Drowned Legacies lore?

[Penelope]

CotBG also refers to them:
"Boa constrictors are native to the Americas, with Ministers identifying as members of the Tlacique — a vampire cult focused on Aztec mythology — commonly taking constrictor form using the Discipline of Protean."
Without the context of previous editions, this could mean that some Tlacique are Ministers and some aren't, which would be to say that it isn't a bloodline.

That’s a very good point.

Chris24601 why couldn’t the Drowned Legacies be both South American and Mesoamerican? Or North American, for that matter?

[Chris24601]

Chris24601 why couldn’t the Drowned Legacies be both South American and Mesoamerican? Or North American, for that matter?

Don’t ask me... ask the guys who wrote them up for BJD and expressly stated they were South American.

I’m just repeating what the canon material says (ex. Nergal/Shaitan/Huitzilopochtli has been confirmed outside of the Chaos Factor and is even mentioned elsewhere in BJD).

Canon says the different known branches of the Drowned Legacies are from Peru/Argentina (Karai Pyhare), Argentina/Chile (Kalku), Ecuador/Columbia (Lostundo), the Amazon Basin (Unhudo) with the Venezuela (Cinpactli) one the only one with any territory in Mexico.

A big part of why I don’t actually want the Drowned Legacies extending out of South America is for the same reason others find “Kuei Jin” offensive. By saying “why can’t they be Central/North American too you’re lumping completely different cultures spanning two continents with a multitude of myths and belief systems into a single “not white European” group and saying they should all be the same just like “Kindred of the East” slammed Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indian cultures together and pretended it was all one uniform culture.

Let’s learn from mistakes instead of repeating them. I’m sure there are/were indigenous vampires/vampire adjacent groups in North America too. I just don’t feel the need to say every cryptid vampire on two continents are all part of the Drowned Legacies.

[Alphari]

Just to clarify, first edition Mage books say a lot of goofy stuff.

Would you like to tell us about it?

[Penelope]

Don’t ask me... ask the guys who wrote them up for BJD and expressly stated they were South American.

I’m just repeating what the canon material says (ex. Nergal/Shaitan/Huitzilopochtli has been confirmed outside of the Chaos Factor and is even mentioned elsewhere in BJD).

Canon says the different known branches of the Drowned Legacies are from Peru/Argentina (Karai Pyhare), Argentina/Chile (Kalku), Ecuador/Columbia (Lostundo), the Amazon Basin (Unhudo) with the Venezuela (Cinpactli) one the only one with any territory in Mexico.

A big part of why I don’t actually want the Drowned Legacies extending out of South America is for the same reason others find “Kuei Jin” offensive. By saying “why can’t they be Central/North American too you’re lumping completely different cultures spanning two continents with a multitude of myths and belief systems into a single “not white European” group and saying they should all be the same just like “Kindred of the East” slammed Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indian cultures together and pretended it was all one uniform culture.

Let’s learn from mistakes instead of repeating them. I’m sure there are/were indigenous vampires/vampire adjacent groups in North America too. I just don’t feel the need to say every cryptid vampire on two continents are all part of the Drowned Legacies.

Okay. That makes sense. But the word “Legacy” is also used to describe the Laibon of sub-Saharan Africa. Could there be non-Drowned Legacies in Central and North America?

Also, even if the vampires of North and Central America are very different from the Drowned Legacies of South America, they’re still probably closer to them than they are to vampires from European or Asian cultures.

[Chris24601]

Would you like to tell us about it?

The only real “early installment weirdness” in The Chaos Factor was that a group of Black Spirals, Nephandi and Sabbat were all working together (all being under Shaitan’s influence) when later material refined the factions’ beliefs in ways that these wouldn’t fit together well anymore without a lot of Dominate (which, to be fair, a 6500 year old demonically augmented 4th Gen certainly has, along with the Auspex to use it at a distance).

Shaitan was written to be extremely powerful; basically pushing the edges of the mechanics in ways that these days would just use the “you lose” stat block in an all vampire campaign; but that doesn’t mean he’s any more or less ridiculous than Ur-Shugli or having Tremere actively running around.

[The Gentleman Gamer]

The Drowned Legacies could have certainly extended north of Mexico. Blackwater would certainly imply they did at some point, if she's one of them. They're deliberately left open as Kindred, Kindred-alts, or a different type of creature so Storytellers can fill in the blanks. I'm not sure if they'll receive further detail, but I hope so!

[Penelope]

The Drowned Legacies could have certainly extended north of Mexico. Blackwater would certainly imply they did at some point, if she's one of them. They're deliberately left open as Kindred, Kindred-alts, or a different type of creature so Storytellers can fill in the blanks. I'm not sure if they'll receive further detail, but I hope so!

Thank you. That would be awesome if they did.

[Chris24601]

Okay. That makes sense. But the word “Legacy” is also used to describe the Laibon of sub-Saharan Africa. Could there be non-Drowned Legacies in Central and North America?

