Know Your Kindred – Silas

Name:  Silas
Clan:  Salubri antitribu
Generation:  Unknown
Embrace:  Unknown

Silas was one of the Salubri antitribu‘s premier historians.  He was captured and interrogated by the Tzmisce of the Blackfoot pack and revealed to them that the fabled war between the Salubri and the Baali was a falsehood; a cover up to hide their shame

The real enemy of the Salubri clan was the Tzimisce.

According to Salias, Samiel and between 7-15 of his warriors took up arms against the Tzimisce Antediluvian, believing the grand Fiend’s clan was part of a demonic partnership with the forces of Hell.

Samiel attacked the Eldest’s haven and slaughtered the grand Fiend with “righteous fire.”  The Eldest, in a final act of defiance, ripped Samiel’s head from his body.  Apparently only one Salubri survived to recount the tale afterward.  The Salubri later realized their mistake and rewrote Samiel’s history to have him die fighting their most hated enemy – the Baali.

Much of Silas’ tale had mixed legend and fact, making it hard to verify its accuracy.  While it was possible for Samiel to have attacked the Tzimisce founder, and some of Silas’ descriptions are accurate, many doubt the clan’s founder was destroyed as described by Silas.

– Source:  Clanbook: Tzmisce, pg. 13-14.

Know Your Kindred – Qawiyya el-Ghaduba

Name:  Qawiyya el-Ghaduba
Clan:  Salubri
Generation:  5th
Embrace:  636 AD

Although few of Saulot’s line remain, those who still remember know that his favorite childe was Samiel, who single-handedly launched the warrior’s path from within the clan of healers; who founded the Code that bears his name, and who was killed by the same monstrosities he swore to destroy.

Before leaving to face the Baali in their unholy sepulcher, the infernal acropolis at Chorazin, Samiel called those of his line together and warned them of dark times to come, and urged them each to remember the Code as he had instructed it.  It would be his last known appearance.

What few know is that Samiel made a single stop on his way to Chorazin – a stop that would change the warrior caste for all time.  Samiel found himself drawn by a vision to a small village.  The townspeople had fallen under a terrible plague.  Those who remained had lost all hope and abandoned their homes and their unburied love ones. – All but a single soul, that is.

Samiel found a lone Arab woman single-handedly moving the corpses of her infant son, her two brothers and her dead husband out to a pyre and watched those closest to her vanish in flame.

Enthralled, the warrior asked the woman why she alone chose to stay, when everyone else moved on.  She simply replied it was her duty that the dead be buried.  She knew the source of the plague was the Devil, but so long as a single soul stayed and tended to the dead with the same unshakable faith she tended to the living, then the Devil could never truly claim the town as his own.  Lucifer would be foiled by one woman of faith.

Now Samiel, the greatest warrior of the Salubri, was shaken.  He recognized God’s work before him.  He had been guided to this woman and knew his journey to Chorazin would be his last.  Knowing this, Samiel entrusted the woman with two great responsibilities:  First, he Embraced her into the warrior line, making her the heir of his legacy. Second, he gave her his first-hand copy of the Code of Samiel, penned by himself centuries ago.  This was hers to protect… and to remember.

Six hundred years later, the last chide of Samiel returned to Jerusalem after she had seen both her sire and her sire’s sire destroyed.  She launched a campaign of brutal justice against the Tremere, raging through the Holy City like the wrath of God, laying waste to the Tremere. Before the year’s end, she had removed them from the city and put a plan into action to keep them out of Palestine forever.

She set up shop in the old Tremere chantry, where she invited all the neighboring princes.  After a week of deliberations, an accord uniting the region.  A new era of peace and determination began in Palestine.  Although Qawiyya holds no title, there is no doubt among its residents who holds the reins of power and righteousness in the Holy City. This Muslim warrior Salubri is now known as the “Lioness of Jerusalem.”

An aged Salubri healer named Nahum ben Enosh assisted her early efforts before passing the torch and slipping into torpor.  He was laid to rest in a crypt he designed and Qawiyya watched over him as vigilantly as she protected her copy of the Code of Samiel.

– Source:  Road of Heaven, pg. 46, 92-93.

Know Your Kindred – Nahum Ben Enosh

Name:  Nahum Ben Enosh
Clan:  Salubri
Generation:  4th
Embrace:  216 CE

Nahum was a Talmudic scholar, studying and arguing all the fine points of Jewish Law.  One evening, while heading home, he said he regretted the fact he was getting older and approaching closer to death.  He mourned the fact that he would not have enough time to acquire all the knowledge he wanted to.  Saulot overheard Nahum’s comments and so he Embraced him.

Nahum spent the following centuries learning and passing on his knowledge to others.  He gained the reputation as a scholar of considerable repute.  He didn’t much care for the blood feeding requirement to be a Cainite, but he reconciled that it must be God’s plan for his life.  Unable to imagine his life as a Salubri warrior, Nahum followed the healing path instead.

With his inquisitive nature, Nahum turned his attention to studying demon pacts.  What are demons exactly?  Why does God allow them to exist?  What purpose do they serve?  Is it possible for a mortal or Cainite to control one?

Nahum appears as a harmless old man in his sixties, dressed in traveler’s robes and carrying a walking staff.  His hair and beard are quite white.

Since Saulot’s destruction Nahum lost most of his enthusiasm.  Tired with the world and unhappy at the direction his clan had taken, Nahum retreated to torpor, where he vanished from the pages of history.

– Source:  Jerusalem by Night, pg. 98-99