lasin, but empires would contest the might of the ;iends. In turn, these new sovereignties would bring Tith them Cainites hungry for the clan's domain. As it ras, the Romans were uncomfortably close because few -zimisce did anything to halt their incursions. Yorak wisely realized that politics and kingly mat- :rs were far outside his expertise or skill. Both the oldun and he preferred their studies to affecting mortal ffairs and stemming Cainite incursion into their lands. nstead, he chose to Embrace the influential members f the regional tribes and task them with that which did ot interest him. SHAAGRA: THF NFW DIRFCTION Yorak's decision to strengthen his brood's domains in ie region came at a fortuitous time. Change gripped the n o m world. To the farthest East, the Hunnite Empire :11 to the Chinese at the start of the Christian calendar, mding the Huns into nomadic exile. They swiftly spread rest, so that, by AD 375, they arrived in the Ukraine, rhere they displaced the Ostrogoths and Visigoths with ieir lighting-fast raids. The Ostrogoths petitioned Emeror Valens for settlement in Moesia, but when he emanded they surrender their wives and children, the ievitable clash resulted in a stunning Roman loss. The :ory later repeated itself with the Visigoths. Meanwhile, any hope that the Roman Empire could rise from its ashes died with Constantine’s illchosen heirs. Rome was on the decline, and its resident Ventrue, Toreador and Malkavians had lost control to a squabbling host of Cainite detractors and to the unlikely strength of a Hebraic cult. The city’s eldest fled in droves, sending Europe into a decaying spiral. The periphery of the Roman Empire crumbled and regional Damned panicked. They knew the Germanic tribes prepared for massacre and pillage, and many sought diplomacy with the previously isolated Tzimisce. For once, the other clans treated the Fiends as potential allies and not an Eastern frontier threat. The Tzimisce, in turn, noticed the flood of humanity streaming through their northernmost borders. The tribes and federations of Hun-displaced nomads fought and intermingled, as was expected, but the Gangrel of the steppes and disenfranchised Brujah accompanied them. Yorak met with several Gangrel chieftains and promised them unmolested passage through the Carpathians’ Tihuta Pass; in return, they promised to incite warfare against the Roman settlements along their routes. Yorak sought to regain the territory the clanlost with the arrivalof theventrue and Malkavians. The spread of the tribes turned into a wave that tainted everything ahead of it. In the wake of that chaos, Yorak sent in Tzimisce to reclaim their former estates. Shaagra’s Embrace heralded the Tzimisce’s golden age and centuries of the Fiends’ dominion over Eastern Europe. Yorak understood that the wandering Hun, Slavic and Goth tribes would eventually become the new landholders of whatever territory they settled. It had happened before with the Scythians and Hallstatt in the centuries preceding the White Christ’s birth, and it would happen again, given Europe’s virgin expanses. Theoretically, by influencing the tribes now, the Tzimisce could establish themselves as the preeminent clan of the region. The Slav Shaagra came from the Vroi tribe and ruled as their goddess, leader and mystic. Her people fled westward after her tribe had suffered under the harsh ministrations of a larger tribe. When they reached the Carpathians, Yorak took notice of Shaagra. She held concourse with potent spirits and possessed a beacon soul. Yorak sensed Shaagra’s potent magic and the supernatural creatures she entertained as counsel. Shaagra commanded strong respect from her people, and possessed the vision as shaman to appeal to the Tzimisce’s sense of Azhi Dahaka. Yorak accepted her for the Embrace, but he did not take her. Although he was the voi,oioo& of the region, other Tzimisce Methuselahs shared Yorak‘s age. While Byelobog remained aloof, both Triglav the ThreeCHAPIER ONE: A RABBLE OF FIENDS Headed - who earned mythological reverence among the regional tribes - and Lambach Ruthven wanted Shaagra for themselves. Yorak, however, chose Triglav as second in line among the local Fiends and allowed him the Embrace. Lambach would never forget that slight, and its repercussions would certainly echo down history’s corridor. Shaagra never knew her sire. Once educated in the craft of the Tzimisce and forced into the blood oath, she and her tribe followed her granddaughter and favored ghoul, Libussa, into the Danube Plain. Traveling in the century-long wake of marauding tribes and bands, the Vroi eventually settled upon land that would become Prague, the westernmost point of Carpathian Tzimisce influence. It would serve as a border against Western interests and become one of many flash points in the Tremere-Tzimisce conflict. Shaagra herself slept in fitful torpor, growing steadily insane in the blackened soil of Kupala’s violation. Her Embrace, however, precipitated the Tzimisce practice of claiming stock from noble families and tribal leaders to better influence the region’s mortals. This brought a new breed of Fiends into the clan’s hierarchy. Tzimisce like Radu, Wladymir Rustovitch and Dracula provide but a sample of the dozen who played the parts of nobility and engaged in games of political intrigue against the regional Ventrue and Brujah at the time better than their sires had. The clan broke its mold of cackling fiends and incomprehensible Metamorphosists and emerged from its isolationism, albeit fractured and of opposing agendas. THF ZADR UGA Eli Dragsky, Priscus of Moscow Sorry if I’m not poetic, but I’m a scholar, not a writer. You’ll also note that I’m against the concept of revenant familiesforavarietyofreasons. Weallknowthat,forcenturies, Tzimisce such as Yorak and the Dracon bound entire families into tortured slavery under the euphemism z&ga, or “joint family.” Convenience first forged this practice because it proved easier to raise servants in an environment of horror than to train continually relative newcomers to accept what they saw. Eventually, these ghouls, whether through the haunted soil of the Carpathians or from centuries of weathering the blood bond, managed to pass their half-Damned state on to their children, thus forming revenants. Yorak’s childer spoke of ancient ghoul families predating the Great Flood, though their fates before Christ’s birth are a little nebulous. Given the deformities that we’re seeing emerge fromour own families, however, I thtnk they simply became too genetically polluted to breed anymore. Sorry, but if the Bratovitches are an indication of what we can expect, then they pose a danger to our existence. They’re becoming wild and unpredictable; the suicide/murder rate among the Bratovitches alone is Before the revenants, th e ghouls came the boguty Yorak asserted the bogatyri staggering, and more than a few revenants have accidentally attracted hunters and, sometimes, the media to our doorsteps. They’rewalking timebombs, andfrankly, that’s theleast ofour worries from them. The modem revenant lines trace their history to the tribes of Slavs and Celts once living in the Danube and Volga basins. The eldest known family, the Basarab, claimed joint lineage from Dacian royalty and Roman legionnaires. The Basarab retained their nobility and land holdings during their existence as revenants. Unlike the other families, they later married into Szekler stock and forestalled the onset of deformity. As warriors and strategistspar e x c e l , they could have served the Sabbat as near equals, had “great” Dracula himself not been born Basarab and Embraced. The mortal Dracula murdered a number of us in his quest for immortality and greater influenceoverregionalplitics. Heeven forced his way
Tzimisce · Vampire