TEXT: CREDITS
  Written by: Bruce Baugh
  Developed by: Justin Achilli
  Editor: James Stewart
  Art Director: Richard Thomas
  Layout & Typesetting: Becky Jollensten
  Interior Art: Michael Gaydos, Leif Jones, Andrew
  Trabbold, Drew Tucker, Christopher Shy
  Front Cover Art: John Van Fleet
  Front & Back Cover Design: Becky Jollensten
  W H I T E W O L F
  735 PARK NORTH BLVD.
  .SUITE 128
  CLARKSTON,GA 30021
  USA
  G A M E S T U D I O
  © 2001 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.
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  and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book
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  PRINTED IN USA.
  SPECIAL THANKS,
  SUMMER CONVENTION
  SHASON EDITION
  Dean "Unrelenting" Burnham, for two solid weeks of non-
  stop punishment.
  Mike "Stank" Tinney, for renting the room that smelled like
  old lady armpits.
  Jess "Correspondence" Heinig, for trying desperately to
  create an airport that came to him. Twice.
  John "What the Funk?" Chambers, for "rescuing" the juke-
  box from Garth Brooks and the Backstreet Boys.
  Conrad "Zoomtard" Hubbard, for nearly dying twice and
  being utterly unaware.
  Fred "Naptard" Yelk, for calling it quits on the first night but
  growing progressively more psychotic over the rest of the trip.
  Chad "Von Tabs" Brown, for pills & thrills & bellyaches.
  Brian "Wingman" Glass, for being there every second of the
  two-week journey into the guts of debauchery.
  Tim "Whoah" Avers, for learning about titty bars the hard way.
  Steve "Patience, Grasshopper" Wieck, for not ninja-kicking
  the bejeezus out of those three drunken hooligans battering
  down his door at half past two.
  Spirit Creek, for hosting the GenCon party.
  Lost Goth and Big Daddy Thwak, for, well, porn.
  THEIR OWN CIRCLE OF HELL
  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM! "Housekeeping! Clean
  your room?"
  Oops
  A correction: Ree Soesbee's "Additional Material" credit
  was inadverently left out of Clanbook: Tremere.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  2
  I
  Apleif
  Digitally �
  signed by �
  Apleif�
  DN: �
  cn=Apleif, �
  c=US�
  Date: �
  2002.03.06 �
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  !;•
  CONTENTS
  INTRODUCTION: THE DARKNESS CLAIMS You
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS UNLIT HALLS
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  4
  1O
  4O
  74
  
  Everything belonged to him — te that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many frontiers of darkness
  claimed him for their own. 
  : 
  • 
  • ,;:
  —- Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
  "pen yeAK Ago:
  J cAn feet tAe pulsein my AeA A,totfAef AnA fASter
  AS men fiteoA spurts from A Aoz.en tuts to Arip pA&t
  my fAte toWArA the pile of firoken glASS fielow me.
  Trfly VAn's emergency ftAshers reflect filAck from A
  I thonsAnA corners, At Att Angles, wherever mirrors
  IcAme forest After tAe collision.'^AeshAttereA streetlight,
  I somewhere Afiove me cASts An octAsionAt shower of
  ? &pArk&. J fiettme AtvAre t&At there's nt> ivAy put e£ Ms,
  £ven i£ tfose £7^1T* mAAe it here tvittin tAe ne&t—
  nit, J'tH fting tt Ate.
  Jt ftAfsaeneA snAAenty. J'A 6ein Arivinft my new
  , testing the meAijitAtiens for AAnAs-tnty tontrel
  A mAnuAt trAnSmissten. £tAry itu^f fat J
  H0m AnA Z&AAsAt in ^Ack, AtSAp
  t not ^uite twitting to SAy SO, AnA mAnAftinff 
  tAe sort
  £ tOnversAtifn we AtWAyf &AA en Ms AnniversAry.
  inft AtvktvArA £ik.ef'j/lreyi>n sure t&At A trip pie
  6e trying Ms sort 0^ tAingt-" or, "Aen't you
  think th.At ten yeArs f t efisesiive Anger nfront the
  ActiAent is ene Hgfa"
  Z&AA AftnAtty &AA someinterestinfi stories A^ent
  recent £0n&trnction arpjetts AnA peinteA out work Ais
  firm AAA Aontfy tAe mAnsions we Afove pA&t. J'A
  AeaAeA to tAke tAe ifnfi 
  WAy home, meAnAering
  ArennA tAe ^rroyo ^eco AnA seeing Aow mAny
  tAnAmArks we tout A iAentifry firom vAriotis mwies.,/1
  tot e£ t2)AA's ctrporAte customers tiveA Aere, AnA some
  tAe money to firing Ais form in for Aomestic work,
  ff- it WAS "just ptAin strAnge, too, tike tAe
  m witA tAe etevAtpr-mOttnteA teiting tAAt tAe
  owner tontA lower to jive feet Afipve tAe fteor for A
  "cozier" foet. Z&AA stArteA testing Att tAe faitAing
  coAes tAAt AAA to fie circnmventeA Or firifieA pASt for
  tAAt one. 
  ;
  "then All tAe tigAts went out for two fifetks on
  every siAe.. flot fust tAe streettigAfs — everything.
  $*orcA tigAts, Aonse tigAts, even tAe AAsAfioArA
  security system tigAts in pArkeA cAfS. ~£Aere WAS
  totAt AArkness witA only the new moon overheAA. J
  StArteA to ®ntt over/ Ait something slippery AnA went
  over A firiAge Afintment. 
  '
  ^tt A mAtter of timing, J suppose. ^ few
  SeconAs eArtier AnA 3 WOntA hAve steereA into A ten-
  foot-high HOtSf-reAfiction WAlt. Jt WOntA hAVt hurt,
  mAyfie A tot, fat then we'A fie stoppeA.,/1 few seconAs
  lAter AnA J'A hAve hit soliA f<280& v'tntAge, sniciAe-
  AiSconrAging hurricAne fence. £ikety we'A AAve
  cAreeneA off thAt AnA spun, mAyfie ftippeA, fat
  stoppeA somewhere on the firiAge.
  "^here's onty A smAtt gAp fietween WAlt AnA
  fence, AnA J hit it tust right.
  THE DARKNESS CLAIMS You
  
  VAn tumfrleA lengthwise en its WAy to the
  roof of the WArehouse. ""fchAt's why y'm here Almost
  upsiAe Aown, my useless legs AAngling overheAA
  white my Arms Are pinneA. Jl-J coulArAfse my right
  Arm/ y coulA touch one of the four glASS roAs thAt
  slAfttttteA through the winAshielA AnA an into the
  &Ack. @ne re A runs through ^Z>AA's thro At, TWO more
  pierce *W\em, One in her right eye AnA one just Mow
  her collArtione. 3&AA gurgleA for A jew minutes, frut
  7/Hom never mAAe A SOunA. y think AeAth cAme
  quickly for them.
  £o it's just me, y cAn't Often my Aottr. J cAn shout
  for help, 6ut there Aoesn't seem to 6e Anyone ArounA.
  y CAn't move to releAse my hArness or AisengAge the
  steering column iirAce or punch in An emergency coAe
  on the cAr phone,
  "~£hen the fights come &Ack on, without Any
  preliminAry flickering, J ckn see the whole WAre-
  spreAA out fretow, or perhAps A&sve, me. Jt's
  yy construction, y wrote An Article once
  the immense AurA^ility of "temuerAry" 6nilA-
  ings like this one. ~£wisteA sheets ofa corrngAteA
  Aluminum now He sprAWleA over long rows 06 glASS.
  T^tirrors/ wtnAows, fjetnliAr pAnes whose function
  y cAn't imAgine. £*-it lights reflect through the
  Ae&ris, reminAing me Briefly of the moon Auring A
  lunAr eclipse, AArk reA AnA Ominous. ~£he whole scene
  reminAs me of something. ^Ant 7*Clee on A &AA AAy.
  f^tme futurist nightmAre. ~£he 6leoA keeps ponnA-
  ing in my heAA. ^tupiA eAucAtion. ^mArt Aoesn't
  help you when you're pinneA in An ttpstAe-Aown vAn.
  J\0> j^lee WASn't so hAm+hAnAeA.
  y tAke Another look in the reAr-view mirror. T^Hy
  pArents Are right where they Were, "^he CAr sfiAes
  Aown A fat. ~£he seAtiielt cuts into my neck AnA
  cetlArfrone. \rfithont WArning, there's A hAnA on my
  shonlAer. y cAn't turn my heAA, so J hAve to roll my
  eyes AS test y cAn to see the slim, neAtly mAntcureA
  fiingernAils. Jt's A SmAll, grAceful hAnA, very AArk
  inAeeA, perhaps ^4 fricAn or from y\ew ^nineA.^1,
  quick check in the mirror shows nofoAy there, y Am
  hAllncinAting.
  voice is cleAr fnt soft/ Alme&t whispereA.
  £,Ach SylMle emerges perfectly ftrmeA. y see noth-
  ing in the mirror; y feel the hAnA on my shenlAer.'*£he
  hAnA AAS no pulse. 
  ?
  'yinArew, AcknewleAge me. ^/ffw heAr mef
  y SAy nothing.
  "y Am not A hAllt^inAtion. Ven're Aying, AnA we
  must speAk."
  y SAy nothing.
  "^onr life is A story you hAven't reAA. £peAk
  with me." 
  .'..."
  & omethingA&OHt thAt SffMnAs so « i . overwrought
  thAt y Almost lAHgh, AnA y speAk to the unseen
  presence. "\f$h,At steryl-^/lre you gting to clAim to £e
  the Architect of my misery^ ~£he nemesis who mAAe me
  suffer for my A rtf thrive me AfoeAk, £ven oaygen-
  StArveA, y expect something tetter th^n thAt."
  "~£hAt's precisely whAt 3 WAnt to tell you."
  "y me An to tell you thAt your life hAS £een my
  for A^out A AecAAe, AnA thAt the time hAS come
  for you to AeciAe whAt to Ao neat, J^isten to me."~£he
  voice unfolAs A steAAy UtAny of secrets, things y've
  never tolA Any one else.' the petty frustrations AS Well
  AS the greAt ones, the minor trials Along with the
  mASSive cAlAmities. ~£he speAker, whose sex. y cAnnot
  guess, speAks to me A^out cAreless Aoctors AnA
  Berserk mAtlmen AnA ArrogAnt eAttors AnA the count-
  less Others who've mAAe my life unpleASAnt. y reAliz.e,
  somewhere Along the WAy/ thAt the voice never pAUses
  for tfreAth.
  'flnA yttt mAAe it hAppenl-"
  "y AiA whAt
  CIANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  6
  
  jLanghter. "itf-er the j-irst time 3 j-eel cenfiAent t£at
  the voice falengs to a woman, "Z&p yen. knew the stery
  "<P/ cenrse. tfieA teek away everything fir em. him,
  to preve te£atan that $e& was werthy. 3 hepe yen're
  net gelng te claim te fa the angel eft the J^orA."
  "listen te ftte.""£he voice remains so fit, fint there's
  i' a cemmanA In It, l/fty month snaps cleseA wlthent
  Any censclens Aeclslen en my part.^ single nail en
  that Immacnlate hanA pierces my skin. "£pare me
  yenr everts at hnmer. 3 AlA net select yen te fa my
  fester." 
  s 
  ' 
  ;;._'. ' 
  , 
  ". 
  ,. . 
  . ,: 
  ^ . : 
  ;•.;,•.'...
  3 cannot ask the efivlens ^nestlen, tint she Antici-
  pates it Anyhow. "3 neeAeA to filnA ent what yen were
  (ike wlthent the things that Aefilne yenr lAentlty. 3ft 3
  cenlA remove yenr train AnA pnt It In a far te
  experiment npen, 3 went A. 3 haA te cnt AWAy the llfie
  rennA yenr minA, as far as possible, te see how yen.
  \ cope with loss. "Wonr llfie has faen a test. *^e
  3 cAn SfieAk AfiAin. "\/~$hAt Ae 3 wl*& 3
  hepe it's A tewet. ^Hy *yt& &tln%,"
  "3 &alA 3 AlAn't want te speak with an
  "VW AlA. 3 am net an angel,"3 can hear a smite
  In that velce. "JL,et me shew yen,"
  3 hear metal scream anA fireAk fahlnA me.^t
  first 3 think thAt 3'm losing my peripheral visien..
  ~£hen 3 realize there's tangible Slackness faslAe the
  car, a column efi something like smoke, floating In
  the mlAAle e£ itf 3 &ee a woman. £ he's tall 6nt slim,
  her face heavily scarreA. frjer hair... isn't hair at all,
  It's layer npen layer ffj- moving shaAows, like exfiell-
  atlng granite or peeling fiark. tyer arms seem nermal
  enengh—3 recognize the hanA anA wrist that resteA
  en my shentAer. "£,etew them, thongh, a seconA set efa
  arms pokes threngh slits in the gray re fa she
  "they're mettleA Hack, remlnAlng me slightly eft
  pictures 3 &aw Where the experimenters lefit raw meat
  entAeers jer a year, phetegraphlng Its changes.
  £ he scAres me hat^ te AeAth, net thAt that's se far
  A trip jnst new. 3've hatlnclnateA fa^ere, anA 3 &n
  afrsetntely nene ej the cues that tell me my ^rain is
  fabricating the scene. 3t takes me 4 mement te realize
  that she's hanging nm&lAe AeWn In that Aarkness,
  since we see eye te eye. 3 feel chains o£ a&&eclatlen at
  werk In my minA, as thengA seme antenemens
  thenght precess has gene searching £er everything
  that "Aarkness" means te me. T/Hemerles flicker anA
  Mare like the Aarkness arennA the weman,
  '{/I nArew," she says threngh lattlceA tips, "^en
  see year tears in the Aarknes&, Aen't yenlr"^ he sees my
  slight neA. "^tt yenr llfae, all Anyene's lifae, these
  things live faneath yenr skin. "Hew they [lew ent
  aleng with yenr Hie Itself. J^earn."
  @ne ef these shaAew-arms stretches tewarA me,
  3ts frlnnt enA smashes threngh the remains e£ the
  Arlver-slAe winAew AnA snakes arennA In frrent ej-
  me. \^ith ene swift metlen It wrap& arennA my heaA,
  completely ceverlng my eyes. W~er an Instant there's
  ,ntter, prefrennA nething. £,ven tAe retlnAl flickers thAt
  ge en fahlnA cteseA eyellAs Alsappear; In seme sense,
  the Aarkness penrs In fahlnA my eyes, 3 can't even take
  a frreath.
  "^he flashes e£ memery faceme mnch mere Intense,
  "^here's ne sensery cempenent te them, enly states efi
  minA. ^nger, at the acclAent, at the bespital, at my
  parents, at the government finreancrAts, at the
  fackheaA Aecters Whe fait te nnAerstAnA what 3 tell
  them. $Fear, efa refectien, ej- leslng my minA as well
  as my legs, e^ never writing again, ef el A age anA
  pevertyln this cenAitlen.^ mfiitien anA prlAe, fier the
  next great werk, te preve wreng all the Aecters anA
  Ae niters, te shew my parents the fielty e^ their hopes
  ier me. Z&epressien weven In threngh it all, the Aeslre
  THE DARKNESS CLAIMS You
  
  te simpty Arifit away from the My. J see myself as
  a vesSet stepping ever with Aark passiens, tacking
  anything te 6e $-t>r, fitting the emptiness with a teng
  titany e£ things te tie against.
  \S~tsien returns, Jt's cletiAy new.&eme Hue A has
  ceagntateA arennA my eyes/ anA new my peripheral
  visien really is ftaAing fier tack eft e&ygen. Z&eath
  cannft tie jar away.
  "^en seet^nAreWf yen have cut yenrset^ eat ej-
  the fabric eft seciety. J>*t£ yen Ae net yet knew what
  yen want te ctethe yenrsel£ in, anA yenr anger is net
  enengh. 3$e yen seeV'1 neA, er at teast J try. ^Hy $ace
  niim£. "Jiet me tett yen what awaits."
  rst her story seems irrelevant, feme secenA-
  rate pastiche. £he Aestri&es grewing up in the
  ^etgian @enge, hearing in her heart the voices eft
  geAs that theceteniat masters senghtte Aestrey.£he.
  Aescrites rapine/ the Aestrnctien efi whete tri&es,
  enslavement anA hnmitiatien at the hanAs (>£ £nrepe-
  4ns tome te get rich.£he Aescrtfres hearing the veice
  eft the night "tnsiAe a particntarty 4m6itiens entpest
  superviser, enty te tese himte his maAness anA setf-
  Aestrnctien. "£e yen see, ^ nArew, ethers knew
  sneering tee."
  ,£, he tetts me the stery eft wanAering the riverfranks
  at night, hoping te hear a worA j-rem the meen erthe
  shaAews.,/1 nA ene night the shaAews speke te her.^/l
  pate man emergeA anA telA her the titany ej- her
  serrews anA eUereAher the pewer ier revenge,
  Watch, ^ nArew." 
  ;
  ~£he shaAew-arm gratis the seat J'm in
  Araws it smeethty ent eft the car, with the ether
  shaAew-arm tearing efifi the remains eft my Aeer in ene
  yank. V$ith a snAAen frtip, J'm right siAe up again.
  ~£he weman pivets te remain facing me anA sinks
  stewty te the grennA. 7/Hy shees tench Hoe Ay sharAs
  ej- gtass. ~£he weman steps out efc the cetnmn et
  Aarkness anA picks the seat anA me up with ene
  tesses me casualty inte the air a Uw times
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  8
  
  frefrre setting me. Aewn. J'A vomit if there
  Anything (eft in my stemAch.
  £ he s^nAts te teek Airectty At me AS J famfU far
  the seAtfatt tAtch. "^tfp," she SAys, AnA J freeze, "ftst
  {ncAH&e. J WAnt tff fat tiecAKSe net ene votnntAry
  mnscte An&Wers me.
  ,/lgAtnst my witt, my Arms nnfackie me AnA
  push me into An upright petition. J tetter far A
  moment AnA then/ tnevitAMy, fatt face.-frrwArA t>nte
  the gtASS. }JAtf A Aozen shArAs stice me open, one A
  tiny frActten ef AH inch from my right eye. ^ piece
  pokes into my menth, te Aging AgAinst my upper
  gums. J CAn fret it scrApe teeth AentAth the gum.
  "T/leW AreAm,^/l nArew. JmAgine yenrsetf A^tt to
  Ao whAt J've "just mAAe yen Ae. "^en remember your
  enemies, J mAAe sure ef thAt. &An yen envisien them
  f suffering AS yen Ae now, AnA wer&elr \/~$itt yen Accept
  nAt werA CAtehes me 6y surprise, "^ifr^"
  i& 6teeA AnA hurt is A jftfft' ^tt snce AgAin the
  chains e£ ASseciAtien fitAre, J hAve £een very cenfiAent
  thAt J nnAerstAnA hew the wertA werks. J've mtcktA
  whe AiSAgreeA. 3n my Aesk At heme there's A
  • white faite ei tetters fretH reAAers Whe report Aisittn-
  sienment AnA to&s oft faith frecAnse 
  ofa whAt J've
  Written. \^ontA Anything tess thAn this hAve cen-
  vinceA melr
  J picture, the sort ej- termcnt the wemAn
  "^eS."Tht werA oozes etttArennA the gtASS
  WeAgeA into my month. "Vw.*
  ^ hAAew Arms fitip me ever so thAt J'm tying en
  my &Ack. £he epens her menth te shew me. fangs.
  T^ey Aen't teek tike, movie-monster preps. Then Art
  the reAt thing, emerging orgAnicAtiy frem her JAW
  AnA serrAteA tike cArnivere fangs, ^s she teAns over
  my neck, nff 6reAth stirs my shreAAeA cettAr. "&er A
  moment J set chAnnets Ateng the fang&'ihsiAe edges,
  stAineA with smAtt fitecks t>& ArieA 6teeA. J mArvet At
  their ej-jidency....
  J thenght thAt J kne-W seme-thing A^ent &n^frr-
  ing, fat this is the shArpest, most consuming Agony
  J've ever frit. T^t pricks Are smAtl, AnA J know thAt
  there Are ne mAtor nerves ArennA them, fat nenethe~
  tess it's tike jire sweeping frem one siAt oft my 6oAy
  to the ether.
  $n$t AS ynickty, there's pteAsnre. flet orgAs*MC
  pteASnre —— there's no physietegicAt component, enty
  A sense otcemptetion AnA rightness. Jn my minA,J
  heAr the wemAn SAy, 'This is yenr fancfton AS prey,
  "p^ememfrer whAt yon Are teAving, kine ne mere^T/Hy
  pntse fietemes errAtic, weAk-^teps. @tinitAtty, J'm
  AeAA. Vhy eyes continue to see, Aimty,fat thAt'tt Step
  seen. *y\o mere ex,ygen in the MeeA. "fte mere 6teeA.
  There's stittness in my £eAy.
  1/Hy eyes Aim, sej Aen't see the wemAn fan Aever
  me, J heAr her fate semethingi £he presses her cot As
  wrist to my month, fcfer frteoA — thick AnA stew-~—
  ArAinS pASt my stitt tips. ^Ain returns, An etectricAt
  shock or something tike it rippting ptit from my
  threAt. Jt's faen ten yeArS since J frit Any reAt
  SenSAtien Mew my hip&. T/lew, AS the shock frtASts
  throngh them, J cAn fret them AgAin. J frit the, Aefrris,
  AnA my tronsers tonching the hAir en my tegs.
  thAt isn't tifr Stirs Within me.
  eyes open. T^ wemAn smites At tie.
  WAS the first step."
  'yiew:
  £e yen see, you're not the enty ene to kneWthesert
  ef tess yen've fett.^es, J'm sure thAt the pAin where
  yenr famity, yenr ]0&, yenr stAnAing in the cemmn-
  nity ence, were is shArp. J knew these, things tee.
  Tare's A WAy to reAress it, if yen WAnt.^re yen
  reAAy to become A preAAter for reAt, rAther thAn prey
  with AetnsienS ef grAnAenrir
  THE DARKNESS CLAIMS You
  
  And o/tentimes, to win us to our harm,
  The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
  Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
  In deepest consequence.
  — William Shakespeare, Macbeth
  THE FIRST LESSON:
  BEGINNINGS
  This night's cold, not that the packmates are about to
  admit it. The winter storms blast off the North Pacific and
  up the Columbia River, driving sleet like knives. The wind
  hasn't fallen below 25 miles an hour since sunset. Gusts
  sometimes move as fast as cars on a highway. The packmates
  feel something in the air, though, and without actually
  speaking a word to each other, they agree that they must take
  extra care to show they understand their condition. Only
  two of the new recruits have any real prophetic sense, but
  that's enough. The Vaulderie transmits their glimpses of an
  impending encounter with the mentor/judge/teacher/cop of
  their brethren.
  So it's with special flourishes that they ascend to their
  meeting ground, the roof of the still unfinished municipal
  administrative building. Nobody wears an extra layer of
  insulating clothing. Druitt makes a grand show of stripping
  handed. For the others, T-shirts and unbuttoned jackets
  suffice to make the point. "Yes," their actions say to their
  ductus, "We understand that the memory of being cold
  doesn't matter anymore. We know how to will a little blood
  through our veins and keep ourselves warm. See for your-
  self: We know that humanity lies below, while we rise
  above."
  Andrew watches their ascent with quiet pleasure. He
  remembers how long it took some lessons to sink in. If the
  rain Jet up, he could look over to the Bank of America
  buildingand see the scorch marks where Leo met the sun last
  fall. Leo never quite got the hang of the basics. His example
  goaded (or scared) the others, and Andrew doesn't think
  he' II have to destroy another of this pack. He can feel Demba
  nearby. She's not as phased with the brood, but then she
  never is. He doesn't notice any little gatherings of shadow
  indicating an impending strike. He hopes that his students
  will make it through the night.
  In short order, all seven of Andrew's charges sit or
  sprawl on the rooftop tarpaulins. Through the Vinculum he
  " 
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  his chest bare be/ore dragging himself up the scaffolding one- 
  can sense their fear and anticipation. He's surprised at how
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  
  much foresight Ming and the Other Razor show, and
  congratulates them. "You're doing well. It's not quite
  enough, of course. If you really thought it was a trap, you
  should have stayed away. But your concern is a good sign.
  Those of you who survive will probably do well for your-
  selves, and each other." He pauses. None of the fledglings
  can sense it, but Andrew hears the whispers in shadow and
  hurries on.
  "It's lecture night." The pack groans in unison. "Not
  from me. Tonight you'll be hearing from the woman who
  really did, once upon a time, teach me every thing I know."
  He makes a slightly theatrical bow, and Demba coalesces
  out from the shadows in Andrew's coat. She does not smile
  at the students. All their little motions, nervous tics and
  semiconscious habits, stop immediately. Her native appear-
  ance is completely hidden: Tonight she stands as a statue
  carved from shadow, lacking any facial features except very
  long, very sharp fangs. She has no mouth that any of the
  students can see, but her words carry through the air rather
  than directly into their minds.
  "Good evening, young Keepers. This is a lecture and a
  test, rolled into one. Let us begin."
  ALL TRUTH
  First, I will tell you the foundational truth, the key
  to understanding everything about the vampiric condi-
  tion. This is it: We can never know the truth.
  You know that all evidence can be faked. Some of
  you here can yourselves craft works of art so flawless that
  no breathing art critic can distinguish them from the
  real thing. You know that money can buy many things,
  that persuasion and intimidation can earn you the rest,
  and that no human being begins to grasp what you and
  your kind can do.
  You know that the kine desperately try to deceive
  themselves and each other about us. You've benefited
  from this willful denial, and you must realize that other
  Cainites do as well. You know that many important
  realities never appear in any records you can examine.
  Furthermore, you know that will and memory are
  something less than absolutely sure. Most of you here
  can force a mortal to do something and never realize
  that he was, for that moment, your direct tool. Some of
  you are learning the art of personal charisma, making
  them love you simply because of the power in your
  Blood. You've no doubt seen that your ductus and other
  older Cainites can do far more than the few tricks you've
  learned so far.
  Where is truth in any of this? Anyone's memories
  can be changed. All records can be adjusted, created or
  removed. There is absolutely nothing you can count on.
  Everything, inside you and out, might be a lie, perhaps
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  12
  \
  
  created deliberately, perhaps the unintended side effect
  of some plan that doesn't concern you, maybe even the
  result of haphazard psychosis. None of you have met a
  truly deranged elder yet, have you? Just wait till the next
  Palla Grande. In the meantime, cultivate paranoia.
  Assume, for the moment, that you do exist. I do not
  give you my word that I have refrained from tampering
  with your perceptions of this occasion. What good
  would that do? None of you can tell if I'm lying or not.
  So 1 simply assert it. You are Cainites, as am I. We are
  in fact a sort of walking corpse that feeds on the blood
  of the living. We burn in sunlight. Our progeny grow
  weaker with every generation. We are not part of the
  natural world. We make no sense in scientific terms,
  and science isn't bunk, no matter what some fools would
  tell you. It explains many parts of the world, and the fact
  that it cannot explain us is just one more sign of our
  alienation from nature.
  I'll return to that point again later, perhaps. For
  now, remember this: The fact that you are what you are,
  here and now, does not mean that the stories we tell
  each other about how we came to be are true. Individu-
  ally, each of you has lied to each other and to yourselves
  about how you came to be what you are, both before
  your death and after. Do you think that we stop lying as
  we age?Nor do we become infallible in our observations
  and deductions. When we talk about our shared past, we
  tell stories. Just as you must distinguish what seems like
  fact from what may prove the case after all, so you must
  distinguish the facts of now from the explanations
  offered for them.
  ORIGINS ON EARTH
  Many Cainites, whether they believe in the common
  myth about our origin or not, describe it as a Christian tale.
  "Adam and Eve had two sons," the story says, "named Caine
  and Abel. Abel was a herder, Caine a farmer. Each offered the
  best of his harvest as a sacrifice. God accepted Abel's sacrifice
  of meat but rejected Caine's sacrifice of fruits and grains. Caine
  murdered his brother. God cursed Caine with vampirism. All
  Cainites descend from Caine." Some versions embellish the
  tale with details of the steps by which our dark father Caine
  rejected God's forgiveness, learned secrets from Lilith and
  otherwise carried on like some Campbellian folk hero. This
  version suffices for our purposes.
  I have, in the first place, reason to suspect that a
  fairly recent editorial hand has been at work in the
  common tale. The terminal "e" in "Caine" doesn't
  make sense in any of the ancient languages of the
  Middle East, where the story presumably originated and
  smacks altogether of an English speaker who either
  wasn't careful with his (or her) spelling. Given that we
  are a proud and boastful lot, I'd be unsurprised to find
  that the unknown editor simply wanted to suggest that
  this was the real spelling of our father's name, as opposed
  to the version used by ignorant mortals.
  Name aside, this story exists in a suspiciously pol-
  ished framework. The linkage with Adam and Eve isn't
  really necessary in any meaningful sense to the story,
  and several scholars of our clan say that some early
  renderings of the tale don't mention the Hebrew figures
  at all. The God who curses Caine need not be the God
  in the sense that a modern Christian or Jew would use
  the word, and maybe not even in the sense that an
  ancient Mesopotamian or Babylonian would. The God
  of this story is a powerful force being appeased through
  sacrifice with the power to inflict the curse of undeath.
  That's all. Everything else is accretion.
  I believe that the tale conveys an important truth,
  which I shall try to summarize for you.
  Caine and Abel represent, respectively, the societ-
  ies of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic
  or New Stone Age. Humanity's ancestors gathered and
  scavenged before they hunted. For a very long time,
  great beasts preyed upon humans at least as often as they
  preyed on other creatures. Before brave warriors hunted
  these creatures, nervous defenders huddled and hoped
  to keep predators at bay. This is where the first weapons
  came into use: not for aggression, but for defense. Caine
  is quite rightly the elder brother, the symbol of that time
  of peaceable, passive and frightened existence. Abel,
  the younger brother, symbolizes the move toward mas-
  tery and conquest.
  I told you at the outset that not all truths can be
  known. I believe that "Cainites," for lack of a better
  word, prowled the starless night before any known
  human civilization and in fact before humanity. Per-
  haps the dominant species of any given era receives the
  deathless power, or perhaps it arises some other way.
  Regardless, I think it sensible to say that the predators
  Caine and his folk feared weren't just wild beasts, but
  creatures like us, at least in some cases. Perhaps those
  early Cainites were human, perhaps they belonged to
  some other hominid species, perhaps something else
  altogether. Abel the hunter didn't just fight animals, he
  fought the devils in the night.
  Caine's example shows that it doesn't do to under-
  estimate the kine. He rose up and mastered first his own
  brother, then the powers in darkness. They may have
  forced undeath upon him, but perhaps he compelled
  them to give such to him, and then destroyed them. The
  fact that no trace of them remains except implicitly in
  stories like this one shows the magnitude of his victory.
  Whatever the "Cainites" before him were, they have
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  13
  
  left no lineage that any of us can now detect. We are all
  Caine's childer. This is why we venerate what some of
  you call the "homicidal farmer" — not for his agricul-
  ture, but for the thoroughness with which he became
  what he had previously feared and hated.
  Caine is kine become greater, victorious over all
  opposition. He is therefore rightly our ideal, our Pla-
  tonic ideal, if you will, the one in whose name we turn
  on our own opponents.
  THP GODDESS
  Before I proceed, let me insert a caution about as-
  sumptions. The oldest signs of human worship that I'm
  aware of all involve the worship of a devouring great
  goddess. Certainly, men throughout history (and before)
  have sought to make women's display of power an evil and
  unnatural thing. That need not be the whole story,
  however. Perhaps Caine was the first male "vampire," or
  at least the childer on whom he turned were female. When
  people of every continent share the imagery of a woman
  wrapped in darkness, who must be placated with blood
  along with other gifts, who awes all around her, we may
  well have a window into the real past.
  BEFORE THH FLOOD
  If you've got an ear for fairy tales, you can seek out the
  Noddists among our sect. They'll gladly prattle on about
  the First City and the Second City and who knows what
  else, with tales of this brother and that sister and the other
  nephew. I have no patience for such things as anything
  except entertainment on a dull night. You may come to
  agree, or disagree. Let the tale-spinners give you their
  versions and make up your own mind.
  However, I can discuss some facts. Insofar as any-
  thing I tell you is true, what I tell you about the physical
  world is. Go and see it, go and speak with others who
  have. It's easier to detect tampering with rocks than
  with the soul.
  The very word "Antediluvian" presumes facts not
  in evidence, as a solicitor would put it. More strongly, it
  presumes claims proven false. Who was present at this
  universal flood? No god or spirit ever covered the world
  with water during humanity's existence, eliminating all
  but a few chosen survivors. Floods swept different parts
  of the world, both rapidly and through gradual inunda-
  tion. But the term "Antediluvian" implies being a rare
  survivor of the deluge that destroyed almost all others,
  and so nearly as science or examination can say, this is
  merely hubris. Use it to refer merely to the eldest get of
  Caine and those of the lowest generation (or genera-
  tions), and you'll avoid deceiving yourself into accepting
  the myths.
  We first find traces of Cainites in history much as
  they are now. The same clans existed, apart from a
  handful of dubious experiments that managed to turn
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  14
  \
  
  on their creators or would-be manipulators. Here is the
  lesson of Caine again. Do not underestimate the kine.
  And if the kine can accomplish so much, how much
  more can we ? I am aware of few Cainites now active who
  personally recall events of the pre-Christian era, but we
  do have a smattering of documents and physical evi-
  dence, and we have a surprisingly accurate roster of
  Cainites whose sires date back millennia.
  Everything different about Cainites — those inde-
  pendent of the current clan lineages, for instance — is
  conveniently pushed back before the first available
  evidence. You can believe that Caine and his childer
  really did found the city of Enoch, if you like. I cannot
  prove you wrong. I simply point out that you have no
  objective evidence for it. Noddist literature is precisely
  as useful as any other holy book, which is to say, not at
  all except when it comes to finding out what the priests
  want you to think and do.
  I suspect that if we could peer into prehistory, we'd
  find that clans of some sort existed long before Caine.
  Each lineage's particular gifts sometimes change over
  time, with the emergence of bloodlines. This conforms
  precisely to Darwinian evolution, and while we are
  supernatural creatures, we are nonetheless partly natu-
  ral. One cautionary note: The sages of our clan know of
  about 13 clans, more or less depending on where one
  separates "clan" from "bloodline." In the absence of
  mysticism and numerology, I see no pressing reason to
  assume that we know of every Antediluvian and its
  progeny. Do not assume that you know everything
  about who else rises as the sun sets.
  In any event, here we are, and there we were. The
  earliest human settlements were in southwestern and
  southern Asia. Even when we reject the notion of an
  actual city of Enoch, the archeological record points at
  foundations for more complex truths underlying the
  mythology.
  Catal Huyuk predates every other known human
  city. Its remains stand on a plateau in interior Turkey,
  an area now barren but then fertile. By 6500 B.C. it was
  already a flourishing city, with more than 6,000 perma-
  nent inhabitants. Around 5600 B.C. the old city was
  abandoned in favor of a new site to the west, and around
  4900 B.C. people left the area altogether. Human
  archeologists debate the reasons for the inhabitants'
  actions. Catal Huyuk anchored trade routes stretching
  for hundreds of miles in every direction.
  Oddly enough, the city had no streets. The build-
  ings stand flush against each other, with openings in the
  roofs to let people out. Traffic moved across the roofs.
  Presumably walkways, ladders or ramps connected the
  rooftops with the surrounding hilly ground. The city
  evolved around obsidian and the volcanic goddess who
  produced it. Imagery of the all-creating, all'devouring
  goddess fills the city. Leopards, who even tonight prey
  ferociously on humanity and its primate kin, attended
  her. Wrapped in cyclopean blackness, she cast forth
  destructive heat that in turn carried the precious black
  glass. Her devotees in Catal Huyuk traded it for all the
  necessities and luxuries their own people couldn't pro-
  duce, spreading the earth's extrusions far and wide, and
  the religion of the goddess with it.
  Does none of this strike you as allusive? When you
  hear this story, do you not think of the power that moves
  in you, and picture it moving across the landscape of the
  first city? Can you not picture your sire's sire's most
  removed sire reaching down, by hand or shadow come to
  life, drawing forth sacrifice from the life-filled rooms
  below? Does your mind's eye not show you individuals so
  terrible that the kine found it easier to objectify them and
  associate them with forces of the earth itself? Can you not
  picture human worshippers scattering in the wake of some
  dreadful conflict between Cainite lords and ladies, the
  humans scurrying to establish some new center as the old
  dissolves into blood and unleashed fury?
  This is our Enoch, the echo of our present state in
  the past, reminding us of our legacy. This should be
  sufficient for you for now.
  The winds have died down, and the sleet's piled up
  wherever drifts can collect. In the calm, the temperature
  rises slightly and then falls. Hail and snow meld into solid
  masses of ice.
  The change doesn't affect Demba's steady facing. Her
  shadow feet leave no mark on the rooftop. Her shadow-
  wrapped throat emits no quiver or stutter to disrupt her
  speech. Druitt wishes he hadn't been quite so melodramatic
  in ascent and is burning through his vitae to heal the frostbite
  threatening his fingers, toes and buttocks. The others don't
  actually huddle for warmth, but do make an effort to avoid
  wasted motion and unnecessary exposure to the worstgusts.
  Demba pauses mid-step. Her face remains as blank as
  before. The gathering heard a brief snuffling sound, air
  moving through some passage very unlike a human nose.
  "It's later than I realized. One more topic andl conclude for
  the night."
  ORIGINS IN DARKNESS
  In addition to the facts of history, timeless, recur-
  rent principles arise. We are the clan of darkness supreme,
  and you can look for our origin in every shadow. The
  fears embedded in human consciousness and culture
  feed our kind, giving us openings to exploit—what you
  might call "leverage" in modern business jargon.
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  15
  I
  
  "The oldest and strongest emotion is fear. And the
  oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
  So said an American writer, Lovecraft, 80 years ago or
  so. Lovecraft showed the peculiar blindness of his era in
  thinking that identifying something as rooted in fear
  meant showing that it was not rooted in reality. I tell
  you now what you should already know: The kine are
  right to fear us. When you loom out of the shadows that
  obey your command, demonstrating the ability to shat-
  ter a human body and overwhelm a human mind, you
  act not just with your own force but with the heritage of
  countless millennia of our kind.
  Throughout history and before, gods in the night
  have demanded blood and meat from humanity. These
  are our sires. You are Artemis. You are Ahriman. You
  are the volcano goddess of Catal Huyuk and Tezcatlipoca,
  the Aztecs' god of the smoking mirror. You look skepti-
  cal. Think, students. A darkness so thick it obscures the
  sun, wielded by the one who requires more blood than
  any other god except the sun? This should sound famil-
  iar. You are Inguma, the Basque spirit that haunts the
  Iberian night and strangles sleeping victims who did not
  propitiate it. You are Hina, the Polynesian goddess who
  guards the underworld and teaches crafts.
  You are darkness personified. So were your sires back
  to the beginning. Look through history for darkness.
  There you find us.
  Without warning, Demba's form collapses. Her shadow
  flits from the rooftop, leaving Andrew and his pack alone.
  WHAT MANNER OF CReATUfte
  Cainites don't have sex very often, and after a
  few hundred years many of the physical and psycho-
  logical features associated with gender wither. Elder
  Cainites often cease to care very much about gender
  questions. Nonetheless, anyone wishing to speak of
  an Antediluvian needs to use some pronoun.
  Camarilla usage generally goes with the genders
  that tradition assigns: male to Brujah and Tremere,
  female to Gangrel and so on down the line. Many
  Sabbat instructors encourage their students to strip
  the implied humanity from the Antediluvians. Just
  as they frown on traditional names like "Ennoia" in
  favor of "the Gangrel Antediluvian," so most
  Lasombra priests teach that the best pronoun to use
  when speaking of an Antediluvian is just "it." Some
  Lasombra and Tzimisce never speak the clan name
  when referring to the Antediluvian at all, preferring
  titles like "the King of Shadows" and "the Eldest."
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  16
  \
  
