. How did this happen?

Noddists cite myths in which Caine curses our entire line. Koldun believe it is a debt owed to the spirits of the land. Proud Fiends insist this is neither curse, weakness, nor indebtedness, but a symbol of their connection to the homeland. But which homeland? The world spins, and now every patch of soil calls out to one Clanmate or another. This soil might come from home, their grave, or from some patch of earth otherwise meaningful to the Cainite.

I have another theory. We travel the far vistas of sensation and thought. We leave behind all things familiar — the sun, palpitation, human morality, even our identities and forms. Perhaps the soil is our concession, our one allowed anchor when we sail out into the Dead Water and explore the outer regions of contemplation. Perhaps the Eldest was wise in imposing this rule on his children, as he sent them off to the terrible, alien stratospheres. What would our inward journey cost us without this precaution? Maybe the Malkavians merely forgot to take their two handfuls with them.

Heart and Soul

The Lasombra are the heart of the Sabbat, and the Tzimisce its soul. It is said so often that it becomes a nasty platitude on cold tongues. What does it mean? The Keepers give the Sect structure, such as it is. They make sure the Sword of Cain survives. The Fiends ensure that continued existence has worth. We attend the higher ideals of unlife, the intellectual, and the spiritual. The Lasombra tend to be Ducti, Cardinals, and Archbishops, while we tend to fill the roles of Prisci, pack priests, and advisors — as a general thing.

We gave the Sabbat its basic social unit, small packs of roaming Cainites united in Vaulderie. The first crude packs formed in Eastern Europe, when young Tzimisce first defied their elders. We invented the process that would later become the Vaulderie. Our pack structure is responsible for the unity of a Sect of predators suited to isolation. Ponder the significance of that. Think about what constitutes the Sabbat, this flapping aviary of horror. The unlikely marriage of Keeper and Fiend, the raging antitribu, all the darling bloodlines, the blood-magic-spawned oddities — that we could sculpt a society from this masque of freaks is a miracle. Our miracle.

Fiendish Enlightenment

Eternity is a very long night, and we wrote the deeper questions for monsters to ponder. When the Sabbat was born, we found the ways one might stifle their Beast while still becoming inhuman. Those who did not follow Metamorphosis borrowed the philosophies of other Cainites, perfecting them into the Paths of Enlightenment.

Most Sabbat vampires wallow in the gore-slimed ruins of their former Humanitas. Our whelps are no different. However, there is a seed in every Tzimisce Embrace, a slight advantage, a deep inclination towards illumination beyond human breath. We know that a human is not a truly sentient thing, only the clay that can be refined into something more. There is an itch in our breasts for something other, and we will expose our innards just to scratch.

The Path of Bones: A number of Tzimisce scholars follow this philosophy, though they call it the Path of Death and the Soul. To transcend the limitations of the Hunger and the Beast, these Fiends seek to understand the vast wisdoms hidden in the moment between life and death.

The Path of Caine: While we are not inclined to bowing before father figures, the Noddists’ scholarly pursuits in discovering the limits of vampirism does entice some Fiends. The next step is stepping past those limits.

The Path of Cathari: While the Albigensian reliance on a spiritual duality and obsession with tempting mortals seems like a waste of time to many of our Clan, sensation beyond mortal limits does offer entire continents of inner exploration. Sometimes, the temple of excess is the temple of knowledge. Some Exsanguinists take up this path, drowning their hunger by inundating the Beast with every other vice.

The Path of the Feral Heart: While it lacks obvious depth, this path does offer the purity of simplicity. One might explore the nature of being a Cainite from the lowest hierarchy of needs on up. We fashion ourselves dark lords, but we make fine Beasts.

The Path of Honorable Accord: The pageant of alien nobility. What could be more archetypal? The tenants of this path fit well with some of our more ancient traditions of hospitality and conduct. The Old Clan, the Neofeudalists, and some knights of the Dracon find enlightenment here.

