From August, 2009
Know Your Kindred – Hukros
Name: Hukros
Clan: Gangrel
Generation: 4th
Embrace: Unknown
It was Hukros who developed the Path of Lilith 1,200 years ago in Africa. While exploring ruins and collecting artifacts of vampire lore, he encountered a cult of mortals who knew the secrets of the Kindred and guarded a collection of ancient writings known as the Cycle of Lilith.
Hukros and his minions attempted to steal the writings, but were defeated by the cult’s demons. Hukros managed to escape and told others of his experiences. Soon curious Kindred joined him and sought the writings in other places.
Followers of the Path of Lilith (aka Lilins) believe all supernatural beings (werewolves, mages, vampires, etc.) were born of Lilith. They believe Lilith was the first vampire, not Caine. The Lilins have their own secret libraries, said to contain ancient artifacts of vampire lore that link Lilith to the Kindred, including writings that claim during the time of the First City Caine was Lilith’s lover and king by her decree. Lilins also believe to fully explore all their vampiric disciplines.
Other Kindred think them fools and debate between the followers of Lilith and Caine grew so heated that neither side is willing to share their discoveries with the other side, instead hoarding the information amongst themselves.
Source: Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, pg 65.
Know Your Kindred – Demdemeh
Name: Demdemeh
Clan: Tzimisce
Generation: 4th
Embraced: Unknown
Little is known about the African Tzimisce (or eggun). They prefer to keep to themselves and are ashamed of their non-African counterparts.
Demdemeh was a warrior discovered by the Tzimisce Antediluvian along the African coast. As the first African it had ever met, Demdemeh confused and puzzled the ancient vampire. The Antediluvian tried to inflict every injury and harm he could to Demdemeh, but the warrior did not flinch and remained calm throughout.
Finally Tzimisce turned Demdemeh inside out, with his organs on the outside and his eyes looking into his head. When Tzimisce asked him what he thought of the view, Demdemeh calmly replied it was nothing special, as all wise men are able to look into themselves. Impressed with his strong mind, Demdemeh was Embraced and left to wonder the jungle. Demdemeh walked across the continent and gathered many followers until he had one of the largest tribes.
To further aid his rule of north Africa, Demdemeh ghouled marshland crocodiles and baboons as his servants. He built the great city of Khamissa to humble the Egyptians.
Over the years Demdemeh no longer hungered for blood, but now feasted on banquets of flesh and became strange and alien to his own people. A row of gills covered his face like a grill, and he no longer had eyes, nose or a mouth. Only his childer understood the whispered, incoherent sentences that he spoke.
Eventually the desert winds spread and the African swamplands dried up. Demdemeh retreated from the world, his ghouled creatures vanished into the night, and Khamissa was abandoned by its people.
Today Demdemeh sleeps at the bottom of a lake deep beneath the Ahaggar Mountains. In his absence, his preeminent childe, the witch Sycorax led the remaining eggun south.
– Sources: Clanbook: Tzimisce (Revised) pg 11, 33-34
Know Your Kindred – Virstania & her Gargoyles
Name: Virstania, Mother of Gargoyles
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1111
Virstania was the youngest apprentice in the Tremere order to earn the rank of mage. But because she was so young she was not able to form friendships with the other magi, who saw her more as a curiosity than a colleague. Instead she turned to creating her own companions and made several constructs she kept as pets.
After one of them escaped her lair and caused a stir in the servant girls quarters. Goratrix found the creature and believed Virstania was ripe to aid him in his next project. Virstania was Embraced and after a year of tutoring at Goratrix’s side, she was put to work hatching the first of the Gargoyles. She bathed them in unwavering love and they responded to her as baby chicks to their mother.
When Goratrix was exiled to Paris in 1133, Virstania felt she had lost her only friend. She retreated to a cave near Ceoris and continued her work to perfect the Gargoyle race. As the years passed, Virstania has come to care more for her creations than her fellow Tremere. She hoped to someday make them an independent race of their own, one that both magi and Kindred will fear.
When the Gargoyles finally went rogue, they look Virstania with them to teach them Thaumaturgy and care for their needs.
– Sources: House of Tremere, pg 92-93. Transylvania By Night, pg 135.
Name: Luma, Stone Beauty
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 9th
Manufactured: 1183
Luma is one of the most aggressive Gargoyles, but also one of the most charismatic. Other Gargoyles automatically heed her commands. The males all wish they could copulate with her but are too frightened to approach without permission.