  THE SECOND LESSON:
  ANTIQUITY
  The worst of the storm is past now, leaving a legacy of
  winds chill enough to keep the ice frozen. Andrew's pack
  spends two nights seeking out stranded motorists and feeding
  on them. Andrew makes it a training game, with the object
  of inflicting the most thorough carnage without any residue
  for police or others to track. Ming shows the most creative
  flair, cleverly arranging blankets of temporal shadow to
  catch the mess she makes eviscerating her victims.
  On the third night, Andrew stirs to wakefulness in the
  pack's communal haven. Some subconscious signal tells him
  to keep the pack together. He makes sure the neonates
  discuss Demba's lesson and related subjects, so that they'll
  be prepared to answer the bishop's pet questions at the next
  Festival of the Dead. He's not very surprised to find more
  reasons, as he sits up in the old hotel basement.
  A small Cainite sits by the door. He's dressed in a tan
  suit and wears lightly tinted glasses. His complexion is
  slightly swarthy. Andrew knows him by reputation and
  immediately assumes a forma! manner. "Welcome to our
  haven, sir. I trust you had a pleasant enough trip, and that
  His Excellency the archbishop won't need your services
  tonight." The small Cainite is one of the archbishop's
  paladins, a scholar and first-rate torturer.
  The paladin moves his lips in a rough approximation of
  a smile. "Thank you, lord. Yes, 1 did, and no, he won't.
  Demba spoke with us last night about her educational effort.
  She would have returned to continue, but other matters
  required her attention. I offered to help."
  Andrew doesn't speak his thoughts while rousing the
  pack, introducing them to the paladin and arranging the
  haven for a lecture. Is Dembanow destroyed? Is an invasion
  from some credible enemy underway? Andrew knows he
  likely won't ever know and tries to calm himself as the
  paladin stands to lecture.
  THE ANTEDILUVIAN
  Be careful not to let the gift of skepticism degener-
  ate into the bane of mindless doubt. The fact that one
  element of a story is false or at least unsupported is not
  warrant to dismiss the rest. 1 remind you of this at the
  outset, because I speak to you of facts that generally
  travel in the company of lies.
  Regardless of the truth or falsehood of Noddist myth,
  the Antediluvians really do exist. In fact, at least 13
  progenitor Cainites, each responsible for one of the major
  clans, still infest the earth, or at least they did once (there
  may well have been more, whose lines failed or who have
  been forgotten for various reasons). I believe they all
  endured well into the Christian era and even now, more
  survive than not. To understand an Antediluvian is often
  to understand much about its clan.
  The Lasombra Antediluvian was certainly real
  enough. It perished only a few centuries ago, and we
  have accounts even in the modern nights from those
  who saw it, spoke with it and dwelled with it. Its origins
  substantially influence our nature.
  The Antediluvian originally lived somewhere in the
  western Mediterranean. In time, Sicily became the
  creature's favored haven, for reasons I'll discuss in a
  moment. It may have been born and lived there, or it may
  have originated elsewhere. I favor Malta. It has some very
  old temples built from black stone with obsidian artifacts,
  and it has sufficient caves with attached legends about
  monsters. It pleases me to think of Calypso as some
  mortal's effort to explain away a thaumaturge of our clan.
  Other Lasombra historians point at Corsica, Sardinia or
  the Balearics. Realistically, we have no way to settle the
  question definitively. It's primarily a way to justify further
  research and argument.
  Cainites do have some solid facts at hand, however.
  The first is that our founder was in life part of the
  Mediterranean region. Unquestionably, the oldest
  Lasombra all spring from that part of the world and spread
  elsewhere over the millennia. The second is that it came
  specifically from the western Mediterranean; it always
  spoke of the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean as
  something a bit foreign, targets rather than homes. The
  third is that it was a creature of the sea, either an island-
  dweller or a resident of some coastal community.
  These are not just facts of history. They echo inside
  you now. You must have felt that peculiar fascination to
  rise in time to see the sunset without feeling any
  comparable urge to catch the beginning of dawn. You
  might even know the drive to spend time on, near and
  under the water, even if in life you cared nothing for it.
  Those are part of your heritage j ust as much as the power
  over shadow. You are, that is to say, part of my field of
  study, as I am myself.
  One excellent reason to doubt Noddist myth is that
  the proposed roster of Caine's childer matches the
  actually existing Antediluvians so poorly. Who would
  have been a suitable sire for the Lasombra Antedilu-
  vian? None of the three fit very well. They serve to
  account for the Camarilla clans well enough, I suppose,
  but the story has more players than the pathetic seven.
  In any event, some Cainite Embraced our founder, and
  it set about building its haven in the shadows. Specula-
  tion rages within the scholars' ranks about the motives
  and nature of the sire. We generally (though not al-
  ways) agree that the Antediluvian didn't spontaneously
  CHAFER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  17
  \
  
  innim
  .—"^s^aL ^
  —- "^_in» J
  transmute itself into a Cainite, but frankly of the sire we
  can know nothing.
  THH SPA PEOPLES
  Our clan has a long heritage of leadership in a very
  primal and pure sense. We do not soil ourselves with the
  petty details of reckoning every little scrap; we command
  and seize. In antiquity, you find us leading this way among
  pirates. Demba, I believe, spoke to you about Catal Huyuk,
  but she has a sometimes disproportionate fascination with
  settlements. It comes from her personal history. I wish to
  speak of peoples on the move. Quite early on in history, we
  find records of great raiders.
  In the second millennium B.C., the so-called "Sea
  Peoples" ravaged all the settled lands around the Mediter-
  ranean. The Hyksos even ruled Egypt for two successive
  dynasties. For a while, the Sea Peoples dominated all
  commerce in the Mediterranean. Nobody sailed without
  paying tribute to them or courting destruction. Indeed,
  around the turn of the millennium, the Sea Peoples played
  a major part in smashing the Bronze Age civilizations in
  and around Greece, ushering in an era that more landbound
  historians like to call a "dark age." An age of darkness.
  Need I belabor the point?
  Pardon? Yes, sir, you are quite correct. Lord Emory,
  I wish to commend your student Druitt for his attention
  to detail. It is indeed one thing to point at a historical
  phenomenon, another to show that it matters to our
  kind. Let me cite some specific examples. This is from
  an Egyptian account of the execution of a band of Sea
  People raiders captured in the Nile Delta. "As the fire
  rose, all the prisoners cried out to various gods. Some
  named gods of our land, even offering prayer to Anubis
  in the most correct way. Most called upon the power of
  darkness that they named Laza Omri Baras, which the
  priests said signifies The God of the River of Darkness.'
  But he did not attend to their prayers, and so they
  perished." Another record, from a ship captain who was
  the only one of his crew to escape a massacre while on
  a voyage from Thebes to Athens, gave the name of the
  god in question as "Lau-Som-Bheu," which is quite
  passable Proto-Indo-European for "profiting together
  by knowledge" or "profiting together by domination."
  I could multiply the examples, but these should
  suffice. Our Antediluvian's name came to the lips of
  pillagers wishing to invoke a power of potency and
  authority. This may not constitute proof in a purely
  academic sense, but then this is not a university. You
  will not be graded for failure to master points of detail,
  merely destroyed at some point for want of knowledge
  that could have saved you if only you'd bothered to
  grasp more fully your heritage.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  18
  \
  
  THE FIRST DISPERSAL
  In 1627 B.C., 
  the volcanic island of Thera erupted.
  Foolish scholars try to link it with everything from the
  Exodus to Atlantis, when it was simply what it was —
  a tremendous eruption, spewing ash and dust around
  the world. The sea recovered quickly enough, but many
  coastal havens suffered. In the wake of the eruption,
  something like a third of our clan chose to seek better
  feeding and opportunity elsewhere.
  The Antediluvian made one of its periodic great
  wanderings at this time, returning centuries later with
  the childe Montano, whose name we associate with the
  foolishness of honor. More of that another time. It
  didn't travel alone, and we can establish firm connec-
  tions between the post-Thera dispersal and the
  appearance of Lasombra Methuselahs in Africa and
  interior Asia. The subject of Lasombra in the New
  World before A.D. 1492 is a little more complex, and
  we'll save that for later. Suffice it to say that Lasombra
  of the Fourth and Fifth Generations established them-
  selves throughout much of the world at this time, albeit
  in small numbers.
  I see a question. Ah, yes. Yes, certainly a world filled
  with dark skies is good for us. But a world in which our food
  supply is diminished and more defensive isn't. The mortal
  toll of the eruption is what motivated the dispersal.
  PARASITES AND PLAGUES
  I will not speak in detail of our clan's involvement
  with pirates during the Greek-dominated centuries
  after the dark age. One man's pirate is another man's
  hero, to begin with. The line between soldier and pirate
  is the line between you and me. The decentralized
  governments of the time favored opportunity and... I
  must address a point of terminology.
  Cainites stricken with conscience, that most lamen-
  table retention from their mortal days, sometimes rant
  about us as a race of parasites. We aren't, of course. We are
  predators. We are also, in a rather literal sense, a disease
  uponhumanity. Consider the course of a plague. It emerges,
  sweeps through the area, kills all those most susceptible
  and then fades into inactivity. That's the way raiders and
  warriors within humanity operate. They emerge, gather
  all the interesting loot and then wait until more loot
  arrives. We do the same, when we operate in a style more
  mobile than the Camarilla's favored hiding. Piracy is part
  of our clan's legacy. It's also a remarkably sensible way for
  Cainites to exist.
  Kine epidemiologists refer to humanity and other
  target species as a disease's way of making more disease.
  The same rule applies to them. Humanity is a Cainite's
  way of making more Cainites, or of simply feeding well.
  Note that this perspective immediately cures the
  common misconception that human history as such is
  driven by our desires. It isn't, and it doesn't need to be.
  The kine choose as they will. So do we. Events that
  favor our good feeding and continued reproduction
  endure. Events that make existence harder for us do not,
  because at those times we seek to cull out those respon-
  sible for the problem. We don't initiate many
  developments because we don't need to, any more than
  evolution has to wait for a species to deliberately inno-
  vate. The myriad choices human beings make every
  year are the social equivalent of mutations, and we are
  the force of unnatural selection.
  Like a disease evolving toward commensurate rela-
  tions with its host, we aim toward a state in which the
  kine prosper (insofar as we wish them to) and so do we.
  None of this requires us to be kings over them. As their
  true masters, we can and do take what suits us without
  the petty demands of being first among equals. Human
  beings don't participate in the social life of their herds,
  and we don't need to, either.
  THE SECOND DISPERSAL
  All good things must come to an end, we are told.
  So it was with the golden era of Mediterranean piracy.
  Alexander's empire seriously constrained our opera-
  tions in the eastern Mediterranean — for half a decade
  one simply couldn't mount a suitably profitable large sea
  campaign, and things remained relatively grim for de-
  cades thereafter. For all their various squabbles,
  Alexander's warring successors often maintained their
  guard against our folk and our comrades in spirit.
  The crushing blow came from Pompey, a Roman
  general, 68 years before the commonly reckoned birth
  of Christ. The man should have been one of ours, so
  great was his talent. In mere months, he took the vast
  power and wealth the Roman Senate granted him and
  eradicated essentially all organized piracy throughout
  the Mediterranean Sea. No longer was the sea ours.
  Now the Roman name "Mare Nostrum" or "Our Sea"
  was something more than an idle boast. Many of our
  clan's havens fell to joint sea and land invasions, includ-
  ing the Maltese stronghold that had until then most
  often provided the Antediluvian with its home. There-
  after the black citadel in Sicily served as our father's
  frequent haven.
  With piracy no longer an option, our clan went
  through a second era of dispersal. By the end of the first
  Christian century, Lasombra had spread everywhere in
  the Old World, though many of those who went east
  subsequently perished at the hands of Cathayans and
  CHAFER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  19
  \
  
  I
  other menaces. Pompey's crusade also gave significant
  reinforcement to the terrestrial faction of our clan.
  I have spoken primarily of our clan on the waves. It
  is also true that some lineages felt more comfortable
  dwelling on land, weaving themselves into the fabric of
  human societies and wearing the resulting garments as
  both camouflage and lure. The Antediluvian itself
  experimented on mortal communities, though prima-
  rily as part of its ongoing search for desirable childer. As
  members of the Sabbat, you know that identification
  with humanity cripples us, blinds us to our true poten-
  tial. You inherit an ancient and glorious tradition of
  mastery from outside. However, certain things must be
  said about the rival tradition of mastery from within.
  As you meet Cainites who belong to other clans,
  you'll find a straightforward correlation. The more
  dedicated a clan is to preserving the foolish illusion of
  humanity, for whatever reason, the more its members
  boast of their glories in "controlling" or "manipulating"
  human societies. The Ventrue and Brujah in particular
  make much of this, to the extent that childer Embraced
  mere nights ago seem determined to reenact the Punic
  Wars in their social relations. You should feel at liberty
  to mock such pretensions — in fact, you should feel
  compelled. I hope to point out a few of the complexities
  LASOMBRA HAVGNSAND
  /: ;; 
  THE COURSE OF EMPIRE 
  1
  •
  : 'Our clan has a very ancient practice that is f
  tregrettably not generally available to you newcom-
  1 ers. Ever since human empires began to expand, :
  some of us have followed just behind the front lines, J
  setting up havens in conquered lands and letting the
  imperial forces keep away all other troubles while we
  make them take care of our sundry needs. Lasombra '.'.
  went with Hittites and Sumerians and Parthians, so
  it should come as no surprise that we went with |
  Romans as well. Elders describe those centuries as a
  good ones for the clan, because dissenters could
  spread out to engage in experiments without cutting ;j
  off contact with the main body of the clan. Not until ?
  •!the last three hundred years or so did we get so much |
  routine exchange of information and resources. 
  f
  Alas, I do not see how you and your peers can D
  enjoy anything comparable without either cheap i
  travel to the stars or a massive collapse of existing s
  ^Social institutions. Some of your clanmates tried to !
  1 engineer a nuclear war or global plague for precisely •;<
  that reason, but none of their efforts worked out. The i
  iCourts of Blood authorized the, destruction of all |
  involved. You may not purchase your haven at the |
  cost of everyone else's. 
  1
  of the real situation, which are in my opinion vastly
  more interesting than Cainite mythology.
  ROME
  As I was saying, Pompey's campaign shifted the
  focus of clan attention. It simply wasn't feasible to
  continue piracy as our primary mode of predation.
  Many of you probably think of the Roman Empire
  as a looming, static sort of thing. It wasn't. For one
  thing, in 68 B.C. it wasn't an empire. It was a delight-
  fully corrupt and convoluted republic of a sort, dominated
  by an aristocracy who made a fetish of hobbling the
  strong. A century before Pompey's crusade, the republic
  controlled territory from eastern Spain over to the
  westernmost tip of Greece. Carthage still stood, though
  most of its empire was already gone. By the time Pompey
  went into action, the republic had pushed its frontier
  south to include former Carthaginian lands (and the
  blighted ruin of Carthage itself), all of Greece, Egypt
  and much of Asia Minor.
  Fun as it might be to claim otherwise, Cainites had
  very little to do with this. Certainly our forebears did
  their part to build up networks of contacts, cultivate
  mortal proteges and the like. We read of the occasional
  general stricken with a mad fear of shadow or of myste-
  rious murderers in the night, and you may smile in
  recognition. Nevertheless, an empire doesn't run on
  such things. All vampiric influence amounts to correc-
  tive nudges and reefs in the path of human history. The
  very futility of vampiric rulership should be a lesson to
  you that it's not what we're fitted by nature (or perhaps
  unnature) to do.
  Pompey's success led to the downfall of the republic.
  The details are complex. Suffice it to say that a jealous
  Senate tried to strip him of power and deny his requests on
  behalf of his troops, and that when the dust settled twenty
  or thirty years later, the republic was gone. Julius Caesar
  ruled openly as emperor, and by the time he died the
  empire had grown to almost its furthest extent.
  At least two codified versions of the Path of Night
  date to around the beginning of the Christian era. Chris-
  tianity itself spread so rapidly because Roman citizens
  traveled with unprecedented ease and safety, and you
  know how interesting the Christian faith has been to
  many of us. The Courts of Blood moved away from their
  Babylonian origins to reflect fresh thought among both
  humans and Cainites about efficiency and justice, with
  results that remain largely applicable even tonight.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  20
  
  THE THIRD LESSON:
  THE GREAT REVOLT
  The Festival of the Dead is over. As always, the police
  and the mayor scramble for hasty explanations about all the
  extra bodies. As always, they tried to cover it up, but
  amused Sabbat made sure to keep the local media informed,
  and the corpses made fine frontpage news. Andrew reaches
  up to feel the bishop's hat given to him on the last night of the
  festival, marking his triumph over his rivals. Ductus no
  more — now it's Bishop Emory, thank you very much. His
  pleasure in the moment would be complete were it not for the
  elder standing next to him, surveying the city from the debris
  of the house they torched in last night's fire dance.
  Brother Oso looks like the bear of his name. He's half
  a foot taller than Andrew, with fiery red hair and beard.
  Thick curly hair covers his arms and hands, the thickest
  Andrew can recall ever seeing on someone who wasn't
  trans/ormingmtoananima[/orrn. Brother Oso is bulky, but
  it doesn't look like there's any fat or flab there. Andrew
  remembers quite vividly watching Oso juggle three flaming
  roof beams, all the while balanced on one foot and using the
  free foot to keep kicking at the firemen unfortunate enough
  to be first on the scene.
  Oso turns from the panorama to look down at Andrew.
  "You 
  have a worthy pack, bishop. If they last, I expect that
  they'll be following you on the path to honors."
  "Thank you, sir. I hope so." Andrew doesn't know
  how much deference Oso actually wants, so he aims for a
  neutral tone open to many interpretations.
  "Iwouldliketospeakwifathembeforelkave.Doyouobject?''
  "I'd 
  be honored. I take pride in having a pack who
  understands their world, and whatever you choose to share
  would no doubt serve that end."
  Oso nods, then casually vaults backward, landing with
  a twist to face the gathered pack.
  M URDERING THE FATHER
  None of you know what it's like to exist in the
  presence of a god, or something so powerful that it might
  as well be a god. You look at your leaders in the Festival
  and find them intimidating, but not one of them is more
  than four centuries old. I was the oldest present at the
  rite, and I am less than a thousand years old myself. But
  I know what our founder's gaze was like, and why it
  made the great patricide necessary.
  You are ambitious creatures. It's part of your nature,
  and if you showed no drive to improve your position,
  you wouldn't have made it this far. You chafe under the
  dead hand of those over you, looking at the archbishop
  or the cardinal and thinking how many decades they're
  likely to stay right where they are. Don't look surprised.
  Remember that it's difficult to keep secrets from your
  elders; plan accordingly. But now imagine that your
  leaders had existed not just for decades but for millen-
  nia, that you could at any time find yourself commanded
  by a creature older than all recorded history. Imagine all
  your hopes and fears known and dismissed, your plans
  casually toyed with to suit some scheme older than the
  language you speak.
  THE GREAT REBEL
  Our clan in its modern form begins with Gratiano
  de Veronese, scion of a medieval Italian noble family.
  He grew up in the early 12th century, in the hothouse
  of peninsula politics. The German empire ruled the
  region's upper half, with the Norman Kingdom of Sicily
  controlling most of the rest. Religious and civil politics
  were often one and the same thing, and always inter-
  fered with each other.
  Gratiano was one ambitious young noble among
  many. He first made his mark as an articulate preacher,
  using the bishopric his family bought for him when he
  was still in his twenties to rouse popular support for
  family causes. In the guise of righteous anger at noble
  sins, he skillfully set the mob against inconvenient
  rivals, generally picking up much of the glory they
  dropped in their hasty flights. Once the de Veronese
  family was secure, he turned to wider ranging matters.
  Specifically, he hoped to assemble an effective coali-
  tion that could force the imperial government to grant
  more autonomy in Italy.
  In this he failed, completely. Thecity-stateswouldn'tgive
  up their prerogatives, and all the nobles in the empire chose
  to pursue their separate advantage rather than cooperate
  againsttheenemyin the background. Inasmall way, Gratiano's
  efforts at inspiring resistance likely contributed to the mid-
  century extinction of most city-states' independence. They
  became sufficiently annoying that theempire and theNorman
  Sicilians each crushed those within reach. That, however,
  came later. What mattered at the time—about 1130—was
  that Gratiano realized he was not fated to be the next
  Charlemagne or Pompey. He planned to step back from the
  national stage to return to the concerns ofhis own family, after
  one final visit to the emperor.
  It was one visit too many. The de Veroneses felt
  troubled during his absence, harboring inner doubts
  about Gratiano's real worth or intentions. They didn't
  think to associate these new fears with the denser-than-
  usual shadows ranging through their estate, and of
  course with merely mortal willpower they never would
  get the chance. All they knew, with increasing cer-
  tainty, is that Gratiano had offended the family's honor
  \
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  21
  \
  
  with his hubris and deserved punishment. Family agents
  quietly undermined Gratiano's efforts, as did whispers
  in the nighttime corridors of empire.
  You recognize the secret face of this story. Yes, the
  Lasombra Antediluvian had taken an interest in Gratiano,
  feeling that the time had come again for it to make a new
  childe. It set about ruining his life to test his character, just
  as our clan does to its potential childer now.
  Gratiano responded to the challenges with re-
  newed fervor. It became a point of pride with him to face
  down opponents and destroy their arguments, humiliat-
  ing them in front of witnesses. He gained quite a
  following among dissidents around the imperial throne
  who felt that Gratiano made much sense when he
  talked about the benefits to the empire of a more
  indirect rule in Italy. Unfortunately for the childe-to-
  be, his arguments couldn't penetrate the reinforced
  mental barriers of the officials who actually had the
  power to approve or deny his requests. When the
  vaguely worded summons back home arrived one day,
  Gratiano found himself forced to admit defeat for the
  first time in his adult life (at least the first failure of any
  goal that had become important to him).
  The irony here is that Gratiano actually had plot-
  ted to betray his family. Bavarian and Bohemian nobles
  with interests in Italy convinced him to betray his
  former associates in the Italian autonomy movement in
  exchange for estates and opportunities in Germany.
  Gratiano made no great effort to conceal his growing
  enjoyment of German custom. He simply concealed
  how deep the change of sentiment ran.
  The failed diplomat returned home to face arrest.
  His parents accused him of treachery, of plotting to
  subvert the family's position through calculated of-
  fenses to the empire, which he would then exploit for
  personal gain. Quite convincing evidence accompa-
  nied the charges. You know how well some of you can
  fool mortals; just think what a few thousand years'
  practice could do for you. In any event, Gratiano went
  to jail and the threat of imminent execution.
  The Antediluvian came into his cell and spoke
  with him that night. It was not the Antediluvian's
  custom to force the Embrace on anyone. For its own
  reasons, it wished its childer to ask for the change. Much
  to its surprise, Gratiano wasn't initially inclined to
  accept. He felt sure that he could negotiate his way out
  of the situation and laid out two fully developed schemes,
  either of which would suffice for the purpose. Naturally
  he found the Antediluvian fascinating, and he certainly
  wanted to learn more about being a Cainite, but he
  didn't feel himself so deprived of opportunity that he
  would want to give up life just yet.
  With surprise and a touch of dismay, the Antedilu-
  vian withdrew to make other arrangements. The
  following night it returned to the cell. This time Gratiano
  did not leap up in surprise, for the torturers had broken
  both his legs. His eyes did not widen in shock, for they
  were both swollen shut after repeated beatings. The
  Antediluvian didn't need to do much to inspire the de
  Veronese interrogators to do their worst to the young
  man — it simply showed them and the family elders
  proof of Gratiano's German deals. The Antediluvian
  now spoke again to Gratiano about the blessings of the
  Embrace, and this time Gratiano listened more care-
  fully. He realized that mere mortal cleverness wouldn't
  serve. With that realization, he accepted the Embrace.
  The details of Gratiano's escape are mundane
  enough, involving a body altered through blood magic
  to resemble him and left in his place. What matters is
  that Gratiano accompanied the Antediluvian to its
  Sicilian stronghold. As he realized how far the black
  hand of the clan (and of other clans) reached into the
  affairs he'd tried to direct as a mortal, he became filled
  with the desire to topple the Antediluvian just as he
  hoped to topple the emperor. As his first step, he set
  about becoming the Antediluvian's model childe.
  Some of you can sense the future, and you've seen
  demonstrations enough to know that stronger oracles
  exist. It seems ludicrous to believe that the Antediluvian
  had no inkling of its coming destruction. Several theories
  prevail as to why it allowed Gratiano to continue.
  • Outside support: That is, Gratiano did not act
  alone. Either another Antediluvian or some other force
  gave him aid. You'll hear rumors of infernalists or the
  spirit-demons of the old Tzimisce domains. Disregard
  them. They're ludicrous. You may meet Gratiano your-
  self some night, and whatever else may be true of him,
  he does not reek of the infernal or anything like it. As for
  other manipulators, well, a theory that can explain
  away all evidence isn't actually useful at all.
  • Suicide: That is, the Antediluvian chose to
  perish. Perhaps it got bored, perhaps it felt it had atoned
  for some primal sin or that it never could. Why does
  anyone ever commit suicide?
  • Plan gone awry: That is, the Antediluvian
  wanted its patricidal childe for some scheme of its own,
  and Gratiano's rebellion was a matter of sheer luck on
  his part, bad luck on his sire's part, or both. Like the
  "outside support" theory, this offers no basis for analysis,
  so in practical terms it's a religious doctrine.
  Whatever the case, the fact is that the Antediluvian
  accepted Gratiano's flattery and ignored the elders who
  whispered to it that he would do in the dark palace what
  he'd tried to do in Germany. I was myself Embraced some
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  22
  
  decades after Gratiano and remember vividly the atmo-
  sphere — Gratiano continued to try directing the Italian
  principalities, now using his powers as well as his native
  aptitudes. It didn't work all that well, but he gained
  valuable experience and became increasingly annoyed
  with the vampiric hierarchy that blocked him far more
  thoroughly than any mortal one ever could. We young
  ones often spoke in the early morning, just before slumber,
  about the desirability of fresh opportunity. What distin-
  guished Gratiano was that he dared to act on it.
  THE ERA OF REVOLT
  I can scarcely describe to you what a horrible era the
  14th and 15th centuries were for us as Cainites. The
  great plague swept away much of our food and left
  remaining mortals sparse enough that maintaining our
  disguises within the mortal world became more diffi-
  cult. Meanwhile, Cainites continued to create childer,
  making more cities crowded to intolerable levels. While
  the Antediluvians themselves spent more and more
  time in torpor, far too many Methuselahs remained
  active to torment us all with unobtainable prestige.
  While they and their rotten sires ruled, we could expect
  never to achieve what we felt to be our potential.
  Violence erupted as generations clashed and as clans
  forced into competition for valuable kine resources
  sharpened their antipathy.
  To make matters worse, we faced organized mortal
  opposition on an unprecedented scale. The fools of our
  kind alerted clerical and civil authorities to our presence.
  The Inquisition mutated from a random collection of
  doctrinal questioners into an efficient secret police, ca-
  pable of ferreting out us and our pawns. Just as the
  Inquisition's ranks swelled, the expanding Ottoman pres-
  ence — all the way to Vienna, before turning back! —
  forced eastern European Cainites to flee westward. Their
  movements and their crowding into others' cities only
  made it that much easier for the hunters to find us all.
  By my tally, the overwhelming majority of the
  Cainites who existed in 1350 had perished by 1500,
  whether at the hands of mortals or Cainites. You can
  picture nothing like it. You are all too young to remem-
  ber the 1919 influenza, let alone actual genocide. It was
  a time in which all saw that we could not continue as
  before. That was Gratiano's great contribution.
  Gratiano planned while the rest of us fretted and
  dabbled. He made contacts among the so-called anarchs,
  listening to their complaints and showing them twin
  lessons. First, he taught them how to identify and
  exploit opportunities in whatever their circumstances
  of the moment happened to be. For most of a century he
  ran a sort of Socratic academy for anarchs, covering
  CHAFUR ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  23
  
  Qso's account differs in some ways from the
  ones found in other Vampire books. From the
  vantage point of the Final Nights, there's no objec-
  tive way to establish the truth of the matter. All
  surviving witnesses and participants claim great
  certainty of their recollections. Simple tests reveal
  that they are all telling the truth as they recall it, and
  that all involved are sure that no mind control,
  hypnosis or other mental manipulation happened
  along the way. Nearly all Lasombra know what
  Dominate feels like, and none of the conflicting
  accounts shows such traces. Nonetheless, the stories
  don't add up. Cainites interested in Sabbat history
  deal with discrepancies mostly through selective
  ignorance and discreet silences.
  " 
  '
  mortal and vampiric politics, the use of religious orders,
  trade and the like. Second, he showed them that how-
  ever useful these lessons might be, in the end it all came
  down to the whim of the eldest. In between sessions of
  his academy, he traveled all over Europe, cultivating
  new alliances outside the clan. His deals with the
  Assamites of the Holy Land and the Balkans proved
  most important for us all.
  Sometime around 1400, Gratiano became convinced
  that he could destroy our Antediluvian. For two full
  mortal generations he laid his plans. Around the middle
  of the century, things finally started to happen. The
  "Victory Order" and other groups of Lasombra enforcers
  encountered anarchs with memories of Lasombra elders
  conspiring with them to commit acts of diablerie. Some
  such memories immediately proved false, while others
  held up to sustained examination. The Courts of Blood
  convened more and more frequently in response to charges
  of this sort of conspiracy, and the ranks of the clan's elders
  thinned visibly. The Antediluvian itself didn't seem to
  notice or care, and never answered questions about what
  its progeny should do.
  Gradually, the memories the Assamites implanted
  into selected anarchs more selectively incriminated the
  elders Gratiano saw as a threat. Above all, he wanted to
  remove Montano, but he also worried about lesser figures
  of the court. To his dismay, the targets he most wanted
  removed proved most resistant to charges based on mental
  forgery. Gratiano himself assisted the Assamites in mind
  stirring, and as he says now, never before or since did he
  ever dominate mortals so thoroughly. The pressures of his
  plan and the general situation must have inspired him to
  great heights, not to be ascended again until some future
  crisis makes it necessary.
  With the clan in chaos, the killing blow fell one
  evening in the summer of 1483. Well, perhaps not.
  Accounts differ as to the actual date; this is what I recall.
  A mixed-clan force of anarchs assaulted the Sicilian
  stronghold. The Antediluvian did not wake or rise, and
  mutual distrust hobbled Lasombra defenses. In short
  order, all the castle's inhabitants other than the Ante-
  diluvian faced the command to surrender or perish.
  Montano evaded capture for the rest of the night,
  flitting about with Obtenebration arts not known to
  anyone else (except, presumably, the Antediluvian). In
  the end, Montano escaped. Everyone else surrendered
  to Gratiano's force or became the invaders' food.
  Gratiano and a handful of elders descended into the
  depths to face the Antediluvian. The void-spirits com-
  mon to the stronghold's lower reaches were absent, so
  the descent was quick and easy. Half a dozen raiders fell
  upon the sleeping thing and drained it in minutes. It
  never awoke or stirred. When the draining finished, it
  simply crumbled into a fine black ash with tarry residue.
  There was, at the last moment, no great drama about it,
  merely the completion of a well-executed plan.
  THE CLAN WITHOUT ITS HEAD
  Gratiano convened the Friends of the Night, the
  Amid Noctis as they were then, and presented them with
  the deed already done. They could condemn him. Indeed,
  he dared them to do so, taunting them that if they did not
  stop him now, he would remake the clan into something
  altogether new. The Friends listened and stepped aside.
  Some Friends chose to join with Gratiano's revolt. Others
  kept quiet and let events unfold.
  The great rebel announced that unlike Augustus
  Giovanni, he would not claim the status of clan founder.
  He was, he said, quite content being a member of Clan
  Lasombra, now that the monster which once defined
  the clan was gone. Now every member of the clan could
  decide for himself what the lineage meant and act
  accordingly. No single will would thereafter run the
  clan: Gratiano explicitly rejected the role and "sug-
  gested" that the Friends of the Night not anoint a
  successor. Montano frantically campaigned against this
  step, but to no avail. He and a handful of his supporters
  became a roving clan-in-exile and were dubbed by some
  unknown wit among the Friends as an "anti-tribe."
  HATCHING THE SABBAT
  Just one decade after Gratiano struck the decisive
  blow against our clan as it was, the Anarch Revolt came
  to a formal end in the pathetic declaration known as the
  Convention of Thorns. In short, the vast majority of
  anarchs meekly submitted to their elders once more in
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  24
  
  \
  exchange for symbolic declarations of allegiance on the
  part of their once and future masters. Only a courageous
  handful in each clan chose to continue the fight. Our
  term, the "anti-tribe," became a badge of honor; even-
  tually the form antitribu found widest acceptance.
  You must remember that organization of any sort
  beyond the scope of a single clan was very new. The
  Camarilla was an actual innovation, something our
  kind produces only slowly. Elders turned to it not so
  much out of enthusiasm as out of the dread sense of its
  necessity. Caught between mortal pressures and chal-
  lenges from neonates, they voluntarily gave up a
  significant portion of the autonomy which used to
  define their status. The clans that stayed out of the
  Camarilla did so primarily because their elders were
  wise enough to see that the imperatives of the new
  organization would destroy old ways just as effectively as
  capitulation to the anarchs would have.
  For the next half-century, our clan simply pursued
  its own course. So did the Tzimisce, who copied our
  destruction of the Antediluvian, for similar reasons, the
  Assamites (who cravenly capitulated to the Camarilla's
  imposed curse), Giovanni, Ravnos and Setites remained
  at liberty. Our elders largely continued as they had done
  for some time, since the Courts of Blood continued to
  function. Our neonates experimented with new rela-
  tions with humanity.
  I remember very clearly the first occasion on which I
  heard the term "Sabbat" applied to a pack of Cainite
  preying on mortals. It was on Maundy Thursday in 1502,
  just after the midnight service. I remember this because I'd
  gone to Mass with certain clanmates in Naples. There was
  concern in the region about what some Friends called the
  Cainite Heresy. (I will not pause here to discuss the
  matter. Ask your pack leader, or your archbishop.) After
  the midnight service, a small group of us stood in the
  courtyard, admiring the stars and casually discussing the
  whole question of what role we played in God's order. I was
  so earnest then, and so foolish.
  One of the youngest neonates spoke up to say that
  the whole area of Italy was blighted with peasant
  superstition (as it still is), including the notion that
  covens of witches roam the countryside in "sabbats,"
  dragging off adults and children alike for hideous rituals.
  He and his associates, he claimed, dressed themselves in
  various styles traditionally ascribed to witches and
  acted as they were expected to: They ran with superhu-
  man speed into a village, shouted out that they had
  come to collect the souls due their lord Satan, break
  down doors at random and seize enough people to feed
  themselves. We all found the notion highly amusing
  and commended his ingenuity.
  I remembered that clever fellow again perhaps six
  or seven years later, when reports came to us of Cainite
  packs doing the same thing in the Danube Valley and
  along the Baltic coast. The presence of these Sabbat
  Cainites was, for many mortals, a precursor of the
  Ottoman siege at Vienna.
  FREED IN BLOOD
  Not long after the Ottoman tide peaked and turned
  back, we began to hear in Sicily of this new thing, the
  Vaulderie. You, of course, take it for granted. You
  cannot easily imagine what a startling thing it was.
  Bishop Emory never subjected any of you to a blood
  bond, did he? No, I thought not. It used to be that your
  sire or another elder could bind you to himself by
  making you drink his blood, and you would feel com-
  pelled to obey his whim, and love it. It was the recurring
  threat against disobedient childer.
  Suddenly, thanks to some anonymous blood magi-
  cian, we were free of the threat. We could form bonds
  to our like-minded peers, the Cainites to whom wechose
  to commit ourselves, and leave the elders none the
  wiser. I myself was one of the first to drink from the
  Vaulderie cup in the grand rituals we held above the
  ashes of our Antediluvian, and I helped remove my sire
  not long thereafter. It was a sweet, sweet thing. When-
  ever you chafe under the bond that the Vaulderie
  creates, remember the alternative, and know that the
  old horror is always waiting to creep back if we cease our
  vigilant guard.
  Whoever invented the Vaulderie, it spread like wild-
  fire in the middle of the 16th century. Quite soon,
  particularly as Cainites measure such things, it was the
  defining practice of Cainites rebelling against the Camarilla
  and the sect's masters, just as the Sabbat pack was already
  the defining organizational unit. The combination of the
  two created a sense of unity among the dissenters. Some-
  time around the middle of the century, we began referring
  to ourselves as the Sabbat. The Courts of Blood first used
  the term in charges brought in 1552, and again in 1558,
  and then regularly after that. Remember, of course, that at
  this point we Lasombra mostly associated with each other;
  cross-clan packs were still rare as far as we were concerned.
  We regarded them suspiciously, even with the Vinculum
  bond at work.
  Nonetheless, we took part in efforts to harass and
  undermine the Camarilla. You'll find quite a good descrip-
  tion of me in one of Charles Fort's books, where he records
  (with his usual exuberant skepticism) an attack by Cainites
  on Maltese pilgrims in 1585. Even this scar is there in his
  text. We created such a public disturbance that the
  Antediluvian-lickers spent literally years trying to smooth
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  25
  
  things over again, and of course in the end it didn't
  altogether work. Such successes came too rarely, perhaps,
  but we certainly forced them to commit more resources to
  the response than they would have liked. Our rising glory
  established us as genuine rivals to the sect and attracted a
  small but steady flow of defectors who wished to be what
  the sect would never allow: Cainites exercising them-
  selves to the fullest.
  B UILDING PATHS
  Human philosophy took fresh twists in those cen-
  turies. So did ours. But first I must lay the context for
  you, as it was a time very different from this.
  Most Cainites throughout history have always kept
  to a moral standard more or less like that of the human
  society in which they originated. They reject some
  tenets, of course, but keep to others. They are more
  likely to think of themselves as wicked people than as
  good beings by standards that have nothing to do with
  humanity. Around this contemptible fascination for
  the ways of the living, tradition placed a number of
  "Roads," more or less formalized ethical systems reflect-
  ing vampiric experience. Most of them took some
  particular interest—chivalry, or insight into mortality,
  or what have you — and magnified it into a whole... I
  believe "paradigm" is the modern word.
  In the late Middle Ages, the weaklings in the newly
  created Camarilla went on a crusade against the Roads.
  Yes, faced with rising challenges from humanity and
  given the opportunity to join the anarchs and Sabbat-
  to-be in turning on elder tyrants, they chose to purge
  Cainites who refused to pretend to be kine. I'm sure this
  impresses you just as it did me when I first learned of it.
  Yes, the Camarilla in its collective wisdom decided that
  the real problem was with those Cainites who chose not
  to exist in ways conducive to hiding among humanity.
  Many of the Roads disappeared altogether, and the rest
  vanished from general view. Afterward, their practitio-
  ners kept their secrets hidden.
  All of this created an intellectual void among Cainites.
  Under the aegis of the Sabbat, a great intellectual fervor
  roiled throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Nearly a
  dozen new ethical systems came into existence and re-
  ceived the ruthless acid test of practice in the hands and
  minds of Cainites very keen to shed more humanity
  without losing themselves to the Beast. Collectively known
  as the Paths of Enlightenment, these systems are among
  the great lasting achievements of our sect. It goes nearly
  without saying, I hope, that Clan Lasombra played a vital
  role in this development. We wisely refrained from anni-
  hilating our own distinctive Road of Night, and thus
  began with a better foundation for Path development
  \
  than any other clan. The Amies Noir provided extensive
  support for the philosophers and sages interested in codi-
  fying other approaches, as well.
  There's a curious feature of this work. Most of the
  key inventors chose to remain anonymous. We simply
  don't have reliable names or necrographies (if I may
  coin a term) for the Cainites who, for instance, formal-
  ized old dualist notions into the Path of the Cathari or
  worked out the elegant compromise that is the Path of
  Honorable Accord. You can learn much about early
  adherents to each of these, and it's a plausible guess that
  those speaking and writing early on about a given Path
  are the ones who created it, but that cannot be more
  than a guess. Perhaps there's something in the act of
  creating a system intended to be universal that conflicts
  with the normal egoism of Cainites. Or perhaps, as some
  Lasombra tell it, the fact that the creators chose to
  remain in the shadows is a literal fact as well as a
  metaphor, and indicates the creative power of the
  Abyss at work within them.
  INTO THC New WORLD
  I do not reveal a great secret when I say that despite
  our best efforts, we did not succeed in displacing the
  Camarilla from Europe. This shouldn't be any great sur-
  prise, of course. Of the clans outside the Camarilla, only
  we and the Giovanni had significant presence in Western
  Europe. The others were all, in their respective ways,
  marginal, attached to other lands. We had fervor on our
  side — holy fervor, I like to think, an echo of the passion
  that drove Caine — but we lacked the resources.
  Inevitably, then, we examined alternatives. The
  Camarilla knew about the discoveries across the Atlan-
  tic just as we did, of course. They simply didn't care,
  except for a passing interest in Aztec and Incan cities.
  We didn't have the luxury of passing interest — we had
  to find new realms for ourselves. So it was that, indi-
  vidually and then collectively, we sailed with our clan's
  own corsairs (and unwitting mortals) to carve out
  empires from the lands of the savages.
  I see a question in your faces. Yes, I said "savages."
  I don't care what social feats they achieved before
  Europeans came. A people who do not build great cities
  are not a people worth feeding from, let alone worthy
  candidates for the Embrace. The European notion that
  the city defines civilization is at least in part a tribute to
  our influence, and it is one of the great truths of our
  kind, Gangrel and other rabble notwithstanding. We
  backed settlement ventures everywhere in the New
  World to create proper homes for ourselves.
  Those were nights of chaos, or so those who made the
  trip early on tell me. Cut off from their various clans'
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  26
  
