History of the Sabbat

History of the Sabbat

**of Note**

S else has remained consistent about the Black Hand throughout the intervening centuries, this vicious fact has.

Blood and Fire o far as anyone can remember, the Sabbat emerged from the fires of the (first) Inquisition. Thus, the grand irony of Second Inquisition-era hunters being the most successful against the Sabbat, of all the sects.

Prior to the Sabbat as a recognized sect, esbats of vampires — little more than localized cults, really — had adopted their own ways of dealing with the Beast. Before, or perhaps in parallel to the mutual understanding of humanitas, these dire broods did what they could to temper the urges of the Beast and codify an understanding of what vampires had become upon receiving the Embrace.

None of these early esbats had any sympathy for the mortals upon whom they fed. If nothing Early in the 13th century, the Catholic Church began the Albigensian Crusade with the goal of destroying a mortal heresy. But in the course of exterminating what is tonight a barely remembered mortal religious movement, the Church uncovered the truth of vampirism. Of course, legends of blood-sucking undead creatures had long been a part of every culture’s folklore, but the reality of an entire hidden conspiracy of such creatures who secretly preyed upon flocks from the shadows was something else entirely.

The Church responded with the creation of the Inquisition — the “First” Inquisition, in light of modern developments — which the Pontiff charged 9 1 V5-Sabbat.pdf-renegadegames.com-#a11397-103 S A B B AT: T H E B L A C K H A N D Chapter Four: The Gehenna War with rooting out and destroying vampires and other supernatural monsters wherever they might be found. And for a time, the Inquisition was very good at its job.

So good, in fact, that the Cainite elders of Europe were soon in a panic as a reactionary terror engulfed Europe and even the oldest and most powerful Kindred were dragged from their resting place to meet the torch or the sun. In their desperation to survive, many elders sent out their own offspring to meet final death in their stead, using Blood Bonds and supernatural powers to compel their own childer to fight the Inquisitors while the sires vanished into the shadows.

Some elders even engaged in mass Embraces to protect them against the Inquisition, a precursor to the shovelhead tactics of the modern Sabbat. Neonate vampires of all clans met final death while their sires fled, hid, or called upon their mortal influences to survive.

V5-Sabbat.pdf-renegadegames.com-#a11397-103 Anarchs Revolt By the end of the 14th century, young vampires, incensed at their callous mistreatment and fearful of being sacrificed to the Inquisition, rebelled against their sires. These Anarchs, as they had been termed by the fearful elders, rebuked the self-serving customs of their sires. In what became known as the Anarch Revolt, childer destroyed their sires, drank themselves delirious on the heartsblood of elders, and plunged many domains into upheaval. Whatever local order had passed for Kindred society prior to the Inquisition teetered in the balance as the Anarchs rejected the ways of their sires. As domains burned, it may have been inquisitors or Anarchs who had hurled the torches — or both.

The prevailing myth is that the Anarch Revolt is largely a European development, but that is not the case. Certainly, the Anarchs had thrown Europe into turmoil, but domains as far-flung as Kyiv, domains that had belonged to the Seljuks and before, and even the kingdom of Alodia, all witnessed a contemporaneous revolt.

Elder attitudes regarding the Anarchs to be a mere annoyance changed precipitously when the foundations of the Blood Bond itself came under fire. Its precise origins have been lost, but the prevailing wisdom suggests that Blood Sorcery proved the foundation for Vaulderie, a ritual by which Kindred could shatter Blood Bonds. Whether it originated with the Tzimisce koldun of the Carpathian domains, in the sorcerous alembics of the Tremere, or from high Alamut no longer matters. Almost overnight, the merciless cudgel upon which sires could rely to bludgeon wayward childer into submission had vanished.

Like the inquisitors’ fires, the Vaulderie spread from domain to domain, among the furtive esbats and the unbound Anarch alike. Now free of their supernatural enslavement to their sires and tied to 9 2 But not all. The next night, Anarchs rampaged against the city of Silchester as part of an intentional violation of the Masquerade. Marauding Anarchs and esbats were joined by Kindred who had been marked for death for their transgressions.