The Path of Lilith: Pain and tribulation are the thorny steps to insight. For the Bahari of our Clan, Lilith is less a literal figure to revere and more of an ideal to aspire toward; one of many faces of the Azi Dahaka.

The Path of Night: We usually leave the Lasombra to root about in the lowest depths of human sin. Yet there is the occasional Fiend who joins a Keeper packmate’s journey into nihilism. We are ideally suited to tormenting mortals without killing them.

The Path of Power and Inner Voice: Those would-be voivodes who do not find enlightenment as Knights find expression as Unifiers. To be master of man and beast. To make one’s underlings quake at your command. What hierarchy remains in the modern Tzimisce Clan is based on personal power and mastery.

Hierarchy, Mouth to Tail

Our Sect and our modern Clan was born in anarchic fury. However, our hierarchy did not die in the fires of Kupala’s Night; it was only redefined. Some of our elders who survived the Anarch Revolt later joined the Sabbat. Ancients who slept through the entire fray occasionally awaken. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Our formal structure is not complex, but it is tightly bound in heritage and based and respect for wisdom and merit.

Many a Fiend calls herself “voivode,” but this is not to be mistaken for the Voivode. This is the most powerful active Tzimisce in the world. When the Ancient went into slumber, Yorak was the first Voivode, and the mold was cast. A potential Voivode must have the endorsement of the Clan elders and must display advanced understanding of Koldunic Sorcery and a Path of Enlightenment.

The zhupans carry the more immediate power through the Clan. They are the wisest, though not necessarily the oldest. Knowledge and demonstrated ability in battle proves the worth of a zhupan. Other Tzimisce often heed their suggestions, and it is considered rude to ignore a zhupan outright. As per the old laws, one must awaken the zulo shape before attaining this rank.

Factions among Fiends

The Old Clan

Do these oddities know something we do not? What do they think they know? Are they a rare breed holding on to some ancient ideal, or a senile branch of paranoid radicals? Their kolduns are as potent as any, so they do not fear the influence of Kupala. They reject Metamorphosis and all of the arts of fleshcrafting. They refuse the Vaulderie for fear of impurities swimming in the blood. Yet, they are family, and the Sabbat has a tense détente with these old Fiends of Eastern Europe. They are selfish, isolated monsters, but it would be too much trouble to root out such entrenched ancients or force them to change their behavior to better fit the modern Sect’s ideals. Better they act as monster to our foolish enemies who step into their demesnes.

In manner, the self-titled Old Clan are like the Fiends of the Dark Ages, post Shaagra’s Embrace. The voivodes. The night princes. Scions of a monstrous nobility and cold, vicious honor. They rule in the medieval fashion, each domain containing a single vampire noble and her brood. Rumor says they can play the strings of the blood bond like a harp, manipulating the subtle emotional effects it brings out in their childer and servants. Their traditions are a throwback to a glorious age, but their time is over. They know it. Yet some are not content to go quietly into history. They Embrace young childer, fresh minds, sending them out of the ancestral homes in the Land Beyond the Forest and into the wider world. Are they trying to make contact with the future? Are they even flexible enough to succeed? Or do they enact a more mysterious agenda?

Children of the Dracon

Metamorphosis takes on many odd forms, but none as strange as when seen through the stained glass window of piety. The Children of the Dracon are a monastic order of Fiends, tracing their roots to Constantinople and claiming descent from the first childe of Tzimisce. Flesh is their prayer, sculpting their sacrament, and they seek to find the divinity hidden within themselves and others. Heaven on Earth is just a nip and a tuck away.

The Children of the Dracon reject the influence of Kupala; even refuse to take part in any ritae they believe has ties to koldunic practices. Clan elders do what they can to shield the Children from the political backlash of this refusal. The knightly order exists to atone for some past sin of the Tzimisce. Politically, they act contrary to nearly every major decision of the Clan proper, always sitting as angels or demons upon our shoulders. Their elders prefer the Children to remain active in the Sect, rather than cloistering themselves. The order produces many templars and no few members of the Sabbat Inquisition.

