Headcanons on Native American Bloodlines

[Shakanaka]

What I disliked about the Laibon, the treatment of Africa, was how disconnected it was from the Jyhad. It was basically presented a nature preserve of clans and bloodlines.

The Second City was in Africa according to White Wolf. Maybe the first city as well. And that makes sense. Mankind evolved in Africl, it has always had the greatest number of parasites evolved for the human species. Africa should be where the Jyhad ran deepest, and where it had its oldest roots.

Although I did love the notion that the Samedi were a remnant of South American kindred that is basically wearing protective coloration and presenting as a bloodline of an extinct European clan.

The First and Second cities were in the Middle-East, so no the wiki isn't right. Second what makes you think the Laibon are removed from the "Jyhad" at all? Jyhad is merely the millennia long power plays and intrigues among Vampires, Jyhad can relatively be anything. Why do you think the Laibon don't have their own Jyhad among themselves at all?

Also where do you get the "notion" of the Samedi are wearing protective type of coloration at all, anywhere? They're pretty much walking corpses. Also I don't know why you mention South America, when Samedi activity pre-V5 were literally all in the Caribbean or North America. I never seen anything about South America at all. Most of the Samedi themes and trope were based on the various Zombi myths or Loa spiritualism based from Haiti and West African superstition.

[Elphilm]

I think you're missing the point that "Brujah" was literally an adaption of the game designers of bruja, back in the 1990s, when the game was first designed. I mean, this wasn't a secret at the time. There is a running issue that pretty much all fictional names are somewhat goofy if you think too hard about them.

I'm not missing anything, I'm simply offering an alternative that I think is a better fit.

But on that note, I've never seen a direct quote from Mark Rein-Hagen, who came up with the seven original clan names, that Brujah was an "adaptation" of the Spanish bruja. It could very well be the case, or this could be another persistent piece of headcanon with no official source. The 1st Edition Vampire: The Masquerade core book even gives a pronunciation guide for Brujah on page 136 as brо̄о̄'-jä, which doesn't support the idea that the j is supposed to be pronounced as h like in bruja.

[MyWifeIsScary]

What I disliked about the Laibon, the treatment of Africa, was how disconnected it was from the Jyhad. It was basically presented a nature preserve of clans and bloodlines.

Because from a purely logical standpoint most of sub-saharan Africa would be a nature preserve for clans and bloodlines. Africa is huge and even today, the urbanized population of africa is low, and for a continent with more than a billion people, it doesn't have many big cities. Historically africa has been plagued by shitty geography and low-teir crops, to the point that europeans would call bullshit when they did find evidence of ancient cities. Given how long vampires can live and how slow they are to change, and just how fucking huge the continent is, it makes sense that much of africa is still functionally in a pre-sect society functionally similar to europe before the Anarch revolt, only with some better technology. That has never mean there is no Jyhad in Sub-Saharan Africa, no doubt methuselah still fight on the regular there, the "laibon" are fine, but for international jyhad there are greener pastures with more opportunities.

The only thing sketchy about "Laibon", other than the name, is the twin morality thing.

Now, in my opinion, most of the important parts of Africa should've become Camarilla since the scramble for africa. Anything by the coast that the europeans conquered should've been Camarilized

[No One of Consequence]

Generally speaking, I'm a lot more forgiving of odd or strangely out of context names and terminology from RPGs written in the pre-internet era - ie, around 1990 when 1st ed Vampire would've been being written - when creators were often having to look obscure terms up in an actual physical dictionary or thesaurus and sometimes just pick something that sounded suitably appropriate, evocative or just cool. (If you were extremely fortunate, someone working on the game or someone they knew - in person, not online - might've had first hand experience with a subject or topic. Otherwise it was often "well, that's how they do it in the movies ...." )

As far as the Antediluvian clan names, I just tend to hand wave them as being the closest modern English approximation of spelling and pronunciation for words/names that predate almost all known human languages save maybe Sumerian, early Old Egyptian and the language of the Harappan civilizations. If they happen to sound like or bear resemblance to modern or other words from various European languages, it's either coincidence or a case of secret (and possible unintentional) vampire influence upon human society.