  \
  procedures for governance, the emigrants constantly
  squabbled among themselves. Efforts to organize conti-
  nent-spanning Vaulderie gatherings came to nothing, so
  the only reliable bonds of unity were local. In addition, the
  emigrants encountered a level of Lupine activity unprec-
  edented in our experience since the Stone Age. Nor did
  we get the continent to ourselves: Camarilla rabble (and
  some infiltrators disguised as rabble) made their way across
  the sea as well, bringing with them the stifling protocols
  they worship as "Traditions."
  It goes without saying that in the middle of this
  struggle, we distinguished ourselves as leaders. The
  somewhat decentralized nature of the Friends of the
  Night means that our clan's members are never wholly
  cut off so long as an experienced clanmates is nearby.
  The Courts of Blood became, for several decades, the
  closest thing to procedural justice in the New World,
  and on some occasions the Friends even contracted out
  their services to Camarilla Cainites needing disputes
  settled. Just see if any of the participants who still
  remain active ever discuss that, though.
  The subject of parallels between our practices and
  various traditions the savages practiced warrant discus-
  sion, but on some other occasion. Suffice it to say for
  now that just as we'd incorporated disparate European
  traditions to suit our emerging body of ritae, so we drew
  on these unfamiliar customs as well. Unfortunately,
  while we engaged in this syncretism, the main force of
  the Camarilla itself arrived in the late 17th century; by
  1700, significant enclaves arose in most port cities and
  some interior settlements. Our hit-and-run tactics fared
  better on the frontier, so we concentrated there, leaving
  behind too many choice morsels.
  We did better in Central and South America. Mexico,
  of course, has been ours almost since Cortez. We were
  there as the old city of Tenochtitlan became Mexico City,
  with literally miles of warrens perfect for our gatherings.
  We were slower to follow Pizarro and his ilk, but that's the
  fault of the Amazon and the fanatically Cainite-hating
  THE BLOOD MASTERS FADE
  Several holes in Lasombra history suggest the use
  of high-powered mental Disciplines. One of these is
  the activities of the thaumaturgists who inspired the
  Lasombra to support genocide in the New World.
  After about 1550, they just don't show up anymore in
  the records. Nobody asks about them. Perhaps they
  were destroyed or perished voluntarily. Perhaps not.
  They might just as easily be out there in the deserts and
  mountains, pursuing whatever ends brought them
  across the Atlantic millennia ago.
  creatures who dwell there. It took time to work out safe
  routes to new Sabbat strongholds in the mountains and
  southern shores. I don't wish to give you the impression
  that we did nothing in the English- and French-speaking
  colonies, merely that it was harder to make progress. For
  some reason the Camarilla "Kindred" from northern
  nations did a better job at opportunistic aggression than
  their southern cousins. We faced the sharpest competi-
  tion along the northern Atlantic seaboard and down the
  St. Lawrence Seaway.
  Your instructors have, I'm sure, pointed out that as
  a clan we seldom attempt to drive human affairs, simply
  to profit from them as suits our own interests. The
  matter of the conquistadors and the Aztecs is an inter-
  esting exception. Two Lasombra scholars accompanied
  the second expedition to Mexico, and they listened
  with great interest to Aztec priests' accounts of how the
  sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun, insured that
  the sun would rise every day. These were nights of
  sometimes mad ambition among our clan, and a pair of
  Spanish packs decided that they just might be able to
  plunge the world into eternal darkness by eliminating
  the Aztecs.
  This wasn't quite as ludicrous a notion as you might
  think. Early Sabbat travelers in the New World en-
  countered ancient thaumaturgists lurking in the wilds,
  practicing paths unknown in the Old World. Some of
  them seemed to be very old indeed, Methuselahs, per-
  haps even Antediluvians whose names were lost to
  history. It frankly didn't seem entirely out of the ques-
  tion that they might have powerful magic affecting the
  sun, or at least the passage of light to Earth.
  We did not make the great genocide. For that
  matter, neither did the Europeans, directly, at least.
  Disease did most of the work long before armies arrived.
  We did as a clan provide funds for missions of conquest,
  and we used our influence to support the dream of
  conquest at moments when bad news might have weak-
  ened mortal commitment to the cause. All of this
  amounted to helping mortals do what they already
  decided to do, but we made them more effective than
  they'd have been otherwise.
  As you know, the sun did not go out when sacrifices
  to Huitzilopochtli faltered and stopped. Pity.
  PEACE AND FLIGHT
  The century of mortal revolution was also a century of
  war within the Sabbat. No American or French revolu-
  tion could be any more incestuous and altogether wretched
  than the conflicts for scarce herds that swept through our
  sect. For a tense decade around 1800, it looked like the
  Sabbat—at least in the Amertcas—might not survive as
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  27
  \
  
  a united entity. Obviously, from your presence here, we
  did survive, and we owe much of that to a deal struck in
  1803. The so-called "Purchase Pact" proclaimed an end to
  old grievances and granted a right of destruction against
  individuals acting in ways that threatened the sect's
  interests. This latter gave more power to the ecclesiastical
  hierarchy that was forming at the time. (Standardized
  titles and ranks didn't appear until later in the 19th
  century.) The Purchase Pact didn't end all strife within
  the sect, nor did anyone expect it would. It reduced the
  level of existing tension and made it easier to respond
  quickly to future conflicts. That was remarkable, under
  the circumstances.
  The peace, such as it was, took time to spread south of
  English- or French-speaking lands. It never fully took hold
  in the new nations carved out of northeastern South
  America. Simon Bolivar and his revolution changed the
  mix offerees at work. The Camarilla stayed further away
  from the ongoing mess, while our kind reveled in it. Even
  now, you simply don't find many of the Antediluvian's
  servants in Colombia, Uruguay or Venezuela. In an envi-
  ronment with fewer external pressures, our internal
  differences ranged more freely, and something like warfare
  has always existed among the local archbishops and
  cardinals. Which reminds me...
  CAINITHS IN MITCRS
  Some of you, I'm sure, have wondered how it is that
  a gathering of Cainites dedicated to the free expression
  of our innermost selves comes to resemble human
  institutions dedicated to doctrinal conformity. Two
  distinct but constantly interacting forces make it so.
  First, there's parody, or rather satire. We use the
  forms of mortal religion, primarily but not exclusively
  Roman Catholicism, because it amuses us to do so.
  Cainites get bored, and a bunch of bored Cainites in one
  place is an invitation to trouble. Since we need some
  structure to our routine affairs, why not make it one with
  intricate details and much potential for administrative
  complications? Our institution, like our rites, is in part
  a game.
  Second — yes, we glorify the power of the indi-
  vidual Cainite. But to fully understand what that power
  is, we must seek the truth and eschew error. We deceive
  others. We must not deceive ourselves. The truth we
  probe is ultimately religious. Whether you subscribe to
  the modern fad for treating Cainites in anthropological
  terms or possess the courage to acknowledge that our
  existence points directly at God, spirit, soul and other
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  28
  
  facts the modem world flees, you must see that the
  questions we pose are religious ones. We deal with the
  nature of the world, of sin and damnation and redemp-
  tion, of curses and death. These are real things, not the
  product of our imagined hopes or fears. There are active
  powers in the night and beyond the stars, and those who
  approach them unprepared perish.
  The ecclesiastical hierarchy, at least when admin-
  istered the way we run the Sabbat, brings prepared
  individuals to the top. The structure serves to remind us
  all that distinctions exist between us, and that some are
  in fact better prepared for particular roles than others.
  You give obedience to your superiors because they are
  superior in certain regards. You owe your survival to
  them for performing their assigned roles properly. You
  are not prepared to confront alone the enemies we face,
  let alone the deeper threats behind them. You serve
  precisely in order to develop yourself in freedom. Total
  freedom would be mere annihilation — you surrender
  what you must to gain what you can.
  Other veterans of the Sabbat would cite at least two
  more points. Neither of them impresses me much, but
  you may as well hear them as not.
  Some members of our sect believe that this or that
  human religion actually speaks truth. The late Cardinal
  Mongada was our most prominent exponent of that
  notion with regard to Roman Catholicism. The pecu-
  liar Abyss cult among the antitribu holds the same
  notion with regard to Zoroastrian and other dualistic
  religions. They would tell you that we use mortal
  religious structures when those structures are true. Give
  this notion whatever respect you feel it deserves.
  And finally, some of our most prominent elders argue
  for the use of mortal religious structures for purely psycho-
  logical reasons. When die Sabbat came into being, Roman
  Catholicism was the official religion in the lands we were
  strongest in. Protestant Christianity prevailed elsewhere,
  but has frankly never generated a very strong set of
  symbols, so we can make little use of it. Even in Protestant
  lands, Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox) imagery conveys a
  sense of sacred authority. In Hindu lands, our cadiedrals
  hold shrines to all the gods of death, chaos and terror. In
  the Americas, we erect totem poles to dark forces and
  gather in sweat lodges as well as temples. Wherever we go,
  whatever speaks of the sacred becomes a tool for us to
  evoke a state of mind in you, while you learn to grasp die
  truths to which the symbols point.
  It grows late. The rest is for someone else to tell you.
  THE Fo URTH LESSON :
  THE R EST OF THE
  WORLD
  It's been fifteen nights since the battered freighter left
  Bangkok. Andrew and his pack are having a marvelous
  time. They came on business: The Pacific Rim cardinals
  "asked" several reliable bishops to investigate rumors of
  heterodoxy and possible infemalism among the Southeast
  Asian packs. Andrew decided to bring the pack along, to
  help them make contacts (and establish some Vinculum ties
  that might come in handy somewhere down the road) and for
  a change of scenery. Back in his living days, Andrew
  sometimes corresponded with a mysterious old crone named
  Dun Meiling who resided in Bangkok and wrote some of the
  most scathingly nihilistic revolutionary screeds Andrew ever
  encountered. It was, in the end, not a great surprise to learn
  that she was a Cainite — Brujah antitribu — and had been
  for decades.
  Dun's pack shows unusual prowess, enough to fuel
  suspicions that they've received infernal investments. An'
  drew introduced himself and his pack, and promptly got an
  invitation to join Dun and her brood on piratical rounds.
  The time since then has been glorious. The freighter, with a
  base crew of completely conditioned mortals, maneuvers
  alongside a target ship and asks for help. Dun dispenses with
  the mortal trappings of Asian piracy, the speedboats and so
  on, in favor of brute strength. She leads the pack over the side
  of their ship to the target via leaps or sprint swimming. They
  destroy any resistance by hand, take whatever valuables
  catch their fancy and depart. Sometimes they scuttle the
  ships, sometimes they leave empty derelicts to confuse
  mortal authorities.
  Tonight the two packs rest comfortably on the forward
  deck of a chartered yacht. Pieces of the crew and tourist
  passengers drift behind them, the wake glistening red in the
  reflectedjune moonlight. One of Dun's brood turns out to
  be Lasombra, and a Chinese Jew at that. This boggles the
  Americans. Lin Baloh laughs at their confusion and suc-
  cinctly explains the Jewish settlement in Nanking, syna'
  gogue'building under the Qing dynasty and other strange
  matters. He's something of a scholar, and a random ques'
  tion about some aspect of Sabbat history turns into an
  increasingly formal lecture. Andrew sits back and listens to
  Lin's careful cadences.
  THH CLAN IN THF WORLD
  I've noticed that while many proletarian Ameri-
  cans and Europeans hate to admit that any thing's wrong
  I
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  29
  
  with their lands, many bourgeois and intellectual Ameri-
  cans and Europeans seem afraid to admit that anything's
  right. The culture you were born into leads the world.
  The same is true in vampiric affairs. We childcr of Caine
  all spring from founders in the arc from Europe through
  Asia to India, as nearly as I can establish, and our sires
  spread from there.
  So the Europeans among you can take proper pride
  in being close to the heart of the clan and the sect, just
  as the Americans among you should glory in being so
  close to the great events of our time. You do not, I assure
  you, give offense by pointing out facts of history, nor
  should they embarrass you.
  ASIA
  I can establish with some certainty that Lasombra
  were creating childer in China before 1300 
  B.C., 
  and
  that Brujah and Malkavians established broods in the
  Korean peninsula not later than 1100 B.C. Dating early
  arrivals by the other clans is difficult. Of course, many
  of these strangers didn't last long in the face of opposi-
  tion by the native Cainite-spirits, whom some of you
  call Cathayans. It takes great determination and intel-
  ligence to flourish amid hostile natives, which of course
  is why the Lasombra in particular did well for them-
  selves. We have never enjoyed large numbers here, but
  throughout the recent millennia, a few dozen of us have
  always made our havens here.
  CHINA
  Traditionally, more Lasombra exist in China than,
  say, Japan or India, for several reasons. India sees enough
  Cainite presence from the other clans to make compe-
  tition both fierce and relatively unchallenging. Little
  seems distinctive, from our perspective, in grappling
  once again with Ventrue and Ravnos and so on. No
  great glory comes to those who survive in such condi-
  tions. Further east, matters change. The Cainite-like
  things who dwell here do afford us great challenges. So
  do the peculiar mortal hunters with their various preter-
  natural gifts and the fiendish alliances of Lupines and
  comparable werecreatures of other breeds. Even now,
  three thousand years after our arrival, much remains
  mysterious to us.
  I shouldn't give the impression that it's all just
  fighting other monsters. One can go decades or centu-
  ries encountering no other supernatural beings at all,
  apart from perhaps the occasional ghost. My sire and her
  sire and his sire and so on back to the Chou dynasty have
  often exercised power in mortal courts, and half of them
  never had direct experience with the "Cathayans."
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  30
  
  i!
  , ONF BLOOD
   
  ; 
  :'
  «" 
  Separate bloodlines don't arise among the |
  Lasombra outside Europe. They all share the same f
  clan disciplines. What differs is the range of com- |
  mon out'of-clan disciplines. 
  I
  Mind you, mortals can be great challenges by them-
  selves. The philosophical tradition in which I grew up
  regards supernatural manifestations not so much as
  blasphemous intrusion, the way many of you were
  taught, but as a private matter best handled through
  polite silence until it goes away. That's opportunity.
  The concomitant challenge is that observers who be-
  lieve themselves skilled in omens and propriety feel at
  liberty to attack those who engage in "improper" mani-
  festations, where your mortal ancestors would have
  deferred or fled. Fully a third of those in my lineage have
  perished at the hands of mobs.
  I've heard that Western Lasombra date their clan's
  first great expansion to the aftermath of the Thera
  eruption. That fits my research. My great-great-great-
  great-grandsire arrived, as I said, sometime before 1300
  B.C. — that gives three centuries to travel from the
  Mediterranean to China, plenty of time even with stops
  to establish broods and pursue goals other than travel.
  I can only prove the arrival of my remote ancestor in the
  Blood, but I would be unsurprised to find that he
  traveled with companions whose lineages have since
  perished. I know of another Chinese Lasombra lineage,
  in the upper Yangtze Valley, of about the same vintage,
  and I can trace back a Japanese Lasombra lineage to
  1200 B.C. or so.
  More Lasombra arrived around the dawn of the
  Christian era, as part of the post-Pompey dispersal.
  Many of you never learned this in school, but for a
  century or more, the eastern edge of the Roman empire
  and the western edge of the Chinese empire were within
  a few hundred miles. While diplomats never made the
  crossing officially, traders did. At least half a dozen
  lineages run back to the period from about 50 B.C. to
  A.D. ZOO, when the Han empire fell into civil war and
  the western frontier became much less hospitable.
  Lasombra who presented themselves as gods of dark-
  ness seldom flourished — the Confucian tradition is not
  receptive to claims of authority on the part of evil spirits,
  given Confucius' obsession with moral government. Con-
  fucians do respond quite well to sage spirits in shadow who
  offer wise advice and speak with the voices of ancestors.
  Thus my ancestors in the Blood have often emphasized
  the mental arts of domination over Obtenebration. Some
  of the early Lasombra settlers brought with them mastery
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  31
  
  of the diviner's arts, secrets of concealment and disguise
  and some forms of blood magic. Auspex in particular is as
  common among us as Obtenebration, which I gather
  confuses hidebound classifiers of clan.
  Vampiric immigration came to a nearly complete
  stop for centuries after Rome and Han China fell.
  Climatic changes dried up old routes, and various inter-
  nal conflicts among the "Cathayans" made it difficult to
  develop new ones. The existing lineages settled into an
  isolated existence, drawing intellectual stimulation from
  their mortal environs rather than the interplay of kin-
  dred thoughts. Some, like my own line, flourished in
  great cities, playing subtle games of influence and study.
  My own sire and grandsire still compile their notes for
  a comprehensive mathematical model of human be-
  havior, with enthusiasm not noticeably dimmed despite
  centuries of data collection. The Yangtze lineage I
  mentioned earlier occupies itself by acting as oracles,
  flitting here and there to answer prayers and petitions.
  A small brood ranging through the northwestern desert
  seems to spend most of its time desecrating tombs in the
  search for evidence of elders in torpor. Whatever keeps
  one's attention focused, I suppose.
  Contact with Europe resumed in the 15th century,
  and an era of purges followed once more Lasombra
  arrived. Some Asian lineages had become just plain
  peculiar and not dedicated to behaving in ways condu-
  cive to survival. Word of the Antediluvian's destruction
  and rise of the Sabbat came less than a century after the
  initial contacts with Lasombra who'd come on Portu-
  guese and Spanish vessels, and it was a deeply confusing
  time. The fact that I am here now, comfortable among
  you, shows that the Sabbat view prevailed, but 1 can and
  do still regret that nearly half of the Lasombra lineages
  active in 1400 had to be destroyed by 1600 for their
  refusal to adjust to the new reality.
  In a way, the news that one of the founding Cainites
  had been destroyed helped win us relief from some
  confrontations with the native Cainite-spirits. Their
  mythology teaches a version of the Wheel of Ages in
  which, as time passes, more demons arise. Creatures
  capable of slaying the eldest are sufficiently demonic for
  many "Cathayans," and while they didn't like us much,
  they left us alone at least some of the time, as harbingers
  of the age. We were of course glad to exploit this belief
  to secure ourselves.
  Industrialization was a boon for us. Large urban
  populations in a condition of extreme alienation make
  wonderful prey and also sometimes cast up just the sort
  of humanity-hating visionary who becomes an asset to
  our clan. The smoke of factories, particularly the old
  coal-burners, makes a marvelous night sky, all cloud and
  reflected fire, much more interesting (at least to my eye)
  than irrelevant stars. I myself was one such visionary in
  the wake of the Taiping Rebellion, bitterly disillu-
  sioned by the manifest failure of my revered leader and
  by association disillusioned with all of Chinese tradi-
  tion. I threw myself into Westernization wholeheartedly,
  though it did not relieve my soul. My sire spotted some
  of my poetry—why, Bishop Emory, you smile. You too?
  Heh. Once again we find that the Toreador hold no
  monopoly on the arts as a tool for recruitment.
  In any event, when I speak of the desirability of the
  wretched age, you must understand that I have a per-
  sonal attachment to it all. I give thanks for the
  circumstances that brought me here.
  LANDS AROUND CHINA
  To the best of my knowledge, few Lasombra flourish
  in Japan, the Koreas, the Indochinese peninsula and
  elsewhere in Asia, nor have they ever done well there.
  My sire used to speak of bands of "feral" Lasombra who
  roam the New Guinea highlands, encouraging tribal
  warfare and feeding on the fallen. I didn't hear the
  phrase "urban legend" until much later, but even at the
  time I suspected a tale.
  AFRICA
  Discussing Cainite history in Africa before the
  colonial powers' arrival is a mess at the best of times. In
  recent years — the last generation or so — mortal
  scholars have argued quite passionately and sometimes
  entertainingly about the real ethnicity of this civiliza-
  tion or that, the flow of ideas from one civilization to
  another. They don't realize that arguments over who
  owes what to whom have been going on since before
  anything their history records.
  The best person I know of to talk with you about
  this would have been our packmate Liu Dou, who
  resided in Kenya from 1575 until 1976. Unfortunately,
  last year he ran into a mid-level bureaucrat whose view
  of herself as a monster hunter in training proved much
  less delusional than we would have guessed. She's dead
  now, 
  but Liu is ash. I will do what I can to pass along his
  thoughts, along with my own study.
  It's very difficult to distinguish early Lasombra from
  early African Cainites of any other sort. As the saying
  has it, they all look alike to European-based chroniclers.
  I myself cannot readily distinguish the various tribes
  that produced Liu's childer, or even predictably identify
  an African as Bantu or Nilotic or what have you. Many
  observers, particularly those with axes to grind, fail to
  make important distinctions or create divisions where
  none exist. I am quite certain, for instance, that while
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  32
  
  some of the members of the African bloodline some-
  times called "Laibon" do refer to one of their distinctive
  gifts of Caine with the Swahili name "Abombwe," none
  of them did so before the invention of Swahili, and that
  even now Cainites inhabiting all the places in Africa
  that do not speak Swahili are unlikely to do so. In some
  eras, mania for grand syntheses arise, often at the
  expense of particulars.
  When dealing with Cainites, the problems that
  affect the study of mortal cultures only get worse. Few of
  us exist, and when we get powerful enough, our delu-
  sions become very hard to shake. In his final decades, for
  instance, my grandsire refused to acknowledge that the
  Ming dynasty had in fact fallen to the Qing. And within
  his haven, it hadn't, or at least you couldn't tell that it
  had. His hapless, mind-controlled guests created arti-
  facts to support his views, and no one in the area could
  disagree without a tremendous act of will. So the fact
  that an elder believes it was a great force in the land in
  the time of this dynasty or that does not itself constitute
  proof, even if you find the account credible in some
  ways.
  So you must understand that everything I have to
  say on these matters is tentative and conditional. Pro-
  ceed carefully.
  WHHRF No LASOMBRA HAVE BEEN
  As nearly as I know, there has never been a signifi-
  cant Lasombra presence in Egypt. The Setites have
  always thrived there, as have Lupines with a particular
  fetish for hunting Cainites. Even more so than their
  kind's general obsession with that pastime, I mean.
  Only the advantages of Sabbat practice make it possible
  for a band of Lasombra to venture in reasonably safely
  on a particular errand, and even then they shouldn't
  linger. Likewise, I know of no Lasombra presence among
  the Pygmy peoples.
  ANCIENT KINGDOMS
  Now, clear-cut evidence places Lasombra in east-
  em Africa south of Egypt even before the post-Thera
  dispersal. Half a dozen words in the ancient language of
  Meroe, far up the Nile from Egypt, reflect names of
  known childer of the Antediluvian. Pottery from the
  Khartum Mesolithic culture, around 10,000 years ago,
  sometimes depicts scenes of shadows flying under the
  moon, images that look familiar to anyone who knows
  our powers. The Antediluvian's Sicilian stronghold
  contained silver artifacts crafted in styles that nour-
  ished in Nubia and Meroe in Mesolithic and Neolithic
  times, and as nearly as I know they came across the sea
  not long after their making. One of them, at least,
  features in Pompey's account of his attack on Sicily's
  pirates as "a chalice of great antiquity, ascribed to the
  power of a night spirit from far to the south," which the
  pirates filled with blood and drank before their raids.
  A little further south, we find similar evidence of
  Lasombra presence in Ethiopia. It is, of course, well
  known that the Antediluvian's eldest surviving childe,
  the great failure Montano, came from one of the tribes
  wandering through the land that modern maps divide
  between Ethiopia and Kenya. If you listen carefully,
  you'll hear that the stories speak of previous experi-
  ments by the Antediluvian among those various tribes.
  The nomadic peoples who settled Kenya 4,000 years
  ago almost immediately took up maritime activity. I
  strongly suspect that the Antediluvian's interest in
  seafaring had something to do with this, with it using
  them for its sundry ventures. I find intriguing hints of an
  ancient Lasombra presence in what's now Mozambique,
  but the migrations that settled Kenya also wiped out
  preexisting societies on the southeastern coast. Too
  little evidence exists to settle the question.
  SHADOWS AMONG MANY
  What interests me most is that once our clan
  arrived in Africa (or returned to it, depending on your
  preferred theory of vampiric origins), our predecessors
  never made much of a mark on the mortal societies they
  preyed upon. The Antediluvian itself engineered catas-
  trophes of various sorts but gave that up after the second
  dispersal, and few or none of its childer attempted to do
  the same. Did the Antediluvian fear the creation of
  some destructive rival? The ironist in me wants to
  believe that it did, and that this set the scene for its
  destruction thanks to the absence of a real challenger to
  Gratiano, later.
  Cainites of other clans set themselves up from time
  to time as kings and sages. We did not. We inspired fear.
  Our influence was indirect and indeed undirected.
  While you may trace the evolution of myths about dark
  gods and night powers and show how they stem from our
  activities, you will find precious few accounts of any of
  those powers speaking to fearful mortals, providing
  explicit lessons or commands. We were what we were,
  and they reacted as they deemed fit.
  You will also find a surprising number of havens —
  literally dozens, if not hundreds — inhabited by tightly
  bound brood lineages for centuries or millennia, that
  seem to have had no impact on any nearby kine. They
  fed, chose childer, pursued their philosophical or reli-
  gious ambitions and passed without a trace. Abyss
  mysticism flourished among the African lurkers, along
  with research into the nature of our blood-borne pow-
  ers. Perhaps if some strong leader had risen among
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  33
  \
  
  them, the African lineages would feature prominently
  in clan history. As it is, they're scarcely a footnote.
  Tne FIFTH LESSON:
  INTO THe FINAL
  NIGHTS
  Demba returns to Portland in mid-October. She's been
  traveling around California, trying to make sense of the
  continuously evolving chaos among Cainites there, and not
  at all sure she understands what's going on. She decided to
  celebrate the Grand Ball in more secure circumstances and
  likes the styk of the Oregon Sabbat.
  Andrew, for his part, continues to consolidate his
  position as bishop. It's tricky, particularly with two of his
  pack gone under ignominious circumstances. Ming left a
  note sayingshe was off to find the antitribu. Druitt promptly
  challenged Andrew to Monomacy, claiming obvious failure
  of leadership, and the ambitious young Cainite perished on
  the field. Two more individuals from other packs also tried
  to take the bishopric away; Andrew mastered Black Meta-
  morphosis in the course of beating them down.
  It's two nights before the Grand Ball, now. Nomadic
  packs begin to gather. Andrew's own pack is back from
  stirring up incidents to keep the police busy, and relaxing in
  the chill rain. Demba started talking about the Anarch Free
  State, the New Promise Mandarinate and the rest of the
  sordid mess down south and gradually segued into a more
  thorough review of Sabbat affairs in modem times. Andrew
  enjoys her reviews, since he always picks up somethingnew.
  BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
  The Lasombra position in Europe before the Indus-
  trial Revolution may best be described as "bad." The
  same goes for the Sabbat as a whole. It's just not easy to
  take on a well-established secret hierarchy connected
  to a variety of groups who'd love to destroy you. We
  retained a few strongholds in Spain, the Sicilian fortress
  and enclaves here and there. Beyond that, only no-
  madic packs could flourish. The one good thing about
  the Camarilla in Europe is that it very thoroughly
  subdued the Lupine menace long ago, making it much
  more feasible for us to flourish in rural lands.
  In the Americas, things were better. The antitribu
  in the Sabbat did us all great service, most especially the
  Gangrel, Malkavians and Ravnos, in forging havens
  among the aboriginal tribes in North America. They
  presented our kind as familiar monsters and spirits who
  shared enmity with the forces of static civilization.
  Never mind that we would gladly have paved them over
  ourselves, given the chance. The tribes needed to see
  only that the Camarilla's notion of desirable cities isn't
  ours. The Camarilla's fondness for modern cover stories
  played into our hands as well, since our missionaries
  could point out quite truthfully how seriously we as a
  sect take spiritual matters.
  Central America remained a delightful playground.
  We have never bothered establishing extensive influ-
  ence in mortal affairs in Mexico, primarily because we
  don't need to. The succession of tyranny and revolution
  keeps the population more than adequately roiled for
  our purposes. American invasions and imperialism in
  the peninsular lands served the same function. Who
  needs to order mortals when they think of such things
  all by themselves?
  South America largely remained hospitable, apart
  from the great wilderness in the Amazon. In Buenos
  Aires, our clan took the initiative in working out a
  sensible compromise with the Toreador of the area,
  which keeps sect strife to a minimum thanks in part to
  the Courts of Blood. They often settle disputes before
  they escalate.
  In Africa, as I believe Lin Baloh described to you,
  our clan continued making little difference, before the
  colonial era began in earnest.
  NEW TOOLS, New CONQUESTS
  Unlife improved for us quite dramatically in the
  early 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, begin-
  ning in England and spreading rapidly throughout
  Christendom, created whole new opportunities for us.
  First of all, factories disrupted patterns of rural life.
  People gathered in towns, then in cities. They had to
  give up old customs, old notions of family organization,
  adopt new ways of organizing their days and years. They
  were confused and scared. They made wonderful prey.
  I've often wished for the opportunity to travel back to
  those nights. Of all the eras of Cainite history, I believe
  that none is more perfectly suited to our way of exist-
  ence. Prey was plentiful, and so disoriented and suspicious
  of new authorities that many crimes went altogether
  unreported except in private accounts. Reading the
  diaries of workers in Manchester or London, tracing the
  litany of murder and mysterious weakness, provokes
  envy.
  With industrialization came empire-building on a
  much grander scale. For centuries, some harsh or rugged
  environments had held Europeans at bay. No longer.
  Mid-century, Europeans spread throughout my own
  continent, ending an era of relative isolation and... not
  stagnation, because in fact Africans developed several
  societies comparable to anything in Europe before the
  Renaissance. Rather, an era of change within limits, in
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  34
  
  which the absence of resources and concepts to progress
  beyond a medieval stage of technology limited innova-
  tion to cultural rather than scientific spheres.
  Industrialization also opened up Central and South
  America to more effective exploitation. Humanity even
  made inroads into the monster-infested depths of the
  Amazon jungle, and we followed, in small numbers.
  The urban blight that made England so interesting soon
  appeared on the European mainland and in slums
  around the world. Lin Baloh talked about his own
  experiences in that time, yes? Many of the clan's current
  leaders originated at about the same time, and with
  similar motives. It was a real outpouring of passions
  suitable for leading one away from humanity. I became
  a Cainite a few decades later, on the outskirts of the
  same phenomenon in Africa.
  THE CODE OF MILAN
  Some Sabbat historians like to speak in terms of
  "Sabbat civil wars." If you fancy such terminology, then
  the First Sabbat Civil War took place from the late
  1790s until the Purchase Pact in 1803. I've already
  alluded to why no single date makes sense as an ending
  point for the conflict, and I frankly think it makes little
  sense to lump a great many disparate battles together. It
  implies a unity of cause that never really existed.
  If that was the first civil war, then the Second
  Sabbat Civil War occupied much of the early 20th
  century. Something like coordinated clan strife actually
  existed between our clan and the Tzimisce around the
  turn of the century, with extended recriminations over
  who was responsible for letting the Camarilla gain so
  much ground in the United States. Obviously that
  particular issue didn't matter much anywhere outside
  North America, but the existence of one feud catalyzed
  the emergence of others. The two clans and the various
  hangers-on came to blows over countless local issues.
  The Code of Milan, issued at the end of 1933, brought
  an end to all that. It reflected the conventional wisdom of
  that time about what the Sabbat's founders intended. As
  far as our clan is concerned, it embodies an extremely
  precarious balance between the views of the Black Angels
  and the rest of the major camps. It's not quite what anyone
  seems to have had in mind in the 14th or 15th century,
  least of all Gratiano and his coterie, but as an averaged-out
  consensus statement, the Code of Milan could easily be
  worse than it is. I can tell you with a straight face that if you
  adhere to its tenets with reasonable faithfulness and
  perform your duties with competence, you are unlikely to
  ever face harsh punishment for deviation from your lead-
  ers' wishes. That may not sound like much, but in a sect as
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  35
  
  driven by conflict as ours, it's more impressive than you
  may yet realize.
  It's worth noting that no later effort to update or
  replace the Code has won widespread support. Should you
  harbor revolutionary impulses, at least study the failures of
  others and try to make some fresh, interesting mistake.
  THF 2OxH CENTURY
  Individual Lasombra won notable triumphs and of
  course continued to provide good leadership for the
  Sabbat, but that's not really the same thing. The closest
  we came to united clan action was in 1957, in what you
  may hear called the Third Sabbat Civil War. A Brujah
  antitribu uprising in New York went down to its inevi-
  table defeat, and somehow the rest of the rabble decided
  to mount more uprisings in, I suppose, a display of
  sympathy for those unable to properly gauge the odds.
  We and the Tzimisce joined forces to suppress the
  rebellions.
  In their wake, wise Lasombra leaders persuaded the
  Tzimisce to accept the existence of a sort of "new clan"
  to provide a certain familial sense for interested Caitiff
  and antitribu. The aggressive if not always very intelli-
  gent Joseph Pander gave his name to the new entity, and
  henceforth the Panders would take part in sect delibera-
  tions. Keep this lesson in mind. Even the most patently
  ridiculous offers can appease the foolish if you make the
  offer seem sufficiently worthwhile. Let the foolish be-
  lieve you're acting reluctantly and giving up something
  of value, and they will not notice what you do behind
  their backs.
  THF COMING WARS
  Never mind what the nostalgic among us tell you:
  The Sabbat has never been stable. We are born out of
  chaos and always move amid turmoil. There's no baseline
  reference time to point at and say, "This is what we are
  when the world allows us to be." Our fundamental goals
  remain constant — most particularly, to destroy every-
  one who'd stop us, from Antediluvians on down to
  mortal resistance. So while we face new opportunities
  and challenges in recent times, this only means that we
  continue to exist in history. "This is not your father's
  Sabbat," I believe some of you say, and you are correct,
  but part of your father's Sabbat was exactly the capacity
  to change into your own Sabbat.
  More clans are in upheaval at the moment than at
  any time since the Inquisition. The Gangrel left the
  Camarilla, and we hear from new antitribu that the
  elders fear active Antediluvians. Let us all pause for a
  moment of shock and surprise that it took only five
  centuries for our founding tenet to register within the
  collective unconscious of a Camarilla clan. The
  Assamites are doing something complex and messy, and
  not talking about it a great deal. Lesser schisms exist
  hither and yon. All of this adds up to opportunity for us,
  since we combine a modicum of clan unity with inde-
  pendent action in a largely ideal balance.
  In times of upheaval, current leaders fall and new ones
  take their place. The Camarilla regards this as a bad thing,
  because their whole existence depends on protecting the
  power of elders. They run on individual identities. The
  Sabbat, by contrast, exists primarily as an idea, and one
  Cainite can hold to the creed and act on it as well as
  another. We are, by undead standards, a sect of fledglings.
  If you pay attention and keep yourselves fit, the next
  generation of leaders will include you.
  Is Gehenna upon us? I think not. It's possible that
  some Antediluvians stir in their slumber, but I think
  that what we see is mostly a combination of panic and
  deliberate hoaxes. Last year, for instance, I was sub-
  jected to a long diatribe by a peculiar old Ventrue
  antitribu who claimed he used to belong to some Gehenna
  cult operating within the Sabbat, and that a great storm
  in the afterlife had destroyed his leaders, and now the
  end would come at any time. I diablerized him, in the
  end. His rant was too painful to endure. Keep in mind
  that he could have used tremendous resources to back
  up his delusions, if he'd chosen to. Apply a certain
  principle of parsimony as you look for signs and por-
  tents: Remember how much our kind can do, even
  unconsciously, and retain your skepticism.
  That's all for tonight.
  THE ANTITRIBU s
  STORY
  The Seattle Police Department responded to a series of
  calls shortly before sunrise on June 12, 2000. Several
  morning-shift workers reported seeing what looked to be an
  Asian woman nailed or bolted to one of the Floating Bridge
  pillars, alive enough to thrash around but clearly fading fast.
  The police arrived just after sunrise, and found bloody bolts
  but no sign of the woman herself. A satchel on the sidewalk
  contained the following manuscript, which police psycholo-
  gists interpreted as evidence of a very sophisticated psycho-
  sis. Perhaps, they speculated, she believed in her vampiric
  nature so deeply that she had decided to "greet the sun" and
  end her existence. If she was part of some cult, perhaps her
  fellow fanatics took her away to keep their existence secret.
  Alternatively, it might all have been some elaborate hoax
  to play on popular fears of vampirism. Like many university
  towns, Seattle suffers its share of sophisticated pranks.
  Investigation turned up no promising leads, and the
  case soon became inactive. A routine inventory of the police
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  36
  \
  
  evidence lockers in September revealed the manuscript to be
  missing. In the absence of any reason to pursue the case,
  nobody made much fuss about it.
  LAST WORDS FIRST
  My name is Ming, and I am a child of darkness. You
  don't need to know the name I bore when I was alive. That
  part of my history is over and done with. Now the unliving
  part of my history comes to an end as well. I will write this
  account to explain to someone why I seek destruction, and
  then my faithful human lackies will perform their last
  service to me. I will see the sun, and perish.
  You will not believe this story unless you have had
  some experience to show you that another society exists
  behind the one you know. If you have not had such an
  experience, seek out someone who has. You know
  someone who's been touched by darkness, who shows a
  secret fear or secret pain that they've never been willing
  to discuss. When you read this, you will understand
  them. Seek them out and let them know that they were
  right. In a world you do not own and which you will
  never own, at least you can give that comfort.
  THB BEGINNING
  In the beginning there was Caine, the first mur-
  derer. Yes, it's true. There was an Adam and an Eve, and
  a Garden of Eden, and a God who rewarded the sacrifice
  of blood and condemned the sacrifice of grain. You live
  in someone else's story. I did not wish to accept this
  myself — I was a child of my time just as you are,
  skeptical and sophisticated. Nonetheless, it is true. In
  the beginning one word made creation, and in the end
  one word will end it. But the ending is not quite yet.
  The curse that God inflicted on Caine was what we
  now think of as vampirism. Caine created three "childer,"
  or offspring, and those three sired 13 grandchilder for
  Caine. The 13 warred with each other and their cre-
  ators, and it was their wickedness as much as the sins of
  humanity that provoked the Great Flood. You may say,
  as I once did, that the flood is a myth without geological
  evidence. I say in return, who can trust evidence when
  God Almighty wills otherwise? Perhaps he removed the
  evidence, or just as likely, it's right there and we simply
  can't see it.
  If you believe any of this, you should feel fear. Good
  for you, if you do. My unlife has been a never-ending
  nightmare of fear, of being so close to such power,
  without defenses. We are all the pawns offerees beyond
  our control.
  The 13 Antediluvians survived the flood. Did God
  change his mind, or have some other plan for them? God
  doesn't speak to me any more than he speaks to any other
  damned soul. Perhaps he might answer your prayer, if you
  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  37
  
  I
  ask with a sufficiently pure heart. Perhaps you would be
  better offnot knowing, though. Whatever his reasons, the
  13 survived, and they founded clans of Cainites that
  remain active to this very night. One of them is my own
  sire eight generations removed, who is called by his
  progeny "Lasombra." All of his childer, including me,
  suffer from a particular weakness that makes us unable to
  reflect in mirrors, and we inherit an aptitude for prefer'
  natural strength, the ability to command others by force of
  will and the ability to command a sort of living darkness.
  Each of the other clans has some other distinctive combi-
  nation of a comparable sort.
  A TALC OF Two GUILDER
  Like the other Antediluvians, Lasombra created
  countless childer, for reasons of his own. Many he
  slaughtered for weaknesses of character — that is, for
  lack of the virtues that interested Lasombra, including
  a ruthless determination to power. I suppose that were
  he still walking the earth, he would judge me one of the
  unfit as well.
  The eldest of Lasombra's childer still active in the
  world is Montano. I met him once and was struck by the
  weight of sorrow on his shoulders. I read in the Bible
  that the Messiah was to be a man of sorrows and
  acquainted with grief, and I think of Montano. No
  single mortal lifetime, no matter how tragic, could
  begin to approach his state. Montano was once a boy on
  the steppes of Kenya, more than a thousand years before
  Christ. Lasombra came there seeking a worthy heir.
  When Lasombra set about torturing the people of
  Montano's village, seeing who endured, Montano vol-
  unteered to become Lasombra's servant in exchange for
  the freedom of his people. Lasombra accepted. Never
  again would the Antediluvian go there or torment those
  people (though he performed the same deeds in other
  lands).
  Montano hated the vampiric condition and still does.
  He is no happy childe of Caine. But he is honorable and
  even now stands by his agreement to uphold his sire's
  interests, even though (as you shall read) his sire is gone
  from the world. Montano traveled throughout the Old
  World with his sire, learning languages and skills un-
  dreamed of on die steppes. When the two returned to
  Lasombra's favorite haven in Sicily, Montano led mortal
  armies and senates as well as Cainite forces. For a very long
  time, everything he did prospered, no matter how much
  his jealous siblings tried to sabotage it. Still, Lasombra
  never understood his childe's soul and continued seeking
  some other who might be his heir.
  You may think that this is strange language for a
  woman born less than forty years ago in an American
  city, and you would be right. But it's impossible for me
  to put it in any other terms. I write of gods and demons
  among men, and the jargon of a scientific society would
  contain countless lies by inference about it all. When I
  write this way, I hope to tell you something of what I
  have felt as well as what 1 know.
  Lasombra had many other childer, some of whom
  may still exist, but they don't matter to the story of the
  clan as a whole. The childe who matters is Lasombra's
  last. Not even a thousand years ago, Lasombra bestowed
  the curse of vampirism on an Italian noble named
  Gratiano, an ambitious young man who showed the sort
  of ruthless dedication that Lasombra treasured. (Who
  was Lasombra in life? Perhaps he was himself a man of
  power. I suspect, however, that he was a pathetic failure,
  Embraced (as we call it) for some trivial reason, who
  flourished unexpectedly. Someone who had lived with
  real success would surely not be so obsessed with the
  matter forever after.) Gratiano was perhaps what
  Lasombra wished he had been.
  Gratiano, for his part, understood how to be a
  successful courtier. He gave Lasombra endless flattery,
  praising the Antediluvian's own accomplishments and
  those of the clan, making a great show of studying it all
  so as to be a "worthy successor." Montano quickly saw
  that Gratiano sought to take Lasombra's place, but their
  sire wouldn't hear of it. Senility seems to come for
  Cainites as well as for mortal men and women. We may
  call you "kine" and "prey," but we are not so different
  from you in some ways. For something like two hundred
  years, Lasombra's oldest and youngest childer fought a
  covert war of influence against each other, trying to win
  support for their respective agendas. Montano lost.
  The elder childe realized that he couldn't forestall
  Gratiano's rebellion. He alternated long years of wan-
  dering with quietly desperate efforts at the Sicilian
  court to awaken others to the threat. It didn't work.
  Gratiano used the clan's institutions for judgment to
  destroy his rivals, all the while impressing Lasombra.
  Finally Gratiano struck. He had allies from other
  clans and his own native treachery. The court filled
  with blood, and Gratiano himself destroyed Lasombra
  in the Antediluvian's favorite crypt. In one stroke, the
  clan had no head. Montano fought a vigorous defense,
  but once his sire fell, the childe escaped. Around him
  coalesced the heart of resistance to Gratiano's redefined
  Clan Lasombra, those Cainites still loyal to the old
  notions of clan order. Montano would not claim to be
  Lasombra's true heir, but felt still bound by his oath to
  act in Lasombra's best interests.
  Gratiano and other rebels created a sect of rebel-
  lious clans, whose founders dubbed themselves the
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  38
  