Children of the Dracon often come from the Obertus revenant family. The training is rigorous, and begins while they are still mortal. They travel the globe, learning the 12 legacies of the order, returning to their monastery of origin for the Embrace. If the initiate is an Akoimetai, the scholarly wing of the order, he is entrusted with one volume from the Library of the Forgotten. If a knight, he must carry a letter he is forbidden to open, sealed by the mark of the Dracon himself or some other elder Fiend. Monasteries dot the globe, and often serve as the haven for the local Children.

The Romanian Legacy Foundation

Somewhere, there is a girl scarred with an Anglicized name. She grows with a trace of our blood coursing through her veins. She is talented, intelligent, a prodigy. She is disturbed, prone to bouts of depression and fits of rage. Neighbors find the mutilated bodies of local pets. She had tried to carve something out of them, something she cannot name.

Despite her haunted life, she grows into a natural leader, a fiery brilliance. Yet she is unfulfilled, still cannot find the nameless thing she sought in the flesh of all those dogs and cats. She finds the right classified advertisement or internet site — a nonprofit genealogical organization. After submitting her family tree, she is selected to attend a convention, which leads to a private party at the estate of a distant relative. The scene is a bloody bacchanalia — much of the decadent, much of the terrible. She is unafraid. This is what she sought. Before dawn, when the ceilings drip with gore, she is Embraced. The next night, she is assigned a sponsor and introduced to the society of the Damned.

That is the work of the Romanian Legacy Foundation. Its board of trustees include names such as Bratovitch, Obertus, Grimaldi, and Zantosa, and is composed of Cainites who came from our revenant houses. The Foundation keeps the families in touch, hosts gatherings, and welcoming revenants into undeath. Such chosen are given something more than a spade to the head and a shallow grave. Not everyone who carries our blood knows it. The Foundation scours the globe for our wayward babes. Globalization has spread the seed of our Clan far, and this new millennium has revealed an exciting harvest of such delicious fruit.

Neofeudalists

Behold the fiendish Don Quixote. A broken anachronism to some, a folk hero to others. Most likely, a bit of both. Not a faction in the strictest sense, but an ideal, an attitude that can bleed into the other factions. It creates strange camaraderie. The Old Clan Fiend and the Metamorphosist, normally at each other’s throat, find grudging respect and native pride when they acknowledge their mutual neofeudalist leanings.

The neofeudalists seek a return to the nights of kings and serfs. They claim vast domains, sire large broods, are the most gracious hosts, but demoniacal to any who trespass uninvited. As a point of honor, they are self-sufficient from the Sabbat, whom they are at odds with nearly as often as the Camarilla.

On the cutting edge of today, few espouse this ideal. Fewer still actually live it. Even fewer survive it for long. Seeing such an exemplar causes something resembling admiration to squirm in our wormy hearts. However, nostalgia, even for something so majestic, is still a pathetic, atrophied organ of humanity. Kiss the vestigial hand growing out of your cousin’s head, if you must, but know when to break it off.

Exsanguinists

The Eldest explored the terrible vistas of possibility, stared into the transcendentally grotesque, and the only thing that disturbed it was the Hunger. Immortality is relative, and if we truly want to dance with eternity, the Hunger must be conquered. The Exsanguinists understand this. They know that feeding the Hunger only deepens it, only erodes and widens the ravenous well inside us, until all that we are is nothing.

Unlike other blood cults who gorge on gore, the Exsanguinists practice feeding abstinence. This Metamorphosist offshoot has developed ignoblis ritae to avoid drinking blood for as long as possible. They teach meditative techniques. They throw themselves into distraction. If they can increase the length of time between each feeding, perhaps they can unlock the secret to transcend the curse.

They are perpetually on the edge of frenzy. I would not recommend them as pleasant company.

