Brujah

Brujah

**of Note**

If they understood how to buck up and keep it in their pants, they might be a more credible threat. When they’re not fighting, they’re whining. When they’re not whining, they’re looking for a fight. They remind me of a bunch of Irishmen, actually. Still, it’s best to let someone else oblige them — or shoot them in the head from a distance. Some of them can throw down as well as we do, and it’s all over if one gets his hands on you. The elders are the most dangerous, as they like to pretend they’re calm and rational scholars, but their fuses are cut just as short.

— Evan Rogers, freelance bodyguard, dispossessed warrior Malkavians Although we are encouraged to extend charity and compassion to the mad, those of Malkav’s brood would strain even a more tolerant heart than mine. They are capricious, unsettling and capable of reaching insights to which they should have found no path. They have always taken a particular delight (or seen a particular duty) in meddling with us, but of late their jests have become less frequent and their skewed stratagems more potent. It almost appears that they have become more focused, which, in its own way, is more disturbing than a shift in the other direction would have been.

Do not mistake me: I believe their ability to perceive layers of reality would be valuable. I simply do not find the price agreeable.

— Mohninda Vajpayee Cheran, intelligence analyst, loyalist vizier Nosferatu An oft-quoted mistranslation of the Book of Nod states, “In any Jyhad, the Nosferatu are first to die.” The correct translation: “In any Jyhad, the Nosferatu are first to disappear.” If you ever expect trouble to strike your city, keep a close eye on the Nosferatu. When they vanish down their boltholes and pull them shut, follow their example. They are the Cainite world’s greatest survivors, and they can see a threat clearly before anyone else has more than a vague sense of unease.

If they have a flaw as a group, it is curiosity. I almost believe that some Nosferatu could subsist on knowledge alone if vitae were unavailable — they would certainly make the attempt. Feed this thirst and they will repay you in kind.

Our clans have enjoyed a long and productive symbiosis that is far stronger than any transitory political considerations.

I advise you to foster that relationship whenever possible.

If you have no choice but to destroy a Nosferatu, do not, under any circumstances, confront him on his home territory. We will never find your ashes.

— al-Ashrad Toreador As a clan, the Toreador are frighteningly ineffectual.

They’d rather stare at old pictures and oddly shaped stones and make wailing noises about their lost heartbeats than actually get out and do anything.

As individuals, some Toreador are frighteningly efficient at whatever arts they apply themselves to. If an individual Toreador considers swordsmanship an art, you can bet your heart’s blood that he’s the equal of any two of our warriors. I reserve my personal fear for those Toreador who consider politics an art rather than a hobby — one of those is responsible for starting that whole Camarilla mess.

If the truth be known, the Toreador remind me a lot of the viziers, but less organized — which is saying quite a bit.

Chapter Two: Prayers to Broken Stone Fortunately for us, most of the clan still seems to be of the “paint smears and pretty rocks” school of thought.

— Kurush Ishraqi, weather-wizard, loyalist sorcerer Tremere The Tremere may be the greatest threat to the Children of Haqim since the ancient struggles that shattered the Second City. They dragged themselves up by their bootstraps, usurping not only immortal blood but immortal power in so short a time as to seem a mere flicker by undying standards. Never trust a Tremere, never turn your back on a Tremere and never forget that they feared the Children enough to lobby for outright destruction. Their curse was a compromise. By some standards, the Tremere may be the perfect vampires: They are cold, rational, patient enough to wait yet swift enough to strike, never cursed by Caine, and deadly in their resolve and their arts. You may, if you like, consider a Tremere a cobra, coiled to strike at you for its own reptilian reasons and well armed with its own particular venom.

If you are fortunate, I will teach you to be a mongoose.

— Deviki Prasanta, Web of Knives Pentjak-Silat instructor, loyalist ghoul Ventrue Many Children of Haqim bitch and moan about our defeat at the hands of the Ventrue, the weaklings, the “rearechelon motherfuckers,” the spoiled rich boys from the Old Country. They say that we should have struck deep into Germany and England and burned them screaming from their castles, because the Ventrue are incapable of defending themselves. We fought them. We lost.

A lot of our clan can’t understand how we didn’t win, because all the Ventrue seem to do is trade favors and lounge around their courts. Understand this: we didn’t lose to the Ventrue five hundred years ago. We lost to the Ventrue and all their allies and their servants and their friends and every poor peasant son of a bitch who ever made the mistake of making eye contact with his undying lord. Understand that, and you’ll understand where the real strength of the Ventrue lies.

— Lydia Dorn, psychologist, loyalist sorcerer The Sabbat The Sabbat doesn’t know what the hell to think of us right now, and we’re pretty careful about how we view it.

