for which the Indian Ravnos were often unprepared. Apparently, Eastern Kindred can't just Embrace others, as the Ravnos can — they have some other method of defying Final Death. Still, when faced with swelling global populations, even the more rigorous asuratizayya "Embrace" results in foes more numerous than before.
BHOpAL One account records a plan to Embrace several hundred mortals in a single night and cover the event up in what would appear to be an industrial accident. What really happened? In 1984, the Kshatriyas swept into the city of Bhopal and gathered up mortals for the Embrace to send them as a massive Kindred wave against a potent asuratizayya who posed a serious threat to the status quo. The plan was to Embrace, force the childer to feed on their families, and manufacture an incident to cover up the disappearances and deaths.
As inevitably happens, someone screwed up.
At the end of the day, more than 40 tons of poison gas killed over 4,000 people and injured 50,000 more. On the brighter side, the toxin also polluted the asuratizayyas' herds and weakened the Eastern Kindred long enough for the Ravnos and their cannon fodder to destroy them. Hooray for our team. The masterminds who thought this up were aware of Union Carbide's poor safety standards, but underestimated just how bad the situation was when they sabotaged the plant.
In India, the ancients awakened and walked again. Their childer — the elders — prepared the way for them. At the same time, Indian Ravnos traveled east and west in search of those Ravnos who had left or never known India. When they found what the clan had become — the European shilmulo with pretensions to mysticism through a false Path of Paradox, the American Ravnos with no knowledge whatsoever of the clan's reason for existence, and so many others who did not even try to resist the vices imposed or facilitated by the Beast — they took action.
In a reversal of events centuries before, when the Sybarites' flawed Path spread through the newcomers, this wave of newcomers converted the Western Ravnos to mayaparisatya. Perhaps the followers of the Sybarites' Path of Paradox were no longer satisfied with an ethos that claimed "all is permissible, nothing is forbidden"? It's possible. I can't imagine an unlifetime of excess as remotely satisfying, never mind centuries of it.
The converts may also have found the alternatives less than desirable. The Ravnos who left India to spread the good word were often quite old, very powerful and extremely intolerant of youthful indiscretions. My impression is that the converts could choose to adapt or die. Even with such a traumatic reason for evolution, it took years for the change to make it as far as America's West Coast or South America. I believe that by 1998, a majority of the Path of Paradox followers had converted to the "proper" path. Timely, no doubt.
Accompanying the conversions were the rumors of powerful Methuselahs of the Fourth and Fifth Generations awakening and tearing a frightening swath of destruction through their enemies in India.
In fact, if the journals can be believed, hundreds — if not thousands — of Ravnos were Embraced, sent against the asuratizayya and destroyed within a matter of nights at a time, over the final decade of warfare before Zapathasura's awakening.
THE WEEK OF NIGHTMARES The week of the Ravnos Antediluvian's awakening — by whatever name you want to call it — was a literal week of nightmares. Ravnos Disciplines flew out of control as even the weakest neonates effortlessly produced illusions and skilled elders created images without the conscious intent of doing so. Few Ravnos could take advantage of this potency as visions from the Antediluvian's clash with its enemies overwhelmed them.
I saw my sire and his sire suffer from literal waking nightmares and bring them to "life" before they could get things under control. Lawrence's attempts to explain the appearance of a manyheaded monster in battle with a tiger and a dragon in the middle of an LAX-bound airplane were amusing, but they didn't help his reputation. Further evidence, all of it anecdotal, indicates that such incidents happened to Ravnos around the world. At the time, we worried more that someone was slipping PCP-LSD cocktails to our herd, but abstinence didn't seem to help.
CLANBOOK: RAVNOS CHAPTER ONE: AGREED UPON LES On the fourth night, it got really bad. I guess the best "new age" way to describe the event is as if a psychic bomb went off. It happened during the day, but all of us awoke when it hit. I didn't get much rest for that day. Come nightfall, things grew much worse. When I arose, I found Karl, more tense than I've ever seen him, sitting in front of the television and flipping channels like it was an Olympic sport. At first, I was annoyed. But as I watched, I realized how wonderfully delicious his blood must taste, as well as how surely he deserved destruction. I can't explain the loathing that penetrated to my bones and seemed as natural as... well, as natural as anything else we do.
On one level, I wanted nothing more than to bite down on Karl and devour his soul. On another level, I knew doing that would be the King Kamahameha of all bad ideas. I don't know how long I stood there before Karl turned and saw me.
He cured me of my indecision — he attacked me.
Between desperation and serendipity, we managed not to destroy each other, but it was close for awhile. We both left for other places to stay (without telling each other or the good doctor, who'd fucking better not claim this story as his, or Zapathasura's destruction will seem like Migraine Headache #15, and I hope I make myself perfectly clear) until the fit passed.
The thirst and rage lasted for four nights. I've never felt a rage like that before and I hope never to feel it again — a filthy, driven rage, backed by a hatred 10,000 years old and encrusted with enough emotional baggage to sink Asia. Such fury called to mind the end of the world.
Who knew that was exactly what it heralded?
By the time we began to suspect, we knew it was big, but until Lawrence got his care package, we didn't know just how big it was, and is.
Two months ago, I — we, all five of us — stood on the plain in Bangladesh where Zapathasura (or Ravana, or Dracian, or whatever name you care to throw its way) fought its last battle. We found the spot where it was destroyed by the light of four suns, where — by all the evidence we can gather — someone detonated nuclear weapons. We have a scrapbook of news reports from the time, about the worst typhoon to strike this area in more than a century. They don't tell the half of it.
I know you're wondering about the other clans — how did they react to all this? As far as I can tell, they didn't. That is, most of them don't have a clue. A few have a clue, but it's incomplete. Some Kindred think all of us are dust, but they don't know why. Some know more details than I do.
Some might suspect the truth and are afraid to speak of it. In the Camarilla, I don't blame them.
Those ostriches aren't about to admit Gehenna's on their doorstep until it's sitting on the sofa, guzzling all the beer and putting out cigarettes on Looking over the area, it's clear that someone or something swept through afterward and tried to hide the evidence. They were thorough, but not completely so. We found enough to tell us what we needed to know — that at least three or four powerful, or should I say godlike, things battled here. That reality, maya as some would call it, was torn here.
I wish I could find the words to convey with sufficient gravity what I'm trying to say. In the simplest terms, "this is the first battlefield of Gehenna." I can't begin to convey the profound nature of this fact — the end of the world started here. How could I? It's too big. What keeps me up wondering all day is, "Where next?" Then I wonder, "What the hell can I do about it?"
FALLOUT In the weeks that followed those days of hell, we learned a few things. First, a lot of Ravnos CLANBOOK: RAVNOS apparently went mad for no good reason. We couldn't reach most of the Ravnos Lawrence and Karl kept in touch with (and still haven't managed it). Lawrence consulted some experts regarding Indian mythology and its imagery, from which we learned that people all over had visions of Zapathasura's swan song. The Fortean Times was abuzz with stories of weird events during that hellish week and I suspect I'm barely touching the tip of the iceberg.