Luma knows more than she lets on. She’s already gotten two younger Gargoyles to enter into a blood oath with her. She cares for her mother Virstania and encouraged her to allow spies to watch some of the Tremere officers should the day come when they would be at war with the clan.
Luma is slender with the serene lovely face of an ancient Greek statue. Her skin glows a faint yellow, an effect only visible in the dark.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 93, 102.
Name: Saxum
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 8th
Manufactured: 1123
Saxum is the dominating leader of Virstania’s gargoyles. He is the oldest surviving Gargoyle. He assists Virstania in her experiments, acts as Gargoyle leader, passing her instructions to the others. He breaks up fights, hands out food and conveys complaints to the Great Mother. His loyalty is to her, not the Tremere.
Saxum is an exemplary specimen of the basic Gargoyle type. His facial features are strongly chiseled. His stone skin is smooth, like marble and his musculature impressive. His wing span is longer than any other, at 10 feet from one tip to the other. He proudly wears a gold-trimmed robe given to him by Virstania.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 102.
Name: Fidus, The ShrunkenBeast
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 8th
Manufactured: 1187
Fidus is too weak and deformed to act as a guard, so he never leaves Virstania’s side. Fidus is the smartest Gargoyle, able to read and understand magic. He’s even given Virstania useful magical advice on a few occasions.
At only four feet tall, Fidus has a bowed neck, tiny eyes and small, twisted wings. He drools uncontrollably and speaks with a lisp that others may find comical.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 101-102.
Know Your Kindred – Malgorzata
Name: Malgorzata
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 6th
Embrace: 1097
Malgorzata had a blade for a tongue, giving a verbal lashing to anyone who disagreed or disappointed her or her master Goratrix, whom she was fiercely loyal to.
Malgorzata was the sixth child of Romanian nobles forced into serfdom. Serving as a young field-worker, she was purchased by Goratrix. He sensed great power in the girl and made her his apprentice. Malgorzata became a coarser, less subtle version of her master, emulating and exaggerating his most blatant traits. By the age of 13 she had become a full mage.
Her boldness and quick rise won few friends but won the admiration of other apprentices. She begged Goratrix to make her immortal like him, but Goratrix was not allowed to Embrace outside the Council of Seven. Instead he broke a lesser rule and made her a ghoul. For decades she begged him to lobby Tremere to her cause, finally gaining the Embrace a tortuous 75 years later. The long wait made her bitter towards Tremrere and towards Etrius, whom Goratrix blamed for his master’s cautiousness.
A great Tzimisce offensive in 1105 crushed all the Transylvanian chantries outside Ceotis. Needing a weapon to fend off the Tzimisce and their allies, Goratrix with Malgorzata at his elbow began experimenting with human and Kindred anatomy. Malgorzata kept the other Tremere focused on their work by reminding them their lives depended on the project’s success. In 1121, the first of the Gargoyles was unveiled. By 1125 the Tremere had created enough of them to turn them loose. The Gargoyles turned the tide in their war against the Tzimisce.
When internal politics exiled Goratrix to France, Malgorzata stayed behind at her master’s command to undermine Etrius’s rule. While Etrius is away from the Ceotis chantry Malgortzata began disobeying his orders and started her own faction of loyal followers, hoping to one day supplant him.
After Goratrix left the clan and joined the Sabbat, Malgorzata remained his eyes and ears until the 1570s, when Tzimisce anarchs captured her during a raid. Taken prisoner and tortured, she revealed all she knew about Ceotis’s defenses and Tremere’s plans. Goratrix found her several tortured decades later, but left her there to linger.
She spent the next several centuries bound to heated iron bands and twisted into a writhing, mindless thing. In the early 20th century she was discovered by Lucita, Anatole and Beckett. By this point she was a horribly deformed, insane, thirst-crazed Cainite. They did the right thing and after three tries, succeeded in finding her head and cutting it off.
Malgorzata presented an image of cold and commanding beauty. Her eyes were the color of a clear wintry sky. Her brown hair was often decorated with glittering gold jewelry set with gemstones. Within Coreris she wore traditional magician robes. On journeys she dressed like a Hungarian noblewoman.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 25. 27, 87-88. Transylvania By Night, pg 133.