The mortal survivors of Silchester described the attacking vampires as “sabbats of devils and witches,” and the Cainites who participated seized upon that description to christen their new movement: the Sabbat. The notoriety — even infamy — of the bloodbath after the Convention of Thorns saw vampires from domains beyond count reject the old order of this “new” Camarilla and declare for what they were. And where the cowards of the Camarilla would hide behind their Masquerade and the veneer of false Humanity, the Sabbat would become the monsters that all Cainites were meant to be. one another by unshakeable bonds of loyalty, the latest generation of Anarchs swiftly became an even more immediate threat to vampiric society.

Not long afterward, a spate of tales regarding destroyed Antediluvians rallied the Anarchs across Europe, the Levant, and northern Africa. Rebellious childer claimed to have destroyed numerous Ancients, with the Lasombra and Tzimisce Antediluvians purportedly the first to fall. At the time, though impossible to corroborate, the apparent destruction of the numerous Antediluvians elevated the status of the Anarchs even as it marked them as kinslayers in the eyes of a burgeoning conspiracy of elders who planned to bring the entire insurgency to heel.

From the Ashes of the Revolt Enlightenment in Blood Despite its rising momentum, the Anarch Revolt ultimately faltered. A network of influential elders orchestrated a counter-rebellion, unsurprisingly using the very advantages under their sway that the Revolt had cast into stark relief. According to some sources, the elders even stoked the fires of the Inquisition itself, using it to burn down the havens of Anarch packs that had emancipated themselves via Vaulderie.

The organizers of the counter-revolution formalized their conspiracy as an aristocracy of the night, a potent camarilla against rebellious fledglings and the medieval ritualism of the esbats. The conflict officially ended with the ratification of the Convention of Thorns in 1493. Most of the Anarch leaders present signed onto the peace treaty and acknowledged the primacy of the Camarilla.

What had originally began as parochial cults of monstrous self-worship eventually emerged as something much more fearsome: a set of wholly vampiric outlooks that their undead followers observed with a nigh-fanatical zeal — because their survival depended on it.

Given the domineering Camarilla’s choice to exalt lineage as the primary expression of a vampire’s character, the Sabbat instead rallied to these Paths of Enlightenment as its own declaration of virtue.

One’s clan and lineage meant nothing to monsters attempting to build a world of eternal night in which mortals would rightly fear their blood-drinking masters.

As the conflict between Path-driven packs and traditional domains stretched into the 16th century, Sabbat packs took up the cause not only against the Camarilla proper, but against that central tenet of Kindred society, the very notion of clans.

Indeed, not only did the Sabbat reject clans, but the founders of the clans, the Antediluvians themselves. By the mid-16th century, the Sabbat — albeit as a decentralized confederation of esbats — had declared itself the champion of a pogrom against If those terms - officially, ratification, convention, primacy - sound weighted, well, there's a reason for that. When you name yourself overtly after the conspiracy you assembled to excruciate the righteous.... 9 3 V5-Sabbat.pdf-renegadegames.com-#a11397-103 S A B B AT: T H E B L A C K H A N D Chapter Four: The Gehenna War those who had strayed from the virtues of Caine, the Dark Father.

From the Camarilla courts of Europe into the domains of the Ashirra and beyond, through the desperately defended mountain territories of the lands past the mountains, fire lit the night skies and elder heartsblood flowed again through the veins of insurgents. The rites of the packs and esbats stirring them to fervor, that most ancient of wars had new zealots prosecuting it.

The Beginning of the End of the World From out of this crucible of the inquisitors’ fires and through the terrifying evolution of the Paths of Enlightenment, the Sabbat has ever been at the forefront of conflicts beyond counting. Intervening centuries saw petty gains here and Sabbat domains established there, but little to merit what the Sabbat tonight would consider accomplishment.

I contend that the glorious Black Hand in fact made great gains during these neglected centuries, but that we squandered the resources they yielded. There is no shame in eschewing the illusion of empire, however. Let the Camarilla Princes and Anarch Barons dance to each other’s orchestras. Those lesser, worldly claims will wither.

Ours is not to sit on thrones and extract tithes - ours is the dominion of the Dark Father.

That all changed as Gehenna dawned. As first the elders and then their ancilla progeny heard the Beckoning, and readily heeded its entreaty. Unlike the Kindred of other sects, who resisted as much as they V5-Sabbat.pdf-renegadegames.com-#a11397-103 might, largely out of greed and complacency, the Sabbat found new purpose heralded by the ominous rise of the Ancients.

