Brujah

Brujah

**of Note**

The sign of Libra, the Scales, rules the Brujah clan. Thoth, the god of writing and measurement, brought their founder into the darkness. This may surprise you if you have crossed a Brujah. If so, you know that they can be far more aggressive than even the Assamites, and with far less cause.

Many Brujah claim that they know how to build a perfect society — whether for mortals, vampires or both — because of their superior intellects. You may locate these “superior intellects” by listening for screams of terror and the crash of breaking objects. All vampires may succumb to the animal within, but the Brujah require much less provocation. Passionate commitments to peculiar causes or ideologies typically mar whatever intellect a Brujah possesses. You will find Brujah minds almost laughably easy to lure, to break through and reach their passions, but almost impossible to rebuild afterward.

The current Brujah are another lineage of supplanters. Unlike the Tremere and the Giovanni, they stole even the name of the original clan. This usurpation, however, happened thousands of years ago, when the Brujah clan was very much smaller. The supplanter was a childe of the true, original Brujah founder.

Brujah himself was a scribe and scholar. Some few descendants of his (not from his childe’s lineage) still survive in hiding from their brutal cousins. I shall respect their wish for secrecy, telling you this only: the Followers of Set claim several of these True Brujah as allies.

Tzimisce I consider this clan one of the most excellent among the Twelve. They do not understand the snares of the Aeons, but evade many of them by instinct. Many Tzimisce pursue visions of transcendence comparable to our own, although they seek godhood within the world rather than beyond it. They prove excellent pupils and initiates. You will require no subtle deception to lead them to our Lord. Simply show a Tzimisce the knowledge and self-perfection that we offer, and he will join the Cult of Set…if you can penetrate the arrogant self-reliance common to so many in this clan.

The elder god Geb, father of great Set, gave power to the first of the Tzimisce and placed their lineage under the dominion of Scorpio: a god of Earth and a sign of Water. Tzimisce vampires possess a unique power to sculpt living and undead flesh like clay. In return, Geb bound them to their native soil.

Away from his homeland, or the soil where she passed from life to undeath, a Tzimisce rapidly weakens. To travel, a Tzimisce must carry a quantity of his native soil with him.

Assamite The Clan of the Hunt owes its origin to the huntressgoddess Neith. The sign of Sagittarius, the Archer, rules this clan and its affairs. This clan, above all others among the Dodecad, masters the bestial rage common to all the undead.

They have developed such fearsome prowess at dealing death that all other vampires fear them and seek to restrain them.

Chapter Two: After Such Knowledge Loyalty lies at the heart of the Assamite clan. In undeath they remain disgustingly loyal to the gods they worshipped in life, whether this was Jehovah or Marduk. They equally prize loyalty to their Antediluvian. Assamites love to prove their courage, devotion and honor by stepping into other people’s business and picking a fight. Distressingly, their theology made a sacrament out of diablerizing other vampires. As you may have heard, the Tremere once cursed the Assamite clan so that the vitae of other vampires would be poison unto them. That curse recently ended (I know not how); instead the Assamites now suffer from a mad thirst for the blood of other vampires.

I very much hope that the Tremere can reinstate their curse, which now looks more like a blessing.

I urge you to stay away from Assamites. Their current wave of bloodlust drives them erratically and uncontrollably. I hear that some Assamites find comfort and renewed self-discipline through Great Set. I also hear that numerous Followers of Set fed the mad thirst of Assamites whom they sought to proselytize. In their current state, you cannot seduce or manipulate an Assamite with any certainty.

Ventrue I regard the Ventrue as the most despicable of the Twelve Clans — and the greatest success of the Aeons. What else would you expect from the clan founded by Atum-Ra himself? The Ventrue are the Demiurge’s trusties in this prison of a world, thinking themselves the masters because they elevate themselves a little bit above the other prisoners. Ra placed the Ventrue under the sign of Capricorn the Goat, and the self-proclaimed “Clan of Kings” are Judas goats leading vampires and mortals alike to the Aeons’ pens and abattoirs. Plague take them!

Their pride, however, provides the key to a Ventrue’s seduction, destruction and (perhaps) eventual liberation.

They feel the tug of ambition as strongly as the Lasombra, but many of them also feel they must cloak their ambition in a façade of duty, respectability, even martyrdom. Ventrue, like all vampires, retain undignified appetites from life. Help a Ventrue to indulge himself in secret (and his ‘shameful’ desires may astound you with their harmlessness rather than their perversity), and he is yours. If you can resist a Ventrue’s command of the wills of others — in which arts, I warn, they have no equal — you may easily buy some favors, extort others through threats of ruining his precious reputation, and ultimately break his will and reduce him to a groveling wreck.

Then you need merely decide if you wish to rebuild his soul as a fellow servant of the Dark God or cast him out to enjoy his final destruction. I prefer the latter course.

Ravnos Ptah gave power to the Ravnos and placed them under the sign of Aquarius. The Divine Artificer gave them a shadow of his own creative power. A Ravnos can change the seeming of things, shaping images of objects or beings that do not really exist. The most powerful Ravnos can craft illusions of terrible power, that become utterly real for a single person. Take care that you never become that victim! This power of illusion hints much at the truth of our world and the Aeons that rule it. I wonder if Ptah realized how much truth he revealed through this clan of liars, or if he intended the Ravnos to become our secret allies in subverting the rule of Ra. Many a Setite forged a useful and amicable partnership with a Ravnos; some Ravnos share our revelatory mission, in their own way.

Unfortunately, most Ravnos fail to understand the lesson of Ptah’s gift and waste their unlives in sneak-thievery, confidence games and other petty trickeries. These small obsessions reveal much about a Ravnos’ soul, but prove worthless in breaking down a Ravnos’ own illusions. One can easily lure and manipulate a Ravnos through her particular, compulsive deception, but actually breaking her habit is always very difficult.

The special problems of breaking a Ravnos’ will may now be academic. My informants tell me many stories about Ravnos going mad and destroying each other in their frenzy, or forgetting to seek shelter from the sun. More than half of them seem to have met destruction.

Toreador Under the weak and vacillating sign of Pisces you will find the Toreador, self-proclaimed Clan of the Rose. Nephthys, the sister and faithless wife of great Set, gave their founder undeath in her role as Anuket, goddess of beauty and desire.

If she wanted to make something pretty, she succeeded. The Toreador often select their childer for their looks or for their talent as artists. If Nephthys wanted to create effective warriors against us, she failed. I find the Toreador the easiest of all vampires to subvert. Indeed, the Toreador do an excellent job of seducing and corrupting themselves; our efforts are redundant.

In my experience, most Toreador lack fixity of purpose.

They are too busy sighing over a painting or madrigal to achieve any real spiritual discipline. They fully equal us, however, at twisting the passions of Cainite and kine, and may parlay this skill into surprisingly wide networks of favor and influence over Cainites and kine. They also move as quickly as any Assamite or Brujah: by the time you realize a Toreador has lost his temper, your head may be several feet from your body.

Sometimes I wonder why Nephthys made the Toreador as they are. Did she feel some loyalty to her husband, despite her services to Isis and Horus (and her alleged “service” in the bed of Osiris), and craft a clan that could never oppose Set’s own childer? If this Aeon intended her childer to become our allies, she could have let them and us know it!

The Camarilla Several centuries ago, after a time of turmoil for Europe’s vampires, the elders of seven clans concocted a ridiculous scheme to delude their childer into thinking they had laws, rights, even justice. The elders called their little secret society the Camarilla. Like most true absurdities, it succeeded brilliantly. To this night, most Brujah, Malkavians, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere and Ventrue believe that they “belong to Clanbook: Setite the Camarilla” as citizens rather than cattle. The Gangrel joined the Camarilla as well, but my informants claim that most members of the Clan of the Beast recently came to their senses and severed their ties to that august fraud.

I will not waste your time propounding the theories of Camarilla organization. They mean nothing. Rather, you should study well the minute details of your local Camarilla members.

Learn the hidden ties of hatred, desire, fear and obligation that pull each vampire this way and that. Then you will see beyond the illusion of titles and traditions to the true structure of power.

Let us spare a moment of kindly thought for the Camarilla.

It suppresses many conflicts between vampires — and as Dr.

Freud recently realized, suppressed conflicts fester and erupt in disguised form. The scheming and backbiting within a city’s Camarilla provide an embarrassing wealth of secret obsessions and rivalries by which you may lead the local vampires to their enslavement, destruction or revelation — if you feel they deserve the effort.

The Sabbat At about the same time that the Camarilla formed, the Lasombra and Tzimisce formed a competing alliance called the Sabbat. Malcontents from many clans joined them. In contrast to the order and safety promised by the Camarilla, the Sabbat declared freedom as its ideal. Join me in a moment of admiration for the Sabbat’s founders, who succeeded in purveying an even greater absurdity than the Camarilla.

In its first centuries, the Sabbat hid from the Camarilla, going so far as a mass emigration to the New World. In the last century, however, the Sabbat emerged as a powerful and determined foe to the Camarilla in spite of various internecine wars. I dare say the Camarilla will never destroy it. Then again, I dare say the Sabbat will never destroy the Camarilla.

Our brothers and sisters sensibly support both sides. Both Camarilla princes and Sabbat bishops will pay through the jugular for information about their sect-rivals. You may collect astonishing boons; simply take care that neither side suspects that you give the other side a better deal.

The Sabbat’s structure itself offers fewer opportunities for subversion and corruption. The Sabbat’s blood rituals generate an ersatz loyalty between members. Conversely, when this blood-link fails, these vampires often simply resolve their differences by single combat.

One faction among the Sabbat, however, you must strive to destroy. The treasonous heretics who call themselves “Serpents of the Light” found refuge in the Sabbat. Do whatever you can to take away that refuge! I urge you to bribe, blackmail, addict and enslave whatever Sabbat members you can, as agents to use against these villains who deny the divinity of Set.

Ourselves: The Flaw in the Chain The celestial Law of Destiny imposed by the Aeons carries a flaw. The Zodiac has more than twelve constellations! The sign of Scorpio also contains the constellation of Ophiuchus — the Serpent Holder. The sign of our clan. The thirteenth sign, carefully ignored by astrologers for 5000 years.

We have our own place in the Chain of Destiny. We are the spoilers, the unknown factor that breaks the force of Destiny itself…and our time may well have come.

I mentioned the strange self-slaughter of the Ravnos. The Eternals of our clan have conducted divinations. They refuse to tell their juniors what they learned, but the priests overhear hints of some great fracture within the Clan of Dreams. Priests at three separate temples tell me they believe that the First Ravnos met Final Death, without diablerie or some other sort of replacement. A priest of my acquaintance at the Liverpool Temple, for instance, read a snatch of her master’s missive to another Eternal. He did not understand what phrases such as “the fourfold Ra,” “Daedalans” or “Dragon Children” might mean, but he understood one phrase: the Dodecad is broken.

If this is true, then the Law of the Aeons is broken as well. Victory over the Aeons’ vampire catspaws seems more plausible than at any time before, and perhaps victory over the Aeons themselves — and the total destruction of this jail in which they hold us.

If you should hear more of these things, please repay my kindness by imparting whatever you may learn.

Psammeticus Childe of Taimhotep Playing God Not every Setite character will be a devout Theophidian or build a blood cult. Their pretensions of divinity, however, play a large role in distinguishing the Followers of Set from other vampire clans. Here, then, are suggestions on ways to make a Setite character something more than a vampire with a snake fetish.

Worldly Power: Backgrounds for Setites Much of the Setites’ reputation as “arrangers” rests upon their Backgrounds. The Serpents cannot equal the political connections of the Ventrue or the wealth of the Giovanni, but they excel at the sheer diversity of their connections.

Setites deserve their reputation for friends in low places, but few Serpents restrict themselves to the criminal demimonde.

Allies, Contact, Influence Most Setites pursue all three of these closely related Backgrounds. The savvy Setite keeps an eye out for opportunities to do someone else a favor and build up some obligation.

Secular Setites recognize the value of having other people concerned with their well-being.

Chapter Two: After Such Knowledge Fame Most Setites avoid fame in the mortal world. Fame attracts too much of the wrong sort of attention. Some Followers do attract famous people into Set’s service because of the social power they wield, but such people are generally more useful as ghouls than as childer. If a famous recruit does prove worthy of the Embrace, he should not mind spending a few years dropping out of society and arranging for the world to forget him.

Generation The Setites respect a lower generation as indicating a closer blood connection to Set, but they don’t obsess about it.

Diablerizing vampires of other clans may seem like a way to gain greater power for oneself and one’s cult: Few Setite elders would recommend it, though (and not just for the obvious personal risks). Diablerie creates intensely bad feeling if discovered, and Setites receive enough suspicion already.

Most Setites count generation from Set rather than from Caine. After all, Setite elders say that Caine never existed!

Thus, a Serpent who is “officially” 13th generation would speak of himself as 10th generation in descent from Set. Other Setites will think of him this way no matter how successful a diablerist he becomes — assuming they care at all.

As a final complication, the orthodox cults describe any Setite who survives 1,460 years as a direct childe of Set. Devout Setites understand that this is metaphor, but it can confuse vampires of other clans.

Herd The Followers of Set surpass every other clan at the cultivation of herds — especially blood cults. A Serpent may collect any sort of herd, but many Setites see themselves as priests or even gods. What’s a priest without a congregation or a god without worshippers?

A Setite’s other Backgrounds may grow out of her blood cult, too. A diverse body of cultists can supply a Herd, Contacts, Allies and Retainers all at once. Note that orthodox tradition enjoins a Setite to guide his congregation to as much enlightenment as they are ready to receive. Other Setites might not respect a Setite who exploited his blood cult without passing on Theophidian doctrine and assisting in cultists’ spiritual development.

A few radical Setites question the ethics of keeping a herd, whether as a blood cult or in any other form. They say that it smacks too much of the manipulations of the Aeons. How does it “liberate” people to play magical games with their minds?

Mentors Many Setites have a Mentor. A Setite’s mentor is usually her sire or grandsire, but a Setite spiritual leader outside the character’s direct lineage is possible. Extraordinary mentors might lead large and powerful cults. Setites almost never have mentors from other clans.

Resources No doctrinal variation enjoins poverty for the Followers of Set. The Serpents collect wealth as one more tool for performing