KARTARIRYA

KARTARIRYA

his domain and settled there with his g r o w tribe, to better learn his new nature.

Demdemeh‘s rule was not easy, for the Nile had its own monsters that challenged the Tzimisce’s presence.

Still, he learned to speak with the marshland crocodiles and form hulking reptilian beasts called mokek and their baboon servitors, the mgbpers. Protecting the people of the Ahaggar, Demdemeh built the great city of Khamissa to humble the Egyptians. Unfortunately, the Eldest’s touch afflicted Demdemeh over the centuries with a hunger for more than just blood. He feasted on banquets of flesh and became strange and alien to his own people.

A row of gills covered his face like a grill, and he possessed no eyes, nose or mouth. Only his childer understood the whispered, incoherent sentences that he spoke.

By this time, the great Ticonis Sea was drying up and becoming swampland, while the Sahara swept into the land. The people of the Ahaggar fled, following those tribes who’d abandoned the fleeting paradise of the northern coast. The mokek rebelled against Demdemeh and escaped into the soft mud; they slipped into the swamplands after nearly decimating Khamissa. Meanwhile, the nagbpers vanished into the night and traveled south, far from the clan’s reach. Demdemeh finally retired to a haunted mountain city of virtually no inhabitants save loyal ghouls and his childer.

SYCORAX Demdemeh fell into the sleep of ages in a lake deep beneath the Ahaggar Mountains. Finally free from his watchful eye, his preeminent childe, the witch Sycorax, led the remaining e m n south across the now-dried Ticonis seabed. She left her sire in the care of his last loyal ghouls, the fierce Tuaregs, whose descendents remain in the region into the modem nights.

Sycorax intended to rule over the Nok cultures and the already established city of Ile-Ife as queen. She found her ambitions blocked by the arrival of nomads called the Yoruba, however. These people had lived in Egyptian lands for some centuries already and knew about the depredations of Cainites. Their leader, King Oduduwa, believed in the one-god Oludumare and his servitors, the Orisha. Unluckily for Sycorax, while King Oduduwa’s faith proved a strong foil to her ambitions, she had greater CLANBOOK: TZIMISCL enemies in the Onsha who existed as spirits but could inhabit kine to fight her.

The Yoruba followed a system of singular devotion, mighty faith and even stronger ethics. As a monotheistic belief, it proved as compassionate and upstanding as any Christian ethic. Before slavery ripped Africa’s heart out, the ajogun Yoruba warriors fought Sycorax and the cultic “followers of the Kagn,” harrying them across Africa. The ajogun proved troublesome (and still do) to the local Fiends. Unlike Sycorax and the e w n , the ajogun are entirely of African heritage and despise the interference of Cainites, even if they are of African extraction.

Forced into centuries of wandering and little peace, Sycorax eventually received satisfaction when European slavers tore West Africa asunder for their trade. After the Portuguese kidnapped 1.3 million slaves from the Angolan coast alone, Yoruba was in shambles. Slavers captured her people by the village-load, who could do little against the white locusts. If the ajogun despised outsiders before, the slave trade deepened their hatred greatly.

Sycorax and her ilk may have survived their woes withtheyoruba, but theajogunprovedagreaterenemy. By this point, Demdemeh had awoken from torpor and came to the aide of his daughter, but even he couldn’t turn the battle in favor of the Fiends. The ajogun commanded the very spirits of the land and turned the jungles against our brethren. The conflict forced Demdemeh and Sycorax into treaties with “white” Cainites who traveled with the traders, but these alliances were rarely to the emn’s benefits. Tired of fighting a divisive war, Demdemeh and a small number of followers retired into Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, just east of Lake Victoria. While Sycorax eventually fell to the ajogun, the remaining African Tzimisce ensconced themselves into regional pockets close to the coastal strips and cities, where they survive to this night.

While Landulf I1 claims the conflict with theajogun is less severe, however, these native undead still prove troublesome to our interests. Whether they are Cainites or otherwise has yet to be ascertained.