The Oradea League and the Tzimisce Antitribu

Semantics make for a tedious game, but the Tzimisce, by and large, do not bother with terms like “antitribu.” Though our personal visions, and even our symmetries, may differ, a Fiend is still a Fiend. Most belong to the Sabbat. The rest, particularly the elders, are apolitical.

Not even the Oradea League bandies about the word “antitribu.” They are an alliance of ancient Tzimisce, powerful fiends who survived the Anarch Revolt. They maintain their feudal lands around the Romanian city of Oradea. A pledge of unity ensures that an outside force attacking one these puissant monsters will face them all. The League has refused to submit to either the Camarilla or Sabbat.

There may be some few individual Tzimisce who have joined the Camarilla. But in a Clan of monsters of such individuality, this notion does not aggravate our vanity as it does the Lasombra. Likely, the motivations of a Fiend walking in the Ivory Tower would be very personal, specific, and temporary, to make them stomach the company of the Warlocks. Perhaps there are Fiends there in hiding. Perhaps they wear faces that are not their own.

Character and Traits

Concepts

Barker

“Step right up!”

You used to travel from town to town, a peddler of the bizarre and grotesque. Ever the showman, your macabre charm brought in the audiences to gaze upon your freak show attractions. Occasionally, you took their blood. Sometimes you kept an audience member and added them to the menagerie.

These days, you lead a more stationary life. You’ve opened a House of Oddities in the city. Your creations hide in plain sight. This modern world celebrates the grotesque. The gawkers come to you. Why just last week, a small band of thieves tried breaking into your place. The look on their faces when the pickled punks leapt out of the jar to defend you…? Well, that was just priceless.

“Safe home, dear friends, and come again!”

Foreign Exchange Student

You have recently arrived in a new country. You carry the soil of your homeland, but you seek to transcend it. Just as the koldun of the old country commune with the spirits of the earth there, you seek to find the voices in this new soil. You research the lore of this new place. You meditate on the ebb and flow of its energy.

You commune with these new people also. Through Auspex, you peer inside of them. You taste their emotions. You pluck out their joys, fears, character quirks, and idiosyncrasies. You bury these concepts in your brain. You perform mental grave robbery, taking the spare parts to the laboratory in your skull, trying out each intangible trait, grafting them to your psyche in varying combinations. Every night, you let loose a new creation, a new you. Let the other Fiends play at their crude patchwork of flesh. You construct Azi Dahaka in the mind.

Foundation Recruiter

The blood of the revenant families has spread so far and so thin. The right talent and genes can surface almost anywhere in the world. The Romanian Legacy Foundation sends you out to find the descendants of the revenant houses who are now far beyond the ancestral lands. You maintain a Foundation website. You give presentations in hotel convention rooms. You follow emails, birth certificates, genealogy studies — the nearly invisible trail of Tzimisce blood that spans the globe. You conduct interviews. When you find the worthy, you bring them in, saving them from the fate of dying as exceptionally talented mortals.

Lost in the Ivory Tower

The Camarilla took the city. Everyone was destroyed, all of your packmates. Only you remain. Desperate, you took on the face of one of the Ivory Tower Kindred who died in the battle. You tasted his heart’s blood and touched just enough of his memories. Somehow, in the chaotic aftermath, the ruse worked.

But what now? All you know is the city. Outside are the Lupines and death. How long can this insane farce continue? You fall deeper and deeper into this stolen identity, Sect, and Clan. The nights go by, and Vinculum is a distant memory. This was only supposed to be a temporary solution.

Old Clan New

You are of the Old Clan, the recent Embrace of an ancient sire. You were chosen because you were born in the homeland. You grew up on the old ways, but your curiosity hungers to see the world beyond. The Oradea League realized that history had passed them by, and so they Embraced you. They are so much older than you are, but you are given a measure of respect for your knowledge of modern technology and culture. Walking between the world of the archaic and the cutting edge, you are something new. You are their experiment.

Now you are sent out again, away from your Romanian home. You are to help the Old Clan make contact with the wider, contemporary world. Distinctions like Camarilla and Sabbat hold little meaning to you. Perhaps there is something to learn from both.