  Sabbat in appreciation of human stories about demonic
  terrors. Most Lasombra surrendered their dignity and
  honor and joined up. They bound themselves by unholy
  rituals. Only the loyal remnant, dubbed mockingly the
  "anti-tribe" or antitribu, carried on in the older style.
  FROM FOUNDING TO Me
  What can I say about the centuries after that? Many
  Lasombra show a flair for the sea, perhaps reflecting part
  of our dark founder's mortal preferences. The antitribu
  seem to do even better at sea than the main clan. Pirate
  fleets harassed the clan's financial interests and made
  things risky for Cainites trying to move their slumbering
  bodies by sea. On land, the antitribu struck where they
  could find weaknesses in the local Sabbat and otherwise
  mostly watched for defectors willing to join the true
  clan's lineage.
  The Sabbat, meanwhile, spread like wildfire. Some
  people will always hate humanity, and they respond to a
  message of brutal vengeance and heartless domination. In
  fact, to my shame, I was one such person. I mistook my
  adolescent fervor for some real insight into the human
  condition, and when a monster offered me the chance to
  indulge my hatred forever, I took it. It took me more than
  a year to realize how wrong I was and longer than that to
  find out how I might go about doing differently.
  Eventually, I made my way to a small gathering of
  Lasombra antitribu. I won't tell you where I came from
  or where I found them, except to say that neither my
  origin nor my destination was Seattle. I came here for
  personal reasons that matter only to the individual I had
  to speak with before destroying myself. While with the
  antitribu, I met Montano and learned much of what I've
  recorded here.
  I came to my decision to seek destruction not long
  thereafter. If Montano, as ancient and powerful as he is,
  cannot stop his errant clan, what hope do I have? I saw
  too many elder antitribu becoming monstrous them-
  selves, creatures of blood isolated from any human joy
  or hope, seeking only an endless cycle of nights like this
  one. I need something more to sustain me, and if there
  is nothing more, than I am not sustained.
  May God have mercy on my soul. I do not believe
  he will.
  ' . . ' " ' Memo to Scourge A(JaM"Pretoritis:™" , . '.' '' j
  Dammit, Adam, this could have been a major |
  fiasco if our people in the department weren't on the job. |
  Look at this. Masquerade breach first class. You tell me |
  that allowing those damned Lasombra to take part in »
  cowrt routine is a good idea. Antitribu be damned, I |
  •s&y, they're all the same. Clear them out, or we're going Si
  to get more fuckups like this. 
  |
  CHAFER ONE: AN UNMIRRORED CORRIDOR
  39
  
  When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves,
  then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
  — Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
  The Bible says that the first murderer disavowed
  responsibility for his victim, with the rhetorical
  question "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Lasombra
  accept the responsibility that their progenitor de-
  nied. Yes, they are indeed their brother's (and sister's)
  keeper. The Lasombra are not stewards, for they do
  not hold power on behalf of another. Nor are the
  Lasombra kings, for they need no formality of title or
  position, and they certainly accept no restraints on
  their power in the form of any human or divine
  sanction. The Lasombra simply are the rightful mas-
  ters of everything in heaven and earth, whether their
  subjects accept the fact yet or not.
  This self-image puts tremendous pressure on the
  clan's neonates, whether Sabbat or antitribu. An
  accumulated glory burdens them, a standard of ex-
  cellence to which sires expect their childer to hew.
  Few childer can actually do it. In previous ages, the
  Lasombra elders tell each other, they could take the
  time to select each childe individually and cultivate
  him properly. Now everything must happen in a
  hurry, and sometimes inferior stock receives the
  Embrace. A Lasombra childe who actually excels can
  expect a combination of being taken for granted and
  regarded with suspicion, while childer who happen
  not to be the best in their field face a constant
  struggle to avoid destruction.
  Lasombra with an eye for ironic comparisons
  sometimes refer to their clan's younger members as
  the Kennedy grandchildren of the Sabbat. It's not a
  bad comparison, as the newcomers try to find some
  way of distinguishing themselves while overshad-
  owed by the legacy of Gratiano and the other founders.
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  41
  \
  
  THE GATHERING
  SHADOWS:
  BECOMING LASOMBRA
  Very few people successfully set out to become
  vampires. In general, the desire to become an undead
  creature of the night goes along with psychological
  features that work against vampiric survival, includ-
  ing a willingness to act with insufficient knowledge
  and a lack of attention to details. The Lasombra
  choose their recruits from among those mortals who
  show aptitude for survival whether or not the targets
  yet know anything about vampires or would want the
  condition for themselves if they did.
  THB SHORT ROAD
  Occasionally a mortal selected more or less at
  random for "shovel party" transformation into an
  undead shock troop survives and shows an intuitive
  knack for Lasombra powers. Estimating how often
  this happens is tough, though most Lasombra arch-
  bishops agree that about one shovelhead in a thousand
  proves worth saving. It depends partly on how care-
  fully the shovelers selected their target for strength
  of will, determination or simple hatred of humanity
  at large, partly on unrecognized qualities within the
  victim and partly on sheer luck.
  THE LONG ROAD
  Most Lasombra recruits enter the clan more
  slowly, with a great deal more deliberation on the
  part of their sires. The Sabbat maintains no strict
  accounting for progeny, but a sire who creates too
  many unsatisfactory childer eventually comes to the
  attention of his superiors. Success justifies risk, in
  the Lasombra conventional wisdom, so would-be
  sires generally prefer to take their time in creating
  childer.
  Long experience shows the Lasombra that kings,
  presidents, chief executive officers, popes and com-
  parable leaders seldom make good vampires. Such
  individuals are too tightly woven into the framework
  of their society, bound to human values and human
  rewards. Better recruits come from the ranks of those
  near the throne but not actually sitting on it: assis-
  tants, understudies, secretaries, advisors and the like.
  These people may exercise substantial power in prac-
  tice, but on behalf of someone else who gets the
  credit. While the vast majority of assistants deal just
  fine with this situation, some succumb to festering
  resentment and take the first unknowing steps into
  the Abyss.
  Ambitious failures may also make excellent re-
  cruits, depending on why they failed. A would-be
  politician with great intellectual gifts who couldn't
  quite mask her contempt for the public, for instance,
  bears watching. As a Lasombra, she wouldn't be
  called upon to treat the public charitably. An entre-
  preneur repeatedly bought out or otherwise balked
  by corporate rivals sometimes succumbs to deepen-
  ing resentment; he's also worth watching, to see
  whether his hatred might broaden into the rage that
  characterizes some of the clan's best crusaders. An
  artist whose work offends critics and gallery owners
  on whose whim commercial success depends is like-
  wise worth watching, to see whether her
  determination lasts in the face of defeat. If it does,
  she might be a valuable addition to the ranks of those
  facing Gehenna.
  In each case, the sire looks for habits of thought
  and states of mind. The world is unpredictable, and
  success doesn't prove the presence or absence of any
  particular quality. Experience counts, but in the end
  it's the soul that endures through the Embrace, while
  all life's lessons become at least partly irrelevant.
  Pride is not sufficient. Anyone can be too proud
  to get along, and pride untempered by judgment is
  not a survival trait for neonates. Ambition is better,
  particularly if it's only partially satisfied in life.
  Revenge in all its forms is a good sign, as long as the
  vampire-to-be also shows patience. Cold detach-
  ment also warrants consideration. It's quite rare to
  find a human being who can actually evaluate the
  world dispassionately, and the Lasombra snatch up
  as many such people as they can.
  Some Lasombra stick to tried-and-true sources
  for neonates. They examine the dominant institu-
  tions of their society and perhaps rummage around in
  certain countercultures. Other Lasombra deliber-
  ately look elsewhere. Several of the most successful
  war leaders in current crusades were housewives in
  life. In each case, a prospective sire noticed some
  quirk of behavior that caught his or her fancy, and
  follow-up examination revealed untapped wellsprings
  of dark passion. Other talented Lasombra have come
  from hospices, refugee camps and medical clinics for
  the working poor. People willing to stop being hu-
  man can turn up almost anywhere.
  TESTING TO DESTRUCTION
  Once the prospective sire identifies a promising
  candidate for the Embrace, she sets about testing
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  42
  
  I
  HUMAN HARDCORE
  Lasombra argue about the merits of Embracing
  serial killers and other particularly violent, driven
  criminals. Some vampires idealize serial killers as
  vampires in all but unlife already, humans becoming
  glorious predators, while others look at serial killers
  and see only dangerous competition, good enough
  to be a nuisance but not good enough to avoid efforts
  at capture which can in turn seriously interfere with
  vampiric affairs. 
  •.
  Clan consensus currently leans away from re-
  warding such people with vampirism. Many of them
  are intelligent, but the psychological foundations of
  serial killing almost always involve a level of obses-
  sion and behavioral constraint — the so-called
  "signature" of the criminal — that makes it hard to
  adapt to vampirism. Serial killers let loose among
  the undead almost inevitably bum themselves out
  in a few years, if not months or weeks. They can't
  continue doing what they used to without signifi-
  cant modifications to their routine, and even though
  their unliving brains don't have the biological com-
  pulsions anymore, the habit remains. So they go
  down in gunfire, or under the fangs of their fellow
  vampires. Another experiment failed.
  Still, a fad for Embracing serial killers ariies
  ; every few decades. The last one passed in the early
  '90s. The one before that ran from the end ofWorld
  War II through the early '50s. Whenever a signifi-
  cant number of Lasombra feels dissatisfied with the
  way their faction fares in Sabbat society, they turn to
  extreme measures of this sort.
  him. Ideally, the testing happens over the course of
  years, though circumstances often reduce it to months
  or less. The testing measures the candidate's re-
  sponse to adversity — the sire usually attempts to
  break him by ruining his life.
  The sire begins by striking at whatever the candi-
  date seems to regard as most important. If it's his
  family, the sire kills them, or uses Disciplines and
  mundane means to alienate his relatives. If it's physi-
  cal ability, the sire cripples the candidate, infects
  him with a chronic disease or otherwise takes the
  ability away. If it's social standing, the sire arranges
  a series of scandals to isolate the candidate from
  former associates. Whatever it is, a dedicated
  Lasombra can take it away, either by himself or with
  the assistance of packmates and other allies.
  Step by step, the vampire cuts off her childe-to-
  be from the world. The candidate must remain in
  control of himself; Lasombra regard using Dominate
  to force states of mind as cheating — the point is to
  see how the candidate copes. A candidate who breaks
  under the strain generally ends up in pure misery.
  The sire abandons the experiment but seldom both-
  ers undoing the wounds inflicted along the way.
  The tricky part of all this is to keep the prospective
  childe from simply feeling deprived of purpose. Each
  loss must give rise to some new motive, whether it's
  simply reclaiming the lost thing or an emphasis on
  something that hasn't previously seemed important or
  desirable. A vampire who lacks drive cannot fend off
  the Beast or flourish in the Sabbat's harshly competi-
  tive environment, and the Lasombra prefer to separate
  the losers from the passionately alienated before the
  Embrace. The ideal Lasombra candidate, for most of
  the clan (and this applies to the antitribu as well), is
  someone who feels distanced from his society and
  yearns to change or overthrow it, but isn't locked into
  an overly narrow sense of what must be done. Even if
  the mortal's current vision looks only at what's close, it
  must contain the seeds of grandeur, or the centuries of
  unlife will become a burden.
  FROM LIFE TO UNLIFB
  A candidate who remains driven and active
  despite adversity at least meets his sire. He probably
  doesn't learn at that time how much of his suffering
  is the sire's fault. She generally lies like mad, saying
  whatever she deems likely to make the candidate
  accept vampirism. She demonstrates her powers and
  offers them to the candidate.
  Some Lasombra prefer to tell the truth to their
  childer: "Yes, I set about blighting your life. You've
  proven enduring, so now I offer you power." Most
  sires find this too risky and prefer to spin fables about
  how they've noticed the miseries afflicting their
  childer and how the powers they offer can let them
  redress the situation. The shock of Embrace leaves
  many childer a little deranged anyway — random
  slaughter followed by sober realization cuts new
  Lasombra adrift from humanity.
  After the childe undertakes his initial period of
  revenge or otherwise deals with the misery of his mortal
  life, his sire brings him into Sabbat society, and the
  usual process of training and Creation Rites begins.
  Note that revenge is not the defining neonate
  passion in all or even most cases. Andrew Emory
  accepted the Embrace (see The Darkness Claims You)
  in large measure for revenge on people he hated, but
  that's at least in part just how Demba's lineage chooses
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  43
  \
  
  its childer. Lasombra offer the Embrace with all sorts of
  emphases, including the following.
  • Ambition: Dominate and Potence make very
  attractive offers to mortals who yearn for prestige or
  physical achievement otherwise denied to them.
  Thus the ranks of Lasombra recruits include people
  who begin unlife as suddenly successful boxers and
  managers, before they turn away from their mortal
  lives altogether.
  • Inquisitiveness: The driving desire to under-
  stand everything about the world and how people
  work often produces first-rate paladins and scholars.
  • Belligerence: This category includes bruisers
  and soldiers, but isn't limited to them. The Sabbat's
  various crusades require tacticians and strategists,
  spies and saboteurs, and many other kinds of warriors
  besides the obvious. The Lasombra like to seek out
  those who show a willingness to keep up martial
  efforts beyond the boundaries of a mortal lifetime.
  • Specialized Expertise: As with warriors, so
  with programmers, accountants, publicists and other
  sorts of specialists. The Lasombra need people who
  understand the modern world. An attentive elder
  can learn to function perfectly well in an unfamiliar
  culture, but it always helps to have a freshly informed
  perspective. Access to the clan's resources and op-
  portunities for working outside the limits of human
  law and morality draw specialists.
  AFTPR THE LAST S
  Andrew surveys his newly constituted pack. They all
  bear the scars of last night's Creation Rite and reek of
  SIBB
  , 
  Deceiving the childe about who ruined his life
  carries certain risks, though not as many as some
  sires worry about. The mere a childe becomes accus-
  tomed to regarding all humanity as prey, the less
  what happened in life seems to matter. Many sires go
  ahead and tell their childer the truth, when the
  childer begin the process of siring themselves.
  Sometimes a childe decides that the manipula-
  tion and lies do call for punishment. A sire whose
  newfound childe spontaneously develops a bit of
  Auspex may unexpectedly face confident accusa-
  tions of deceit, and sometimes a sire in the flush of
  the Embrace finds himself diablerized in short order.
  A more cunning childe may set about ruining the
  sire's unlife in revenge, culminating in the sire's
  destruction, with or without blessing from the Courts
  of Blood. 
  * 
  •
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  44
  
  tonight's blood. They stand confident, ready to take over the
  world. He hopes to ruin their night.
  Most new Lasombra don't survive. By making it
  this far you've already beaten the odds, to some
  degree, but never for a moment think that your
  existence is now secure.
  More than half of the kine we choose to Embrace
  fail to survive their testing period. They despair and
  commit suicide, or break under the strain, or survive
  but show that they're crippled by unworthy person-
  ality traits. At least one in a hundred, and sometimes
  more than that, fail to survive the Embrace itself,
  either simply dying or emerging so totally mindless
  and compulsive that they must be destroyed immedi-
  ately.
  So of a thousand mortals who seemed worthy
  after initial investigation, we now have about 450 to
  500. Look around you, and notice that where there
  were ten of you on that first night, now there are only
  eight. We lose ten to twenty percent of new recruits
  in the training interval before formal acceptance
  into the Sabbat. In times of crisis, the percentage can
  double or even triple, and it's never much less than
  ten percent. Too many new vampires retain more
  humanity than is good for them. That gets us down
  to perhaps 350 to 450 of the original thousand.
  In the next five years, experience says, at least
  half of you will have gone to your respective un-
  marked graves. You will perish in battle, or offend
  your superiors and warrant judgment by the Courts
  of Blood or the bishopric. Some of you will fall in
  Monomacy. Some of you will destroy yourselves in
  accidents. One of you may attempt to join the
  antitribu, and may even survive to do so. If more than
  seven or less than three of you stand together five
  years from now, you will be a most unusual pack
  indeed. Of our initial thousand, as few as 200, or as
  many as 300, survive.
  Those of you who make it to five years will
  continue to face challenges. Of the five or so of you
  likely to last that long, at least one and perhaps as
  many as three will perish in the next five years. The
  pace of this brutal winnowing slows further and
  further for those of you who endure. Another halv-
  ing takes place between 10 and 25 years, another
  between 25 and 50, another between 50 and 100.
  Your instructors and I face the same challenges.
  Perhaps one of you will win the right from a Court of
  Blood to destroy me and enrich your standing in the
  ladder of generations. Perhaps then in turn one of
  your current peers will win the right to destroy you.
  \
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLFT HALLS
  45
  
  \
  In the Camarilla, which keep its pampered childer
  in gilded cages, more vampires survive past a century
  than in the Sabbat. You can even seek to join them,
  if you wish. All you give up is your only real chance
  at survival when our true enemies appear, your free-
  dom to choose your own destiny and the precious
  support the Vinculum provides. Yes, you can exist
  indefinitely as the Antediluvians' pawn and the
  prince's slave. Or you can remain here, burning more
  brightly and becoming far, far more of what you can
  be than they allow. Those who persist in our grand
  conflict reach heights of mastery that no humanity-
  fearing vampire, let alone any prey, can imagine.
  You gamble your existence. Would you have it
  any other way?
  IN ENDLESS DARK :
  LASOMBRA CULTURE
  The Lasombra revel in the endless struggle for
  survival and mastery. At least that's what they say
  when asked, and what they try to convince them-
  selves they feel. It would be gauche to admit that
  over the long years, social and physical warfare grow
  tiresome. It would be far worse to admit that one
  sometimes admires virtues quite different from those
  identified publicly with the clan, or that one would
  prefer not to shoulder the burden of leadership all
  the time.
  Lasombra consensus holds that overly rigid struc-
  tures turn on their creators. Thus the institutions
  within the clan operate flexibly and with substantial
  local autonomy. These informal distinctions are just as
  deadly earnest as anything chartered and codified, but
  they are much more lethal for being open to interpre-
  tation. Keeping things loosely defined allows for more
  dimensions of competition, many more opportunities
  for the victors to show their superiority.
  ON THE INSIDE LOOKING O UT:
  VIEWPOINTS
  Individual Lasombra see the world and their role
  in it many different ways. For survival's sake, like-
  minded vampires tend to cluster together, particularly
  in the Sabbat. They only commit to Vinculum bonds
  with others they like or at least respect to some
  degree.
  Most of the Lasombra subcultures have no orga-
  nization or even a well-known name. They're outlooks
  rather than institutions. The only clanwide institu-
  tion is the Courts of Blood (and the Friends of the
  Night behind them). Everything else is unofficial. A
  group that became organized enough to challenge
  the courts would be co-opted and folded into the
  Friends themselves or destroyed, depending upon
  how well the group's leaders pled their case.
  THE FACTIONLESS
  What the hell are you talking about?
  — Druitt, pack member, Detroit
  Most Lasombra identify themselves this way:
  "I'm a Lasombra and a Sabbat." They don't worry
  about other details much, and they don't feel driven
  to identify themselves with subgroups of any sort.
  The factionless aren't mindless supporters of the
  status quo, or at least don't have to be. Many of them
  take part in the debates about future policy for the
  Friends of the Night and the Sabbat as a whole. They
  argue about how to deal with the Lasombra antitribu,
  about who are the Sabbat's biggest enemies and
  other practical matters.
  Factionless Lasombra vary widely in how much
  attention they give to their clan heritage. In some
  ways it's inescapable, thanks to the clan's signature
  Discipline and role in Sabbat history. (Not all
  Lasombra learn Obtenebration, of course, and thanks
  to sharing between packmates, a fair number of non-
  Lasombra also know it. Some vampires revel in the
  fact, proud of having inherited power and glory and
  a tradition of using both effectively. Others just
  don't care. They're interested in building their own
  empires, however defined, and they regard the clan
  heritage as irrelevant or even a nuisance that pres-
  sures them to conform to norms they reject.
  THE CRUSADERS
  We are an army. Not a fan club, not a sporting league,
  not a philosophy. An army. You stand on the brink of
  destruction at the hands of the Antediluvians' pawns. You
  speak of independence, but wish for yourself only the
  independence of annihilation. I will make you survive and
  triumph, regardless of what you think you want now.
  Submit to me and win.
  — Dr. Julius Sutphen, Bishop of Atlanta
  A minority of Lasombra are "crusaders," Cainites
  who view the Sabbat as a religious and military
  organization almost to the exclusion of the Sabbat as
  an ideology of freedom. More elders favor this ap-
  proach than neonates, though a surprising fraction
  of the Lasombra Embraced in the last few years share
  their elders' concerns, thanks to the rising possibly of
  Gehenna.
  Assigning numbers and fractions to any set of
  vampires is an inexact art. Too few vampires exist,
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  46
  \
  
  and ideas don't spread evenly around the world. Any
  large Sabbat city has at least a few crusaders in its
  ranks. In a few large cities and several small ones,
  crusaders dominate the local hierarchy. In most
  councils, the crusaders are the annoying handful
  who either end up totally ineffectual because every-
  one hates them or making most of the decisions
  because they wear their critics down.
  In the Sabbat at large, the Ultra-Conservative
  faction includes both Lasombra and Tzimisce elders,
  along with some antitribu elders, especially Ventrue.
  The crusaders specifically favor Lasombra leadership
  of the Sabbat, pointing out that Lasombra began the
  crusade and often citing prophecies of doubtful reli-
  ability to the effect that Lasombra shall complete it.
  THE FAITHFUL
  When Jesus was crucified, we were there, to darken the
  skies until He died. We continue now, darkening the hearts
  of those who reject the salvation we can no longer escape,
  guiding them to destruction. In the end, we will gather all
  darkness unto ourselves and descend into the Abyss, leaving
  behind the world God intended. Thus we serve Him.
  — Brother Paul, Franciscan, Barcelona
  In earlier nights, many Lasombra took Chris-
  tianity very seriously indeed, as smaller numbers did
  Judaism, Islam and other faiths. They regarded them-
  selves as servitors of God locked into certain or
  near-certain damnation. Their actions likely wouldn't
  earn any reprieve from divine wrath but might post-
  pone final judgment as long as they remained useful
  tools.
  Cardinal Moncada personified this approach to
  unlife. He was for centuries the leading exponent of
  the Faithful outlook, surviving the destruction of
  many of his former comrades. He sought to kindle
  the spark of faith in new generations, but with little
  success. Vampires who lived in cultures that didn't
  worry much about God seldom developed an interest
  in the subject after their Embrace. Even the Cardinal's
  occasional pet project of mass Embrace in the midst
  of religious revivals didn't work very well. Few fla-
  vors of postmedieval religion lent themselves to the
  concerns that drove him. Embraced snake-handlers,
  speakers in tongues and evangelicals had no use for
  the cosmology he offered them.
  With the Cardinal's passing, the Faithful lack a
  strong leader. Half a dozen rivals — almost all Latin
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  47
  
  American or Mediterranean archbishops — seek to
  establish themselves as "Mon9ada's heir," but none
  of them can make a very strong case. Archbishop
  Menard of Nicaragua has the most widespread sup-
  port at the moment, combining a deeply
  traditionalistic Roman Catholic fervor with fanati-
  cal devotion to the Sabbat's various wars.
  Unfortunately for his campaign to succeed Moncada,
  his vision remains focused on Latin American con-
  cerns, and too many Faithful elsewhere simply get
  bored by his diatribes about the leftist influence in
  Latino Catholicism and the need for a purge.
  THF BLACK ANGPLS
  Taint of sin in my soul! Fuck, yes! My every act makes
  it manifest. It is my glory. Let me share it with you.
  — Madd Killah, ductus-in-training
  Since the first Christian centuries, some
  Lasombra have interpreted their role as being literal
  devils on earth, serving Satan's will by feeding moral
  as well as physical darkness. Even before Christian
  teaching spread, similar movements existed on the
  fringes of Zoroastrian and other dualist beliefs. In the
  Middle Ages, the Angellis Ater or Black Angels con-
  stantly provoked the Friends of Night with their
  reckless and relentless assaults on mortal society.
  The Black Angels' depredations fueled popular sup-
  port for the Inquisition's monster hunting. The clever
  survivors among the Black Angels played a crucial
  role in bringing the Sabbat together with a doctrine
  of supremacy in evil.
  In the last thirty years or so, the Black Angels
  have re-emerged from the margins of Lasombra cul-
  ture. Explicit dedication to evil appeals to surprising
  numbers of neonates who've grown up in societies
  they find bland and unprincipled — any code of
  conduct will do, it seems, as long as it provides a firm
  justification for their depredations.
  THE ABYSS'S CHILDREN
  1 find no truths except in darkness. The world will not
  interest me until all traces of light have been expunged from
  it forever. I act only to hasten the end of the last day.
  —FilipeToreaso Maguno, packmember, Cali, Colombia
  The Children are the dedicated practitioners of
  Abyss mysticism (see page 63). They tend to care
  about the Sabbat only insofar as it affords them a safe
  space in which to pursue their studies. Occasionally
  they venture forth to battle, demonstrating exotic
  Obtenebration arts and often calling on unfamiliar
  occult forces. Then they return to their labs and
  libraries. Lasombra bishops love to have a few of the
  • ' ; ^K^-f" PRIVATE SUBMARINES 
  f
  ; { 
  Yes, they really exist. Most of them operate as I
  ilthe submersible equivalent of glass-bottomed boats
  in the Bahamas, South Pacific and other tourist I
  ^destinations. They seat anywhere from half a dozen |
  to a couple of dozen passengers andf cruise along at ;
  4|a few knots. Some very wealthy individuals arrange 
  >,
  for private subs built by businesses like US Subs |
  When yet another yacht seems so typical. In the I
  World of Darkness, a vampire with connections to J
  § maritime engineering firm might well be able to I
  arrange for custom modifications to a Navy or |
  scientific submarine, which then gets "lost" in inter- 5
  agency record-keeping errors. (The 
  Kings and
  Queens of Shadow may prove useful in this regard, \
  if the corsair can make a suitable offer.) Such a {
  venture requires extensive resources and influences, I
  and could get exposed if security slips. But then *
  k-that'-s what makes it a challenge. 
  j
  Abyss's Children around in moments of crisis, and
  are then glad to see them go away. The dedicated
  scholars of the Abyss are strange even by Sabbat
  standards.
  No city has more than a few of the Abyss's
  Children, but secret enclaves of Abyss mystics sup-
  posedly locate themselves far from known Sabbat
  strongholds. Their inhabitants either don't mingle
  with the rest of the clan or do so under disguises no
  one has pierced. Skeptics figure that this is one more
  rumor used to keep vampires looking away from real
  targets in search of fake ones.
  THE K INGS AND Q UEFNS OF SHADOW
  Yes, I believe in ruling from the shadows. But I want
  to be the shadow that stretches ahead of mortals marching
  away from the light, intimately bound to them and
  defining them in ways they do not recognize. My kingdom
  is their souls.
  — Gloria Yee, ductus, Manila
  Some Lasombra take the vampiric condition as a
  mandate to rule directly over humanity. They serve
  a very important function in the Sabbat, doing much
  of the work performed by ghouls in the Camarilla.
  They take part in mortal institutions, exerting influ-
  ence, gathering resources and in general keeping the
  mortal world soft and susceptible to Sabbat control.
  Despite their grandiose name, the Kings and
  Queens of Shadow are nearly outcasts within their
  clan. They must retain Humanity rather than adopt-
  ing a Path or they lose most of their ability to mingle
  with human beings at all. Furthermore, they must
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  48
  
  retain a high Humanity to operate in the company of
  people who aren't psychopaths. This means that
  they have to avoid many common Sabbat activities,
  including some of the most important rites. Being
  assigned to duty among mortals is often a punish-
  ment, carrying with it the implicit sentence of
  isolation from one's pack; choosing duty among
  mortals shows either tremendous dedication or some
  secret defect of will, and few vampires give the Kings
  and Queens the benefit of the doubt.
  Sometimes the Kings and Queens form their own
  packs. These often receive special (and critical) atten-
  tion from the local bishop. Several times a century, a
  scandal arises when some pack of Kings and Queens
  gets destroyed for heresy against Sabbat doctrine and
  conspiracy against Sabbat organization. Often the
  charges are true: Cut off from other ideas, the packmates
  come to think of themselves as the true Sabbat and
  formulate plans to establish their mastery. In other
  cases, the charges are simply convenient excuses for
  removing vampires who've gotten a little too attached
  to their charges and show too much sympathy for the
  Camarilla's notions of restraint.
  THE CORSAIRS
  Three quarters of the world is covered with water.
  That's more territory in pure darkness beneath the waves
  than in all the closets and caves that ever were. When the
  lands perish beneath pollution and your precious cities bum
  in the king's final war, my interests will continue undis-
  turbed. You tell me who's wasting time with trivial pur suits.
  — Louisa Baker, Bishop of the Madagascar Fleet
  Many Lasombra take interest in the sea once
  in a while. The compulsion to spend time around
  dark tides comes even at many generations' re-
  move from the Antediluvian. A few Lasombra
  dedicate themselves to the sea full-time. The
  corsairs include disciplined individuals who were
  naval officers in life (or wished they were) and
  ecstatic, impetuous adventurers alike. Some cor-
  sairs operate entirely alone, exploiting
  computer-assisted navigation for their yachts or
  even commissioning private submarines.
  Some corsairs run private empires in shipping,
  feeding on crews and passengers, moving their ha-
  vens from one vessel to another. They may never set
  foot on land at all, or may spend much of the year
  attending to business onshore. In recent decades,
  more corsairs have turned to piracy, particularly in
  Southeast Asia and both coasts of Africa. Most
  Europeans and Americans have no idea that thou-
  sands of people make a very profitable and violent
  living preying on shipping in these areas. Whole
  packs of vampires blend in without a fuss. Bishops
  dealing with particularly violent packs sometimes
  "recommend" piracy to get the most violent trouble-
  makers away from prying eyes: Mortal pirates engage
  in enough butchery to conveniently cover almost
  any Sabbat acts.
  A handful of corsairs deal with the world's navies.
  At least one fast attack sub is in Lasombra hands, a
  Soviet Kilo-class sub sold to Iran in 1995 and "lost at
  sea" two years later. The Black Fang preys primarily
  on Camarilla-controlled shipping and, when pos-
  sible, ships carrying important members of the
  Camarilla. Archbishop Ferrari of Morocco directs
  the three packs required to operate the sub. Vam-
  pires can neglect life support systems, with substantial
  gains in efficiency and stealth. This compensates for
  some of the difficulties in getting first-rate mainte-
  nance.
  The Friends of the Night keep the sub's move-
  ments a deep secret indeed, and on several occasions
  have given Courts of Blood sanction to destroy
  noncorsair Lasombra unfortunate enough to see the
  sub in action. At least a dozen ambitious packs are
  trying to get control of ships and subs rotting in ex-
  Soviet naval yards and other trouble spots. So far,
  none have managed to pull it off.
  THF TRANSHUMANISTS
  "Every day in every way we're getting better and
  better." This is a great time to be undead. Never mind all the
  talk of Gehenna: Look at developments in cybernetics,
  materials technology, communications and all the rest. We
  have the best tools ever to build a world empire of blood that
  will never, ever fall. And I aim to be there for the rest of
  eternity, breaking new ground all the time.
  — Malcolm Federsen, pack member, Denver
  Many modern people (living or undead) don't
  realize that theories of evolution run back to antiq-
  uity. Darwin didn't invent the notion, he just
  identified natural selection as its mechanism. Since
  before recorded history, some Lasombra have taken
  as their primary goal the mastery of all their implicit
  abilities, evolving into beings who show the full
  potential of unlife.
  The spread of Darwin's idea made the notion
  more acceptable to modern vampires who didn't buy
  into Pythagorean mysticism and the other ancient
  philosophies surrounding evolution. While they grant
  the intrinsically supernatural state they're in,
  transhumanists point out how many natural laws still
  apply to their condition and see their ongoing devel-
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  49
  \
  
  opment in essentially scientific terms. The modern
  transhumanists aim to systematically create the per-
  fect vampire.
  Transhumanism confuses both elders and neo-
  nates who think of vampirism in mystical terms.
  Transhumanists quantify their various powers, work
  out taxonomies and otherwise seek to reduce vam-
  pirism to data. Some end up retaining their humanitas
  simply because debauchery and villainy seem boring.
  Others excel at wildly inhuman Paths because they
  regard human morality as a dam in the flow of ideas,
  forcing innovation into narrow channels.
  Many transhumanists retain an interest in ad-
  vanced technology: computing, biology, medicine,
  aerospace engineering and the like. Others seek a
  perfection that relies on no tools, though they also
  appreciate logic and method. They're not Spock
  with fangs, however — they recognize that passion
  and destruction are parts of vampirism as much as
  logic and insight are, and when they take part in the
  rites, they're often the most driven participants.
  They do everything that seems worth doing at all as
  wholeheartedly as they can. It's just that they ex-
  plain their fervor in terms that most vampires find
  incomprehensible.
  Some transhumanist Lasombra pursue matters of
  common interest with Tzimisce Metamorphosists
  and antitribu who share similar inclinations. Others
  prefer to associate only with their own clan.
  THE FATALISTS
  It doesn't matter. Everybody says that, but 1 mean it
  really, truly doesn't matter. Your own sire can make you
  lick his boots and like it. What do you think the eldest can't
  do to you?
  — Vincenzo Fiore, nomadic Sabbat, currently in
  southern Italy
  Fatalist Lasombra do not speak of themselves as
  such, not if they want to avoid destruction. Insofar as
  the Friends of the Night acknowledge the faction's
  existence, they regard it as a recurring failure among
  otherwise worthy clan members.
  The fatalists hold just one doctrine: that no
  matter how things appear, they have no actual free
  will. Some argue that the Embrace makes them (and
  all vampires) into tools of the eldest, but that human
  beings retain free will. Others claim that no sentient
  being ever enjoys free will because the Antediluvians
  usurp all minds, at conception or birth or adulthood,
  for the endless wars the eldest wage among them-
  selves.
  Fatalism almost disappeared in the early centu-
  ries of the Sabbat era. Only gradually did young
  Lasombra pause to reflect that they were still sur-
  rounded by entities more powerful than themselves.
  The rising tide of unprecedented calamities in re-
  cent years brought fatalism back to popularity. Some
  Fatalists throw themselves into frenzies of activity.
  Others withdraw and avoid doing any more than
  necessary to survive.
  THE DOOMED
  I drink to your memory, asshole!
  — Garcilaco, pack member, Mexico City
  Some Lasombra style themselves heroes, war-
  riors and other self-congratulatory terms. They aim
  at the immediate conquest of everything in sight.
  They're not really thoughtful enough to qualify as
  extreme worshippers of freedom. They don't deal
  with anything so abstract. Self-indulgence, pure and
  simple, is their goal. Some go so far as to make a point
  of always showing their fangs, tattooing black hands
  and other shadow symbols in prominent places (like
  the top of a shaved head) and otherwise flaunting
  their condition.
  The doomed are just what the name suggests.
  Most Lasombra wipe such clanmates out on sight. It's
  one thing to lord it over humanity. It's another to do
  so in stupid, short-sighted ways that invite reprisals
  without preparation on the vampire's part. It takes a
  lot of Fortitude to shrug off a SWAT team, and more
  to deal with hunters filled with the fearful knowledge
  that punk vampires lurk somewhere in the vicinity.
  Exhibitionism generally doesn't pay, at least not
  among the Lasombra.
  THE IRON FIST: INSTITUTIONS
  In most matters, Lasombra run their own affairs
  in accordance with Sabbat principles and varying
  interpretations of clan priorities. The clan maintains
  no permanent hierarchy, police force or other such
  agency. Inevitably, clan members do fall into dis-
  agreement with each other, and the single prominent
  institution of the clan comes into play on such
  occasions.
  Behind it stands an intermittently visible orga-
  nization, or working alliance, or some sort of
  gathering. It operates with little obvious plan, and
  doesn't set any sort of clanwide policy. Nonetheless,
  it exerts influence on the clan both by teaching and
  by example.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  50
  
  THP COURTS OF BLOOD
  Long before the Sabbat existed, before any hu-
  man society now known to mortal scholars, the
  Lasombra Antediluvian realized that its childer would
  (just like the Antediluvian and its peers) seek to feed
  on each other. Suppressing the practice outright
  wouldn't work anymore than, according to Noddist
  stories, Caine's decree against diablerie.
  But predation could be bound by rules, and the
  destruction of one's clanmate could be made the
  reward granted in accordance with procedures and
  policy. The Antediluvian set up the Courts of Blood
  to put this insight into practice.
  A Lasombra who has a grievance against a
  clanmate starts the process by making her dissatis-
  faction known. She speaks to the powerful Lasombra
  in her vicinity. They speak among themselves, and
  anywhere from three to 13 members of the Friends of
  the Night constitute a Court of Blood. They listen to
  the plaintiffs petition and then dismiss her while
  they deliberate the case. This can take minutes or
  years, and while the court deliberates, the vampire
  with a complaint must not press the case or risk
  destruction herself.
  In over half the cases, the court decides that the
  complaint has insufficient merit. The court members
  reprimand the plaintiff for poor judgment, and some-
  times impose a sanction like loss of status. In 10-15 %
  of cases, the court decides that the target warrants
  some punishment short of destruction. Occasion-
  ally, the court simply orders the target to turn over
  information or assets to the plaintiff. More often, the
  court instructs the plaintiff that she's entitled to
  certain property or influence if she can take them
  from the target. If she goes beyond that, she again
  risks destruction by the court, and if she can't man-
  age to take it, well, she obviously doesn't deserve it.
  In the remainder of cases, the court agrees that
  the target warrants destruction. Often the court
  imposes constraints: no use of Disciplines, destruc-
  tion of ghouls and possessions before destruction of
  the target and the like. In all cases, one or more
  Lasombra, who may be chosen by the court or nomi-
  nated by the plaintiff and confirmed by the court,
  must witness the act of destruction itself. The plain-
  tiff can try to destroy the target either a limited
  number of times (usually just one) or during a spe-
  cific timeframe, after which the court considers the
  matter settled. The court prefers to grant the right to
  try rather than to guaranteeing a result.
  The court convenes in darkness. The plaintiff
  shouldn't know which local clanmates hear her suit.
  USING THE COURTS
  Esteemed Ming:
  / Ductus Andrew tells me that you're about to
  present your first case to a Court of Blood. Just as I
  did for him, I offer you a few words of advice on
  /getting what you want. 
  •
  1. Be prepared in advance. Make sure that you
  are clear on your target, and make sure that you can
  document your grievances. This doesn't mean that
  all your charges must be true. They must be plau-
  sible and supported by what appears to be good
  evidence. Do not, however, attempt to fake things
  beyond your capacity to succeed in the deception.
  2. Be concise. If the court has questions, the
  judges will ask you for more information. Do not
  start by insulting their intelligence or experience.
  ,3. Offer kickbacks and incentives. If possible,
  explain how your action will benefit the probable
  members of the court. Do not make too many
  assumptions in this direction. Above all do not
  confidently assume that you know who isn't on the
  court and explain how this action hurts that absent
  Friend. Inevitably, either he or an ally of his will be
  on the court. If a judge has shared blood with him,
  she might heed the Vinculum's call to oppose you.
  4-Be respectful and confident. The court could,
  after all, decide to destroy you. Show yourself a
  worthy heir to the clan's tradition of authority.
  Respect the judges. Command your inferiors. It
  helps in this regard to have some inferiors to com-
  mand. Cultivate subordinate members of your pack
  for the purpose if you expect to do this on a regular
  ..basis. 
  .,.-; 
  •• 
  "': ,,. 
  . .''''. '*••_.-.
  t; 5, Follow all instructions the court gives. Fol-
  fow them completely. Do not go beyond them. DJJ
  not stop short of them. 
  Y; ; •' ^v*.'*/ •''••','
  :"
  ;",. •
  6. Do not get greedy. If you petition more than
  once every few years, you'll draw skeptical atten-
  tion. The court may well authorize your destruction
  ;«as a disruptive threat to clan interests. Do not waste
  your effort on trivial matters. You and your target
  are in principle immortal. Take your time.
  *;• Regards,
  Demba
  She's summoned anonymously to a meeting place
  and enters to find the judges already cloaked by
  Obtenebration, Obfuscate or other means. If she can
  pierce their concealment, she's clearly worthy to do
  so, but any effort later to act on the knowledge that
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  51
  