The Gehenna War exacts a high cost, however.

Domains that had been claimed by the Sabbat, from the Old World to the New, fell, or were actively abandoned as the Black Hand rallied to its apocalyptic call. Mexico City, Detroit, Madrid, and even New York had once been considered “Sabbat domain,” as had any number of other territories, but all of that burned away like so much chaff as the sect’s actual purpose hauled itself from its millennial tombs, threatening to devour the entirety of the Damned.

Those who consider the situation wisely describe the Sabbat as having a sort of “hollowingout” since the Gehenna War ignited. Many Sabbat elders and ancillae heard the Beckoning and took up arms against the Antediluvians, while others demonstrated a fundamental cowardice by taking shelter among other sects, leaving a great many young Cainites without the structure that had existed in the Sabbat prior. Those few elders who hadn’t heeded the Beckoning turned the rest of the sect toward the inevitable conflict — and many of them subsequently vanished, whether as casualties or into other fates remains unknown.

Tonight, the Sabbat situation is one of desperation, but a desperation that many of the sect either do not perceive or are unwilling to acknowledge.

Spread out over three geographically disparate war fronts and two different theaters of retreat, the Sabbat has had to radically redefine its methods and tactics on the fly. No longer content to “hold domain,” the Sword of Caine has become an active, guerrilla force. And even though its holdings are fewer and its Cainites probably less in number, the Sabbat has spread out its influence over a greater area than ever it has before. 9 4 SITREP: The Gehenna War Walking between life and death is the least of our dark gifts. We are the gods of this world and we have left it in the hands of the least worthy for far too long.

— OZYMANDIAS, PRIEST OF THE PATH OF POWER AND THE INNER VOICE An Empire of Blood The Gehenna War is the latest incarnation of the 500-year war the Sabbat has waged against the pawns of the Antediluvians. While the Camarilla is often still the primary target of the Sabbat’s efforts, the Sword of Caine sees all who forsake the Vaulderie as potential tools in the service of the masters of Gehenna. The Anarchs were long regarded as potential converts to the cause, but in the modern nights they’ve shown their true colors as shortsighted opportunists, eager to supplant the Ivory Tower but not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for true freedom.

Now that the Black Hand has taken the fight directly to the sleeping Ancients, the veil has parted.

Many in the Sabbat believe the Camarilla and Ashirra had long been secretly united in service to the Antediluvians, but that the losses of the Gehenna War forced that union to the fore. As the Gehenna War continues, many Sabbat in its central conflict zone believe the seemingly aloof and unconcerned Ashirra to be less a sect of Muslim vampires and more akin to a devoted cult of ancestor-worshippers.

For generations the Ashirra sat idly as the Camarilla and Sabbat clawed at each other through mortal pawns in Ashirra domains in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans. It was only when the Black Hand began to unearth the secrets of the ancestors that the Beckoning first claimed the elders and Ashirra Kindred decided to intervene and risk their own Blood.

Since the first compilation of the Book of Nod, what is tonight known as the Middle East has long been supposed as the origin point of the Cainites. When the Gehenna War went hot, little doubt existed among the Brothers and Sisters in Caine where they should seek the Blood of the eldest vampires.

It quickly became clear to the Sword of Caine that not all Noddist texts could be trusted as a map to unearth the Antediluvians, and that servants of these secret masters had the resources and time to bury their secrets wherever they wished. Almost as soon as it had started, the Gehenna War spread to distant locations across the Earth as the Sabbat pursued the clues wrested from the consumed souls of countless elders.

While the Book of Nod remains a sacred collection of documents to many within the Sabbat, the realities of the Gehenna War have led to various manuscripts being regarded as having different degrees of authenticity. A few Sabbat even suspect that the scholars who compiled the original text may have been under the sway of the Antediluvians and that some of the clues within subsequent texts may actually be clever traps and bait versions designed to shield the masters of Gehenna from the Sword of Caine’s wrath.

An Eternal Struggle Although diablerie and murder are the Sabbat’s preferred tactics in waging the Gehenna War, packs still recognize the need for subtlety in pursuit of their greater goals. Centuries of fighting elder influ9 5 V5-Sabbat.pdf-renegadegames.com-#a11397-103 S A B B AT: T H E B L A C K H A N D