Paranoid Fiend

You’ve read the writings of an ancient of the Old Clan. An Obertus monk preached to you about the Dracon’s immaculate conception. You once talked to a guy who talked with Lambach Ruthven. You’ve put it together. You know what’s going on. But now, it knows that you know. It began in small ways. You woke to find your clothing torn, t h i n g s i n yo u r h a v e n rearranged, a knife in one hand and fingers missing from the other. One dusk, you found the words “BE A GOOD LAD” flesh-scrawled into your chest. It’s in there, watching you now, isn’t it?

Now you spend all your time in the lab. You’ve missed several auctoritas ritae. The others are beginning to talk. Who can you trust? You experiment until you collapse with the sun. You write your findings in the dark, so it won’t see. You tried to exsanguinate all of your vitae. You removed your own limbs. It does no good. No going back. You scream from the hyperawareness of something the size of a planet greasily slithering between your dead cells. You try to warn the other Fiends, but no one listens. They say you are insane. Really? Do they think so? Oh, how glorious that would be if it were true.

Scholar of the Akoimetai

You grew up among the Obertus. You learned the 12 Legacies and were Embraced a Child of the Dracon. You travel the world, in study and pious contemplation.

You search for the Divinity Within. You attempt to sculpt Heaven on Earth in the flesh. Your hands are not an artist’s hands, but when inspired by the Holy Ghost, you can find godhead in the crude meat. You tap into something bigger than yourself and are able to shape symmetry you could never have imagined, forms that existed before dreams. Sometimes you show mortals this primeval iconography. When you show them your celestial face, when they scream and sweat blood, then you are reminded of why angels always must preface their visitations with the words “Be not afraid.”

Shabby Voivode

You are the land. You claimed a particularly opulent mausoleum in the city cemetery as your manor. You took in the homeless as your subjects. Democracy had used and discarded them, and you gave them something more pure. To the few exceptional transients, you gave the sacrament of your blood, from your bent chalice, making them your personal bogatyri. You control the city park where you hold court, but your demesne grows alley by alley, shelter by shelter.

Judicious impaling taught the gangs where not to tread. The urban birds and beasts are your eyes and ears. Your word is law in the hearts and minds of peasants. Your loving subjects made you a crown of barbed-steel thorns. You live the neofeudalist ideal better than your fellow Cainites, who hide in penthouses or skulk in sewers. They laugh at you, but it must be from jealousy.

Walking Urban Legend

The Eldest found transcendence in dreams, and you seek inspiration in the dark dreams of others. You travel the country, collecting urban and rural myths — stories passed from mouth to ear — stories that live, crawl, and evolve with each telling. You change with the stories too, fashioning yourself into the monsters. You are a hook-handed killer. You are the bleeding woman who appears in the darkened mirror. You are the chupacabra. You enact the gory legends, enriching the dead water soil in the nightmares of the kine.

Sometimes you focus on one legend, refining the minutia of its image as you travel. You find Metamorphosis through the nuanced regional differences you discover from town to town, forced evolution along the road.

Scary stories are fun when you’re dead!

Weaver

You wield your bone shears with the gentle grace of an artist. The miracles you can work with human leather. The osseous jewelry. The bioluminescent gown. The still-living great coat, kept alive with vitae, covered in eyes that still blink. The flesh and bone coffin you designed for the Archbishop herself that lovingly opens for her, every dawn, with the deliberation of a Venus flytrap.

For all the Sabbat’s talk of transcending human customs, they still preen like demon peacocks when they gather. Shock and awe. You give that to them. You are in high demand. You give them post-human fashion — post-mundane. Not just garments; you give them designer ghouls and designer selves. The packs strive to be monsters, reach for freakishness, but many do not have the skill to truly transform. The poor dears. Why should the Fiends be the only ones to experience Metamorphosis? Your Clanmates are so self-centered. You were always extroverted. You want to share. You want to give.