  \
  a particular vampire was one of her judges almost
  always warrants destruction. The courts are sup-
  posed to operate as the voice of tradition, abstracted
  from the myriad voices of individual Lasombra.
  No formal procedure for appeal exists. A plain-
  tiff may request a second hearing, but the court has
  no obligation to agree. Judges may themselves choose
  to refer the matter to other Friends of the Night, but
  this almost always happens in the deliberation pro-
  cess so that no other vampires know about it.
  Occasionally an appellate court gathers in the same
  place as the lower-ranked court and calls the plain-
  tiff back; the practice of concealment makes it hard
  to distinguish this from any routine request for fur-
  ther information.
  Attempted destruction of another Lasombra
  (other than an antitribu) without court sanction is
  itself grounds for a complaint, whether the attempt
  succeeds or not. A neonate acting in the grip of
  frenzy may win reprieve, as do some elders facing
  extreme provocation. In general, however, the
  Lasombra expect each other to possess enough self-
  control to hold back from destruction (though not
  from lesser violence). The courts' efficiency in over-
  sight of such matters depends entirely how zealous
  the Friends of the Night dwelling in that area are —
  in some cities, almost anything goes, while in others
  only the mildest infractions escape.
  The whole concept of the courts exists in an
  uncomfortable tension with the Sabbat's organiza-
  tion. The courts do not respect position within the
  Sabbat as anything but an incidental concern. A
  low-ranking Lasombra may press a complaint against
  a vastly higher-ranking Sabbat Lasombra, and if the
  court finds merit in the case, the inferior may pro-
  ceed and the judges will intercede (at least to some
  extent) on his behalf with the surrounding Sabbat
  hierarchy. The court can decide to postpone a judg-
  ment until after some local crisis ends — very few
  decrees come down in the midst of a war, for in-
  stance, or right before one of the big annual rites
  when Sabbat officials must prepare for the occasion.
  Few elder Lasombra see a conflict between sect
  and clan tradition. The Lasombra predate the Sabbat,
  and the Sabbat owes its existence to visionary
  Lasombra above all else. For elders outside the
  Lasombra, the issue is equally simple: The Sabbat
  governs and the clans yield. Minor skirmishes often
  flare wherever a court decision upsets the Sabbat
  order of things.
  The courts actually operate in some cases among
  antitribu as well as the main clan. Neither side adver-
  tises the fact, but some cities rich in Lasombra simply
  don't pay much attention to the division and make
  clan "justice" equally available to both sides.
  THE FRIENDS OF THE NIGHT
  Behind the courts stand the Friends of the Night,
  a loose-knit network of clan elders and some younger
  members who have proven themselves exceptionally
  capable.
  Like the courts, the Friends predate all known
  civilizations. They usually render their name in what-
  ever language most firmly indicates culture and
  authority. When ancient languages in the Middle
  East were still differentiating themselves from Proto-
  Indo-European, the Friends were "Brether Nokw."
  When Latin was the language of empire (and then of
  scholarship after the empire fell), they were the
  "Amici Noctis." When French was the universal
  European language for diplomacy and commerce,
  they were "Les amis noirs." In the last century or two,
  they've generally been "Friends of the Night."
  The Friends take a simple oath to protect the
  interests of the clan as a whole and to work against its
  enemies. In theory, they stand apart from internal
  disputes. In practice, of course, most Friends simply
  associate their partisan concerns with the clan's best
  interests and proceed accordingly. In times of strife,
  half or more of all convened Courts of Blood deal with
  disputes between Friends of the Night. (Lesser clan
  members do not learn of such things. They only know
  that for some reason, elders are slower than usual to
  convene courts and seem grouchy about it all.)
  While the Antediluvian still existed, it was easy
  to identify overall clan concerns — they were what-
  ever the Antediluvian said they were. Since the
  Anarch Revolt, no consensus exists on the matter.
  f.. * *" THE DEATH OF AMBITION 
  i;
  >' 
  Diligence is good for vampires, but the obses-
  sion with persisting without a break isn't. A vampire I
  who cannot cope with the limitations of his new I
  condition is very likely to develop derangements or I
  simply lose all self-control and perish in the final |
  fury of Wassail. Alert priests sometimes steer troubled 1
  neonates toward a suitable Path of Enlightenment |'
  to avoid a terminal crisis, but this only works when 3
  the youngster is ready to give up his humanity ;
  altogether —-the problem is precisely that he's still |
  too attached to his old goals. The suicidal behavior ?
  of such neonates is one of the major causes, of Final I
  EJeath among the Lasombra. :;' 
  i 
  i
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  52
  
  Some antitribu still take part in meetings of the
  Friends, their safety guaranteed by elaborate pacts
  and often reinforced by blood magic of various sorts.
  This is rare — most Sabbat Lasombra prefer to simply
  annihilate leaders of the dissenters or (more el-
  egantly) to co-opt them through mental Disciplines.
  Nonetheless, it would come as a shock to many
  young Lasombra to find out just how muddy the lines
  get high up in the clan.
  Most Lasombra who survive a century or so get
  invited to join the Friends. The Friends don't all
  speak with one mind about nominations. Rather, a
  nominating Friend consults with as many others as
  possible and tries to address concerns. A sufficiently
  unworthy Friend inevitably ends up the target of a
  court-sanctioned destruction, and likely so does his
  sponsor, so these matters are somewhat self-correct-
  ing. A Lasombra of a few decades' experience may get
  an invitation to the Friends after some remarkable
  feat — a brilliantly executed series of crusades (not
  just one), a breakthrough in Obtenebration applica-
  tions, a diplomatic coup that strengthens the clan's
  position in the Sabbat, the defection of a prominent
  antitribu lineage. These invitations are few and far
  between, and warrant careful concern.
  The Friends of the Night are "secret" in the sense
  that mortal secret police usually are. Everyone, or at
  least every Lasombra with more than a few nights'
  instruction, knows they're there, and many Lasombra
  know the names of several Friends. The scope of the
  network as a whole remains concealed, and few of its
  operations take place anywhere outsiders can see it.
  The Lasombra don't conceal the existence of the
  Friends or courts from other vampires. They just
  don't call attention to the institutions and few vam-
  pires of other clans think to ask.
  THE RHYTHMS OF THE NIGHT
  What exactly do vampires do with their endless
  existence?
  It's easy to overlook the constraints vampires
  experience. Only the handful with extremely high
  Fortitude can routinely resist the urge to slumber
  when daylight approaches, and low Humanity forces
  vampires to sleep longer after the sun has set. Aver-
  aged over the course of a year, the vampires with the
  highest Humanity get 12 waking hours per night.
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  53
  
  \
  Lasombra havens, whatever other features they
  may possess, almost all tend toward one of two ex-
  tremes in regard to mirrors. Some are mirrored on
  virtually every surface (often including ceilings and
  floors). A few seek out dramatic lighting and create
  artistic effects in the endless reflections, surrounding
  their guests with dazzling, even downright confusing,
  displays. The other extreme favors no mirrors or
  reflecting surfaces of any kind. Tradition associates a
  fascination for mirrors with a preference for Domi-
  nate, while a hatred of mirrors supposedly goes with a
  preference for Obfuscate. Whatever truth once lin-
  gered in this tradition, it's just superstition now. In
  truth, Lasombra who favor reflection like to keep their
  audiences abit on edge and disoriented, while Lasombra
  who try to banish reflection like to quietly remind
  their audiences that something unusual is at work but
  the host is in control.
  Nearly all Sabbat vampires get substantially less,
  down to as little as eight or nine hours per night.
  At least an hour a night usually goes toward
  feeding, though in practice many packs don't hunt
  every night. They drink their fill and then do with-
  out for a few nights. Even with well-established
  herds — which few Lasombra other than the Kings
  and Queens of Shadow enj oy — it takes some time to
  get kine together, feed on them and then disperse
  them again.
  Performing the ritae, auctoritas and ignoblis, takes
  time. The grand annual rites each require multiple
  nights of preparation and more time cleaning up
  afterward. Games of Instinct occupy all available
  time in a particular night. Ritual preparation for
  combat against sect enemies takes all of the night
  not consumed by the fight itself. The Sabbat has
  many enemies, from the Camarilla to human oppo-
  nents (witting and otherwise) to other races
  inhabiting the shadows. A crusade occupies weeks,
  months or years. Self-contained skirmishes can oc-
  cupy weeks even without the complications of
  sustained conflicts.
  By the time all is said and done, Lasombra can
  count on only having a few hours a night for their
  own pursuits. Within this window of opportunity
  they must train themselves and each other, seek out
  entertainment, rest and do everything else that in-
  terests them. No human workaholic labors under
  anything like the constraints upon an ambitious
  Lasombra. One important reason the Sabbat as a
  whole exercises less influence over mortal society is
  the pressure of time: It cannot insinuate itself with-
  out forsaking the practices that define it as a sect.
  Lasombra who survive their first nights often
  develop quite elaborate personal interests: quirks of
  style, particular aptitudes, some environmental fac-
  tor they require in any place they inhabit for a while.
  Such obsessions must compensate for the sort of
  well-rounded personality and expertise that hinges
  on time Lasombra simply don't have. Even the eldest
  lack the sort of diversified mastery a comparably
  immortal human being would, since the vampire's
  endless years are still constrained at every step.
  Vampires are creatures of ego. The Lasombra,
  pushed by their heritage to show themselves worthy
  leaders, feel a great need to make themselves stand out
  from each other and from the vampires around them.
  For young Lasombra, this is also a survival trait, show-
  ing impatient and distrustful elders, "See, in this way I
  excel and show myself your worthy heir."
  Successful packs often recognize the limitations
  of their existence and assemble diverse individuals
  to complement each others' weaknesses. A pack full
  of hackers, or automotive aces, or performance art-
  ists excels at one tasks and had better hope that they
  don't face other challenges. By contrast, a pack with
  one hacker, one ace and one artist can cover a lot
  more ground adequately if not always excellently.
  Ambitious pack leaders compare notes about what
  works and spy on each other to learn the tricks that
  don't get noted. Clan Lasombra, like the mortal
  business world, suffers from fads in management.
  THE CLAN IN THE
  Elder Lasombra tend to feel possessive about the
  Sabbat. It's theirs in very important ways, the fruit of
  their brave actions (or least actions they stood by
  and allowed). The elders of the clan expect that their
  childer and grandchilder will lead packs, teach doc-
  trine, preside as bishops and rise through the ranks.
  For the elders, if Lasombra aren't at the forefront in
  both peace and war, then things aren't working
  right.
  By the numbers, Lasombra make up about a
  quarter of the Sabbat. They fill more than a third of
  all offices, and in some cities an actual majority of
  the titled leaders belong to the clan. In addition,
  experienced Lasombra serve as advisors and special-
  ists even when they happen not to hold a Sabbat
  title. The clan's elders don't actually cheat in help-
  ing promising young Lasombra gain power, but they
  can and do provide assistance, information and co-
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  54
  
  vert aid. Elders see this as a self-correcting process, in
  that unworthy heirs flame out and perish, while
  anyone who flourishes once in the position clearly
  deserved to be there in the first place.
  LASOMBRA AMONG THEMSELVES
  Lasombra pride themselves on doing things with
  style and elegance. That doesn't mean they all dress
  alike, act alike or furnish their havens the same way.
  Lasombra havens that win respect for their appropri-
  ate elegance range from recreated (or preserved)
  chambers in Mughal and Etruscan styles to the pin-
  nacles of I.M. Pei-designed buildings and
  self-sufficient rammed-earth homes half underground.
  Lasombra leaders may turn out for formal occasions
  in clerical garb (earnest, blasphemous or satirical),
  classic evening wear of recent centuries or styles
  popular in their mortal days. The Lasombra taste in
  ritual observance and social gathering ranges from
  ancient pagan through selectively medieval to ag-
  gressively postmodern — sometimes varying wildly
  from one performance to the next, depending on
  what they hope to accomplish.
  Almost anything can be elegant. One of the
  classic Lasombra virtues is the gift of exposition,
  allowing one vampire to explain to others why this
  particular choice is in fact elegant. The clan favors
  its members who can articulate their preferences in
  persuasive manner. The clan frowns on efforts to
  shock — unless they work. Managing to introduce
  something so unfamiliar that it tramples on existing
  assumptions and yet, with explanation, manages to
  fit clan imperatives is one way to win a great deal of
  honor. Merely being offensive warrants loss of status,
  at a minimum, and may bring harsher punishment.
  Sabbat Lasombra vigorously deny that they keep
  anything like the Camarilla customs of Elysium and
  salon. Talk is cheap. In practical terms, most
  Lasombra gather and exchange news and views with
  like-minded associates, and deal with each other in
  environments policed against random violence. Pur-
  poseful violence like dueling is another matter, of
  course. The Lasombra seek to reassure themselves
  and each other that they are, despite their differ-
  ences, united by superior lineage. At least that's how
  the elders see it. Many younger Sabbat could care less
  about lineage, but recognize that angering their cre-
  ators is unwise. Generational tensions fester just out
  of sight.
  For many young Sabbat Lasombra, tonight's el-
  ders seem very much like what the stories say Gratiano
  and the others rebelled against in the first place. Yes,
  the Sabbat's structure allows new vampires to de-
  velop in ways that the Camarilla and independent
  existence do not, but at a cost. A vampire who wishes
  to be more than human but rejects the crusading
  element of the sect, for instance, is simply out of
  luck. She'd better conform and keep her opinions to
  herself. Paranoid elders see new conspiracies like
  Gratiano's in every unhappy gathering of neonates.
  This fear motivates ever more ostentatious rites,
  with an eye toward building Vinculum bonds strong
  enough to make rebellion difficult or impossible.
  Such acts themselves stimulate neonate plotting to
  find ways around it.
  So far the balance of power remains intact. It
  would take the coordinated removal of a great many
  elders, inside the clan and out, to inaugurate a new
  era of Lasombra openness. If it happened, such a
  purge would bring immediate reprisals from the
  Sabbat and opportunistic attacks from Camarilla
  and independent vampires. The would-be conspira-
  tors know all this, and haven't struck yet. Yet.
  THE UNKEPT:
  THE ANTITRIB u
  To begin with, the Lasombra antitribu never refer
  to themselves as antitribu. The distinction has noth-
  ing to do with their view of the clan. Clan Lasombra
  is a single family of lineages. Some glory in the
  destruction of the Lasombra Antediluvian and em-
  brace the Sabbat. Others don't. In addition, some
  individual Lasombra choose to accept or reject the
  Sabbat for reasons of their own. Thus the boundaries
  between Sabbat-committed Lasombra and the rest of
  the clan remain in constant flux.
  The lineages that reject the Sabbat sometimes
  do so for one of two diametrically opposed reasons.
  REACTIONARIES
  Most Lasombra who reject the Sabbat remain
  attached to the traditional (if outdated) order of clan
  hierarchy and childe-sire relations. They often sup-
  port the Camarilla, although a third of the
  conservative lineages steer an altogether indepen-
  dent course and avoid the sects completely.
  Reactionary antitribu usually value Humanity, and
  when they adopt Paths, favor scholarly, sedate ones.
  Some reactionary Lasombra war against their
  Sabbat clanmates, but it's tough going. Sabbat doc-
  trine and training breeds very thorough warriors,
  free of the ethical constraints that often tie down
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  55
  I
  
  their antitribu assailants. The "Kindred" have few
  great warlords or generals. This is one reason they
  work with the Camarilla.
  Within the reactionary Keepers exists a subfaction,
  "the Distinguished." These Cainites prosecute the war
  against the Sabbat, but not by direct means. At sea,
  they maintain the famous antitribu pirate fleets. On
  land, they engage in complex schemes of espionage and
  sabotage. Some act flamboyantly within the context of
  rigid, demanding ethics, while others are almost as
  monstrous as their enemies. Like the Kings and Queens
  of Shadow, many Distinguished specialize in working
  among mortals to turn the surrounding society against
  Sabbat activity.
  RADICALS
  The radical complaint about the Sabbat is that it
  doesn't go far enough. Radicals fully accept that vam-
  pires are innately inhuman. They venerate the
  Antediluvian as darkness incarnate and think that any
  later vampire who believes he can destroy darkness
  incarnate is too foolish to earn any respect. Radicals
  practice Obtenebration and (whenever they can find
  instructors) Thaumaturgy with consummate devotion,
  and seek to bring about the end of all light in the
  universe forever. They wish that their Sabbat clanmates
  would give up this business about tearing down
  Antediluvians or banding together with other clans
  and get on with the Lasombra's true work.
  Radical Lasombra seldom retain Humanity for
  very long. It interferes with their calling.
  BECOMING ANTITRIBU
  The antitribu choose their childer very much as
  Sabbat Lasombra do, including testing to destruc-
  tion, or at least to near-destruction. Indeed, in some
  cases the antitribu take it much further. The Lasombra
  see pragmatic justification for this: Only a few antitribu
  exist, and they can't afford even one deadbeat or
  marginal childe. Reactionaries must always think
  about what impression they make on the Camarilla,
  since it wouldn't take much for a twitchy archon or
  justicar to decide to sweep away "dangerous impedi-
  ments." Radicals need childer who can stand up
  under the mental and physical rigors of constant
  exposure to the darkest forces.
  Lasombra who belong to the Camarilla generally
  make a very visible point of respecting the Tradi-
  tions governing Embrace and release, and their
  released childer are among the best educated in the
  sect. (This only annoys many members of the six core
  clans, who resent outsiders doing it so well.) The rest
  of the antitribu follow their own inclinations and
  established clan wisdom about suitable childer.
  The reactionaries have experimented on at least
  three occasions with mass Embrace in the style of
  Sabbat "shovel parties." Conservative Lasombra on
  Paths that didn't interfere with this practice set about
  creating dozens of childer in short order, while their
  more humane allies Dominated the shock troops and
  gave them crash courses in using Disciplines. The
  berserk hordes then went plunging into battle. All were
  slaughtered. Some reactionaries speculate that a Sabbat
  rite infuses the sect's shock troops with knowledge and
  power. Most of the experimenters disagree, but they
  certainly missed something important. The Sabbat
  Lasombra occasionally get a worthy survivor out of such
  efforts. The reactionaries never have.
  The non-Sabbat Friends of the N ight have made it
  clear that they will not look favorably on any fourth
  effort. The effort will still happen — the crises of the
  Final Nights make it too tempting a tool — but it will
  happen somewhere a few Lasombra gather in secret,
  well away from the Camarilla and other observers.
  DEFECTION FROM THE SABBAT
  The Sabbat make no great effort to teach childer
  about the antitribu and even less effort to provide any
  information helpful to a would-be defector. Among
  disgruntled neonates, urban legends of all sorts pro-
  liferate — think of junior-high myths about sex for a
  sense of how accurate the stories are. Any Sabbat
  Lasombra who decides to act quickly on her sense of
  dissatisfaction, taking the common stories as her
  guideline, is likely to end up caught and destroyed.
  Successfully leaving the Sabbat takes time. A
  vampire with extensive Vinculum bonds probably
  can't do it at all. The knowledge that she is joining
  the enemy and fighting against her former allies is
  sufficient to make unlife uncomfortable with a Vin-
  culum bond of 3 or higher, difficult at 6 or higher and
  almost altogether impossible above 7. The would-be
  defector must remove her allies herself or wait for
  time and chance to do it for her.
  Once she can leave, she must then find the
  antitribu. Likely she knows, at most, in vague terms
  where nearby Camarilla vampires congregate. She
  knows nothing of their practices, and if a sheriff or
  scourge detects her, she'll likely be destroyed before
  getting a chance to make any other social gaffes. She
  must remain on her best behavior for an extended
  period of time, avoiding giving offense to anyone
  with the right of destruction over her and convinc-
  ing someone with influence to grant her at least
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  56
  
  temporary protection. The Sabbat does not favor the
  development of those social skills. Either she knew it
  in life and hasn't forgotten it all, or she manages to
  scrape by on intuition and quick learning.
  Nor does finding the Camarilla actually help
  much, unless she wants to get adopted into some
  other clan. Few princes know much of anything
  about the Lasombra antitribu, and few want to admit
  ignorance of such things or alert the Camarilla's
  authorities to the presence of a new oddball indi-
  vidual. So some defectors choose to give the Camarilla
  a miss, either altogether or once they've earned the
  most rudimentary acknowledgement, and instead
  search for their own clanmates.
  The antitribu try to keep some observers in areas
  of Sabbat activity. It's difficult and dangerous work.
  Most of the alleged defectors who come to their
  attention are in fact decoys set to lure the antitribu
  into traps. A genuine defector who makes a few too
  many unconvincing moves generally ends up de-
  stroyed without warning by precisely the people she
  hopes to reach.
  Perhaps one in ten defectors actually ends up
  with the clanmates she hoped to find. Once found,
  she must undergo extended probation. The exist-
  ence of mental Disciplines means that her new
  associates can't be entirely sure of her reliability; she
  may have things inside her head she's completely
  aware of, just waiting to explode. It takes years or
  even decades to fully earn trust and standing among
  the antitribu, once one's been tainted by the Sabbat.
  THE CLAN AND THE
  WORLD
  The early night air is stagnant and humid. There's been
  neither rain nor wind for more than a week, and urban smog
  combines with the detritus of crop burning to leave the air
  reeking. Demba stands on the back deck of a Vancouver
  condominium, looking with preternatural eyesight across
  the Columbia River at downtown Portland. The unfinished
  building where she spoke to Andrew's pack about origins is
  done now, even with the delays occasioned by an "accident"
  early one morning when a whole series of safety bolts failed.
  She smiles at the memory — she still feels some emo-
  tions a human being would recognize — and looks down at
  the Other Razor, who's still draining the last drops from the
  family whose condo this was. He bears the scars where he cut
  himself to remain awake long enough into daylight to strike
  after the morning shift was at work. She was impressed then,
  and remains so now.
  "O.K.," she says. "Stop playing with your food."
  Immediately, he looks up. "Okay. I'm ready when
  you are."
  Demba smiles again. "If you're still serious about
  becoming a priest..." Henods emphatically, and she contin-
  ues. "... then youneedto know who you re fighting against,
  so that you can prepare your packmates in mind and soul."
  "Everyone, right?"
  "Well, yes. But not all targets are the same. Pay
  attention, now."
  THE SABBAT
  You'll actually do as much fighting within the
  sect as against outsiders. That's a matter of practice,
  not theory. We who survive the first few years of
  unlife might like it if the sect were a little less
  fratricidal, but wishing doesn't change things. The
  bishop would strongly disapprove of you saying that
  the chief enemy of the Sabbat is its own members,
  and I encourage you not to bring up the subject
  unless your examiners broach it first. Even then,
  downplay it. Let them see that you know the realities
  of the situation but that you're not mired in skepti-
  cism about the great crusade.
  Remember too that your only allies are inside the
  sect. Every outsider who knows about us hates us and
  would like to see us destroyed. Of course we return
  the favor. Anyone who'd work at our destruction is
  an obstacle to our eventual triumph and must be
  removed. Your only opportunity for companionship
  is within the Sabbat. Don't use up the opportunity
  frivolously.
  In short order, of course, if your pack endures as
  well as it seems to now, you won't have the option of
  using up your packmates. The Vinculum will ensure
  that you don't. Does that seem frightening to you? It
  should. You should sometimes stir in quiet moments
  and worry that a force you don't understand is work-
  ing in your body to make you care about these other
  Licks, and to make them care about you. It should
  strike you as strange that pronouncing ritual bless-
  ings with the right attitude turns regular vitae into
  something that can make the Vinculum bond. You
  need to remember that you are part of something
  larger and older than yourself, which operates at a
  level you do not now understand and which in some
  ways you will never understand, unless the Courts of
  Blood award you many diableries.
  And that's the good news.
  \
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  57
  \
  
  The Fiends are our closest allies and most bitter
  competitors. Never forget that we initiated the re-
  volt that led to the Sabbat. Before Gratiano and his
  allies acted, and before Les amis noirs endorsed their
  action, a few disgruntled individuals made only hap-
  hazard strikes. Lugoj and his followers imitated
  Gratiano. The Fiends simply hate to come in second
  on anything and seize every opportunity to punish
  those with the misfortune to be more successful.
  They've launched wars against us before and will do
  so again. Always be on your guard. Always use them.
  Trust them only when you see the vitae go into the
  chalice during Vaulderie, and even then be slow to
  spread your confidences. Sometimes you'll find a
  common cause on a specific project. Never pass up an
  opportunity to make useful contacts or to get some-
  thing worthwhile done. Watch your back, and keep
  the mirrors handy to see them coming.
  BLOOD BROTHERS
  Yes, it's true, experimentation is vitally impor-
  tant to our sect's continued existence. Were we to
  decline new opportunities, our enemies would soon
  predict us, surround us and destroy us. That said, I
  question whether this experiment in particular adds
  anything to the sect. We have cannon fodder. Per-
  haps some night I may see Blood Brothers accomplish
  something that commands my respect. Some night I
  may diablerize Caine, too.
  HARBINGFRS OF SKULLS
  I don't know. I don't want to know. They walk
  out of the lands of the dead with masks and grudges.
  If they hate the Camarilla or other vampires, fine, I
  will work with them. But I prefer to let my trusted
  subordinates handle it. These fellows disturb me like
  nothing else.
  KlASVD
  Well-beloved student, if you ever learn anything
  about these creatures, tell it to me and I will reward
  you handsomely.
  PANDERS
  Speaking of cannon fodder... I find their preten-
  sions to clan status profoundly amusing. Encourage
  them—you may need them to interfere with Tzimisce
  plans every so often.
  \
  -J* j
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  58
  
  I am slightly unfair to the mob. A few of their
  members show real aptitude for our clan's Disci-
  plines and lore. You should recruit such individuals
  away from the mob and arrange for a proper surrogate
  sire to fold them into our clan. What I said about the
  rest of them still applies.
  SALUBRI ANTITRIBU
  Truly we occupy an era rich in portent. Who
  would have suspected that the Tremere's victims
  would return in force, and so willingly fight for us?
  When I was young to unlife, the Salubri were one of
  the great cautionary stories about what one clan
  could do to another if the Antediluvians allowed it
  (or, more likely, encouraged it as a scheme of their
  own). We knew that it's hard to completely destroy
  any group, but expected that any survivors must
  huddle childeless in remote wastelands. Now here
  they are, full of the warrior's drive. I welcome the
  sign, for it reminds us that Gehenna will bring us
  triumphs as well as defeats.
  They seem reclusive when it comes to their lore
  and powers. Any member of our clan who managed
  to acquire insights into the Salubri secrets would win
  much merit in the eyes of Les amis noirs.
  OTHER A.NTITRIBU
  At least the Tzimisce form a meaningful set of
  lineages, bound together in blood and tradition.
  They have social and ideological coherence, even if
  it's misguided. The antitribu all predicate their exist-
  ence on a "no" rather than a "yes." We and the
  Tzimisce affirm our continuity with traditions worth
  respecting, paradoxical as that may seem to outsid-
  ers. We annihilated our respective Antediluvians in
  the service of our own survival and the goal of
  ultimate freedom. The antitribu begin with rejection,
  rightly turning against their pathetic ancestors but
  lacking much coherent alternative. They're gener-
  ally more eager to destroy than to build or rule. This
  is fine: Why sacrifice your clanmates when you've
  got volunteer cannon fodder? Give them even scraps
  of respect and instruction and they'll follow you
  anywhere.
  I have a personal fondness for many of the Ventrue
  antitribu. They understand what their clan has for-
  gotten, that the end to which we are fitted is power.
  If they had more defectors, they could pose a serious
  threat to our situation. As it is, they make good
  lieutenants.
  THC CAMARILLA
  In the other corner, wearing this millennium's
  fashions in shackles and pathos, the Camarilla. I
  once visited a carnival in New York. The barker's
  style reminded me of the Camarilla, or vice versa.
  See the finest vitae in captivity to the manipulators
  who want to eat us all! Gaze on the awesome spec-
  tacle of the world's best predators cowering in the
  night and hoping to turn back into prey!
  Here's Van Zooks the Dog-Faced Ventrue, who
  thinks banks are better than thrones, next to Emilia
  Toreador, who lurks in the bowels of the art world
  like a tapeworm and regards herself as a co-creator
  rather than an annoying parasite.
  In the next booth, it's Rampaging Jack the Bruj ah,
  willing to boldly promote any ideology that won't
  force him to confront his inhumanity. He towers
  over Clever Zelda the Tremere, who's gotten as far as
  using her blood to reshape the world but doesn't
  think this means she has to give up fawning over the
  kine.
  Bringing up the rear, we've got Manson the
  Malkavian, willing to entertain any vision that lets
  her deny her inner yearning, and Ugly Charlie the
  Nosferatu, who makes a big fuss over his clan's
  independence — they even hang out with evil old us
  — and how they're all bravely ready to get wiped out
  together rather than separately as Gehenna acceler-
  ates.
  Oh, yes, and there's Gorgeous George the
  Gangrel, the most beautiful mastiff who ever was. He
  barks out that he's slipped the Camarilla leash, but
  even though he acknowledges the eldest are harvest-
  ing us already, he doesn't have the sense to join us.
  Pity. We could use the infantry.
  And that's the group that thinks it understands
  the undead condition best.
  Oh, very well, with a little less sarcasm and a
  little more specificity.
  BRUJAH
  If I were forced to pick the single most pathetic
  clan, Bruj ah would get my vote. Yes, even ahead of
  the Toreador or the Gangrel. The Rabble are the
  parasites' parasites. Their sect seeks to cower away
  from mortal eyes rather than striding forth in glory or
  simply blinding the kine with hot pokers. This clan
  in turn prides itself on rebellion but cannot actually
  manage to leave, take over or otherwise alter the
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  59
  
  status quo. The antitribu are much the same, except
  with more blood and piercings.
  GANGRPL
  The Outlanders make good poster children for
  wasted potential. They could rule the wilds as gods of
  chaos if they only had vision and organization. As it
  is, they scatter in the face of what they believe to be
  approaching Gehenna. Precisely because their
  strengths do not challenge ours, I like to make a little
  effort now and again to recruit them. They could
  strengthen and diversify the Sabbat, if they were
  willing to accept discipline. Certainly their twin
  Sabbat bloodlines reflect well on a mongrel ancestry,
  producing surprising feats of vigor and cunning.
  MALKAVIANS
  Visionary, lunatic; po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to. I
  sometimes suspect that the Malkavians' collective
  dreams and hallucinations are the result of a botched
  effort to simulate our clan's experience of the Abyss.
  Note the suspicious similarities, from the subcon-
  scious working to the symbolic nature of the
  communications, or so I'm told by a Malkavian
  antitribu who once belonged to my pack. She stayed
  long enough to master Obtenebration to a surprising
  degree, so she had a basis for comparison.
  The precise nature of the Malkavians' blood
  curse seems a little unclear. Do you suppose that it's
  imbecility, or simply a streak of infantile nature
  exactly deep enough to keep the clan trivial? Some
  of the antitribu seem interesting, but for every really
  visionary general or inventor we get, quite a few
  more serve as educational examples.
  NOSFERATU
  Any clan that appears so altogether pathetically
  useless and yet survives must be up to something we
  don't see. Noddists say that a passage describes the
  Nosferatu as first to fall in any war between vam-
  pires, and 1 suppose it's possible that one or more
  Antediluvians keep the clan around for fodder in
  some impending battle. That strikes me as unlikely,
  however. I suspect that mere competence would
  suffice to give the Sewer Rats a competitive edge in
  the Camarilla. That sect does not (to put it mildly)
  display much collective wisdom, so the idiot savant
  information-broker act may simply lull the others
  into blissful ignorance.
  The Nosferatu of our sect are a shifty bunch.
  They're not always smart, but they are clever, and
  they see too much even with our clan's particular
  \
  advantages in the way of darkness. I try to keep the
  ones I encounter busy investigating my rivals.
  TOREADOR
  Poetry! Sweet poetry! I think that I shall never
  see a poem as lovely as a tree! There. Now, if you
  were a Toreador in disguise, the beauty of my words
  would captivate you. Then I would slaughter you and
  your servants, and seize your goods to sell later. What
  a wonderful clan they are. I've found that some of the
  antitribu find our shadow-transformed bodies equally
  captivating. When you master the Black Metamor-
  phosis, you can build a little legion of Toreador
  admirers, if such suits your plans.
  This is one of the few Camarilla clans I take
  seriously. They have an effective organization, even
  with allowances for the greed, jealousy, backstabbing
  and other individual passions that drive us all. They
  systematically study the art of Thaumaturgy, which
  is predicated on the unliving condition and often
  leads its practitioners into increasingly inhuman
  states of mind. Were they to decide to pursue collec-
  tive power, they would be serious rivals indeed.
  Fortunately for us, the affairs of their sect keep them
  from mounting serious challenges to our position.
  Not long ago, I lost contact with the Tremere
  antitribu I used to exchange services with. Rumor has
  it that something befell them all. If you find any new
  defectors from their clan, see that they're properly
  welcomed and cared for.
  VENTRUH
  Think of the Lasombra. Subtract the intelli-
  gence, the forethought, the style and the dedication
  to supremacy. That's the Blue Bloods: like us, but
  stupid.
  ASSAMITES
  You need a score card to keep track of what the
  Assassins are up to now. Many longtime Sabbat
  stalwarts have returned to clan strongholds, and they
  haven't all just been wiped out. Meanwhile, a whole
  fresh crop of Sabbat admirers is spreading through
  many of our cities. I recommend proceeding very,
  very cautiously until you understand what caused the
  changes. In the meantime, the Black Hand seems to
  be in substantial disarray. Perhaps you or someone
  you know could fill one of the vacancies and help
  gather the confused faction back under proper leader-
  ship.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  60
  
  FOLLOWERS OF SPT
  If you ever find the Abyss as such too intimidat-
  ing, try the Serpents. They dress up the darkness
  with a snake. Fine if you like that sort of thing, I
  suppose; it strikes me as the cartoon version of truths
  we face directly. They're very useful business associ-
  ates as long as you remember to set boundaries. The
  roster of Lasombra condemned by the Courts of
  Blood includes too many fools who thought that one
  more deal couldn't hurt. It can.
  GlOVANNI
  I don't understand them, and have no particular
  interest in remedying this as long as I have allies who
  can work with them. You might think that with the
  various points in common between our respective clan
  histories we'd share some sympathy of outlook, but I
  find no point of contact with their obsession with the
  dead. At times I think it's even more pathetic than the
  Camarilla and their Masquerade. At other times, the
  Giovanni strike me as perhaps approaching the Abyss
  itself from other angles. Fortunately, I have little that
  requires me to deal with them.
  RAVNOS
  I hate them. If I could, I would exterminate them
  from the face of the earth. No, never mind the silly
  stereotypes about Gypsies and such. Their clan is as
  old as any other and just as diverse, and happens
  merely to escape our gaze most of the time. What
  matters to me is that they bring a unique sort of
  confusion and disorientation. When a Ravnos is in
  the area, by far your wisest course of action is to
  retreat into the shadows and wait until it leaves. The
  creatures play on fears and hopes and willful delu-
  sions with virtuoso precision. I don't believe the
  stories about their mystical powers of illusion, nor do
  I think they need any such power. They're social
  engineers of the finest rank. Unfortunately, they've
  wed this aptitude to a disgustingly distracted and
  altogether useless view of the world. They weaken all
  undead social structures as they pass, and the Sword
  of Caine cannot afford such turmoil. Let chaos hap-
  pen on our terms and no others.
  CATHAYANS
  Yes, there are clans of vampires native to other
  parts of the world. You know from your historical
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' lkrr HALLS
  61
  
  study about our interactions with the vampires of
  Africa in various ages. Of the non-European clans,
  the most successful ones I'm aware of reside primarily
  in Asia, with occasional incursions elsewhere. I dis-
  like the term "Cathayan" myself, but no other seems
  as widely known, so I'll use it for the moment.
  The Cathayan sect they call the Pentuple Court or
  Crossed Court, their equivalent of the Camarilla or
  Sabbat, includes at least three distinct clans, and per-
  haps as many as eight. It's difficult to establish distinct
  lineages among them, and many of them deny having
  clans in the sense we use the term. What they hope to
  gain by this deception I cannot readily imagine.
  Their policy toward mortals is a peculiar combi-
  nation of our ideas and the Camarilla's, blending a
  proper sense of superiority with extremely convo-
  luted ethical guidelines and monstrously inflated
  claims of power for their elders. They deny the
  existence of Cathayan Antediluvians, but if you
  encounter one of their Buddhas or Brahmans, de-
  stroying it would apparently be as much a service as
  the destruction of any Antediluvian.
  Some Cathayan factions seek territorial expan-
  sion around the Pacific Rim. 
  So far, Les amis noirs
  have taken the view that expansion at the Camarilla's
  expense doesn't matter to us. Some elders seem
  concerned, and the gathering as a whole merits
  careful surveillance. If the Asian vampires threaten
  our clan and sect interests, then it will be necessary
  to mount a crusade against them.
  OTHER CREATURES
  We have enough to do in dealing with the kine
  and other vampires. To properly fulfill our destiny as
  the Keepers, we will in time have to confront the
  other races that clutter the world. The rule of thumb
  is simple: Stay out of their way when you can, 
  and
  destroy those who refuse to move.
  LupiNES
  It's much easier for Lupines to destroy you, on an
  individual basis, than vice versa. You enjoy several
  advantages — you are an urban creature who spends
  a great deal of time with your kind. Even though you
  probably reek more strongly of blood and whatever
  else it is that upsets the Lupines, you pose a less
  tempting target than the typical Camarilla or inde-
  pendent wanderer. When you discover Lupines active
  in your vicinity, exploit your advantages. Feed them
  a few sacrifices and either wait until the beasts leave
  or relocate yourself.
  One sometimes hears of vampires who work out
  deals with the Lupines. I remind you that one hears
  more often of vampires receiving messages from
  Caine. Treat the stories as equally valid.
  MAGICIANS
  In theory, Les amis noirs wants to understand in
  detail what sorts of magic various human beings
  work. In practice, it's just too dangerous. The best
  blood magicians I know say that the magic that
  comes easily to vampires shares very little with mor-
  tal magic, so no pressing point of self-interest balances
  out the fact that master magicians among the kine
  are very powerful indeed. As always, take action
  when they threaten your current activities. Other-
  wise, steer clear.
  GHOSTS
  You've seen for yourself that restless souls do
  exist. You know that they are driven by individual
  passions that makes the typical Sabbat recruit in the
  first flush of Vaulderie seem temperate. If you draw
  any conclusion from this but "stay away," I will
  undertake to correct you. 
  At times, it's possible and
  profitable to deal with a ghost. Very occasionally,
  our plans bring us into conjunction with various
  camps who share our interest in toppling existing
  kings and potentates, even if they presumably would
  object to our rule as well. Deal with them as I
  recommended dealing with the Tzimisce or the
  Setites: Keep the deal clear and bounded, and stop
  when it's done.
  CHANGELINGS
  Should you desire to better understand creatures
  who supposedly feed on dreams and exist half in an
  imaginary realm, well, Les amis noirs will lay out the
  circumstances of your demise quite carefully. Clearly
  we will have failed to properly instruct you in some
  way and seek to avoid that error in the future.
  HUNTERS
  Certain venerable elders of our clan explain
  confidently that they know everything important
  about kine society as it is now, 
  or as it was at some
  moment in the past. They're wrong. Even though we
  are blessed with vast superiority, our numbers are
  small, and the kine are many. Never assume that you
  understand everything about any situation. Allow
  room for surprise, and you'll avoid many of the stupid
  ends that destroy your fellow warriors. We hear
  reports of mortals with unfamiliar aptitudes in recent
  nights. So? Mortals are constantly coming up with
  \
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  62
  
  something new. It's a sort of collective immune
  system, doomed to failure in the long term but
  sometimes annoying along the way. Don't panic.
  Study your environment and act accordingly. Noth-
  ing seems fundamentally new about these
  witch-hunters.
  SHADOWS' DANCE:
  L ASOMBRA AND
  MECHANICS
  Keep in mind while reading this section that
  your game may start with the printed rules, but it
  doesn't stop there. Not everything here may fit a
  particular chronicle. If not, players and Storytellers
  should modify to taste.
  ABILITIES
  OCCULT
  Not all Lasombra share an interest in the occult
  as such. The clan includes many pragmatists and...
  not materialists, precisely, since it's hard to believe
  in a strictly natural order when you're an immortal
  being, but at least individuals who regard the search
  for deep secrets as a waste of time. They'd prefer not
  to squander their nights studying occult lore at all,
  except that it's clearly necessary to make the best use
  of Obtenebration.
  A handful of skeptical stalwarts try to do with-
  out. Their clanmates think they're pathetic.
  Many Lasombra lineages teach a sort of stripped-
  down version of Occult, or Shadow Occultism.
  Vampires who learn this collection of techniques
  gain only fragmentary insight into the larger realm of
  occult studies. When a character attempts to use
  Shadow Occultism for any purpose other than
  Obtenebration, the player should halve the rating in
  the Ability, rounding down. The character is rum-
  maging through compressed and edited descriptions,
  hoping to find something useful, rather than drawing
  on systematic knowledge.
  At the other extreme, Lasombra occultism con-
  stitutes an entire constellation of theories and
  observations. Lasombra characters can learn Occult
  with the Abyss specialty if they study the clan's
  accumulated lore on the subject.
  Non-Lasombra learn Abyss mysticism in two
  ways. About once per century, the Friends of the
  Night authorize teaching the subject to an outsider
  who's rendered some particularly noteworthy service
  to the clan. This gift of lore comes with the stipula-
  tion that the outsider not teach it to others without
  permission, which the Friends never grant. (Sooner
  or later, therefore, most non-Lasombra Abyss mys-
  tics end up hunted and destroyed for violating the
  terms of their agreement.)
  In earlier ages, a handful of independent
  thaumaturges and other outsiders learned Abyss mys-
  ticism by studying the abandoned occult libraries of
  Lasombra destroyed or forced to flee. Since the
  Tremere looted the clan's occult resources, the
  Lasombra have guarded their secrets more carefully.
  It's been at least three centuries since anyone gained
  enough raw material in the form of notes and com-
  mentaries to master Abyss mysticism this way... as
  far as the Lasombra know.
  The Abyss specialty applies to Obtenebration
  use, and to knowledge about and performance of rites
  associated with gods and goddesses of darkness, death
  and destruction. The Lasombra traditionally feel an
  affinity between their Antediluvian and gods of the
  darkness. Lasombra thaumaturges — of whom a hand-
  ful more emerge with each century the Sabbat endures
  thanks to packs' frequent sharing of Disciplines —
  enjoy the same bonus to darkness- and destruction-
  related blood magic, at the Storyteller's discretion.
  MERITS AND FLAWS
  WEATHER SENSE (l-pT. MENTAL MERIT)
  This acumen is very much prized among seafar-
  ing Lasombra. A few sires manage to pass on its
  intricacies to their childer. You subconsciously sense
  impending bad weather. The Storyteller makes a
  Perception + Survival roll (difficulty 7) on your
  behalf to give up to several hours' notice of storms
  and other weather problems before they manifest.
  MET: Make a Static Mental Challenge against
  seven Traits for advance warning of bad weather.
  CONTROLLABLE NIGHT SIGHT
  (2-pT. SUPERNATURAL MERIT)
  You can choose to invert the effects of light and
  darkness on yourself. Spend one turn in concentra-
  tion to turn Night Sight on or off, plus one per each
  health level of injury you currently suffer. While
  Night Sight is active, pitch-black darkness seems
  brightly and uniformly lit to you, while any light
  brighter than a hundred-watt bulb creates a zone of
  pure darkness. The penalties for partial darkness
  instead apply instead to weak illumination. This
  Merit doesn't allow you to see through
  \
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  63
  \
  
