From Know Your Kindred
Know Your Kindred – Viktor, The Night General
Name: Viktor, General of the Army of the Night
Clan: Gangrel
Generation: 6th
Embraced: 3 BC
When the legendary Nosferatu Baba Yaga awoke from torpor, she declared war on the rest of the world and summoned back her immortal minions to her side.
Viktor is the leader of Baba Yaga’s Army of the Night. The Army is composed of 25 vampires, including Viktor.
Viktor had served Baba Yaga a thousand years before she entered torpor and his loyalty earned him a special place in her eyes. Although he is old and tired, he serves the Hag with a zeal reserved for fanatics. Rumor has it he ripped apart his own childe for not showing proper respect to the Hag.
The only thing that rivals his love for Baba Yaga is his respect for the Garou. In another life he could have befriended them. He sometimes shows leniency to the Garou in battle, something Baba Yaga does not know and would be very displeased with if she found out.
But Viktor’s respect for the Garou would be his undoing. While on a mission in St. Petersburg, the White Nights began – an annual event each June when the Sun shines day and night in Northern Russia for three weeks straight. To avoid the Sun, Viktor ordered his men to Earth Meld into the land. There was a worry that the Garou would discover them sleeping and take advantage of the situation. But Viktor believed the Garou were too honorable to attack a sleeping foe – He was wrong.
About a dozen local Lupines sensed the enemy in the land and they unearthed and destroyed Viktor and most of the Hag’s army. When Viktor awoke he flew into a wild frenzy, killing three Garou before the rest took him down. As they tore his head from his body he screamed obscenities at them and cursed them, “You have no nobility to attack a sleeping foe!” Even after his body crumbled to dust his disembodied head could be heard muttering “Forgive me Little Mother. I could not find it.” The event was thereafter known as the White Nights Massacre.
Viktor was a tall, dark man in perfect shape. His glare was intense and commanding.
– Source: Rage Across Russia, pg 91. Nights of Prophecy, pg 88-90.
Know Your Kindred – Reginald Moore
Name: Reginald Moore
Clan: Brujah (but really Ventrue)
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1840
In life, Reginald was an intelligent boy from a lower class family. He was a dedicated student who taught himself Latin and Greek. Unable to find a career to support himself, Reginald spent his nights drinking and roaming the streets in sadness.
Reginald’s Embrace was the result of a feeding gone wrong. He was attacked by a starved Ventrue named Donal, who was in the midst of a frenzy. The attack nearly killed Reginald, so to cover up his folly the Ventrue tried to turn Reginald into a ghoul, but then on impulse decided to Embrace him instead.
One of Donal’s rivals, an elder Brujah, witnessed the whole event and intervened, killing Donal. Reginald has no memory of the event, but the Brujah took him under his wing and claimed him as his own childe.
Reginald knew little about the vampire world, but he took it upon himself to sharpen his wits and soon he found himself welcomed within the ranks of the Brujah clan, where knowledge and debate skills were respected. Reginald finally achieved the status he wanted his whole life and he eventually became London’s Brujah primogen.
Since London was run by the Ventrue, Reginald had no interest in rocking the boat. He favored intellectual gatherings over physical fights. Since Reginald never intended to become a combative Brujah, he never learned Celerity or Potence, focusing exclusively on Presence only.
Reginald’s true linage could be discovered if it was ever investigated or by a simple act of Thaumaturgy. Such a revelation would destroy Reginald and greatly humiliate the Brujah. Just to be safe, Reginald’s “sire” has instilled in him an absolute terror of Thaumaturgy, which manifests as a hatred and distrust of all Tremere.
Reginald is in his early 20s, with curly black hair and pale skin. He tries to look like a businessman, but he is rough around the edges both physically and socially. His lack of funds result in a small wardrobe of ill-fitting suits. He tries to relax when he’s with other Brujah, but he is still uncomfortable around them, just as they are typically uncomfortable with him.
– Source: London By Night, pg. 67-68.
Know Your Kindred – The Unnamed
Name: The unnamed
Clan: Baali
Generation: 4th
Embraced: “A time before it all.”
Few mysteries plagued Cainite scholars with such persistence and urgency as the details of the origins of the Baali. It is a popular belief that Saulot may have created the bloodline in one of his attempts to sire a brood of vampires. This endeavor backfired and produced an evil that all Kindred have tried to wipe out.
