The Fifth Lesson: Into the Final Nights

The 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 style 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 saying she 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 Metamorphosis 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 modern times. Andrew enjoys her reviews, since he always picks up something new.

Before the Industrial Revolution The Lasombra position in Europe before the Industrial 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 nomadic 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 influence 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, beginning 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 existence. 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 which the absence of resources and concepts to progress beyond a medieval stage of technology limited innovation 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 leaders’ wishes. That may not sound like much, but in a sect