  Obtenebration-created darkness, which glows with
  pure white light that obscures all details.
  PELAGIC HARMONY (3-px. MENTAL MERIT)
  Being close to the sea calms you and reinforces
  your self-control. All Willpower rolls made while
  you're on or within sight of the sea have their
  difficulties lowered by one.
  MET: Receive a +1 Trait bonus to Willpower
  Tests while on or within sight of the sea.
  POSEIDON'S CALL (l-px. MENTAL FLAW)
  Your self-control varies with the weather. Make
  rolls to resist frenzy at -1 difficulty in completely
  calm weather, but +1 difficulty on rough seas, +2 in
  thunderstorms and +3 in hurricanes.
  MET: In calm weather, receive a +1 Trait bonus
  to Virtue Tests to resist frenzy, a -1 Trait penalty in
  rough seas and thunderstorms and a -2 Trait penalty
  in hurricanes and other particularly severe storms.
  UNCONTROLLABLE NIGHT SIGHT
  (2-pT. SUPERNATURAL FLAW)
  Light and dark are permanently inverted for you.
  Pitch-black darkness seems bright and uniformly lit
  to you, while any light brighter than a hundred watts
  creates a zone of pure darkness. The penalties for
  partial darkness apply to weak illumination instead.
  This Flaw doesn't allow you to see through
  Obtenebration-created darkness, which glows with
  pure white light that obscures all details.
  This is a very difficult Flaw to handle in a story,
  both for Storytellers and players. Storytellers, be sure
  you know what you're getting yourself into if you
  allow a player to assign this Flaw to her character.
  MET: Make a Static Mental Challenge against
  six Traits to turn Night Sight on or off. Again,
  Storytellers should be very careful in permitting a
  player to take this Flaw for her character — it's even
  more difficult to adjudicate its use in a live-action
  setting, and you know that some players have no
  scruples....
  Pelagic Compulsion (2-pt. Mental Flaw)
  You become increasingly agitated when on land.
  Raise the difficulty of all Willpower rolls made when
  you've been away from the sea for more than 24 hours
  by one.
  MET: Suffer a -1 Trait penalty on Willpower
  Tests when you've been away from the sea for 24
  hours or more.
  O.ANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  64
  
  DFATH'S REFLECTION
  (3-px. SUPERNATURAL FLAW)
  You cast a reflection normally, which would
  cancel out the clan weakness — except that your
  reflection always shows the state you'd be in if you
  were dead. Any Lasombra more than a few decades
  old looks in reflection like an ambling skeleton.
  Younger vampires appear as rotting corpses.
  MET: Wear a card that indicates your condition
  to others. Roleplay this Flaw.
  MORALITY IN
  TH^ SHADOWS: PATHS
  Most Lasombra remain committed to the Path of
  Humanity. They're not very good people, but they
  remain tied in some ways to a human outlook. Sabbat
  notions of freedom and inhumanity don't actually
  require practicing a Path of Enlightenment. Most
  Sabbat members make virtues out of things that are,
  in terms of Humanity, sinful. That's their perspec-
  tive, and it doesn't change what happens on the level
  of game mechanics. No matter how good a vampire
  following Humanity feels about his masterful acts of
  mass murder, he's still going to drop to Humanity 3
  in fairly short order and get the associated problems
  of frenzy, sleeping late and so on.
  ALMOST FALLING OFF
  This is a central fact of belonging to the Sabbat
  and staying with Humanity: Sabbat are not wholly
  their own masters. No vampire stands altogether free
  to choose his behavior, thanks to the Beast and the
  fundamental requirements of vampiric survival. The
  Sabbat makes matters worse with its beliefs and
  practices, which repeatedly push participants into
  acts that erode conscience (and Conscience).
  When you play a Sabbat vampire, you take on a
  distinct set of challenges. It's not necessarily more
  "adult" or "sophisticated" than any other sort of vam-
  pire, nor is it automatically more "juvenile" or
  "indulgent." Sabbat exist within tighter boundaries
  than most independent or Camarilla vampires. Not
  everything you'd like to have your character do, or that
  he would plausibly want to do, is actually within reach.
  In his early years as Sabbat, your character can
  compensate in part for the loss of Conscience through
  attention to Self-Control. This isn't just a matter of
  mechanics. Sabbat often turn calculating, probing
  their own limits through Games of Instinct and
  informal challenges to establish the circumstances
  under which they snap. It's one thing to deliberately
  lose control in the rapture of the hunt, quite another
  to go berserk because of a trivial provocation.
  The Lasombra discuss this matter explicitly with
  their new recruits. The honor of the clan requires its
  newest members to refrain from acting with bone-
  deep stupidity, if they can possibly avoid doing so. A
  Lasombra who does not learn from experience about
  his psychological vulnerabilities is very likely to
  suffer Final Death at the hands of his sire or some
  other Lasombra in a position of authority. Lasombra
  tradition, including the notion of "gods of darkness,"
  emphasizes the naked mind detached from fleshly
  concerns — not necessarily reason so much as con-
  scious choice, emotional as well as logical. The mind
  wrapped in shadow ought not act like a mind still
  bound in flesh.
  Unfortunately for would-be masters of the night,
  Self-Control also fails as Humanity crumbles. After
  a few years' worth of rites, crusades and routine
  Sabbat existence, an experienced vampire must make
  one of three choices.
  • Accept diminished Self-Control. This is what
  most Sabbat — Lasombra and otherwise — do, for
  however many years they manage to survive. In most
  Sabbat cities, the veteran Lasombra look after one
  another to some extent, saving each other from acts
  that would embarrass the clan as a whole... except
  when sacrificing the indulgent vampire advances
  the schemes of others. Elaborate scheming goes on at
  such times, with a few visible clues like increased
  reluctance to participate in the Vaulderie with the
  chosen victim. (Ongoing crises make it easy to plead
  being too busy or otherwise occupied — it's harder to
  betray one's neighbors in peaceful times.) Individual
  ambitions aside, the Sabbat provides plenty of op-
  portunities for vampires running short on
  Self-Control to do useful things, from crusades to
  random terror-provoking acts.
  • Accept restrictions on self-indulgence. This
  is the choice for vampires who want the freedom to
  interact with mortal society. They must carefully
  balance their individual needs with the demands of
  ritual observance, and the situations into which
  Vinculum bonds may call them. See "The Kings and
  Queens of Shadow," p. 48, for more about the
  Lasombra who choose this course of action. A high-
  Humanity vampire (by Sabbat standards) should
  expect never to hold a high office in the Sabbat and
  to endure constant hostility from other Sabbat.
  • Abandon Humanity. This is difficult, and
  never happens lightly.
  I
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  65
  
  SHEDDING THE INNER S^LF: ONTO PATHS
  Paths aren't easy or fun to follow. They require
  the vampire to surrender even more power of choice
  than simply trying to maintain free will in the face of
  low Humanity. The vampire deliberately adopts an
  artificial system of beliefs to contain the Beast. A
  particular Path may allow some measure of choice at
  lower levels, but survival in the long term requires
  moderate to high Path ratings. Paths lack Humanity's
  margin for error. A vampire on a Path becomes
  increasingly constrained and committed to a highly
  formalized code of conduct. Observers who know the
  Path's tenets know a great deal about how a vampire
  on it must act, and in a brutally competitive society
  like the Sabbat, this can be a serious liability.
  Nonetheless, vampires do turn to Paths with
  time, because Humanity, longevity and the Sabbat
  simply don't go together. Playing out the change in
  worldview offers many hooks for troupes who wish to
  delve into the psychology of monsters. It may not be
  much fun for the vampire, but it can be tremendous
  fun for the player.
  See Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised Edi-
  tion, p. 288, for the mechanics of adopting a Path.
  Keep in mind that these aren't just numbers to
  measure off on a character sheet. A vampire who
  isn't already routinely committing planned acts of
  extreme violence and general mayhem isn't ready for
  a Path. Humanity 3 is the highest score a vampire
  can have when trying to adopt a Path, and at Hu-
  manity 3, the odds of success are small. Bring the
  scene to life: A creature with essentially no con-
  science, constantly succumbing to frenzy, tries
  diligently to adopt a carefully constructed code of
  ethics. There's comedy in here, if you want it, along
  with drama.
  A vampire all the way down at Humanity 1
  stands an even chance of making the leap to a Path.
  Of course, a creature so degenerate cannot count on
  surviving for long — if he doesn't make the leap, he's
  going to burn out quite soon.
  The Lasombra offer help to clan members who wish
  to abandon Humanity. Many Sabbat cities have a
  Friend of the Night who specializes in teaching the
  young. He or she needs a particular combination of
  aptitudes, including a moderate to high Path rating
  herself, ties to comparably experienced practitioners of
  other Paths and a knack for instruction. (A long-term
  Lasombra chronicle focusing on the changing relation
  of the clan to mortal society could use a pack of
  instructors like this, who constantly have to study the
  iOBTENPBRATION SPECIAL pFFHCTS
  : Some Disciplines like Obtenebration involve spec-
  tacular effects. If players and the Storyteller agree,
  apply the following guidelines, or as many of them as
  seem like interesting additions to your game.
  | Wherever a power calk for spending blood, the
  * blood pours out of a cut the vampire inflicts on herself
  (or from her mouth, tear ducts and other openings)
  and crawls through intervening space to the chosen
  area of effect. A vampire using Shroud of Night
  therefore disappears momentarily in a fine mist of
  blood, while Arms of the Abyss calls forth jets of blood
  that plunge into target shadows and animate them,
  ' Vitae itself isn't quite like human blood, and an astute
  Storyteller exploits the differences as part of the shock
  .lvalue of Obtenebration in use.
  Note that these cuts don't inflict any health
  levels of damage unless the vampire specifically
  ftSehooses otherwise. They're outlets for blood created
  with deliberate effort, not random damage. Vam-
  * pires who know Black Metamorphosis and more
  ;advanced powers may choose to go ahead and inflict
  ghastly wounds like ragged rips through their limbs
  or their own chest, which the emerging shadow
  heals on its way into the world: i 
  .-.« 
  i f " 
  ;' ;H
  ifi 
  When the effect ends, a faint residue of blood may
  linger. As an optional rule, failure or a single success on
  an Obtenebration roll leaves' enough blood for a
  vampire with Enhanced Senses or other means of
  identifying blood to recognize the individual signature
  of the vampire using Obtenebration. With two or
  more successes, the vampire leaves a testable residue
  only if she chooses to.
  MET: To gain the option of leaving a residueor
  fnot, spend one extra Trait of whatever sort the
  f challenge involved. 
  ,
  Powers that don?t require blood draw on shadows
  the vampire ejects from herself. Depending on the
  ivampire's own conception of the Abyss and her needs
  vpf the moment, the shadows may flow out of her open
  |t|iouth, from cuts she makes or even emerge from
  I shadowed folds in her clothing. When the effect ends,
  the shadows draw back into her the same way.
  moral challenges of the moment.) While most bishops
  and higher-ranked Path instructors feel responsibility
  to all Sabbat members, Lasombra Path guides give
  priority to their clanmates. The informal but effective
  network of alliances within the Friends of the Night
  helped give the clan an edge early in Sabbat history and
  continues to do so in the Final Nights.
  \
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  66
  
  THE PATH OF NIGHT
  The Lasombra claim this Path as their own.
  Records show it being taught in earlier forms far back
  into antiquity, and reasonably plausible legends at-
  tribute it to the Antediluvians' childer. The Path of
  Night sums up the Antediluvian's legacy in a few
  brief imperatives: domination, mastery of the dark-
  ness, transcendence over fleshly limitations.
  The Path of Night's ancient legacy gives it a
  certain organic flexibility that the more recently
  invented Paths lack. Nobody's existed long enough
  to really internalize a Path invented only a few
  centuries ago, and few enough vampires have ex-
  plored the ramifications thoroughly. The Path of
  Night, on the other hand, exists in a variety of
  related forms, and vampires who adopt it get to make
  a few choices. Once they commit to a particular
  version, changing from one to another is as hard as
  adopting a Path in the first place, so Lasombra elders
  who want to avoid tormenting their childer encour-
  age discussion and study before the new practitioner
  makes the commitment.
  • The Cold Path of Night. The most prominent
  variation of the Path of Night is often called the
  "Cold Path," as distinguished from the "Hot Path,"
  the common form of the Path of Night described in
  Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised Edition, p. 291.
  The Cold Path relies on Conviction and Self-Con-
  trol rather than Conviction and Instinct. The
  Hierarchy of Sins remains intact with somewhat
  different interpretations — Cold Path followers do
  the same things for not quite the same reasons as
  their Hot Path comrades. A Cold Path follower, for
  instance, rejects impassioned and premeditated kill-
  ing because mortal death merely distracts him from
  contemplating the deeper mysteries of his existence.
  He kills and eats as he would scratch or blink.
  Likewise, he rejects accidental killing because his
  goal is to make every aspect of his existence con-
  sciously chosen, even when it's unimportant.
  • The Allied Path of Night. The version of the
  Path of Night favored by many Abyss mystics re-
  places the role of the individual in the Hierarchy of
  Sins with the role of the clan as a whole. Thus the
  level 7 sin is "Asking aid of a vampire of another
  clan," while the level 9 sin is "Acting in the interests
  of another clan." The Allied Path teaches that in the
  end, all Lasombra become one in the Abyss, and
  individuals matter only until that grand dissolution.
  In the Final Nights, the clan as a whole becomes its
  own new master, replacing the Antediluvian of old
  with a comparable power at the end of time. The
  f,
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' Ikn HALLS
  67
  
  Allied Path may use either Self-Control or Instinct,
  depending on the vampire's inclination toward frenzy.
  • The Lightless Path of Night. The Lightless
  Path focuses on darkness as the quintessential
  Lasombra condition. Several sins change to reflect
  this emphasis. The level 10 sin is relying on sight,
  while the level 9 sin is allowing light to strike
  oneself. The most experienced practitioners of the
  Lightless Path blind themselves and rely on senses
  other than sight (at least physical sight, and they
  debate the proper role of Auspex and the like).
  Rather than penalizing the lack of innovation, the
  level 8 sin penalizes depredations conducted in the
  light: A Lightless Path Lasombra sins by killing or
  wreaking havoc while illuminated. The Lightless
  Path uses Self-Control.
  • The Righteous Path of Night. This is one of
  the oldest surviving variants, more popular in times
  when Lasombra believed in themselves as agents of
  a divine will. Cardinal Mongada's destruction spurred
  widespread abandonment of the Righteous Path.
  Just as the Allied Path replaces the individual with
  the clan, the Righteous Path replaces the individual
  with all vampires who believe in their divine pur-
  pose . Accepting the superiority of a fellow Righteous
  Path practitioner or, say, a devout practitioner of the
  Path of Caine or the Path of Cathari isn't sinful.
  Innovative killing is no particular virtue on the
  Righteous Path. Instead, the practitioner sins by
  killing in a way that does not strike fear into the
  hearts of sinners and impress upon them the very
  present wrath of an angry God. The Righteous Path
  generally uses Self-Control, but some packs of In-
  stinct-driven "fearful angels" do exist.
  More alternatives exist as well, many practiced
  at any given moment by just a few Lasombra. Players
  should feel free to work up variations, whether pre-
  sented as new or old in the World of Darkness.
  Storytellers can use the examples here to judge
  whether a variation makes sense. It should never
  make existence a whole lot easier for the vampire.
  CLAN DISCIPLINES
  While Obtenebration shows the distinctive
  Lasombra nature most clearly, the clan's scholars
  believe that Dominate and Potence also reflect par-
  ticular aspects of Lasombra's legacy. For most Keepers,
  what they do isn't quite like what other clans do even
  when they're using the same Discipline. Similar
  effects sometimes spring from very different causes.
  DOMINATE
  The two Lasombra obsessions — shadow and
  reflection — come together in clan thinking about
  Dominate. The Lasombra vampire doesn't just force
  her will on her target in a generic or abstract sense.
  She incises out part of the target's own will, leaving
  traces of herself inside his mind to direct him.
  A famous painting from shortly before the Great
  Revolt hangs in the clan's ancient Sicilian strong-
  hold. It depicts a commanding Lasombra surrounded
  by a crowd of mortals in two concentric circles. The
  people in the inner circle look toward the vampire,
  and their eyes are all mirrors reflecting his glory. The
  people in the outer circle look out, carrying their
  various badges of office and power. Each one casts a
  shadow stretching away from the vampire, and in
  each case the shadow is gray and translucent except
  for a silhouette of the vampire within the person's
  head. That silhouette is pitch black.
  That's how many Lasombra think of Dominate.
  POTENCB
  The clan abhors weaklings. On the other hand,
  "strength" comes in many forms. Few Lasombra de-
  velop great strength in a purely physical sense. The
  supernatural vitality many Lasombra possess doesn't
  rely on undead muscle and bone. It reflects the
  transformation of the vampire's body into something
  increasingly inhuman.
  For Christian Lasombra (and those interested in
  various of the Christian heresies that attract vampiric
  belief), their mastery of Potence is a form of transub-
  stantiation: They retain the appearance of mortality
  but not its substance. Some technically-minded
  Lasombra believe that they draw on the intrinsic
  energy of the universe through the Blood, and that in
  theory a master of the Discipline could literally move
  worlds. Most Lasombra associate Potence with
  Obtenebration. Potence is the clan's shadow legacy
  reinforcing the vampire's own body, rather than
  manifesting in the environment.
  O BTCNeBRATION
  Lasombra have spilled more blood and ink over
  Obtenebration's precise nature and operation than
  over any other topic, including the Great Diablerie.
  Obtenebration is, if not the heart of the clan itself,
  certainly intimately bound together with what the
  Antediluvian was and what its childer are now.
  The first question many new Lasombra ask about
  Obtenebration is "What the hell is that stuff, any-
  way?" The darkness Obtenebration calls forth has
  \
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  68
  
  substance. It can entangle targets and even inflict
  damage. It absorbs sounds and scents as well as light.
  On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have much if
  any weight of its own, and it has no substance that
  any chemical analysis can detect. (Yes, a few Lasombra
  do point spectrographs and the 
  like at
  Obtenebration's shadow-stuff and establish only
  negatives. They know that Obtenebration creates
  nothing with any identifiable chemical signature.)
  The shadow-stuff operates by rules unlike those that
  govern nature.
  In short, Obtenebration brings into the world
  something even more alien than vampires. Depend-
  ing on the particular Lasombra's inclinations, she
  may refer to the endless space within which
  Obtenebration's stuff resides when not summoned as
  "outside" the world, "beneath" the world or "be-
  yond" it. The shadow-stuff responds to the Lasombra's
  blood and will, leaking out, under or beyond the
  world once the command ceases. See Occult, p. 63,
  for more on the subject.
  The linkage between Obtenebration and occult-
  ism bothers some Lasombra. A small minority within
  the clan insists that nothing about Obtenebration
  requires anything beyond their own vitae and the
  immediate environment, that the Discipline merely
  changes air and shadow much as the Embrace changes
  blood into vitae. The rigid self-control required to
  keep this attitude while actually using Obtenebration
  takes a heavy toll, and in time most of the skeptics
  recant or crumble under the strain. Another, some-
  what larger group holds that whatever the key truths
  within occultism are, it should be possible to isolate
  them and incorporate them into a framework based
  on rhetoric or philosophy or science. Millennia of
  effort have produced no success, but the rationalists
  keep trying.
  As always in such matters, clan legend attributes
  one such success to some adept vampire who's now
  gone. The details move around from one account to
  another like humanity's urban legends.
  The prevailing answer to the question about
  Obtenebration's shadow-stuff is simple and direct:
  "It's what it is. It's what you get when you do the
  thing that draws it out."
  All Disciplines can be shocking and frightening.
  They're not natural, by definition. They all come
  from an ancient curse keeping corpses alive. Some
  don't so overtly offend human sensibilities, at least
  not in their weakest manifestations. In an era of
  special effects and tales of PCP addicts on the ram-
  page, for instance, Potence and Fortitude look scary
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALLS
  69
  
  but not completely unexpected. But Obtenebration's
  overt manifestations are just wrong on a very deep
  level. Shadows simply don't move independently of
  the light, and they especially don't come loose to fly
  around.
  As a Storyteller, you should give some consider-
  ation to how the power strikes any mortals in the
  area. It's disturbing. It confronts people with proof
  that the world is something very unlike what they
  thought. In addition to panic, many people con-
  fronted with such upset respond with moral revulsion,
  the conviction that the wrongness must be removed
  — the conviction that drives Inquisitors and other
  hunters, if they can manage the courage to avoid
  fleeing into the night.
  If a character's courage fails him, it should mean
  more in play than just "he runs away." It indicates a
  complete collapse of choice and willpower, a mo-
  ment in which a single terrified impulse takes over a
  person's mind to the exclusion of all else.
  Obtenebration exploits deep-seated fears in the hu-
  man psyche: of isolation, of demonic powers, of
  nothingness. Vampires who use terrifying powers
  soon learn what effect those powers have, and re-
  peated, informed use is a good way to sap their
  Humanity.
  Shadow Play
  Many players assume that one-dot powers just
  aren't good for much. They're often wrong, and
  particularly so in this case. Many Lasombra find
  Shadow Play quite sufficient for most of their pur-
  poses. The opportunity to simultaneously enhance
  Stealth and Intimidation and to reduce targets' soak
  and Stamina, all for one blood point and no concen-
  tration, for an entire scene...
  The Lasombra sneer at any of their clanmates
  who can't find something useful to do with this
  power.
  Note that Shadow Play doesn't just make shad-
  ows slide around and provide dramatic lighting effects.
  Pieces of darkness come alive to wrap themselves
  around the Lasombra's victims. Irregular masses of
  pure blackness fly through the air to swat at targets.
  Shadow Play involves a blatant show of supernatural
  power. Dazed mortals can explain away the effects
  that enhance Stealth or Intimidation relatively eas-
  ily. Animated shadows in midair just don't yield to
  logic.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  70
  
  Most Lasombra care nothing about the Masquer-
  ade as anything but a survival tactic, but they prefer
  not to be overtly supernatural except in situations
  they control. Hasty recourse to Shadow Play shows
  dulled imagination and poor planning, just as refusal
  to use it where it's appropriate shows a dangerous
  tendency toward self-imposed strictures.
  Shroud of Night
  Shadow Play's animated shadows spring from
  existing sources. The transformation itself is scary,
  but at least it has an obvious source. Shroud of Night
  brings forth something that has no antecedents. A
  vampire using Shroud of Night must consider the
  tradeoff involved: The people inside are well and
  truly wrapped in shadow, the ball of which is utterly
  obvious to anyone outside. The ball of tangible
  darkness Shroud of Night invokes can be a secret
  only when the environment around it is also fairly
  dark. Then again, secrecy isn't always the priority,
  and for sheer shock value, a roiling mass of blackness
  beats many alternatives.
  Lasombra in Rotschreck often subconsciously
  invoke Shroud of Night to hide themselves from a
  perceived threat.
  Arms of the Abyss
  Arms of the Abyss is another power that seems
  mundane only to people who have the benefit of
  reading the rulebook. Characters in the World of
  Darkness see shadow extrusions longer than them-
  selves come to life and act without apparent effort on
  the part of the vampire who created them. Remem-
  ber that it doesn't take active concentration to
  maintain the arms once evoked. Since it takes three
  levels of Obtenebration to create arms at all, even
  the weakest shadow tentacles are (unless their cre-
  ator chooses to weaken them) stronger and faster
  than the average mortal. With sustained practice,
  even the meekest 13th generation Lasombra can
  draw out tentacles capable of beating humanity's
  best warriors in a fair fight, as if fighting against
  extruded shadow powered by dead blood could be fair
  under any circumstances.
  Arms are of course useful in fights, but they also
  serve noncombat functions. Crippled Lasombra like
  Andrew Emory use Arms of the Abyss to carry them
  around; two tentacles can do the job. A shadow
  tentacle can pass through very thin openings (though
  its creator needs some other way of seeing where it's
  going after that) and loses no strength or speed as a
  result of the constriction. An arm need not be a
  "tentacle" in the sense of a simple flexible cylinder.
  It can spread out into a fan, or break up into a knot
  of intertwined fibers, or spread flat over a square foot
  of any surface (or open space), or take on nearly any
  other shape its creator imagines. Thus an arm can lie
  in wait until its creator brings it forth. A latecomer
  won't see the blood or concentration it took to
  create the arm and may not realize the arm's connec-
  tion to the vampire.
  Lasombra in frenzy often subconsciously create
  Arms of the Abyss to help defeat the offending
  targets.
  Optional Rule: The vampire may spend one
  blood point to gain faint but clear sensory impres-
  sions from an Arm of the Abyss. This requires one
  blood point per tentacle and covers touch, taste,
  pressure, temperature and the like but not sight,
  sound or smell. This way the vampire can use the arm
  to explore beyond its creator's sight. If the arm bursts
  into flame, for instance, the vampire might suspect
  that sunlight waits around the corner.
  Black Metamorphosis
  This power reflects a great deal of the Lasombra's
  self-image. When thinking about how a character's
  appearance changes in the metamorphosis, review
  the above sections about Lasombra conceptions of
  their legacy and individual natures. A Lasombra who
  regards her powers as expressing original sin takes on
  elements of religious iconography, with a combina-
  tion of very confessional, personal and thoroughly
  codified symbols of the sins that drive her. A Lasombra
  who regards herself as heir to the gods of darkness
  may become rigid and stylized in appearance, like a
  cave drawing of some evil spirit or a statue of a
  bloodthirsty goddess. A Lasombra who favors a
  Lovecraftian approach to the Abyss may take on
  non-Euclidean angles and peculiar spatial distor-
  tions. In any event, no two Lasombra, not even sire
  and childe, look quite the same while undergoing the
  Black Metamorphosis.
  The metamorphosed vampire doesn't look like
  many people's conventional notion of a vampire. She
  can walk down a city street and probably get not one
  response along the lines of "look at that vampire!"
  Lasombra interested in keeping the populace scared of
  supernatural menaces in general therefore favor the
  Black Metamorphosis as a psychological weapon. It's
  good for appearing to mortals who think they're dealing
  with demons, too: With Shroud of Night to mask an
  entrance and a sudden appearance in metamorphosed
  form, a Lasombra can convince most would-be occult-
  ists that their summoning ritual worked.
  \
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLFT HALLS
  71
  
  Optional Rule: The Black Metamorphosis also
  draws on the mental states of bystanders. Any mortal
  who's been the victim of a vampire's advanced Domi-
  nate powers (Conditioning or Possession in
  particular) suffers a +1 difficulty penalty to rolls to
  resist flight. The residue of the vampire's power
  inside the mortal's head combines with the current
  transformation to produce a particularly horrifying
  result. Any mortal who botches a Courage roll not
  only flees but suffers partial amnesia, unable to recall
  any details of the scene except that they have wit-
  nessed something desperately, hideously wrong.
  MET: Victims of previous advanced Dominate
  uses suffer a -1 Trait penalty on their Courage checks.
  If this reduces their Courage to zero, they panic
  automatically and suffer partial amnesia.
  Tenebrous Form
  This power marks the threshold between control
  of shadow and identification with it. A Lasombra in
  Tenebrous Form has, for the moment, ceased being
  human at all, even in form. She's now a disembodied
  will operating in the world as a force of nature, or
  rather a force of unnature. Some Lasombra prefer to
  spend as much time as possible in this condition and
  arrange the steady flow of victims necessary to keep
  the Tenebrous Form active. Some particularly dili-
  gent elders even get infusions of blood into their
  chambers so that they remain shadowed forms nestled
  in pools of blood during the day.
  As with Black Metamorphosis, the Lasombra's
  outlook affects many details of the Tenebrous Form.
  A Lasombra who regards Obtenebration as sin made
  tangible transforms with a series of eruptions, skin
  and bone shattering as the darkness gushes forth
  from her heart and mind, or becomes suffused by
  darkness as if her veins pumped a poison throughout
  her body. A Lasombra immersed in occult studies
  who regards the Abyss as the First Substance may
  collapse as if into a black hole, her body sucking itself
  away into the Abyss and leaving only animated
  shadow behind. A Lasombra who identifies shadow-
  stuff with some primal state of matter may transform
  all at once in a flash of darkness after three turns'
  meditation, or fade into translucence and regain
  opacity in shadow form.
  Note that the Tenebrous Form cannot fly, but
  can swim, and that since it lacks substance, it suffers
  no harm from increased pressure. Nor can any con-
  finement keep it in or out of a location, as long as
  there's an opening a few molecules wide.
  At the Storyteller's discretion, the optional rules
  for the intimidation value of Black Metamorphosis
  may also apply to Tenebrous Form.
  COMBINATION DISCIPLINES
  SHROUD OF ABSENCE
  (DOMINATE • • •, OBTeisreBRATiON • • • )
  This power refines Shroud of Night and com-
  bines the Abyss's intrusion into the world with
  psychic manipulation of bystanders. Instead of a
  highly visible cloud of blackness, Shroud of Absence
  creates a region into which nobody looks. Bystanders
  don't think to linger in the area. Anyone scanning
  the scene just keeps looking, her eyes not resting on
  the shrouded zone. It is a darkness as much of the
  mind as of the world.
  System: The player spends a blood point and rolls
  Manipulation + Occult (difficulty 7). Success creates a
  blind spot about ten feet across, located anywhere
  within the line of sight of its creator and capable of
  moving at up to the vampire's walking speed. Anyone
  wishing to peer inside must earn more successes on a
  Willpower roll (difficulty 7) than the creator achieved
  on the Shroud of Absence roll. Otherwise, he just
  doesn't think to consider it. Note that this power is
  wholly supernatural in origin, and most mortals will not
  have had the experience with the occult to even
  consider that they can try to see what is so malevolently
  forcing their attention away.
  MET: Make a Static Social Challenge against
  seven Traits to create the Shroud of Absence. Any-
  one seeking to peer in must win a Willpower
  Challenge against the Shroud's creator. The creator
  can spend Social Traits to raise his Willpower total
  for this purpose.
  THE ABYSS
  Most vampiric powers affect either the vampire
  himself or the surrounding material world — mostly
  the perceptions and mental states of nearby human
  beings. Like necromancers and thaumaturges, vam-
  pires using Obtenebration reach outside the world
  into a different sort of space and bring back dark gifts
  with them.
  For many Obtenebration practitioners, the Abyss
  is simply the conceptual realm from which they draw
  shadow-stuff. A handful of Lasombra probe deeper,
  finding layer upon layer of mystery in that endless
  blackness. The Lasombra Antediluvian sometimes
  claimed that the Abyss was the state of all creation
  before an interfering God made light, and that as the
  perfect master of Obtenebration, the Antediluvian
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  72
  
  \
  incarnated that primordial essence on Earth. Whether
  it was right or not, study of the Abyss repays the
  diligent student.
  Intelligence exists in the Abyss. It does not
  possess self-awareness or even identity in any com-
  prehensible sense. Fragments of knowledge and
  passion come together for a time, then break apart.
  The mind within the Abyss is in some ways more like
  a computer capable of emotion as well as logic than
  like a sentient entity, a pool of resources executing
  instructions provided by some unknown force.
  CALLING THE THING IN DARKNESS
  Actual manipulation of the Abyss requires a
  total of at least five dots in Obtenebration and
  Occult (Abyss), with at least two dots in each. Below
  that, students learn only pragmatic lessons on apply-
  ing Obtenebration in the physical world.
  Arms of the Abyss can draw out portions of the
  Abyss intelligence, when coupled with proper occult
  preparation. This requires a one-hour ritual, one
  blood point and a successful Intelligence + Occult
  roll (difficulty 7). Then the summoner invokes Arms
  of the Abyss with the player making the usual Ma-
  nipulation + Occult roll (difficulty 7). When used
  this way, only a single arm manifests. It has its regular
  physical statistics and one dot of Mental Attributes
  per dot of Obtenebration the summoner possesses.
  The summoner can decide how to allocate the dots.
  Each success beyond the first on the ritual Intelli-
  gence + Occult roll provides another dot, as does
  each additional blood point spent at the time of
  invocation.
  The Abyss creature possesses at least one power-
  ful derangement and an obsession that resembles one
  particular sin from a Path of Enlightenment (usually
  level six or higher on the Hierarchy of Sins) chosen
  by the Storyteller. Each Abyss creature emerges
  driven to do something, which may or may not fit
  with the summoner's plans. The creature can move
  independently at the summoner's running speed and
  exists for the duration of the scene or one hour.
  Intense light (strobe lights, stage lights and so on)
  dispel the creature immediately.
  The summoner can repeat the ritual steps to
  reinforce the creature's presence. If all steps succeed,
  the creature remains present for the rest of the night.
  The summoner can try to summon the same creature
  again, and three successes in a row allow it perma-
  nent presence as long as the summoner feeds it (10 -
  the character's Obtenebration rating) points of blood
  each night.
  The summoner can attempt to absorb the mani-
  festation into himself. This requires the summoner
  to defeat it in combat, reducing it to zero health
  levels. This done, the summoner can drain its dark-
  ness into himself. He gains half the creature's dots in
  each Attribute added to his own for the duration of
  the night. He also gains the creature's derangement
  and cannot spend Willpower to resist its effects.
  If the creature succeeds in reducing its sum-
  moner to torpor, it can invade his body and control
  it for the rest of the night. It can also return the
  following night and try again, and if it defeats him
  this way three nights in a row, it can possess him
  until driven out. The dispossession requires some
  other practitioner of Obtenebration to reduce the
  invaded vampire to torpor and go through the steps
  of the summoning ritual. If they all succeed, the
  Abyss creature returns to the void and never returns
  again with quite that combination of Attributes.
  DESCENT INTO DARKNESS
  An expert in Obtenebration can actually enter
  the Abyss. As with calling Abyss spirits, this requires
  an hour-long ritual, one blood point and a successful
  Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty 7). The vam-
  pire then uses Shadowstep (see Guide to the Sabbat,
  p. 111). If each step works, he passes into the Abyss,
  in the Obtenebration equivalent of Psychic Projec-
  tion. He also risks encountering Abyss spirits.
  Every (the character's Obtenebration rating) turns,
  make a Perception + Obtenebration roll (difficulty 8)
  for the character to sense coalesced fragments of Abyss
  intelligence in the vicinity. If the roll fails, a creature
  approaches with statistics equivalent to one called with
  the summoning procedure described above. The more
  skillful the traveler is, the more powerful the entity that
  wants to possess him — distribute its Attribute dots as
  if the player had scored the character's maximum
  number of successes on the summoning. The creature
  attempts to possess the traveler.
  If the roll botches, a creature immediately possesses
  the traveler, and he falls out into the nearest dark place.
  Treat the game mechanics of the Abyss like the
  "astral plane" (Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised
  Edition, p. 152). The character moves at up to a
  thousand miles an hour and can peer into any environ-
  ment in total or near-total darkness — the Night Sight
  Merit or Flaw comes in handy for this purpose. If a
  character loses all of his Willpower in astral combat, no
  "silver cord" is severed but the Abyss spits the character
  out into nearest dark place in the material world.
  CHAPTER Two: THE KEEPERS' UNLIT HALIS
  73
  \
  
  If then the light in you is darkness, how; great is the darkness!
  — Matthew 6:23
  From the most august, genteel and wicked elder to
  the basest shovelhead, the Lasombra share one trait:
  pragmatism. Whether this manifests as a cunning skill
  with manipulation or a simple meanness, the Lasombra
  are direct in their desires. It is no wonder, then, that
  many Cainites, some Lasombra included, see the Keep-
  ers as the counterpart to the Ventrue. But where the
  Ventrue master Presence, the Lasombra hone their
  prowess with Dominate. Where the Ventrue ask and
  cajole, the Lasombra proclaim their wills and woe to he
  who fails to obey.
  With that in mind, watch your tongue and keep
  your wits about you as you peruse the gallery of masters
  set before you. Know that with them, the end justifies
  the means — and that your end may well be the means.
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  75
  
  THF ACCUSER
  Quote: Yauhave nosecretsins. Everythingyaudo, we see. We know.
  Prelude: All your life, a peculiar guilt weighed on you. You had
  a privileged life, from parochial school to the Ivy League to Fortune
  500 management. You married a fellow manager and raised two fine
  children (with a lot of help from nannies and others).
  Inside, something gnawed at you. The parochial school nuns,
  with their talk of endless fire and brimstone, impressed you in a way
  that escaped your classmates. You believed their talk of judgment
  much more readily than homilies about mercy. An inner need to
  atone drove you to charity, to efforts at socially responsible corporate
  engagement. None of it sufficed, because the stain didn't just come
  from what you did but from what you were.
  You weren't exactly surprised when unseen voices began whis-
  pering your sins to you. You always knew that demons watched. In the
  morning, they spoke to you from the bathroom mirror. At night, their
  words emerged from shadows in the corners. You were surprised when
  they began whispering about others' sins as well. You realized nobody
  could help you because everyone around you was damned, too. The
  demons began manifesting physically, unseen claws raking your flesh
  in darkness and shadows
  coming alive with
  ominous motions.
  It was too
  much. 
  You
  threw yourself
  _2=~fei^sB;
  NAMF:
  PHVSICAI
  Strength
  Dexterity
  \ I A M P
  Kfe
  TT
  ^THE nASQUe8AD^
  NAT URF: Judge
  CLAN:Lasombra
  ••ooo
  ••ooo
  ••000
  SOC,A,
  Charisma 
  ••••o
  Manipulation
  ••••0
  ••000
  ^<^.
  OPNFBATION: 13th
  HAVPN:
  CONC-FPT: AcCUSer
  MFNIAI
  Percept cm
  Intell Cence
  Wits
  •]
  •••OO
  ••000
  •••oo
  TALFNTS
  Athletics
  Brawl
  Dodge
  Streetwise
  y u bte rtugc _______
  Contacts
  Resources
  •OOOO
  ooooo
  _00000
  ooooo
  ••ooo
  ooooo
  •••oo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ~>s
  •OOOO
  ••ooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  Sunn
  Crafts 
  OOOOO
  Drive
  Melee
  Performance
  Security
  Stealth
  Survival
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ••ooo
  ••ooo
  ••ooo
  HNOWLfTKifi
  Academics _______ OOOOO
  Law
  Medic o
  Occul
  Politic
  Icicnc
  •••oo
  ••ooo 1
  •••00 1
  ••ooo 1
  CXXXXJ 1
  •OOOO 1
  •OOOO
  Disnpt INFS
  dominate 
  «««OO
  Obterebration
  • • • • • O O
  D D D D O n O
  •OOOO
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  o o o
  o o o
  O D D
  n n n D D D D D D D
  n n n D D D D D D D
  ViHiurs
  Consc ience/Con vtcrion
  Seif-CxmtrQl/*nsrtnet
  Bruised
  Hurt 
  -1
  Injured 
  -1
  Wounded 
  -2
  Mauled 
  -2
  Crippled 
  -5
  ncapacitated
  1
  ••••0
  ••000
  •••00
  Daaa
  D
  Q
  D
  over a bridge...
  and landed in a web of living shadow.
  A devil in female form waited for you on the ground below. She told you how hell
  had at last claimed you, chosen you to judge and punish the wicked. You drain the life
  from sinners and tell them why they suffer. You move unseen through boardrooms and
  back offices, learning sins that you later make public. You accuse your targets in their secret
  places. You drive them toward the pit, and when they choose to die, you do not
  interfere as that devil interfered with your death. Hell has you and your kind,
  and doesn't need the souls you feed it to minister to the earthly kingdom.
  Concept: Your packmates find your conviction of demonhood
  peculiar. They can't deny your effectiveness in dealing with mortals, so
  you're the one who does the work they cannot. As part of your routine for
  torment, you make your victims procure the physical goods you and your
  packmates need. Thus do sinners support hell. Then you carry on with
  your work. You are the face that doesn't show in the mirror, the Satan
  in its original Hebrew meaning, the "accuser."
  Roleplaying Hints: Lot was right about Sodom, and every
  modern city is Sodom. Not one righteous person graces this world.
  Everyone deserves suffering and death. This knowledge reaffirms
  the pain that gnawed in you when you were alive. You correctly
  judged yourself; now you correctly judge others. In time you'll help
  your fellow demons, who think of themselves as vampires, to
  understand their true nature. In the end, when the light of the
  universe goes out forever, no illusions will remain. Hasten the night.
  Equipment: Expensive suits, attache case with dossiers on your
  current targets
  NBOOK: LASOMBRA
  76
  \
  