Most of our elders bugged out last year, and that pretty much fucked the Black Hand’s leadership structure. Things were kind of tense for a few months, and a lot of us who stayed behind were waiting for the hammer to come down. Apparently, though, our loyalty meant more to the higher-ups than our sires’ disloyalty did. Some of us have moved up in the ranks, and the rest seem to be relatively free from Black Hand or Inquisition suspicion. As long as we keep kicking Cammie ass, anyway.

The sudden surge in recruitment from the Mountain is another thing entirely. On one hand, it’s nice to get confirmation of the reason for the Sabbat’s very existence.

The Antediluvians really do exist, and they’re determined to wipe out everyone who won’t kneel to them. Ur-Shulgi doesn’t leave much room for doubt there, judging from the reports I’ve heard. On the other hand... shit. That’s the kind of confirmation I could have done without for a long while.

Now we need to figure out what to tell the rest of the Hand.

— Michael diCarlo, sharpshooter, antitribu warrior Lasombra Never, never, never underestimate the Lasombra.

They are the Ventrue without the moral frailty. They are the Tremere without the pretensions, they are the Setites without the posturing — and they are none of these things.

Elements among their ranks have also shared a common faith with us, as well as common lands. Those nights are long past, but many Lasombra still remember them. More than any other clan in the last two thousand years, they have been our occasional allies, and this makes them a greater threat than any other.

— Fatima al-Faqadi, former Hand of Vengeance, dispossessed warrior Tzimisce What a truly reprehensible collection of freaks, fuckups and megalomaniacs. The Tzimisce are sort of like Silly Putty Toreador with the attitude problems of a Brujah on crystal meth. I truly fail to understand why the Lasombra persist in letting these fools think they’re in charge. I mean, every so often, you may need someone to charge a machine gun, but that’s no reason to waste effort on keeping them in figurehead positions and countermanding all their silly-ass dictates from behind the scenes.

Sooner or later, we’ll get the order to give them what we gave the Tremere antitribu. I look forward to that night with an anticipation that mere words cannot describe.

— Gene Bancroft, templar, antitribu warrior Independents There is no such thing as independence in the Jyhad.

There is only lack of awareness of one’s masters.

— ur-Shulgi Followers of Set The serpent metaphor is actually quite inappropriate for the Setites. Though they may be reptilian in appearance, they are more akin to a trapdoor spider in behavior. At any given time, any given Setite has three times as many schemes in motion as he is suspected of masterminding. Many of these will be interrelated, so that the failure of one will ensure that the responsible party blunders right into another. Never make the mistake of engaging a Setite on his own battlefield, that of the social and political. You won’t notice the fangs until Clanbook: Assamite they’re in your throat.

For all their prowess in their chosen fields of entrapment and entanglement, the Setites have two rather useful weaknesses. First, a typical one is so dedicated to cultivating external power that he himself may be relatively weak. Second, many members of the clan fall prey to the same blind idolatry of their founder that we are often guilty of. If you can exploit these, you may be able to remove the creature.

— Sukainah, court advisor of Algiers, dispossessed vizier Gangrel The Gangrel know many of the same things that we do. They don’t have the same specifics, but they’ve been keeping their ears to the ground, and they’re also aware that some very old, very bad things are waking up. Their decision to leave the Camarilla was not a political maneuver for sympathy or leverage — it was a calculated survival tactic.

You’ve heard the story about the two hunters who meet the bear? One starts lacing up his running shoes. The other asks, “what are you doing? You can’t outrun that bear.”

The first guy grins and says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.” That’s why the Gangrel got out of the Camarilla and why their antitribu haven’t left the Sabbat. The Sabbat can run faster, y’see.

If you meet one of the newly independent Gangrel, don’t get condescending. Living with the animals does not necessarily make them oblivious to social niceties, it just reduces their tolerance for bullshit — and they are killing machines like most of the Sabbat thinks we are.

— Lydia Leszcznska, nomadic scout, antitribu sorcerer Giovanni They command vast portions of underworld power.

They have machine-gun-wielding minions at their beck and call. They measure their personal wealth in possessions and companies because mere dollar amounts have lost their significance. They have an extended family from which they can attain assistance anywhere in the world. They perceive aspects of reality that are forever closed to most of us.

I could be describing the Giovanni. Then again, I could be describing the crack dealers of the Chicago streets. Aside from the necrophilia, there’s not much difference.

— Khaled Johnson, bounty hunter, dispossessed warrior Ravnos Everyone underestimates the Ravnos. They share our particular problem of a one-dimensional stereotype in other Cainite eyes. They also share our particular advantage of a great deal of internal diversity that the rest of the Kindred aren’t aware of. We probably get along better with them than we do with just about any other clan, in part because survival in the places where we have the most contact with each other demands too much attention to leave much time for comparing fang sizes.