Already answered in the section you quoted...

“I’m sure there are/were indigenous vampires/vampire adjacent groups in North America too.”

That said, population density matters for a predatory species. Pre-Columbian Mexico had a estimated population of 17 million. The rest of Central America had about 6 million. The Andes had nearly 16 million, the South American low lands around 8 million.

The entire United States and Canada combined had under 4 million.

Basically, you could have Aztec, Incan, Mayan and other Legacies in South America because there was a human population big enough in one place to support it and permanent structures that could easily shelter them from daylight.

In North America, any Legacy/Bloodline would almost have to be solitary predators with a territory covering several human encampments to maintain a stable food supply without depleting it. They would similarly suffer from the lack of permanent settlements in many places making avoiding daylight a serious concern (unless their legacy was more resistant than the standard variety Cainite vampire).

A variant Protean with early access to Earth Meld might be one of their disciplines if they didn’t have better resistance... or maybe a disciple that lets them not be affected by indirect sunlight (direct sun should always be a bane, but something that would let them shelter in a shallow cave without bursting into flame from reflected sunlight would be a necessity in many parts of Pre-Columbian North America.

Basically, some sort of variant Gangrel would make the most sense for a North American legacy.

[Saga]

Just to clarify, the Drowned Legacies are South American, not Mesoamerican and “The Chaos Factor” pretty well established Shaitan/Nergal/Huītzilōpōchtli and his brood as have been playing the roles of Mesoamerican divinities for multiple millennia.

Similarly, the Tlacique are also Mesoamerican/Aztec not South American, so probably not part of the Drowned Legacies (or if they are, they’re either a distant offshoot or northernmost branch).

Basically, the Drowned Legacies would be more likely connected to Incan beliefs/divinities than to Aztec or Mayan ones.

What happened in Chaos Factor was later retconned in Mexico City by Night (and Tribebook Children of Gaia Revised). During the revised era, the Tlacique were supposed to be among the weird things happening in south america when they first mentioned the continent back in Wold of Darkness 2nd ed, and though their origin was north and central american from the aztecs, it was later expanded to the whole american continent out of spite for the european.

One can heavily dislike the existence of drowned legacies since the whole "weird stuff" from south america concept is a bit offensive, specially when V5 claimed to be respectful on source material for other cultures (specially when there's almost no cultural difference in them with any other north american country except the fact that they are third world countries). I doubt for V5 to publish the drowned legacies as a source book since it would be unlikely to be of interest to the target public of their material, so I guess that it will only have scarce footnotes across other books in the future.

- Saga

[Penelope]

Already answered in the section you quoted...

“I’m sure there are/were indigenous vampires/vampire adjacent groups in North America too.”

That said, population density matters for a predatory species. Pre-Columbian Mexico had a estimated population of 17 million. The rest of Central America had about 6 million. The Andes had nearly 16 million, the South American low lands around 8 million.

The entire United States and Canada combined had under 4 million.

Basically, you could have Aztec, Incan, Mayan and other Legacies in South America because there was a human population big enough in one place to support it and permanent structures that could easily shelter them from daylight.

In North America, any Legacy/Bloodline would almost have to be solitary predators with a territory covering several human encampments to maintain a stable food supply without depleting it. They would similarly suffer from the lack of permanent settlements in many places making avoiding daylight a serious concern (unless their legacy was more resistant than the standard variety Cainite vampire).

A variant Protean with early access to Earth Meld might be one of their disciplines if they didn’t have better resistance... or maybe a disciple that lets them not be affected by indirect sunlight (direct sun should always be a bane, but something that would let them shelter in a shallow cave without bursting into flame from reflected sunlight would be a necessity in many parts of Pre-Columbian North America.

Basically, some sort of variant Gangrel would make the most sense for a North American legacy.

That makes sense. Thanks.

[Chris24601]

What happened in Chaos Factor was later retconned in Mexico City by Night (and Tribebook Children of Gaia Revised).

Not so much retconned as seeing the events from an alternate perspective... after all, the events there are definitely given in-universe as they make a point that the Sabbat believes Huītzilōpōchtli to be either a Tzsimice or Nosferatu.

The Huītzilōpōchtli mentioned as being diablerized in Mexico City by Night is most likely related to the Pandemonium entity that Shaitan left behind at his old haven when he relocated to what would become Paraiso Vista c. 1493 (i.e. 500 years before The Chaos Factor is when it was said to have been carved... so right after people from Europe started arriving on the Continent... and about 30 years before Cortez and the Sabbat showed up at what would become Mexico City).

So, basically, the events recorded in Mexico City by Night are the commonly accepted version of events, but is actually a case of the Sabbat falling for the same trick Shaitan used to escape destruction after the war with the Second City... they killed a demonically altered and conditioned childe (how many could really tell the difference between a 5th Gen body double and the 4th Gen original?) while the real one slept safely in a hidden haven a hundred miles away.