KARTARIRYA I By Devi& Bhalla, priest of the Split Lip pack Ratti-Ben? I believe it meam “Sister of Blood.” She’s the chi& ofKimarirya. 1 met her recently and was stunned by her appearance. She’s covered in skin swatches with a diferent tattoo on each patch that she’s colkctedfim her victims. She’s a quilted beauty.

Laika, Tzimisce koldun Kartarirya’s existence extends the length of the Indian subcontinent’s history, making it among the eldest and most powerful of our clan. It spent its earliest centuries with the Harappa culture and later with the Vedics who brought Sanskrit into the region. It did not coexist with them peacefully, however, for the bloodthirsty Kartarirya drew the hostilities of the growing Rroma people and a Nosferatu Methuselah who’d settled into the region.

Despite some conjecture, the region’s Tzimisce never inspired or emulated the multi-limbed avatars of the Hindu gods, though not for a lack of trying. Kartarirya tried impersonating Karttikeya, the god of war, only to discover the Brahmans wielded their faith as weapons and saw through such artifice. Surprisingly, in its search to find worshipers among the growing Vedic pantheon, Kartarirya came to understand and appreciate their religion. The multi-limbed divinities represented multiple states of beings, interpretations and personalities. While thedivinities were certainly terrifying to behold, the Indians accepted the complex and often conflicting gods and precepts as natural. Everything and everyone had their place and moment in time. Enamored with the concept of multifaceted existence and perception, Kartarirya geared its transcendence toward that effort. Instead of seeking worship, Kartarirya sought to remold itself into a creature that could exist in multiple states of awareness simultaneously.

Kartarirya fashioned the yakshi, demons by kine perception but horribly altered szhhta in reality. In the millennia following its arrival into the Indus Valley, Kartarirya’s childer and yakshi schemed and fought against CHAPTER ONE: A RABBLE OF FIENDS iar to the region through their influence in Mesopotami first arrived en masse when Alexander the Great’s armb swept through Hindu Kush and the Afghan Platea When Alexander died on his return journey, the Grec garrisons found themselves cut off from their homes ar remained behind. A few Brujah stayed as well, eventual Embracing from the indigenous people. The Gangrel wE rode with the Mongol hordes proved troublesome wit their continued raids against the regional villages ar towns, but eventually, the Indian culture absorbed the1 as well. The Toreador came with the French colonizatio of India in the 17th century, though later, a French-India Tzimisce by the name Grandmere Kale ousted the Tore; dor from the island of Reunnoinnais and came to live dee in the heart of its dormant volcano. Her domain becarr tsy laosana, a Madagascar phrase for “a place from whic you never return.”

The Ventrue came well after the East Indian Con pany had established her monopoly over the region, bt they proved of little concern to the local Fiends until th British suddenly went from a trading company to th ruling oppressors. The one place that remained beyond a outside influence, however, was opulent Hyderabad, acit blessed with Indo-Muslim heritage. From the 19th int the early 20th century, Hyderabad played the exotic poi of call for the world’s richest mortals and Cainites. Toreador aristocracy who’d seen their world shattered by the French Revolution flocked to the City of Palaces and its unique architecture that drew Muslim and Indian influences together effortlessly. High society, both sophisticated and exotic, intrigued vampires of all persuasions. Even the Ventrue couldn’t resist attending her courts and processions. Some even suspect the Khazars finally settled in what became Hyderabad, lending an air of timelessness to its mystery.

Of course, such beauty never lasts. Hyderabad’s patron was Omasam, a Rroma of Pdguh nobility and among the richest of the maharajahs. Omasam fought against Tzimisce inclusion in the local courts at every turn and even employed local murshad magicians to cast spells on families with Tzimisce affiliations. This forced the Tzimisce’s hand in the region, relegating them to Embracinglow-castemembersafteromasamhadtheiraristocratic ghouls murdered in their beds. Nobody realized the full repercussions of his actions until well after India’s independence, when the caste system itself degraded.