As the story goes, a powerful Cainite (most likely Saulot) discovered a large cult that had worshiped faceless entities for many generations. The cultists would sacrifice prisoners, slaves, children and livestock, then throw their bodies into a great stone well. The Cainite had seen their rituals and wished to show these people that their depravities and atrocities were nothing.
The priests rose up against him, but their incantations proved useless. The power of his voice struck them dumb and silenced their cries. His gaze struck down the weak minded and feeble. He ripped the strong ones limb from limb and commanded the others to rend each other’s flesh with their knives. He tossed their bodies into their own pit and dropped some of his own vitae into the well when he was done.
The result: Out of hundreds slaughtered that night, only three survived. They lapped up the vitae and clawed their way out of the organ pit the following evening. They were filthy with gore, caked in blood and howling with unquenched fury and madness. They were mad and hateful and thirsty for death. The Baali had been born.
Three Baali arose from the well, each equal to the others in power. The first was Nergal, the terror behind the Babylonian deity. The second was Moloch, who sired progeny until the Baali were like a plague of locusts spread across the Phoenician Empire. The name of the third, and even its gender are a mystery. Nergal and Moloch rarely spoke of their sibling, but each would wroth at the mention of the third.
Some claim the third Baali was the lover of one or the other, or both. Others claim it was infact a pair of lovers merged together at the organ pit, thus explaining the presence of hermaphroditic deities in various ancient societies.
The most popular theory is that the third Baali is female. Some support the notion that the third is Zillah; others claim it’s Lilith. Still others say she has no name and is simply called the Crone.
– Source: Clanbook: Baali, pg 16-18.
Know Your Kindred – Byzar
Name: Byzar
Clan: Cappadocian
Generation: 4th
Embraced: Unknown
Note: It is probably true that Byzar is also known under the name Mahatma, a Cappadocian who studied the path to Golconda closely under the tutelage of Saulot.
Byzar founded the colony of Byzantium around 550 BC. The colony grew to be the leading port and trading city between the Greek city-states and Asia.
A beautiful older woman named Alexia Theusa traveled through Byzantium while in search of her long lost lover, Andreas. Byzar fell deeply in love with Alexia and was impressed with the woman’s knowledge of death. On her final night in Byzantium, Byzar offered her the Embrace, telling her that with immortality she could wait for her lover until the end of time. Byzar hoped that the Embrace would make Alexia fall in love with him and cause her to forget about Adreas. Unfortunately the Embrace had the opposite affect on Alexia and her love for Adreas was strengthened.
One night she had a vision of Byzantium in ashes and a new golden city being built in its place upon where Adreas would return. Alexia interpreted her vision to mean Byzantium must be destroyed if her lover would ever find her. So one night she incapacitated Byzar and his followers. Using her powers she placed them in torpor and laid their bodies in a crypt in the deepest recesses of the city.
Byzar never shows his true appearance to others. He often appears as a young man of great beauty, a physically perfect specimen almost akin to Michelangelo’s “David” come to life. He has alabaster skin and long, dark hair, which falls straight down his back. When he feels penitent, he looks like a particularly hideous Nosferatu, with lice, ticks and other unsavory creatures crawling on him and dressed in the stinking rags of a leper.
– Sources: Constantinople by Night, pg. 91-92. Children of the Night, pg. 98-99.
Know Your Kindred – Black Wallace
Name: Black Wallace
Clan: Lasombra
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1659
Wallace was the spoiled son of a wealthy British noble. He gained a seat in the House of Lords and got involved in Oliver Cromwell’s crusade against the Anglican Church, where he showed off his savage and sadistic side, leading terror mobs in acts of violence.
It was while Wallace was living in Spain after the Thirty Years War that he was taken by a Lasombra and Embraced. Wallace relished the power his vampiric form gave him and opportunities the Sabbat presented to him.
At first his low standing in the clan was a big concern for Wallace, but he soon learned that he could gain power quickly by revealing trechery within the sect rather than by fighting the Camarilla.
After successfully getting a Gangrel antitribu to confess to treason, Wallace’s status rose and in 1780 he became a Sabbat Inquisitor, where he is known for being the most impassioned and feared of his kind. Even his fellow Inquisitors hesitate to challenge his authority.
Wallace has brown eyes and jet black hair. He instructs his ghouls to trim his beard and mustache to match his favorite portrait. His teeth are quite bad by 20th-century standards, so when he extends his fangs they come out a bit askew
– Source: Children of the Night, pg 18-19.
