Sabbat


The Inquisition also spawned another movement of the vampires, but a far more brutal one. As the witch-fires raged, the elder vampires took/threw their childer into harm's way in an effort to save their own hides. Finally, many of these abused childer rose up and rebelled against their sires.

This resulting fight was called the Anarch Revolt. Fueled by youthful rage and strange secrets from Eastern Europe that allowed them to break the bonds of blood that held them to their sires, the anarchs wrought terror on the elders. But for all that they made the elders suffer, they also suffered losses to the Inquisition's fires. The battle ground to a stalemate, and both sides called for a parley.

The Treaty of Thorns put an official end to hostilities, allowed those Kindred who wished to return to the Camarilla's fold to do so, and punished those who had been most instrumental in the fight. However, not everyone was so convinced of the Camarilla's promises, and these die-hard rebels turned their backs on the Camarilla entirely. Many of them joined to create their own force that would set itself opposite the Camarilla, called the Sabbat.

Since those days, the Sabbat and the Camarilla have continued, diametrically opposed to one another, hounding and thwarting each other at any opportunity, up into modern nights. The Sabbat claims two clans, the shadowy Lasombra and the monstrous Tzimisce, which make up the larger part of the membership. The rest are antitribu of the Camarilla and independent clans.These turncoats are like dark mirrors of their Camarilla brethren, reveling in their vampiric natures and often setting themselves fiercely opposite their former clanmates.

The Sabbat organizes itself in a parody of the Catholic Church, from which much of its ritual springs. At the lowest level is the pack, which is led by a leader and a priest. Above the pack are the bishop and the archbishop, who oversee the Sabbat activity in a city. Cardinals coordinate Sabbat activity in regions, the regent in Mexico City oversees the entire sect, aided by the prisci. Paladins and templars serve as assassins and bodyguards for the regent, prisci and cardninals.

Freedom and loyalty are the guiding principles of the Sabbat. A vampire, as a superior being, is free to choose what she will, so long as she maintains her first loyalty to her sect. Above all, the sect looks ahead to the nights of Gehenna, fearing the prophecies of the Antediluvians, and it is determined to survive it by any means necessary. And the means of the Sabbat include merciless cunning, brutality and perversion. Whatever it takes to both spite the enemy and thwart the future.