  JYV SS3MOJ J) g X33U340J
  COH8GIEMGB/CQNV1C
  COUHACJE
  ••ooo
  CHABACTEB Angry Young Man
  CHBONICLE
  OOOOOO 
  NATUBE 
  SoCJOpQth
  DEHEAHOB Architect
  sannoa&HOVo
  CONSCIENCE/CON vi CTIOM
  o
  COURAQE
  •••GO
  CHABACTEB Accuser
  CHRONICLE
  
  Tne ANGRY YOUNG MAN
  Quote: There's always someone else who thinks he's escapedhisjust
  desserts. He's wrong.
  Prelude: You grew up one more typical smart suburban kid,
  physically comfortable and inwardly filled with angst over life's
  minor indignities. That all changed the day before your sixteenth
  birthday. During your last driver's education lesson, you made a
  perfect U-turn, only to run headlong into a drunk driver on the
  wrong side of the road. Your instructor died instantly. You lived, but
  the impact shattered the top of your skull, sending bone shards deep
  into your brain. You might have recovered fully were it not for
  someone's fumbling on the third of three operations to extract the
  shard. You emerged with permanent damage to the nerve centers
  that controlled your legs, and never walked again.
  Teen angst darkened into lasting rage. You poured out your
  frustrations onto paper — clumsily at first, gaining polish with
  practice. The hospital's zealous cover-up of whoever crippled you
  became a symbol of everything wrong with modern life. Your essays
  caught the attention of a vampire with literary ambitions ofher own.
  She liked your style and set about testing you. So many things went
  wrong for you in your early twenties, from denied grants to corre-
  spondents turning hostile. Occasionally you stepped to the brink of
  paranoia. Your sire was pleased that you never quite went over the
  edge, always coming back to a sane if nihilistic rage. After torment-
  ing you for five years, she decided you were ready.
  On the tenth anniversary of your original accident, your
  parents took you out for dinner. As you drove home in a van
  modified for hands-only control, everything went dark. You
  swerved off the road, through the roof of a warehouse
  below. You regained consciousness dangling upside
  down, watching your parents die from lacerations
  across their faces and necks. A woman drew you from
  the wreckage with living shadows. She smiled at you. With
  fangs. She told you that if you were ready to leave the
  day behind, she could give you the power to
  wreak the vengeance you'd dreamed of.
  Youknewthatifyoulived,nothingawaited
  you but more of the same. You accepted the
  woman's offer and felt almost nothing as she
  drained your life away, then gave you back
  some of hers. You soon discovered that you
  didn't need legs, not when you can make
  shadows carry you. And an entire society
  awaits, ready to work with you to pull down
  the world you've left behind.
  Concept: You're the thinker, the
  one who weighs options and checks for
  hidden flaws. You're completely dedicated to
  the Sabbat's ultimate triumph and have broad-
  ened your list of enemies to include supernatural
  foes as well as the kine. You hope that if you
  survive, you can rise through the ranks. You
  expect that you will.
  Roleplaying Hints: You want to see humanity's
  leaders cower in the rubble and beg for mercy, and
  die in fear when mercy does not come. Now that
  you've learned about die Camarilla, you want die
  same thing for them, and for the Antediluvians
  behind diem. Yourfellow Sabbat don't always under-
  stand how it all fits together, so you have to explain it
  to them, and you protect them from their own igno-
  rance. The cause needs you just as you need it.
  Equipment: Wheelchair, laptop computer, wheelchair-
  equipped van
  NAMF:
  PLAYFR:
  PHVWAI
  Dexterity
  TAitN-fi
  Alertmsj
  Athletics ________
  Brawl
  Dodi*
  1 Emparhv
  1 Expre,sion
  Intimidation
  1 Leadership
  Streetwise
  BACHGROUNI
  Generation
  Resources
  ————— MFRTTVFLA*
  ^t
  •OOOO
  •MOO
  ••OOO
  ••OOO
  _«OOOO
  OOOOO
  •oooo
  ooooo
  •MOO
  ooooo
  ••OOO
  ooooo
  •oooo
  ••OOO
  ••OOO
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  fe
  DFMFANOM: Architect
  ciANrLosombra
  SOC-IAI
  Charisma 
  ••OOO
  Appearance 
  MOOO
  \niLiTir-
  Animal Ken ______ OOOOO
  Crafts 
  OOOOO
  Drive 
  •OOOO
  Etiquette 
  ••OOO
  Firearms 
  OOOOO
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  Performance 
  ••(XXI
  Security 
  «OOOO
  Stealth 
  •OOOO
  SULVLVJ! _________ OOOOO
  DlSfI(>' INFS
  Potence 
  ••OOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  ooooo
  • • • • o o o o o o
  • • • • • • o o o o
  n n n n D D D n a n
  GFNFRATION: lITrl
  HAVFN:
  cowrppi : Angry Young Man
  Mvtnt
  Wir*
  KNOWIF
  L;iw
  Lincuistics
  Occult
  Politici
  Science
  Vimu
  SclfCcmtFQi/lattiC
  Bruised
  Hurt
  Injured
  Wounded
  Mauled
  Crippled
  Incapacitatet
  1
  •••00
  MMO
  •••GO
  KiFS
  •OOOO
  ••OOO
  ooooo
  ••OOO
  ooooo I
  ••OOO 1
  ••000 1
  ••000 I
  ooooo
  ••000
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  £1 MOOO
  ••OOO
  DDDODDD
  1
  
  355
  THF BALFFUL A V^NOER
  Quote: Something's under your bed, in your closet and
  looming up behind you. It's me.
  Prelude: As a child, you lived in a vivid fantasy world
  and dreamed of being a superhero. You continued to visit
  that realm in daydreams as you matured. It kept your hope
  alive amid crumbling family and personal circumstances.
  Visions of secret power kept you stable through two di-
  vorces, the suicide of one sibling and the murder of another,
  two roommates convicted for felony fraud schemes and a
  whole lot of other complications.
  Your future sire never explained just how he noticed
  you in the first place. In a bookstore? Overheard conversa-
  tion among friends? Random selection? All you know for
  sure is that gradually this tall, skinny guy began showing up
  more and more often on the fringes of your social scene. The
  nightmares began not long thereafter. Antidepressants
  couldn't keep the vivid hallucinations about animated
  shadows at bay.
  Somehow it came as a bit of an anticlimax
  to learn that you hadn't been halluci-
  nating. One night the shadows
  disgorged that tall, skinny guy, and he
  demonstrated genuine powers to you.
  He told you that you were right to think that
  the world had many wrongs to redress, though
  you were kidding yourself when you thought
  that there were all that many good people to
  protect. Vengeance and fear, he said, not justice.
  He offered you the chance to test out your theo-
  ries. You accepted.
  You soon realized that your sire saw you
  as an expendable experiment. As far as he
  and most of the other vampires around you
  are concerned, you're a nut case. That's fine
  — you've been odd man out before. The
  power to see into men's souls has confirmed
  your sire's skepticism about the goodness of
  humanity and made you much more com-
  fortable with your role as predator. But
  more sinners and fools need punishment
  than you could have imagined. You'll be
  busy for a long time.
  Concept: You're your own nightmares
  come true, out to haunt others. If you
  weren't actually good at what
  you do, you'd be one more
  buffoon bound for self-de-
  struction. As it is, you're
  the sort of wild card that
  keeps the Sabbat com-
  petitive — the sect's
  ._^~
  NAMF:
  P.AYPH:
  CHRONICLF:
  PHYSICAL
  Dexterity
  Stamina
  TAINTS
  Athletics
  Brawl
  1 Dodge
  1 Expression
  BACKGHOUN
  ——
  -32
  •••••M^BsSH
  •— ^saawB^B
  \Tnmfe
  TT
  NATURF:Martyr
  DFMFANOR: Judge
  ciAN:Losombra
  MOOO
  •MOO
  •oooo
  So™
  Charisma 
  MMO
  Manipulation
  Atroirance
  MMO
  MOOO
  GFNFHATION: 13th
  HAVPN:
  coNcppt : Baleful Avenger
  Mt-NTAl
  Perception 
  MOOO
  Intelligence 
  M»OO
  Wits 
  M*00
  MOOO
  ••••0
  ••000
  •oooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  MOOO
  •oooo
  MOOO
  ooooo
  Sums
  Animal Ken ______ OOOOO
  Crafts 
  «OOOO
  Drive
  Etiquette
  Melee
  Performance
  Sccuritv
  Stealth
  Survival
  •OOOO
  ooooo
  MMO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  MOOO
  MOOO
  OOOOO
  HNOWI men's
  Academics 
  OOOOO
  Computer 
  M«OO
  Finance 
  OOOOO
  Investigation 
  MOOO 1
  Law 
  (XXXX) 1
  Linguistics 
  OOOOO 1
  Medicine 
  OOOOO I
  Occult __________ OOOOO 1
  Politics 
  OOOOO
  Science 
  OOOOO
  ns
  OOOOO
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  DisripiiNes
  Obtenebration
  Potencc
  •••••do
  •••••• O
  D D O O D D D
  •OOOO
  •OOOO
  MOOO
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  O O O
  O O O
  nan
  D O n n n Q D D Q D
  QDQ o n n a no a
  Vim UPS
  Qmimc/Coiwtetion M*00
  Self-Control/hwinet MOOO
  ~
  Bruised 
  D
  Hurt 
  -1 O
  Injured 
  -1 D
  Wounded 
  -1 HI
  Mauled 
  -2 D
  Crippled 
  -5 D
  Incapacitated 
  D
  1 
  1
  enemies don't really expect to see cloaked avengers
  leap through windows, shouting about the
  reckoning for secret crimes.
  Roleplaying Hints: Deep inside
  you, something yearns for a peace
  that can only come from doing
  good deeds, as you once thought
  of them. But the world as you
  now know it has no place for
  that. You've settled for the
  next best thing and try to
  make the most of it. The
  Sabbat often horrifies you,
  but then so did the ma-
  terial world as it ground
  you down. You remind
  yourself that in its own brutal
  way, the mass slaughter of hu-
  man predators makes the world
  a better place, and you keep
  hoping that something in the
  undead condition will allow you
  to escape the whole deep sea of
  human misery, sometime.
  Equipment: matched pair of .45s
  \
  
  DCCDCCDCDC
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  JOAIAJnS 
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  5onnnnnonnnnnnn
  DjqiuosDi 
  ^^00009999999999
  J30U3Ay |n^9|Dg
  NOIJ.OIAMOJ /33N3I3SNO3
  BACKGROUNDS
  Inf luence (Underworld x 1)
  BACKGROUNDS
  Influence CUnderworld x 11
  ••OOO
  PHYSICAL
  Brawny
  SOCIAL
  Allun'na 
  .Emoathetic
  SOCIAL
  Charismatic 
  .Intimidatinox2
  Bequilinq x 2 Senial
  Charismatic Persuasive
  DISCIPLINES
  Celeritv x 1 CAIacritv)
  Dominate x 1 (Command)
  Dominatexl (Command)
  Obtenebration x 1 (Shadow Ploy)
  Potence x 2 (Prowess, Might)
  MERITS & FLAWS
  Obtenebmtion x 1 (Shadow Play)
  Potencex2 (Prowess,Might)
  MERITS S /LAWS
  ABILITIES
  Brawl 
  Streetwise
  ABILITIES
  Athletics 
  Firearms
  
  THP SUCCESSFUL M ASS-
  Quote: Dearie, punch it a few more times first. The flush
  makes it taste better.
  Prelude: Sixty years of life, and what did you get? A
  deadbeat husband who drank himself into the grave, two
  worthless children incapable of living without you to bail
  them out, the one boy with promise dead long ago in some
  two-bit war and a clutch of grandchildren already busily
  spawning brats when they're not selling themselves, drugs
  or both. You lost your home when the freeway came
  through and shuffled around a series of cheap apartments
  after that. Everyone you ever cared about was dead or gone.
  It can always get worse. One summer night, a gang of
  young people grabbed you off the boulevard, hit you with
  a shovel and buried you. You managed to dig yourself out.
  Your assailants sent you and the other survivors into some
  big rumble you never really understood. You were one of
  two to remain standing at the end of it all. The other one
  didn't make it, but you did, albeit locked in a
  sustained manic fit. By the time you regained
  self-control, you'd been undead for four weeks.
  You found that nobody missed you. You
  were just one more minor statistic in a
  county report on disappearances. You
  realized that for the first time since you
  said "I do" to that sad sack forty years
  earlier, you had a clean slate.
  The Sabbat suited you.
  Amused mentors showed
  you how to consciously
  control the powers you'd
  exercised instinctively.
  You listened to the lore
  and studied the rites. Af-
  ter 
  two 
  years 
  of
  "apprenticeship," the lo-
  cal bishop decided that
  you had prospects and
  let you join one of the
  local packs. Sure, some
  of the vampires have
  been undead a lot
  longer than you, but you
  lived longer than they
  did. Sixty years of work-
  ing-class existence
  taught you things no
  snot-nosed kid knows, no matter
  how long he's been skulking in shad-
  ows as a parasite.
  NAMF:
  PLAY™
  CHRONICIF:
  Strennth
  Dexterity
  TAIFNTS
  Alertness ________
  Athletics
  Brawl __________
  1 Intimidation
  1 Leadership
  StrwtwKc
  Subterfuge
  BACKGROUNr
  ciANiLosombra
  MWX) 
  Charisma 
  MMO
  MOOO 
  Manipulation 
  MMO
  •MOO 
  Appearance 
  MOOO
  M*00 
  Animal Ken 
  »OOOO
  OOtXKI 
  Crafts 
  •OOOO
  MOOO 
  Drive 
  •OOOO
  MOOO 
  Etiquette 
  »OOOO
  M*00 
  Firearms 
  •OOOO
  OOOOO 
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  ••OOO 
  Performance 
  OOOOO
  •OOOO 
  Security 
  OOOOO
  •MOO 
  Stealth 
  ••OOO
  OOOOO 
  Survival 
  MOOO
  OOOOO 
  Celerity 
  •OOOO
  OOOOO 
  t>ominate 
  »OOOO
  ooooo 
  Obtenebraticm 
  »OOOO
  ooooo 
  Potence 
  MOOO
  OOOOO 
  OOOOO
  ooooo 
  ooooo
  OOOOO 
  OOOOO
  GFNFRATION: 13th
  HAVFN:
  CoNt-i-pi : Successful Mass-
  Embracee
  Perception 
  »»OOO
  Intellieence 
  MOOO
  Wits 
  MOOO
  Academics 
  •OOOO
  Computer 
  OOOOO
  Finance 
  OOOOO
  Investigation 
  OOOOO
  Law 
  OOOOO 1
  Linguistics 
  OOOOO 1
  Medicine 
  MOOO 1
  Occult 
  »0000 1
  Politics 
  •OOOO
  Rripnn. 
  onoon
  VlRTUF-j
  Qinscience/C.m viction MOnn
  Sclf-ControlflfrtHfiet ••OOO
  Couraee 
  «««*O
  - ————— MfRflVFLAV
  ^B
  • • • • o o o o o o
  an naQDDDan
  n
  Bruised 
  D
  Hurt 
  -1 D
  Injured 
  -1 D
  Wounded 
  -2 D
  Mauled 
  -2 D
  Crippled 
  -5 D
  Incapacitated 
  D
  1 
  1
  Concept: You watch over the kids.
  They find this funny but let you do it. A
  few of them even recognize that your care
  keeps them from losing those last
  scraps of humanity. You don't care
  about grand crusades — you want
  to protect the society that gives your
  existence some value.
  Roleplaying Hints: Momma
  knows best. Momma knows how to
  spot easy targets and recognize tricky
  ones, how to hide the bodies later,
  how to bless the cups for the
  Vaulderie. Oh, sure, you've got a
  lot to learn, but you're doing well
  and enjoying it. There's a woman
  at the top of the sect, you hear.
  Maybe some night there will be
  another.
  Equipment: Sturdy clothes, por-
  table cooking gear, station wagon
  \
  \
  
  THH PIRATE
  Quote: Hand it over. Now.
  Prelude: You were conceived in rape, and that set the pattern for
  your life. Your mother was the priestess of some tribal religion in what
  had been a remote African valley. Poaching and industrialization
  forced her people into a coastal city. Beyond that, you never quite got
  the story straight. You don't know whether she turned to prostitution
  or was simply seized at random by sailors on a drunken rampage. Doesn't
  matter much either way, really—you were bom with the taint of the
  syphilis she got at the same time she got you.
  You grew up in war-zone squalor. Three or four nations ckimed
  to rule your area at different times. In practice they were all well-armed
  gangs, favoring their respective tribes at the cost of everyone else. You
  were violently and sadistically abused, or coldly abused in a detached
  manner, and that's how you could tell one regime from the next. Any
  outside peacekeepingforces were either ineffectual or in active collabo-
  ration with one gang or another, so that was no help. And you
  remembered that what they did to your mother, they could do to you
  sometime, if they wanted to.
  By the time your mother died, you'd learned enough to make
  yourself useful to petty waterfront tyrants. You escaped some of the
  worst abuse meted out to less talented children and might have gone
  on to lead (by the standards of the docks) a reasonably decent life. If it
  weren't for the syphilis, that
  is. Early signs of mad-
  ness 
  manifested
  before your 18th
  birthday, and your
  increasingly erratic
  NAMF;
  PIAYFR:
  Strength
  Dexterit,
  Stamina _____
  TAI tN
  Athletics
  Brawl
  DodK
  1 Empathy
  1 Expression
  1 Intimidation
  Streetwise
  BACHCBO
  MMO
  MMO
  •MOO
  TS
  MOOO
  __M»00
  •MOO
  ••OOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  DFMFANOR: BraVO
  CiANiLosombra
  Charisma ________ MOOO
  Manipulation 
  ••OOO
  Appearance 
  ••OOO
  Sums
  Animal Ken 
  OOOOO
  Crafts 
  ••OOO
  Drive 
  MMO
  Etiquette 
  OOOOO
  Fireanns 
  •OOOO
  Melee 
  MMO
  Performance 
  OOOOO
  Securitv 
  OOOOO
  Stealth __________ MOOO
  r>is<-i|>i INI •>
  Potence 
  M*OO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  • • • • • • O O O O
  • • • • O O O O O O
  D D D a D D n n n n
  n n a D D D D n n a
  D D D D D D D D D n
  HAVFN:
  coNc-Fjn: Pirate
  MFNTAL
  Wits
  Academics
  Computer
  Finance
  Investieation
  Law
  Medicine
  Occult
  Politics
  VlHlUV?
  Self-ControlfltMtmet
  Bruised
  Huct 
  -1
  Injured 
  -1
  Wounded 
  -2
  Mauled 
  -2
  Crippled 
  -5
  Incapacitated
  1
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  behavior cost you what marginal protection you once enjoyed. You never talk about the
  few years after that.
  Gradually you became aware of a persistent voice in your mind, somewhere in the
  mental fog, an amused and curious probing. In your moments oflucidity, you learned about
  the pirate captain with a taste for amateur physiology. He fed you the blood that let you
  recover your sanity and kept the disease at bay, and also made you pretematurally strong.
  The cost for all this was service, and you gave it gladly. You soon joined his crew and
  pillaged throughout the Indian Ocean. When he lost one of the mysterious
  crewmates who only came out at night, he held a lottery to replace him. You
  won. Then the fangs came down.
  You continue to serve your captain. Your existence gives you lots of
  opportunity to hurt people and moments of solitude in which you don't have
  to think much about anything in particular. Both suit you fine.
  Concept: You're a pirate, and a good one. You know how to foil
  ^dozens of security measures, jam distress signals, fence loot and so on. The
  workings of the Sabbat seem nebulous to you; you know only the routine
  on your ship. But others who think you na'ive are setting themselves up
  for trouble.
  Roleplaying Hints: The world has hunters and hunted, nothing
  more. You hunt. You're good at it. With practice you may become
  much better at it. As you gain distance (physical and psychological)
  from your mortal days, you're beginning to wonder what else
  vampires do and are taking your first steps out into larger Sabbat
  society. You'll always be a pirate, but you realize that that may not
  preclude being other things as well.
  Equipment: Seaworthy clothes, knives, books of Sabbat
  history
  •LANBOOK: I
  82
  
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  NOIJ.OIANOJ /33N313SNO3
  MOIJ.OIANOJ /33N313SNO3
  B A C K G R O U N D S
  Senerotion x 2
  BACKGROUNDS
  Inf luence (Underworld x 1^
  Influence (Political x 1]
  PHYSICAL
  Steady
  Energetic 
  Wiry
  Nimble x 2 
  Tough x 2
  SOCIAL
  Charismatic x 2 Magnetic
  Diplomatic 
  Persuasive x 2
  Eloquent
  D I S C I P L I N E S
  Dominate x 2 (Command
  DISCIPLINES
  Obtenebration x 1 (Shadow Ploy)
  Potence x 2 (Prowess. Might.
  Viqop)
  MENTAL
  Attentive 
  Wily
  Obtenebration x 2 (Shadow Play
  Shroud of Night)
  MEBITS & [LAWS
  MERITS & FLAWS
  A B I L I T I E S
  Firearms 
  Politics
  ABILITIES
  Athletics 
  Melee
  Investigation Subterfuge
  Law
  
  THF REVOLUTIONARY
  Quote: If you could take the larger view, you would see that your
  death validates the revolutionary struggle as your life validated the existing
  order. But I see you have too much blood, in the way.
  Prelude: You grew up not very far from the brink of starvation
  in Sicily. Your family lost a lot of its land in "reforms" after World
  War II and never recovered from it. When you were old enough to
  leave home, you set out to make your fortune elsewhere. After a year
  of wandering, you ended up in Rome.
  Rome wasn't the greatest place to be poor during the 1960s.
  The combination of rampant corruption and clerical interference
  kept everyone without connections constantly on edge. You could
  be arrested on trumped-up charges and put to work on someone's
  estate, or simply harassed into leaving a particular neighborhood
  because the cops didn't like your style. Had they deliberately set out
  to make a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary of you, they could scarcely
  have done a better job.
  You suffered a crisis of conscience after kidnapping and
  torturing an innocuous South American businessman. It's one
  thing, you reasoned, to strike at the agents of tyranny. While in
  important ways all bourgeois are collaborators, was this actually
  helping your cause ? When you asked questions, your comrades were
  only too happy to beat you within an
  inch of your life, frame you for
  drug charges and let the po-
  lice haul you away. Rome
  wasn't a good place to be
  imprisoned during the '60s,
  either.
  So it was, twenty years
  after leaving home, that you
  ended up back in Sicily. You
  were still driven to do some-
  thing but had no clue as to
  what. Your parents ^ V
  \
  were long dead by this time, and your relatives didn't want to see you.
  You wandered the island, visiting tourist attractions. And you
  started hearing voices. Shadows spoke to you as you camped outside
  old castles, telling you of a great war that your Marxist revolution
  couldn't begin to approach. You were pretty sure you were going
  insane, but you listened and sometimes carried out the daylight tasks
  the shadows asked you to.
  One night, the shadows came alive to reveal a nattily dressed
  old man, who told you the rest of the story. He explained about the
  Antediluvians, for whom capitalists are only the most recent pawns,
  and about the Sabbat, the ultimate vanguard party in all of history.
  He showed you how the dialectic of history made sense only in light
  effects that dialectical materialism couldn't allow. Then he offered
  you the opportunity to join the struggle. Of course you accepted.
  Concept: You're a neonate amid elders. Still, you show the
  fervor that makes Sabbat founders smile, and if they seem sometimes
  like part of the problem, that's a matter for another night. From
  Sicily, you and your fellow neonates strike out at Camarilla targets
  all around the Mediterranean. You don't really belong to a perrna-
  nentpackyet—yourmentorsaretestingcombinationsformaximum
  efficiency. You aim to prove yourself worthy — who knows,
  someday you may strike against these elders as they struck against
  theirs.
  Roleplaying Hints: There's so much to learn! Everything you
  assumed about the world seems false. You try never to admit your
  fear, only your ignorance: You're quite willing to ask honest
  questions in search of answers. You also seek to find suitable allies,
  the ones who show themselves most flexible and determined. Let th
  Equipment: Disguises, collapsible firearms
  NAMF:
  PLAYFR:
  CHHONICLF:
  PHVS.C-AI
  Dexteritv
  Stamina ________
  TALFNTS
  Alertness ______
  Athletics
  Brawl
  1 Expression
  Leadership
  1 Streetwise
  BACKC.ROUN
  , ———
  NATURcRebel 
  OPNFRATIONlllth
  DFMFANOR: Visionary 
  HAVFN:
  CiAN:Losotnbra 
  CONCEPT: Revolutionary
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  ooooo
  •MOO
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  ••ooo
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  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
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  SOCIAL
  Charisma ________ ••••O
  Manipulation _____ M*OO
  Appearance 
  M*OO
  MFNTAI
  Wits
  SKILLS 
  KNOWLFDC.FS
  Animal Ken 
  OOOOO 
  Academics
  Drive 
  OOOOO
  Etiquette 
  OOOOO
  Firearms _________ M*OO
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  Performance 
  ••OOO
  Security 
  •OOOO
  Survival _________ OOOOO
  DlSCI [H INFS
  Dominate 
  MOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  ooooo
  p
  • • • • • o o o o o
  • • • • O O O O O O
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  annnnnnnDD
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  Computer
  Law
  Medicine
  Dccult
  Politics
  Science
  -.nscience/Sn^tlm
  Courace
  Bruised
  Hurt 
  -1
  Injured 
  -1
  Wounded 
  -2
  Mauled 
  -2
  Crippled 
  -5
  Incapacitated
  •OOOO
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  I
  : LASOMBRA
  
  BROKER FOR THE DAMNED
  Quote: It's all about leveraging your core competencies.
  Prelude: All your life you had a very simple goal: You
  wanted to be rich. You got off to a good start, with a decent
  enough middle-class upbringing and an okay college
  education and a better business school and a lucky break
  at a big Wall Street brokerage. You flourished in the '80s,
  exploiting regulatory chaos with the best of them and
  twice managing to change jobs just before the SEC ruined
  the party. You almost wondered if someone were looking
  out for you, some God of Leverage.
  Then things got interesting, when the weirdoes
  started calling you in for nighttime consultations. Their
  money was good so you didn't mind, but when you asked
  if they were vampires or what, they didn't exactly laugh.
  What the hell. You kept working for them.
  Then came the night when it all changed. One of
  the weirdoes actually burst into your office and fucking
  drank your blood. Right there. Half a dozen of
  the other weirdoes came in and smashed up
  that first one pretty bad. As you lay dying,
  they debated whether to give you hugs —
  at least that's how you remember it.
  (You've since learned of the "Embrace.")
  They poured some of their own blood
  down your throat and you came back to
  life, or at least back to something like life.
  You'd like to still work as "a broker for
  the Damned," the title you use sometimes,
  but it's hard when you can't go to the
  market floors and have to
  break off a planning ses-
  sion just because the sun
  is rising. The guys you
  used to work with are
  doing a lot better than
  you are, and they're go-
  ing to keep pulling ahead
  because you can't. Ever.
  Catch. Up.
  Concept: You're a
  vampire on the edge of
  a nervous breakdown.
  You cannot maintain
  NAMIT;
  PHYSICAL
  Strength _______
  Dexteritv
  TALFNIS
  Athletics
  Brawl
  1 Empathy ________
  1 Leadership
  Streetwise
  BAC-KGHOUNr
  mp
  NATunr:ThrilI-Seerter 
  GrNrnATiON:12th
  DFMFANOHiConformiSt 
  HAVFN:
  ci AN: Losombra 
  conn-pi : Broker for the
  A 
  Damned -
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  SOCIAL 
  MFNTAL
  Charisma ________ *99OQ 
  Perception _______
  Manipulation 
  ••••D 
  Intelligence
  Appearance 
  •••OO
  SKILLS
  Animal Ken ______ OOOOO
  Crafts 
  OOOOO
  Drive 
  OOOOO
  Etiquette 
  MMO
  Firearms 
  OOOOO
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  Performance 
  OOOOO
  Wits
  KNOWIFOOF'
  n vest ifrat ion
  Law
  Medicine
  Jccutt
  Survival 
  OOOOO 
  Science
  DlSClpl-lNFS
  Obtenebration 
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  OOOOO
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  Bruised
  Hurt 
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  Injured 
  -1
  Wounded 
  -2
  Mauled 
  -Z
  Crippled 
  -5
  Incapacitated
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  the routine you did in life, and you don't yet
  know of any alternative that you find satisfy-
  ing. You'd probably respond to a carefully crafted
  pitch to join someone else's cause, unless you can
  manage to invent one for yourself.
  Roleplaying Hints: Panic. Don't show
  panic. Show confidence. But confi-
  dence in what ? You know you're not
  the broker you used to be, and it's
  probably just a matter of time until
  the pack figures it out, too. Ditch
  them? Maybe get leverage on them.
  Blackmail? Don't show panic.
  Equipment: Last year's suits,
  portfolio
  
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  B A C K Q R O U N D S
  Contacts x J
  BACKQBOUNDS
  Seneration x 1 
  ._
  Influence (Underworld x 1)
  PHYSICAL
  Ferocious 
  Moanetic
  Influence (Church x 2)
  SOCIAL
  Commandina Maqnetic
  SOCIAL
  Beauilino x 2 Magnetic
  DISCIPLINES
  Dominate x 1 (Command)
  Potence x 3 (Prowess, Might
  DISCIPLINES
  Dominate x ? (Command.
  Mesmerism, Forgetful Mind)
  Obtenebration x 1 (Shadow Play)
  MERITS & /LAWS
  Etiquette 
  Investigation
  Expression Law
  
  THE CRUSADER O ux OF TIME
  Quote: It's never too late to mend! Or, in your case, break.
  Prelude: You were one among thousands of Spanish peasants
  who joined the 1930s civil war on the anarchist side. When
  recruiters came to speak of a new society, built on the rubble of
  hierarchy and power, it was like a revelation. You had to do your part
  to help.
  The reality of war was less glamorous. You fought first against
  Nazi-backed royalist forces, then against your own ostensible allies
  when Stalin decreed that good Communists should now extirpate
  anarchists like yourself. Two years after enlisting, you found yourself
  rotting in a cell somewhere outside Madrid, waiting for your turn in
  front of the firing squad. For company, you had only a raving old man
  who babbled of ancient masters who would come to rescue all
  deserving Spaniards.
  You still remember with perfect clarity how surprised you were
  when an ancient master did come to rescue the old man. A foppish
  young dandy in archaic clothes shattered the prison wall with his
  bare hands, scooped you and the old man up and ran off at
  superhuman speed. By the time you regained your composure, you
  were safe and resting in some seaside manor looking out toward the
  Balearics. Over the next few nights, the young man, who proved
  to be more than eighty years old, explained the secret history of
  the world to you. It was, in many ways, just what you expected.
  Could anyone look at the history of Church and State and be
  surprised to know that immortal bloodsuckers were behind it all ?
  When the dandy offered you the power to fight the secret
  masters on their own ground, you readily accepted. Things went
  well enough, until the fateful night in 1941 when a crippled
  bomber unloaded its cargo before plummeting into the sea. The
  dandy, the old man and all the others in that seaside manor perished.
  You were buried, trapped in torporfor more than halfacentury, until
  workers building a new resort acci-
  dentally dug you out. Now you're
  back 
  among 
  the
  Lasombra antitribu, try-
  ing to make sense of the
  strange new world and
  get back into the fray.
  Concept: You're an anachro-
  nism as well as an idealist. You
  remember the world without comput-
  ers, the world with Hitler and Stalin.
  You bring a level of practical experi-
  ence with extremely dirty warfare that
  makes you valuable to your allies, valu
  able enough for them to put up with your
  limitations. Perhaps they also find your
  revolutionary zeal encouraging, an artifact
  of a time and place when the world seemed
  more malleable.
  Roleplaying Hints: This is terrible! Fifty
  years went by, and what good did your clanmates
  do?Not adrop, as nearly as you can tell. They need
  you to show them how to do it right. It's time for bold deeds
  and strong words. While you're not about to explain vampires
  to the masses, surely it's right and proper to rekindle the fire of
  self-determination. Skeptics call it rabble-rousing. You know
  ——— H-™^P^—— 
  -
  • • • • • • • o o o
  • • • o o o o o o o
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  Injured
  Wounded
  Mauled
  Crippled
  Incapacita!
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  i that the rabble are the only people
  ' ever worth bothering with. And as
  for the malefactors of great wealth,
  well, you have ways of dealing
  with them, too.
  Equipment: Rug-
  ged clothes, assorted
  smallfirearmsand
  knives, maps,
  anarchist pro-
  paganda
  CHAPTER THH
  
  THF HARPY
  Quote: So you assert that your sire taught you nothing. This is
  perhaps more convenient than admitting you are a fool, except that
  the end result is the same. Here is your sire to explain just what he
  taught you, and what you have failed to do.
  Prelude: You grew up in pretty average middle-class cir-
  cumstances in one of South America's more prosperous cities.
  You didn't have to live in a garbage heap (though you knew that
  people did, not very many miles from where you were). You
  never dealt in drugs or found yourself caught in a drive-by
  shooting. None of the northern stereotypes about your country
  applied to you, really. Your parents were successful profession-
  als, and so were you.
  Ironically enough, your life began to fall apart during a trip
  to Rome. There you were kidnapped by the Red Brigades (not
  yet crushed by police assault and internal dissent) and tortured
  before your release. The psychological scars ran deeper than
  your therapist realized, as you became obsessed with analyzing
  the "status markers" that led to such a terrible fate for you and
  other victims. You became a sort of business anthropologist,
  tracing the cues that invite attack and warning your peers
  about them. You developed a reputation as a kook and
  became increasingly marginalized within your hometown.
  Your sire discovered your work when she emerged
  from a decade-long torpor. She was intrigued — she'd
  dabbled in such semiotics herself, unsuccessfully. When
  she offered you the opportunity to pursue your work through
  all ages, what could you do but accept?
  Once you mastered the basics of unlife, your sire
  presented you to the local Camarilla. She was of the
  Lasombra antitribu and an honored participant in her
  city's secret affairs. You rapidly earned a place for
  yourself. Your idiosyncratic studies came in very
  handy tracing out the maze that is prestation in
  any flourishing court. You don't always agree with
  what the vampires around you do, but they never
  become dull.
  Concept: You're the model antitribu: intel-
  ligent, gracious and above all well
  behaved. You show up
  t h e
  failings of your clan by
  comparison, and were it not
  for the stain of your heritage,
  you'd simply blend in with the
  Camarilla. Your ongoing studies lead . if1C
  you to travel, so that you can compare i ) 0C0C
  the workings of as many Kindred as
  possible.
  NAMFL
  PIAYFR:
  CHRONICLF
  P
  Dexterity
  T
  Athletics
  Brawl
  1 Dodge
  Leadership,.
  Streetwise
  N AT UH F :Perf cctioniST
  ci AN; Lasombra Antitribu
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  Charisma ________ M»OO
  Manipulation ______ *M«O
  Appearance 
  •MOO
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  Animal Ken
  Crafts
  Drive
  Melee
  Performance
  Survival
  OOOOO
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  OFNFRATIOM: 13th
  HAVFN:
  coNCfpr: Harpy
  MFNTAL
  Perception
  Intelligence
  Wits
  •MOO
  •MOO
  •MOO
  KNOWIFDGPS
  Academics 
  ««OOO
  Computer
  Finance
  Investieation
  Law
  Linguistics _______
  Medicine
  Occult
  Politic. _________
  Science
  OOOOO
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  Courage _______ ••••O
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  Hurt 
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  Injured 
  -1
  Wounded 
  -2
  Mauled 
  -2
  Crippled 
  -5
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  QDDDOaaODQ
  Roleplaying Hints: In a sense, you're
  reverting to your ancestors' attitude of
  noble superiority, back when they
  received grants of total power
  over the aboriginal tribes in
  your part of South
  America. It bothers you
  sometimes to feel your
  attachments to human-
  ity slowly drain away, but
  the Kindred make such
  fascinating subjects.
  Always ask politely,
  but never fail to ask.
  Understand what's go-
  ing around you. Once
  you understand, you
  can judge with wit and
  precision.
  Equipment: Fine clothes, exten-
  sive notebooks (gradually being
  abandoned in favor of a handheld
  computer)
  I
  
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  CHABACTEB Student of theAbySS
  CHRONICLE
  CLAN Lasombra
  NATURE Architect
  SMV1J R S1IH3M
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  CHABACTEB Harpy
  CHRONICLE
  Lasombra Antitribu
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  NATURE Perf ectionist
  DEHEANOB Traditionalist
  
  THP STUDFNT OF THE ABYSS
  Quote: Dammit, if you'd just shut up for a second, you could
  learn something useful. The Abyss will waitforever, but 1 could be off
  doing something worthwhile if you're going to keep this up.
  Prelude: All your life, you wanted to know something more,
  to understand the next layer beneath what you could see. In
  school, you didn't always get very good grades, because you
  preferred to spend the time studying interesting topics to wading
  through pablum. Once out of school, you pursued your interests
  as an autodidact, ranging freely through the sciences and humani-
  ties alike. You found few close friends, simply because a lot of folks
  seemed confused by the notion of being simultaneously con-
  cerned with, say, quantum mechanics and Hermetic alchemy.
  Their loss.
  With the Internet, you could
  reach out to the other one-in-
  a-million eclectic seekers
  and find some companion-
  ship, albeit at a distance.
  Somewhat to your sur-
  prise, you even found
  ways to parlay your ap-
  proach to the world into
  freelance writing of vari-
  ous sorts. Not bad for
  someone accustomed to being
  NAMP:
  PLAVFR:
  CHRONICLF:
  PHYSICAL
  Strength
  TALFNT-S
  Alertness
  Athletics
  Brawl
  Emp^hy
  Intimidation
  1 Leadership
  MOOO
  MOOO
  MOOO
  MOOO
  MOOO
  OOOOO
  •OOOO
  MOOO
  MOOO
  •OOOO
  NATLJPF: Architect
  Dt-Mi-ANoH: Pedagogue
  ciAN:Lasombra
  SOCIAL
  Charisma 
  MOOO
  Manipulation 
  M«OO
  Appearance 
  M»OO
  SKILLS
  Animal Ken 
  •OOOO
  Crafts 
  •OOOO
  Drive 
  •OOOO
  Etiquette 
  •OOOO
  Firearms 
  OOOOO
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  Performance 
  »OOOO
  Securitv 
  OOOOO
  OFNPRATION: 9th
  HAVFN:
  CONH-III: Student
  Abyss
  MFNTAI
  Perception
  Wits
  KNOWI FDO
  Academics
  Finance
  Law
  Medicine
  Occult
  of the
  •MOO
  MMO
  •••OO
  s
  •••00
  •OOOO
  ooooo
  OOOOO 1
  OOOOO \
  OOOOO 1
  OOOOO 1
  •••OO 1
  Mentor 
  »oooo
  Resources 
  •••OO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  Survival _________ OOOOO
  Obtenebration 
  MMO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  Path of Night
  • • • • O O O O O O
  • •••••• O O O
  nnnnaDnDnn
  annnnnnnnn
  DDDDnDDnnn
  Science
  Vim 11
  Conscienco/Cjjrjiis
  Courage
  Bruised
  Hurt
  Injured
  Wounded
  Mauled
  Crippled
  Incapacitates
  1
  MOOO
  MOOO
  1 nnnnnnn
  the odd girl out.
  At first you didn't notice just how systematically your life was going bad. Harassment on the job, your
  family becoming even more stupid and truculent than their norm, net acquaintances disappearing or
  abruptly changing personalities... it didn't add up for a while. At first you just did your best to cope with
  each fresh obstacle as it arose. The awareness of calculated harassment rose gradually, and when you
  took your initial steps toward identifying the perpetrator, everything got worse. Credit fraud and
  worse went on in your name, with very plausible evidence. You came close to the brink, but never
  quite broke.
  After five years of this, the mastermind presented herself. She didn't take long to establish
  that she was the one responsible — she had the sort of proof it took to convince you — and
  she essentially dared you to accept the power that would let you compete with her on an even
  footing. You accepted. She's gone now, and you remain. On to the next challenge: probing the
  mysteries accessible to you now that you're no longer among the living.
  Concept: You're a highly individualistic vampire. Your sire was Sabbat in all but name,
  really, and you're not comfortable with the vapid protestations of morality that characterize
  the Camarilla. You associate primarily with anarchs, when you're not in the company of your
  clanmates who share an interest in Abyss mysticism. You pursue knowledge as the pathway
  to power. As power comes, you'll figure out what to do with it.
  Roleplaying Hints: Above all, behind all, after all, you want to know. You want to
  experience reality. While you were alive, you went as far as living sensation could take
  you. Now you delve into unliving sensation. The Abyss fascinates you, though not to
  the exclusion of other interests. You'd like to share what you find, but so few vampires
  can see beyond the next feeding. Sometimes you try to break through their ignorance.
  Other times you let them stew and get on with things.
  Equipment: Occult tools, extensive library of science and history books
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  90
  