RATTI-RFN,“SISTFR OF BLOOD”

Ratti-Ben represents a changing consciousness in India, one MahatmaGandhi would have mourned had he known the future. It began in August of 1947, during India’s partition into two nations: India and Pakistan. The previous years saw friction and outright hostility between Hindus and Muslims, and Kartarirya and its childer anticipated the worst. When arbitrators announced the borders at the last minute, 12 million Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus scrambled to find their respective sides of the borders using the only form of available mass transit, the train. Unfortunately for these travelers, these aging locomotives passed through the territory of one side or the other, Often times, trains would arrive at stations like Lahore - that served as the prime artery for travel both ways - with all its passengers butchered and massacred. Over one million people died in the Independence Day rioting, and while this was a mortal issue, the Tzimisce certainly contributed to the chaos with night’s arrival.

With Kartarirya in torpor, it fell to Ratti-Ben, Kartarirya’s childe and a practitioner of baha mati black magic, to continue its agenda. Unlike many within her brood, Ratti-Ben could best be described as a terrorist trying to usurp the rule of the Rroma and oust the Ventrue and Toreador from the Indian subcontinent. Her clan, long the underdogs in India’s political games and power plays, often resorted to blatant acts of violence to keep the other clans preoccupied with the backlash. With the other clan’s attentions diverted elsewhere, the Fiends used the diversions to launch a flurry of coups and assassinations to undermine the authority of adversarial Cainites.

CLANBOOK: TZIMISCE got it.

During the Independence Day rioting, for instance, the Fiends used the night trains as mobile butchershops. They traveled the length of the country, stopping long enough to take on new passengers, before murdering them en route to their destinations.

In the 20th century alone, Ratti-Ben and her progeny ensured that states in Northern India stayed violent and dissatisfied, to undermine regional Rroma rule. With the destruction of the ancient Rroma, however, the Fiends started a trend that is reversing India’s advancement. The Tzimisce supported the Dalits, once known as the untouchables, inattackingtheRaj Brahmcastethroughout this past decade as evidenced in states like Bihar, where the caste-strife resulted in the murder and massacre of entire villages. Ironically, the lower castes are acutely aware of the changing world around them, thanks to television and newspapers. Now they want more, and over the last two decades, they’ve been getting it. The Dalits can elect their own candidates into national parliament, and their influence grows steadily. Much to the dissatisfaction of the populace, however, these low-caste individuals I c CHA~ER ONE: A RABBLE OF FIENDS are often members of organized crime. Some political candidates have criminal records a mile long, employ armed goondas thugs to protect them from assassins and even use the police to off their rivals. Bribery is the most effective method to gain the support of a village chief and all the voters in his district. India’s politics suffer from systemic corruption, and the local Tzimisce, long the supporters of campaigns of terror, gained substantial political presence thanks to their patronage of the Dalits. As result, the Fiends have destabilized the holdings of political enemies and grow as India’s preeminent clan.

With the Ravnos gone, the Tzimisce possess unprecedented influence and prestige in India. As result, many Tzimisce employ envoys to negotiate with their distant cousins in an effort to use India as the staging ground for the Sabbat’s crusade into Asia. With Kartarirya in torpor, Ratti-Ben may well join the Sabbat, bringing many Fiends with her and giving the Sabbat both a nation ranked seventh as an industrial power and with a population of 843 million potential vessels - or Cainites.

Welcome to Kali Yuga. Welcome to the Age of Kali.

In these circumstances I decided that the only safe thing for me to do was go for myself. It became clear that it was possible for me to take the initiative: instead of simply reacting I could act. I could unilaterally - whether anyone agreed with me or not - repudiate all allegiances, morals, values - even while continuing to exist within this society.

My mind would be free and no power in the universe could force me to accept something if I didn’t want to. But I would take my own sweet time. That, too, was part of my new freedom.

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice