Origins in Darkness 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 evidence, and we have a surprisingly accurate roster of Cainites whose sires date back millennia. Everything different about Cainites — those independent 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 natural. 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 permanent 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 buildings 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 Chapter One: An Unmirrored Corridor 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 produce, 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 pacing. Her shadow feet leave no mark on the rooftop. Her shadowwrapped 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 worst gusts. 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 and I conclude for the night.” Origins in Darkness In addition to the facts of history, timeless, recurrent 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. Clanbook: Lasombra “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 shatter 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 skeptical. 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 familiar. 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 Creature Cainites don’t have sex very often, and after a few hundred years many of the physical and psychological 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.”
Lasombra · Vampire