by Damien Moore aka. Sean O'Connell (23 Jun 94)
Carthage was utopia. It is a living dream. Millenia ago, we Brujah created a city where Kindred and kine could live together. We strove for the heavens only to see others grow jealous. They betrayed us and destroyed the dream. Now we are divided, and we have gone from being scholars and philosophers to cretins and clowns like your sire, Smiling Jack
- Critias to Dre, newly Embraced Brujah.
At one time the Brujah were not all rebels. At one time they sort to understand, not to destroy.
Before Carthage. To many of the Brujah of the time, this was a dirge. Their dream destroyed, their plans unravelled. Many were claimed to Hunters, to the plots of the Jyhad, as they fell into despair, and so into carelessness.
Some, however, did not grieve. They were angered, seeking vengeance. These Brujah were the basis of the High Council of Clan Brujah. They met in secret in the ruins of Carthage, and formed their plans for revenge.
Each time they had given their dreams flesh, the other, jealous clans came and destroyed what they had built. Even with their wide powers over the elements, their powers of Presence and their Potence-enhanced strength, they did not have warriors to fight the other clans.
A plan was conceived to give them these warriors. From this point onwards, the High Council would conduct a 'breeding' program for Brujah warriors. Those who Sired were to find those with the fighting spirit, who were high of temper, who could defend their Elders. They were no longer to be taught their Sire's powers over the earth, but instead were to be taught to move with the speed of lightning.
The Council believed that the combination of Potence and Celerity would give their warriors the ability to defend them, to create a warrior- class within the Clan. Those who created Childer against the Council's edict were held to be in violation of the Third Tradition and were either destroyed along with their Childer or ostracised and no longer granted the clan's protection.
There was more to this policy however, that met the eye. For the most-part, it was Troile's Childer rather than Brujah's that had somehow learnt the discipline of Celerity, and thus it was they more than their siblings that Sired Childer. As a result, over the following two centuries the number of true Brujah fell, and the number of Troile's Childer increased.
These Childer were taught nothing of their Sire's original abilities, but simply assumed that they too were masters of Celerity. They were also instructed to destroy any Kindred they saw using the Elementalism discipline, described to them as a form of Blood Magic.
The years passed, and the warrior-Brujah's childer became more populous. They either forgot or did not learn their Sire's heritage, and the High Council faded from sight, so as not to present a target to the other clans. The Ventrue, the Malkavians, the Toreador, all assumed that the elder Kindred of the Brujah had been destroyed or had fled, or melded with the earth, no longer a factor in Kindred politics.
The other clans of the kindred noticed this change in the younger Brujah, but did not pay it much heed, often to their dismay when these new Brujah went mad, destroying all in sight. For since the fall of Carthage, the Brujah had been always on the edge of Frenzy. Some theorised it was the rage of Troile, echoing down through his bloodline. The High Council considered it to be an unfortunate side-effect of their new Childer's posession of Celerity, one that may reap its own benefits when they used their Childer in battle in the centuries to come.
This situation continued for a thousand years. The High Council, from their various Havens and hiding places watched, and their warrior- childer ravaged the Kindred world, increasing in numbers and generation. The Council cared not for their Progeny's fascination with the Anarch movement, regarding the battles against the other Elders as good training.
Indeed, when the Sabbat was formed, they would have collected their Childer and fought against the Ventrue and other clans. Except for one thing.
The Inquisition. Their fascination with their own Childer, their tweaking of their destinies, led the inquisitive mortals to themselves, the evil ones who sat in the background like the puppet-masters. And why, came the argument in the mortal councils, destroy the puppets when you may destroy the puppeteers
By flame, by stake and by sunlight, the mortals found and destroyed the true-Brujah, one by one. Their secrecy from the world of the Kindred, long their shield, became the sword used against them, as they could not even call for their warriors.
And so the majority of the High Council passed away, their plans flapping lose in the winds of history. Without their subtle control upon their behaviour, their childer raged unchecked... the Sabbat, the wars of the Jyhad, all would have been lessened with the intervention of the High Council.
Not all of the council was destroyed. A small number of those that knew the truth escaped the flame, and fled into hiding, seeing this as a repetition of the destruction of Carthage. They lost much of their will to live, and slipped into Torpor.
The years passed, and their grief lessened, even in Torpor. The remainder of the High Council awoke, and took stock of the world around them. Times had changed since the dark ages of the Inquisition. New Empires had arisen and fallen, new thoughts and philosophies to light.
First in priority was regaining their control over their breeding experiment. This was complicated by the existence of the Sabbat. No longer was there a single Clan Brujah, but now there were the Brujah antitribu. These childer had conceived a plan to free themselves from tyranny, and in this they mirrored the true beliefs of the High Council - freedom and self expression.
Yet once again, a Brujah's dream was shattered by the other clans. The Tzimisce and Lasombra clans took control of the dreams of freedom and turned them to anarchy and chaos.
Even their warrior-childer had split into several factions. The Iconoclasts were the chaotic and devastating warriors that the breeding program was designed to bring about. The Idealists on the other hand were extremely suspect to the High Council. Many of them decreed them to be the "legacy of Veddartha", and their attitudes of controlling all of the Brujah were termed "Ventrue-syndrome."
It was the Individualists that surprised the High Council the most. Even after 2,000 years, the true Brujah spirit seemed to spring anew from their chaotic childer. Many individualists were secretly sponsored by the High Council, and the most promising were led subtley towards an 'apprentic- ship' - an apprenticeship that ended in them being taught the true history of the Brujah, and led into their full legacy.
Nickname: Witches.
Appearance: The appearance of this clan is fairly sharply divided between the Elders, who are often at least 300 years old, and often prefer to dress in the styles of their lifetimes, at least in private, and the younger Kindred.
These younger kindred often are a strange mix. Scholastic backgrounds are mixed in with very fit sportsmen. The members of this clan tend to dress casually but conservatively.
Haven: Their Havens are either their Elder's Haven, or in homes or apartments near Universities.
Background: True-Brujah are always intellectuals of some degree. Many of the newly-Embraced Kindred have university degrees, and no small number were teachers in their mortal lives.
Character Creation: True Brujah often have a Pedagouge or Scholar background, but many of them are quite fit as well. Visionary, Deviant or Architect demeanors and natures are common. Mental Attributes are usually primary, but Physical Attributes are often quite high. Knowledges are almost always primary. True Brujah commonly have Contacts and Mentor as their backgrounds.
Clan Disciplines: Elementalism, Potence, Presence.
Clan Weakness: The Blood of Brujah has the strange characteristic in that it is almost impossible to form Blood Bonds with it. True Brujah have theorised it is the spirit of Brujah herself that prevents these bonds, as she was known to hate any form of compulsion or binding.
In order to Blood Bond someone to themselves, the Thrall must drink 9 times from the Kindred, rather than the standard 3. [Alternatively, the blood is _incapable_ of forming blood bonds.].
This does not apply when the True Brujah herself is the Thrall, it takes the standard three seperate drinks to blood bind a true Brujah.
Organisation: The true-Brujah part of the Brujah clan is so small in comparison to the other clans that at this stage they are still relatively closely knit. They rarely have formal meetings, but instead the clan is organised around an Archive, with one Elder and his childer in a city.
These true Brujah often masquerade as Intellectualist Brujah, so as to allow themselves to move easily within the Kindred world.
Quote: We must take control of our Sibling's Childer, as we control ourselves, and bring them back into the fold.
Stereotypes