  SAMPLE BROOD :
  BLACK CAGLE
  CONSULTING, INC.
  Modern technology makes it easy for a wide-
  spread group to remain in regular contact. The
  Sabbat pack that operates as Black Eagle Consult-
  ing actually gathers for face-to-face meetings only
  a few times a year, at great rites and as pack
  members' concerns warrant. Nonetheless, most
  members are in touch via e-mail, online chat and
  telephone several times a week.
  The original incarnation of the pack dates
  back to 1877 and a series of Sabbat attacks on
  telegraph stations in the Midwest. Some forward-
  thinking 
  templar 
  realized 
  that 
  a 
  fast
  communication network would give her cause a
  competitive advantage against the Camarilla's
  vastly superior social ties. It wasn't enough, of
  course. The Camarilla stomped organized Sabbat
  presence in the Midwest flat. But the Nighttime
  Messengers pack survived, and has continued to
  update its organization and membership to reflect
  new technology. The pack added radio engineers
  in the 1920s, motion picture projectionists in the
  '30s, TV camera operators and station engineers
  in the '50s. The pack Embraced its first electronic
  networking specialist in 1980 and its recruiting
  has become increasingly net-oriented since then.
  Part of the pack's success is that its members
  don't make easy targets. A lone vampire can take
  advantage of cover that doesn't work for half a
  dozen of them together. Pack members attend
  carefully to security in their communications,
  working through relay systems often set up years
  or even decades ago. On the occasions when law
  enforcement agencies have tried tracing one pack
  member's contacts, they've gotten nowhere. Some
  nomadic packs reject a lot of the modern world
  and rely on their innate abilities. Black Eagle
  represents the modernist response, exploiting the
  modern world to make fixed havens largely un-
  necessary.
  USING BLACK EAGLF CONSULTING
  This pack can appear in a chronicle in two
  distinct ways: with just one of its members or
  assembled as a group.
  See below for descriptions of the currently
  active pack members. They all travel, and all
  enjoy seeing new sights. A couple of them actu-
  ally work on a fairly regular basis in mortal society,
  keeping up the appearances necessary to make
  Black Eagle Consulting a viable disguise. The rest
  don't do any real business with the kine, but do
  study mortals and spend time with them. Any
  community with a high-tech industry of note, or
  a good university with scientific research facili-
  ties, or for that matter an interesting fine arts
  scene may attract a Black Eagle's attention.
  When traveling alone, Black Eagles who en-
  counter other vampires claim Caitiff and anarch
  status. Earlier versions of the pack mounted bold
  challenges against Camarilla courts and anarch
  alliances. After the third time when more than
  half of the pack perished in the ensuing carnage,
  the survivors decided not to do that anymore.
  Now a Black Eagle on his own is just one more
  abandoned vampire who would be ever so grateful
  for a little shelter and of course willing to trade
  his technical expertise for the favor.
  Once out of imminent danger of destruction,
  a Black Eagle generally makes himself useful. Suc-
  cessful spies know that as much of their cover
  should be real as possible. The best way to con-
  vince others that one is a good security specialist
  is to provide good security for one's customers.
  The Black Eagle maps out his hosts' weaknesses
  and then calls in the rest of the pack.
  Black Eagle attacks aren't like other Sabbat
  raids. Most of the time, the pack seldom if ever
  confronts any of its targets directly. The Black
  Eagle method aims at exposing targets so that
  other forces do the destruction on the pack's
  behalf. Over the course of several nights, the pack
  implements some or all of the following dirty
  tricks:
  • Automatic signal splitting, so that private
  communications (encrypted cell phone conversa-
  tions, direct e-mail connections and so on) get
  copied to appropriate sources. Depending on the
  city in question, recipients may include the local
  prince or bishop, government intelligence agen-
  cies, 
  churches 
  who 
  show 
  interest 
  in
  monster-hunting, the local press and so on.
  • Signal destruction. Simply losing messages in
  transit does a great deal of harm. Forging plausible
  I
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  91
  \
  
  replacements is fun, but takes time and requires
  preparation, a luxury the pack rarely enjoys.
  • Framing. Black Eagles commit crimes, leav-
  ing behind just a very few clues that point to the
  targets. Vampires only leave fingerprints in oily
  substances, to take one case in point. A helpful
  Black Eagle may spend a lot of time showing her
  targets how to use a new computer system which,
  of course, she keeps meticulously clean with vari-
  ous maintenance oils. Gradually, she can assemble
  plausible composite prints, and leave a few be-
  hind. A few hairs in the right place can keep a
  dedicated forensic investigator going a long time.
  So can traces of blood. The trick in each case is to
  avoid overdoing it, and instead tantalize mortal
  investigators.
  In the end, all Black Eagles perish, just like
  the vast majority of other Sabbat. Lone Black
  Eagles sometimes screw up, and by a wrong word
  or action reveal their underlying convictions. Or
  they may just anger a host and get destroyed for
  petty reasons. The pack as a whole has had several
  close brushes against targets who were more tech-
  nically competent than the Black Eagles realized,
  and the pack had to break off its siege and flee.
  The Black Eagles should be tough, interesting
  nemeses for non-Sabbat vampires and equally in-
  teresting mentors for technically inclined Sabbat
  neonates, but they are emphatically not unstop-
  pable engines of destruction.
  THE CAINITES
  The members of Black Eagle Consulting get
  along pretty well, in part because they don't spend
  a great deal of time in each other's presence. They
  all maintain Vinculum ratings of 4-7 with each
  other, and thus feel committed to each other's
  well-being without having to do much for each
  other night in, night out.
  In terms of Lasombra outlooks, the Black
  Eagles straddle the line between simple factionless
  views and the Kings and Queens of Shadow. They
  can operate well enough among mortals, but feel
  no ideological commitment to doing so. This is
  just how they pass the years, putting to use the
  parts of their old lives that still interest them
  while also pursuing distinctively vampiric projects.
  RICHARD B. WEINSTFIN, Ducxus
  Background: Richard is the eldest surviving
  member of the Black Eagles, apart from rumors
  that one or two of the 19th century bunch are still
  in torpor in some Camarilla-controlled city. De-
  tails of his mortal life are not so much vague as
  inconsistent. While Richard doesn't yet have full-
  blown multiple-personality disorder, it's just a
  matter of time. Richard himself is intermittently
  aware of the problem. As nearly as he knows, he's
  suffering from internal trauma associated with
  diableries he committed during the Third Sabbat
  Civil War.
  Most of the time, Richard remembers being an
  engineer at Los Alamos during World War II,
  working on early computer projects for the Navy
  after the war. Consulting trips took him from his
  native San Francisco down to Los Angeles, where
  he met engineer and occultist Jack Parsons. (Ri-
  chard believes he must have met the young L. Ron
  Hubbard then, but cannot now recall any such
  encounters.) During one of those trips, Richard
  ran afoul of an anti-Semitic gang loosely associ-
  ated with the newly reorganized Nation of Islam
  and received the scalp burns that make his hair
  such a patchy mess.
  Parsons' Crowley-imitating occultism proved
  fascinating, and Richard soon surpassed his
  teacher. His amateur attempts at demon summon-
  ing through human sacrifice came to the attention
  of a Lasombra Abyss mystic, who studied him for
  several years before arranging Richard's Embrace
  in 1954- The new vampire won distinction during
  the 1957 insurrection and joined the Black Eagles
  pack not long thereafter. Under a variety of cover
  identities, he continued to do some mainframe
  design and programming up through the 1970s.
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  92
  
  I
  Now unable to keep current with his field, he
  focuses on the welfare of the pack itself.
  Sometimes Richard remembers two other stories.
  In one, he's a Bostonian literary critic who learned
  about computers by having early programmers as
  roommates. His burns were purely accidental, in-
  flicted at an autumn bonfire at which Richard got a
  little too drunk. He attracted Lasombra attention for
  his elegant, cynical dissection of several local poets,
  culminating in the scandalous suicide of one of them
  on the night after her engagement was announced.
  In the other story, he's once again a programmer, this
  time shuttling between aerospace projects in Denver
  and Raleigh-Durham. He had no interest in the
  occult — he simply came to the attention of a
  Lasombra sire who recognized that the Sabbat would
  need members who understand computers. He re-
  ceived the burns on the night of his Embrace, in a
  slightly bungled effort to fake his death.
  In the early '80s, Richard came to the conclu-
  sion that unitary identity is a mortal weakness
  that Cainites can overcome, and he stopped wor-
  rying about his conflicting memories.
  Image: Richard stands just over six feet tall.
  His most distinctive feature is his scarred scalp
  and the mess it makes of his hair — for a while he
  was annoyed to find himself treated as an obvious
  punk music fan, and in recent years a wave of
  punk nostalgia has brought the compliments back
  again, even more annoying this time around. He
  points without much result to his immaculate
  regimen of suit and tie, or (for possibly messy field
  work) untagged versions of his old Army kit.
  Roleplaying Hints: You used to miss human-
  ity. Not any more. The world that once absorbed
  is, whatever it actually was, gone now. The Sabbat
  defines your existence, and you're satisfied with
  it. You take vicarious pleasure in the accomplish-
  ments of your packmates and do what you can to
  discipline them so that they can do, well, almost as
  well as you did in your prime.
  Sire: probably Almira Veracruz, then Bishop of
  Oakland
  Nature: Director
  Demeanor: Judge
  Generation: llth
  Embrace: 1954
  Apparent Age: mid-30s
  Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
  Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2
  Mental: Perception 2, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
  Talents: Alertness 3, Dodge 1, Leadership 3, Sub-
  terfuge 3
  Skills: Drive 1, Firearms 2, Security 4, Stealth 2
  Knowledges: Academics 2, Computer 2, Finance
  4, Investigation 2, Law 2, Occult (Abyss) 3, Sabbat
  Lore 3, Science 3
  Backgrounds: Contacts 3, Resources 2
  Disciplines: 
  Celerity 
  1, 
  Dominate 
  4,
  Obtenebration 2
  Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 4
  Morality: Humanity 5
  Willpower: 7
  GeoFFRrf Y ARMOR, PRIEST
  Background: Geoffrey actually served as an
  unwitting pack member for three years while he
  was still alive. Richard discovered him exploiting
  very subtle weaknesses in CompuServe in 1982,
  when Geoffrey was seventeen and using his par-
  ents' computer to grind out high-quality warez.
  Geoffrey showed an aptitude for trivia and prob-
  lem solving that stood out even in the crowd of
  extremely diligent, utterly bored teenage hackers
  he belonged to. Richard was still active in the
  BBSing scene then, under two prominent handles,
  and passed specific chores to Geoffrey as a sort of
  test, both of aptitude and morality. The boy showed
  wide-ranging competence and an utter disregard
  for ethical issues, and by 1984 he drew a regular
  stipend from Black Eagle Consulting for help on
  encryption and networking chores.
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  93
  
  In 1984, Geoffrey went through a round of
  chemotherapy for leukemia. It ended successfully
  with the disease in remission, but Richard de-
  cided not to take a chance on losing a valuable
  asset. Geoffrey was fascinated by the whole no-
  tion of vampirism and took immediately to the
  Sabbat — he already regarded the vast majority of
  humanity as boring prey, so it wasn't much of a
  stretch for him. He studied the occult with the
  same determination he applied to hacking, cata-
  loging a huge body of lore with an eye for
  unexpected correlations. The Embrace didn't do
  anything to relieve his hot temper and deep-
  seated conviction of personal correctness, and he
  had some close scrapes in his early years. Eventu-
  ally he learned how to stifle the most egregious
  insults, and things went better thereafter.
  Geoffrey has served as pack priest since 1993.
  His detached attitude means that he has no personal
  agenda to push, and his knack for careful questioning
  makes him quite useful as a spiritual advisor.
  Image: Geoffrey still looks like a teenage geek
  — he's very likely to get carded for any purchases
  with age restrictions. He hopes that eventually he
  can work permanent alterations in his appear-
  ance, because he's tired of the hassles. In the
  meantime, he generally dresses casually, but when
  the situation calls for a dandy, he's the one the
  Black Eagles send in. He has by far the pack's most
  extensive collection of really fine suits and knows
  how to wear them properly.
  Roleplaying Hints: Unlife is the hack that
  never ends. Hacking's always been a means to two
  ends for you — superior knowledge and superior
  status. Well, you know things that your former
  peers could never dream of (or cope with if they
  did), and you're one of the secret masters of the
  world. Hot damn! This is a great way to go. You
  love your existence and will go to any lengths to
  protect it.
  Sire: Richard Weinstein
  Nature: Thrill-Seeker
  Demeanor: Thrill-Seeker
  Generation: 12th
  Embrace: 1985
  Apparent Age: late teens
  Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2
  Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
  Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
  Talents: Alertness 3, Leadership 2, Streetwise 3,
  Subterfuge 4
  Skills: Firearms 3, Security 4
  Knowledges: Computer 4, Investigation 4, Oc-
  cult (Abyss) 4, Science 1
  Backgrounds: none
  Disciplines: Dominate 
  1, Obfuscate 
  1,
  Obtenebration 2, Potence 1
  Virtues: Conscience 1, Self-Control 3, Courage 4
  Morality: Humanity 4
  Willpower: 6
  ANGELICA SHAWN
  Background: Angelica says little about her
  mortal life. Her packmates know that she came of
  age somewhere on the West Coast in the 1950s,
  and that she earned a reputation early on as a
  deviant of some sort. They know that she spent
  time in mental hospitals undergoing elaborate
  drug therapies and even electroshock. They know
  that she became a vampire while in prison for the
  attempted murder of her family, a desperate effort
  on her part to avoid more medical assaults. She
  never discusses the rest.
  In fact, Angelica was transgendered. Her fam-
  ily interpreted her desire to become physically as
  well as mentally female as evidence of psychosis.
  She accepted the Embrace in part because the
  Sabbat pack preying on her cell block happened
  to use Vicissitude in her presence. She offered to
  pay any price they cared to name for the power to
  change her form that way. She spent the next
  decade in the midst of danger, performing what-
  grunt chores the pack assigned her
  ever
  in
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  94
  
  exchange for the occasional fix of Vicissitude.
  When, ten years on, they deigned to work a per-
  manent transformation on her, she diablerized
  the pack leader and fled.
  As a mortal she'd studied mathematics, and
  while she had no applied experience with com-
  puters, she found herself crossing paths with Black
  Eagles more and more often during the '70s thanks
  to shared interest in some sorts of mortal targets.
  Gradually she went from loner status to pack
  member. She could in theory challenge Richard
  for leadership, but she prefers to let someone else
  deal with the Sabbat hierarchy whenever pos-
  sible. This way she gets to work with the group she
  cares about and dodges the hassles.
  Image: Angelica chose an exotic combina-
  tion of features for herself; observers sometimes
  make out traces of African and Caribbean ances-
  try, but the product is uniquely her own. She has
  alert gray eyes and long white hair. Most of the
  time she favors functional, casual clothing, but
  when the pack needs "social engineering," she
  can compete with Geoffrey for the honor of best-
  dressed member.
  Roleplaying Hints: Humanity has potential,
  but so does dirt. You remain consumed with rage
  at the society that made you suffer. Never mind
  the grand crusade for the future of the world, you
  just want to make the bastards who hurt you
  bleed. And you want to make the sheep who
  acquiesce to their tyranny bleed, too. No amount
  of human misery will satisfy you. It's only among
  vampires that you can calm down long enough to
  pursue your chosen science.
  Sire: Warrior
  Nature: Visionary
  Demeanor: Competitor
  Generation: llth (originally 12th)
  Embrace: 1962
  Apparent Age: 30
  Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3
  Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3
  Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
  Talents: Alertness 2, Athletics 4, Brawl 3, Dodge
  3, Empathy 2, Expression 3, Intimidation 3,
  Streetwise 2, Subterfuge 2
  Skills: Animal Ken 1, Etiquette 2, Firearms 2,
  Performance 1, Security 2
  Knowledges: Academics 3, Law 3, Linguistics 1
  (Spanish), Occult 2, Science 4
  Backgrounds: none
  Disciplines: Dominate 3, Obtenebration 3, Po-
  tence 2
  Virtues: Conviction 4, Instinct 2, Courage 4
  Morality: Path of Night 4
  Willpower: 8
  KATHFRINF SCHMIDT
  Background: Katherine grew up in a house-
  hold steeped in both arts and sciences. Her father
  was a famous geologist, her mother an equally
  famous illustrator. Quite early in life, Katherine
  decided that she'd combine the two, and devel-
  oped her skills as a scientific and technical artist.
  Her parents enthusiastically supported her, though
  she won enough scholarships to pay her own way.
  Her first brush with the Sabbat occurred in
  Paris. A pack of Toreador antitribu preyed on
  students the year she studied at the Sorbonne,
  destroying anyone whose work failed to entrance
  them. Katherine woke up one night to find three
  confused vampires peering at her gorgeous draw-
  ings of snail shells and carefully inked diagrams of
  bolt configurations, at once overwhelmed by her
  talent and totally bored by the subjects. For a long
  time she said nothing. They did not speak. In the
  end, they left, leaving her to wonder if it was all
  just a hallucination.
  Years later she had her second encounter. By
  then she was well established at a university press,
  mounting occasional (usually successful) exhibi-
  tions of her personal illustration projects and
  dabbling in arts and crafts from gem polishing to
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  95
  
  candle making. She was taking down pictures
  after a show when a vampire murdered the gallery
  owner, turned to Katherine— then froze, en-
  tranced by her work. A second vampire entered
  the gallery. He killed the first, murmured, "Until
  later," to Katherine, and dragged the corpses out.
  She wasn't good for much after that. She saw
  supernatural apparitions everywhere. Her work
  suffered, becoming what critics called uninspired.
  In truth, she'd lost her faith that science and logic
  mattered to the world that forced itself on her in
  the night. She struggled back to a point of poise,
  abandoning scientific work for disturbing surreal-
  istic work on horrific subjects.
  The Black Eagles discovered her then. They
  watched her recovery and her growing occult
  fascination, and decided that they'd benefit from
  having an artist in the ranks. Three members of
  the pack appeared to her one night and told her
  the rest of the truth. She had a single question:
  "Will I be able to hunt down the ones who stalked
  me?" When told that she could, she accepted the
  Embrace. She's still coming to terms with her
  condition and goes through bouts of intense self-
  loathing for which she compensates with ever
  more fervent efforts on behalf of the pack.
  Image: Katherine is a short, stout woman with
  curly brown hair. She doesn't actually need glasses, but
  she wears them out of habit, along with many-pocketed
  coats and trousers stuffed full of drawing tools.
  Roleplaying Hints: The artist must always
  portray what she knows. How can you turn back
  on the challenge of whole new categories of expe-
  rience? Soon, you hope, you'll be able to render
  your new knowledge in suitable media. In the
  meantime, you work with your new "colleagues"
  and appreciate the opportunity to make things
  harsh for the Toreador and their allies. The worst
  poseur that ever lived was not one-tenth the
  threat to real art that those creatures are. The
  Jyhad cannot come soon enough for you.
  Sire: Richard Weinstein
  Nature: Perfectionist
  Demeanor: Conformist
  Generation: 12th
  Embrace: 1997
  Apparent Age: late 30s
  Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1
  Social: Charisma 4, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
  Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 2
  Talents: Alertness 2, Dodge 1, Expression 4
  Skills: Crafts 3, Drive 1, Etiquette 1, Firearms 1,
  Performance 3
  Knowledges: Academics 2, Computer 1, Law 2,
  Linguistics 2 (French, German), Occult 2, Sci-
  ence 4 (Geology)
  Backgrounds: none
  Disciplines: Dominate 2, Obtenebration 1, Po-
  tence 1
  Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 3
  Morality: Humanity 4
  Willpower: 5
  LASOMBRA OF NOTE
  CARDINAL MON^ADA
  The mastermind of Clan Lasombra has been de-
  stroyed. For nearly a thousand years he led much of his
  clan and sect toward a vision of Cainite mastery, under
  the dark banner of Heaven's wrath. He brokered truces,
  persuaded some antagonists and destroyed others, all
  the while staying a dozen moves ahead of would-be
  challengers. The Cardinal originated many of the poli-
  cies that now define the Lasombra's position in the
  Final Nights, from rapid expansion into the New World
  to building brood havens on imperial frontiers.
  For centuries, his mirrored chambers beneath
  Madrid were the epicenter of Lasombra culture.
  Mongada led his clan far more often than the Friends
  of the Night gathering in the ruined Sicilian strong-
  hold and other places important in clan history.
  Hubris took him, in the end. A combination of
  unforeseen circumstances destroyed him in an
  Assamite attack on his haven. An Abyssal guardian
  summoned long ago to guard his innermost sanctum
  turned on him, thanks to a peculiar conflict of
  imperatives which none of the survivors understand
  very well (or even at all). Now he's gone on to find
  the eternal punishment he always expected.
  The surviving portions of the Cardinal's ha-
  ven have become a pilgrimage destination for
  devout Lasombra, and even for some devout
  Cainites of other clans. They travel to see the spot
  where the greatest advocate of Cainites' role as
  tools of divine vengeance fell, and to ponder their
  own uncertain futures. A small coterie of elder
  Lasombra protect pilgrims in and around Madrid,
  shielding them from would-be predators.
  \
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  96
  \
  
  \
  LUCITA
  The most famous independent member of Clan
  Lasombra faces her own difficulties. She took part
  in the Assamite assault on her sire the Cardinal,
  and believed that his destruction would at last
  bring her peace. It hasn't. His presence within her
  mind is now gone forever. His legacy of ideas and
  challenges remains.
  Lucita hadn't fully grasped the extent to which
  her existence was a series of negatives. She'd
  acted, more often than she realized, in whatever
  way would most displease her sire and interfere
  with his plans. Now it doesn't matter. He doesn't
  see or care. (At least, none of the mediums or
  necromancers she's spoken with find any linger-
  ing trace of his soul.) Offending and sabotaging
  her sire's aims was never her only motive, but with
  the Cardinal gone, the others jumble together in
  unfamiliar patterns.
  Now Lucita finds herself seeking out the com-
  pany of other vampires on occasions besides the
  start or end of a contract. In a variety of disguises,
  she listens to how fervent neonates in both the
  Camarilla and Sabbat define their senses of pur-
  pose, and to how elders worn down by recent
  struggles discuss what to do next. For the mo-
  ment, she's stepped away from Fatima, whose
  attention to Assamite clan affairs offers no in-
  sight to the problems Lucita wrestles with.
  Lucita-spotting is a centuries-old hobby among
  the Lasombra. In recent nights, rumors put her in
  so many interesting locales. For even half of them
  to be true, she'd have to spend all of her time
  traveling and then slipping up in ways that make
  her visible. In fact, the vast majority of her real
  appearances among other vampires go altogether
  undetected. At least a few ambitious neonates
  and ancillae sometimes impersonate her. She finds
  this amusing and lets them do it, knowing that the
  penalties for being caught will in time weed out
  the crowd.
  ZARATHUSTRA
  Beyond the Sabbat and the antitribu, some
  Lasombra regard all sect labels as so much transitory
  fluff. Of these, Zarathustra is one of the most active.
  A native of Antioch (in modern Turkey), he was
  Embraced by a veteran of the post-Thera dispersal
  while in central Asia with Alexander the Great's
  army. After a mortal lifetime's worth of wandering,
  he settled in his home town and set about protecting
  and improving it. He continues to do so in the new
  millennium, when not in torpor.
  Zarathustra is of the fifth generation. He can
  trace his offspring all the way down to 14th gen-
  eration neonates created since the Gulf War. At
  various times, his lineage has included more than
  a hundred active members. Thanks to unsuccess-
  ful crusades and a wave of successful vampire
  hunting by Sunni Muslim nationalists, only forty
  or so members of the lineage walk the modern
  nights. Zarathustra himself remains unchallenged
  as secret father of the city.
  He owes much of his success to a single-minded
  focus: Only events that affect Antioch concern him.
  When the Crusades brought invading armies through
  his city, he learned enough about mortal politics and
  religion to effectively direct his childer to route ma-
  rauding hordes elsewhere. When Ottoman forces
  overwhelmed Turkey's western shores, Zarathustra and
  his childer studied Islam and learned how to help their
  favored mortal families adjust. When Attaturk's na-
  tionalism brought Turkey into contact with the Western
  powers, Zarathustra learned the language of imperial-
  ism and oversaw a combination of diplomacy and
  covert manipulation that protected Antioch, albeit at
  the cost of leaving other parts of Turkey vulnerable to
  exploitation. They weren't his concern.
  Antioch was a commercial port long before
  Zarathustra's own time, and his lineage includes
  many merchants and traders. In the Final Nights,
  some members of the line oversee brokerages in
  Chicago and commodity exchanges in Shanghai,
  while a complex network of overlapping director-
  ates manages thousands of tons of shipping each
  year for the lineage's benefit.
  Zarathustra survived the early Sabbat efforts
  to wipe out all Methuselahs through a combina-
  tion of prudence and good luck. He allowed his
  lineage to take part in some Sabbat efforts, if they
  wanted to, and resorted to bribery as well as
  intimidation to direct war parties at other targets.
  (In the course of thirty years or so in the mid-15th
  century, he used the Sabbat to eliminate at least
  a dozen of his most serious rivals in coastal Tur-
  key.) 
  When necessary, he simply withdrew into
  shadow with arts unknown to neonates and waited
  until their fervor burned out.
  Once or twice a century, Zarathustra agrees to
  serve on a Court of Blood. He's adjudicated mat-
  ters for both the Sabbat and the antitribu. No
  younger vampire quite understands how he chooses
  cases, but the other judging Friends agree that
  each time Zarathustra serves, he acts within the
  code of conduct accepted by the participants rather
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  97
  \
  
  than imposing his own views. He also meets with
  promising neonates — rumor says he sends childer
  and grandchilder out to wean ambitious Lasombra
  away from the Sabbat. He doesn't presume to tell
  the rest of Caine's offspring how to run their
  affairs, but when asked he makes a potent case for
  simple independence.
  DeMBA MAKEMBA ADOULA, "CONRAD"
  Background: Makemba Adoula grew up amid
  one of the great atrocities of the 19th century, the
  Belgian occupation of the Congo. Under King
  Leopold, a literal army of soldiers and a sprawling
  mob of opportunists swarmed over the landscape
  in search of precious metals and any other loot.
  Disease took a horrendous toll — many settle-
  ments lost 90% of their European population every
  year — but more young men were always willing to
  risk it all in the pursuit of wealth. Elaborate
  machinery rusted. Fanciful buildings rotted. Live-
  stock sickened and died. The European presence
  became a scene of constant entropy.
  Diseases swept through the native popula-
  tions as well. Soldiers massacred whole villages.
  Panicked natives went to war with each other as
  well as with the invaders, and religious fervor
  kindled fanatical crusades of all sorts. This was
  life when Makemba grew up along the banks of
  the Congo.
  As a young woman, she fell under the sway of one
  of the countless charismatic conquerors who carved
  little personal empires for themselves out of the
  jungle. She learned something about European tech-
  nology and culture, and watched an icy dark passion
  I
  consume her mentor from the inside. ("Icy" was itself
  a foreign concept to her, and the notion of water
  stripped of every property she associated with it
  fascinated her.) When he died, she threw herself
  into a blind panic and raced away from the river,
  toward some fresh illumination.
  Elias Bruylant was a two-hundred-year-old
  Lasombra who came with some of the very first
  European explorers in the 1860s. He built a haven
  for himself in ruins on the Sangha tributary of the
  Congo River and gathered select natives who
  showed leadership potential. He'd watched
  Makemba's mentor with interest and marked his
  student as a woman who might go far, if liberated
  from her mortal constraints. When she fled, he
  followed and brought her to his haven. There he
  explained very politely what he was going to do,
  and forcibly Embraced her.
  Unlife wasn't altogether a shock for the new
  vampire. She already despaired of life, and follow-
  ing her mentor's darkening philosophy found it
  somehow quite suitable to now be wholly depen-
  dent upon others as a parasite. Gradually she
  explored the scope of her new powers. When she
  and Elias agreed she was ready, she went to Europe
  to investigate her mentor's homeland. She's never
  returned to the Congo, though she occasionally
  visits other parts of Africa.
  Europe dazzled her. Here were empires and
  philosophies such as she'd never dreamed, and
  not a one of them could resist her blood-granted
  powers. She traveled the continent, making the
  acquaintance of her fellow Lasombra and gradu-
  ally joining in the Sabbat's cause. Cardinal
  Moncada made her a personal project for several
  years after World War I, hoping to convince her
  to adopt his theology, but she had no use for his
  notion of God. She parted with him after explain-
  ing that as far as she was concerned, his God was
  her Devil and she didn't need to worship one
  power of darkness with two faces.
  In the 1920s, she began calling herself
  "Conrad" in a quiet personal nod to a Polish-
  English writer who made a deep impression on
  her. He'd been to her homeland and seen the same
  horrors she had, and captured them in prose that
  spoke to her soul. In moments when she felt
  purposeless and truly dead, his written anger would
  rekindle her desire to reshape the world.
  During the Great Depression, she came to the
  New World in search of fresh opportunities. Her
  natural flair for rhetoric gives her many opportuni-
  QANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  98
  \
  
  ties in black communities, from North American
  ghettos to poor districts in South America. She loves
  to stir up trouble and see which souls show enough
  fire or ice to endure when official persecution de-
  scends. From time to time, she dreams of organizing
  a coordinated Sabbat effort to provoke white gov-
  ernments in more tyrannical states, to see if American
  empires would breed more people like herself, but so
  far nothing's come of it.
  When she tires of personal ventures, she spends
  time instructing new recruits in Lasombra history
  and powers. Herself a product of destructive nov-
  elty, she remains curious about the opportunities
  that the new century's chaos may bring forth. The
  notion of impending Gehenna seems ludicrous to
  her — somebody's world is always ending, and
  from it comes new vampires.
  Image: When she's not in disguise, Conrad is a
  tall slim woman with an extremely dark complexion.
  Her face is scarred with ritual marks, overlaid with
  garbled Westerns symbols she picked up from her
  insane mentor. She prefers to dress simply, in shirts
  and trousers that give her room to move freely,
  though she can match the heights of fashion when
  she chooses to. When she deals with mortals, she
  uses Obfuscate to very slightly shift her features, just
  enough so that she seems to belong in whatever
  community she's manipulating.
  Roleplaying Hints: You have a deep and
  spreading hatred for mortal society. You hate the
  conquerors who destroyed your hopes, and you
  hate your own people for lacking the spiritual
  strength to resist. You now find hope only in
  individuals who prove they can overcome, and
  dedicate yourself to finding them, then releasing
  them from the prison that is life. You "grew up"
  outside the Sabbat, and even now it isn't quite so
  central for you as it is for Sabbat-created neo-
  nates. With time, whether you will it or not, your
  personal crusade intertwines more closely with
  the Sabbat's great war. You're not sure whether
  you like that or not.
  Sire: Elias Bruylant
  Nature: Visionary
  Demeanor: Architect
  Generation: 10th
  Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
  Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
  Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
  Talents: Alertness 3, Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Dodge 1,
  Empathy 2, Expression 2, Intimidation 3, Leadership
  3, Subterfuge 2
  CHAPTER THREE: NEW SHADOWS
  99
  Skills: Animal Ken 1, Crafts 2, Etiquette 1, Fire-
  arms 3, Stealth 3, Survival 3
  Knowledges: Linguistics 3 (Belgian, English,
  French), Medicine 1, Occult 2, Sabbat Lore 2
  Backgrounds: none
  Disciplines: Dominate 2, Obfuscate 
  3,
  Obtenebration 5, Potence 1
  Virtues: Conviction 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 5
  Morality: Path of Night (Cold Path) 6
  Willpower: 7
  LIN BALOH, xne BLOODTHIRSTY PROPHET
  Background: Lin Baloh grew up in a China
  torn by unrest. The governing Qing dynasty lacked
  widespread legitimacy — its emperors were
  Manchu, rather than Han Chinese, and in a time
  that called for quick response and intelligent seiz-
  ing of opportunities, they could only ossify
  Confucian orthodoxy and bar the door against
  intruders. But in the early 19th century, the in-
  vaders didn't just come on horseback or with
  scrolls proclaiming dangerous ideas. They came
  with guns.
  Baloh came to manhood during the Taiping
  Rebellion, in which a southern Chinese man pro-
  claimed himself Jesus' younger brother and rightful
  emperor, gathering millions together into an army
  that the Qing could defeat only with Western
  mercenaries. Baloh's family was ethnically Chi-
  nese but Jewish in practice, an offshoot of a
  centuries-old Jewish enclave there. They had no
  faith in the Taiping leader's divinity but sup-
  ported him as a more vigorous alternative to the
  
  Qing. Baloh's father and three of his brothers
  joined the revolt, and all died in battle or were
  executed once the rebellion failed. Baloh stayed
  home to tend the family farm outside Nanking
  and thus escaped punishment.
  Baloh didn't escape the pervasive despair that
  followed. He became an opium addict in a search
  for distraction from life's grinding routine. When
  tax collectors took the last of the family estate, he
  wandered to the city, doing just enough day labor
  to pay for more opium.
  A few opium users sometimes slip into rages
  rather than stupor while under the influence. Baloh
  proved to be one of these. He came to the attention
  of Nanking's Lasombra brood in a particularly artis-
  tic and violent rampage along the waterfront, in
  which he used spilled perfumes and spices to create
  huge calligraphic insults directed at the port au-
  thorities. The brood was impressed by his courage
  and resolve even while exhausted and drugged, and
  brought him into their care. He served them as a
  ghoul for more than a decade, doing daytime errands
  and learning how to apply his blood-given powers to
  acts of creative destruction.
  He won the Embrace during a dock strike, when he
  was trapped with his soon-to-be sire in a burning ware-
  house. Baloh persuaded the vampire to let Baloh work out
  an escape, one that required true vampiric might. The
  vampire accepted. Baloh did in fact escape and never had
  to explain what happened to the desiccated corpse left
  behind. The other members of the brood saw Baloh's
  obvious burns and assumed that the older Cainite wasn't
  quite fast enough to escape a falling roof beam or some-
  thing of the sort.
  The Nanking Lasombra had been antitribu ever since
  they received word of the Sabbat's existence. Baloh played
  a decisive role in changing that. His own act of sire
  destruction fed his appetite for more, and he carefully set
  about making contact with the Western Sabbat who
  sometimes sheltered in his port. He finally struck in 1889
  (exploiting a brief panic among Westerners in the port
  that Jack the Ripper had come there from London),
  leading a pack of shock troops. Half the existing brood
  joined the Sabbat. The other half perished.
  Baloh became one of the youngest Lasombra invited
  into the Friends of the Night since the first great Sabbat
  revolt, not long thereafter, and he still plays a crucial role
  in keeping the scattered Asian Sabbat in touch with each
  other and in accord with sound doctrine. He continues to
  spend most of his time in Nanking, but travels several
  times a year to meet with his fellow warriors in convenient
  ports throughout the region. He managed to forestall
  many potentially sect-disrupting problems during World
  War II through an aggressive program of establishing
  Vinculum bonds, which continues to tie diverse packs
  together. The news of mysterious chaos in India and
  Bangladesh not long ago roused him to even more fervent
  effort. He believes the great war is coming, and he intends
  to remain standing at the end of it.
  Image: Baloh is five and a half feet tall, and somewhat
  gaunt. He wears his black hair closely cut and often shaves
  his head. He began unlife with a long queue, but got it
  caught in an awkward moment once too often. He dresses
  in Western jeans and flannel shirts, looking very much
  like a textbook example of a "Westernized hooligan" as
  found in Chinese police manuals. While he doesn't delib-
  erately go looking for fights, he certainly does nothing to
  avoid them, and prefers to dress functionally for the
  purpose. He often wears wraparound sunglasses, having
  been impressed by Arnold Schwartzenegger's look in
  Terminator.
  Roleplaying Hints: Unlife is wonderful! In a particu-
  larly perverse way, you have become the well-balanced
  man of Confucian lore, balancing physical, intellectual
  and aesthetic exertion into a single harmonious whole. Of
  course, Confucius didn't think of the whole being directed
  toward the subjugation of all living flesh, but that's sages
  for you. You like who and what you are, and you take great
  satisfaction in strengthening the Sabbat in this land, far
  from the sect's birthplace. The recent omens worry you,
  but you compensate by being that much more attentive to
  preparations. Victory will be yours.
  Sire: Unknown
  Nature: Competitor
  Demeanor: Guru
  Generation: llth
  Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4
  Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
  Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
  Talents: Alertness 3, Athletics 4, Brawl 3, Dodge 3,
  Expression 3, Intimidation 4, Leadership 4, Streetwise 3,
  Subterfuge 2
  Skills: Drive 2, Firearms 3, Security 3, Stealth 3
  Knowledges: Finance 1, Investigation 3, Linguistics 3
  (English, Japanese, Vietnamese)
  Backgrounds: Contacts 3
  Disciplines: Animalism 1, Celerity 2, Dominate 4, Forti-
  tude 2, Obtenebration 3, Potence 3
  Virtues: Conscience 2, Self-Control 3, Courage 5
  Morality: Humanity 3 (preparing to adopt Path of Night
  (Hot Path))
  Willpower: 8
  CLANBOOK: LASOMBRA
  100
  
  NAME:
  PLAYER:
  CHRONICLE:
  PHYSICAL
  Strength
  Dexterity
  Stamina
  TALENTS
  Alertness
  Athletics
  Brawl
  Dodge
  Empathy
  1 Expression
  1 Intimidation
  1 Leadership
  1 Streetwise
  Subterfuge
  •oooo
  •0000
  •oooo
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  BACKGROUNDS
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  - ——— MERITS/FLAWS ——— *-
  ,
  NATURE:
  DEMEANOR:
  CONCEPT:
  SOCIAL
  Charisma 
  •OOOO
  Manipulation 
  •OOOO
  Appearance 
  •OOOO
  SKILLS
  Animal Ken 
  OOOOO
  Crafts 
  OOOOO
  Drive 
  OOOOO
  Etiquette 
  OOOOO
  Firearms 
  OOOOO
  Melee 
  OOOOO
  Performance 
  OOOOO
  Security 
  OOOOO
  Stealth 
  OOOOO
  Survival 
  OOOOO
  DISCIPLINES
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  -• ——— HUMANITY/PATH ——— •-
  o o o o o o o o o o
  -• ———— WILLPOWER ———— •-
  O O O O O O O O O O
  n n n n n n n n n n
  -• ———— BLOOD POOL ———— •-
  n n n n n n n n n n
  GENERATION:
  SIRP:
  HAVEN:
  MENTAL
  Perception 
  •OOOO
  Intelligence 
  •OOOO
  Wits 
  •OOOO
  KNOWLEDGES
  Academics 
  OOOOO
  Computer 
  OOOOO
  Finance 
  OOOOO
  Investigation 
  OOOOO
  Law 
  OOOOO
  Linguistics 
  OOOOO
  Medicine 
  OOOOO
  Occult 
  OOOOO
  Politics 
  OOOOO
  Science 
  OOOOO
  VIRTUES
  Conscience/Conviction 00000
  Self-Control/Instinct •OOOO
  Courage 
  •OOOO
  -• ————————— HE ALT H ————————— >~
  Bruised 
  H
  Hurt 
  -1 n
  Injured 
  -1 H
  Wounded 
  -2 D
  Mauled 
  -2 O
  Crippled 
  -5 H
  Incapacitated 
  H
  -• ———— WEAKNESS ———— "~
  Casts No Reflection
  
  L
  OTHER TRAITS
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  NAME
  OOOOO
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  ooooo
  LFVFL 
  TOTAL:
  TOTAL SPHNT:
  spent on:
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  OOOOO
  ooooo
  ;NC, ————— 
  ^
  •DERANGEMENTS
  BoUNOTO
  •BLOOD BONDS/ VINCULI
  RATING 
  BOUND TO
  RATING
  COMBAT
  WEAPON
  DAMAGE
  RANGE
  RATE
  CLIP
  CONCEAL
  ARMOR
  
  ALLIES
  BACKGROUND
  MENTOR
  CONTACTS
  RESOURCES
  FAME
  RETAINERS
  HERD
  STATUS
  INFLUENCE
  OTHER
  GEAR (CARRIED)
  POSSESSIONS
  EQUIPMENT (OWNED)
  FEEDING GROUNDS
  VEHICLES
  LOCATION
  HAVENSDESCRIPTION
  '
  \
  
  HISTORY-
  PRHLUDH
  A OF_______
  APPARENT AGE_
  DATF OF BIRTH_
  RIP_______
  HAIR________
  Eves_______
  RACE_______
  NATIONALITY_
  H FIGHT______
  W FIGHT______
  VlSUALS
  COTFRIF CHART
  CHARACTER SKFTCH
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/World of Darkness (WoD) [multi]/unsorted/Vampire the Masquerade/Clanbooks/Lasombra (2001).pdf