Know Your Kindred – Theo Bell
Name: Theo Bell
Clan: Brujah
Generation: 9th
Embrace: 1857
Theo Bell is part of the Camarilla’s first line of defense in a time of crisis. As an archon, Bell has won the Inner Cirlce’s personal accolades no fewer than seven times, an unprecedented feat in the sect’s history. Bell was instrumental in the Camarilla’s reconquest of New York City as well as uncovering and killing the Sabbat spy, Marcus Vitel. Sabbat vampires walk warily when Bell is near and the Anarchs of a hundred cities curse the name of “Killa-B.”
Bell was born into slavery, working in the cotton fields of Mississippi. He escaped from the plantation and fled to Ohio. He joined the Underground Railroad and made many trips into the deep South freeing slaves and earning the scorn of the plantation owners.
After a failed mission, Bell laid wounded in the woods. He noticed a man standing over him. The man dodged Bell’s lunge and locked him in an inescapable grip. His name was Don Cerro, and he had been keeping track of Bell’s exploits for years. Impressed, he offered Bell the chance to become something more. Bell agreed to his bargain.
During the following years and through the American Civil War, Bell learned under Cerro about the gifts of his kind. The two toured Europe, where Bell was exposed to an entirely new nocturnal world. There were very few black Kindred in the Camarilla and Bell earned much notoriety because of his race. But the decadence and debauchery of Europe’s Elysiums disgusted Bell and reminded him of his old slave master’s parties.
Cerro and Bell were as close as father and son. As Cerro’s star rose in Camarilla politics, Bell was carried up along with him. When the Inner Circle made Cerro the Brujah Justicar, Bell become his archon. Bell performed his duties to the letter and by the 1990s he was the most respected – and feared archon in the United States. Bell didn’t entirely love the Camarilla, but they served his purpose. Also he hated the Anarchs and believed the Sabbat was a danger to the world.
But in the Final Nights of Gehenna, Bell rebelled against the Camarilla. Bell learned the elders were capturing neonate vampires and using them as food to stave off the mysterious blood withering. He could not bring himself to aid them in their mission and so he went renegade – going city to city and freeing all captured vampires. Bell brought his fight directly to the head of the Camarilla, Hardestadt. The weakened elder was unable to defend himself and he met final death from Bell’s twelve-gauge shotgun.
Bell is tall, dark and handsome. Scars across his back and shoulders are the only legacies of his slave days. A New York Yankees baseball cap, reflective police-style sunglasses and a Dragonsbreath-loaded shotgun are Bell’s trademarks.
– Sources: Children of the Night, pg 51-52. Clanbook: Brujah (Revised), pg 96-97. Gehenna: The Final Night, pg 328.
Know Your Kindred – Troglodytia
Name: Troglodytia
Clan: Cappadocian
Generation: Possibly 5th
Embraced: Unknown
There is little information available to prove it, but all logic would conclude the Samedi bloodline is somehow connected to the former Clan of Death – the Cappadocians. The former clan’s weakness was that its members resembled corpses, a disfigurement that is more pronounced in the Samedi, as they resemble putrid, rotting corpses.
The Cappadocian discipline of Mortis and the Samedi discipline of Thanatosis are very similar to each other, dealing with the study and exploitation of death. On top of that, many Samedi possess Necromancy. If the Samedi truly did evolve from the Cappadocian line, from whom did they descend? Were the Giovanni involved?
Upon her Embrace Troglodytia was cursed with a horrible appearance that seem to fall on many new Cappadocians of the time. Her face showed advanced decomposition. Her disgusting appearance made her unapproachable and drew mean-spirited insults from her peers. But through it all Troglodytia wore her condition as a badge of matrydom and was determined to rise above it all.
She took up company with a group of Nosferatu, but her mastery of Obfuscate is not advanced enough to hide her appearance. But true to her martyr self, she has made the best of her lot, becoming a mercenary, acting as a broker for the Cappadocians and Giovanni, procuring dead bodies for experimentation, odd herbs and alchemical ingredients, as well as strange artifacts that come to her attention. She has become a veritable black market all by herself.
Trogldytia is content to work for any benefits and promises she can gather. Who knows what will come of the favors she gains?
– Source: Clanbook: Cappadocian, pg 64-68.
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.