On the other hand, with stuff from created around the turn of the millennium and onward, I'm slightly more nitpicky. And in the case of vampires from Africa and the like, I typically try to find terminology that characters from that culture might think of themselves with. (Hindu Indian vampires thinking of themselves as descendants of the Raksasha for example.) The main deal with Africa is that it's not a single universal culture, but a bunch of separate ones. North Africa is different from East Africa is different from West Africa is different from South Africa is different from Central Africa. Aside from the Islamic Kindred of the North (and their satellite members further south), there should probably be at least four separate "Ebony Kingdoms", each with its own unique culture and terminology.

(And the same is true for the Americas, where you probably used to have around a dozen large cultural areas where whatever vampires existed there each had their own unique origin stories, belief systems and names for themselves.)

[Guest]

Generally speaking, I'm a lot more forgiving of odd or strangely out of context names and terminology from RPGs written in the pre-internet era - ie, around 1990 when 1st ed Vampire would've been being written - when creators were often having to look obscure terms up in an actual physical dictionary or thesaurus and sometimes just pick something that sounded suitably appropriate, evocative or just cool. (If you were extremely fortunate, someone working on the game or someone they knew - in person, not online - might've had first hand experience with a subject or topic. Otherwise it was often "well, that's how they do it in the movies ...." )

As far as the Antediluvian clan names, I just tend to hand wave them as being the closest modern English approximation of spelling and pronunciation for words/names that predate almost all known human languages save maybe Sumerian, early Old Egyptian and the language of the Harappan civilizations. If they happen to sound like or bear resemblance to modern or other words from various European languages, it's either coincidence or a case of secret (and possible unintentional) vampire influence upon human society.

On the other hand, with stuff from created around the turn of the millennium and onward, I'm slightly more nitpicky. And in the case of vampires from Africa and the like, I typically try to find terminology that characters from that culture might think of themselves with. (Hindu Indian vampires thinking of themselves as descendants of the Raksasha for example.) The main deal with Africa is that it's not a single universal culture, but a bunch of separate ones. North Africa is different from East Africa is different from West Africa is different from South Africa is different from Central Africa. Aside from the Islamic Kindred of the North (and their satellite members further south), there should probably be at least four separate "Ebony Kingdoms", each with its own unique culture and terminology.

(And the same is true for the Americas, where you probably used to have around a dozen large cultural areas where whatever vampires existed there each had their own unique origin stories, belief systems and names for themselves.)

Very good point

[Black Fox]

I tend to stick closely to the original canon, but eliminate or change anything I feel doesn't fit my conception.

My headcanon is that only the 13 original clans exist. And some bloodlines as well, but I consider bloodlines to be more of a chronicle mystery or metaplot device. So I only use those bloodlines in my chronicles that fit that need - which may be some bloodlines that exist in canon, or some of my own, but doesn't include most VtM published bloodlines. (Bloodlines being defined as completely new and independent lineages, not subclans that are simply distinct lineages of an established clan.) I think Drowned Legacies is a perfectly fine concept, but not one I'll ever use in my games.

The antedeluvian founders of those clans all climbed out of the muck somewhere in the Old World near Mesopotamia. So there are no "native" American vampires in the sense that one arose out of the muck somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. Any vampires that got to the New World walked there after spending significant time in the Eastern Hemisphere. A few very old vampires did manage to do that and survive. Not many as the lack of urban civilization for such a long time meant there weren't safe places to hide. The three tribes of Garou there and other Changing Breeds would have eliminated most childer of these vampires before they became powerful enough to hide on their own.

= =
There is the 4th Generation Gangrel Methusaleh "Slumbering Giant" mentioned in Dark Alliance: Vancouver and who was the sire of Mictlantecuhtli (Diablerie: Mexico). He's also known as the Wanderer, and I'll use that name simply to spare my spellchecker. The Wanderer was embraced in 51 BC in the Pacific Northwest so it is possible that his sire had only recently crossed over from the Chukotka Peninsula to Alaska. If the Slumbering Giant embraced once, he could have done so again. And we know from Diablerie: Mexico that the Wanderer created Progeny. So there is a strain of "native" Gangrel that date back at least 2000 years, but they probably weren't very prominent.

We also know there was a 4th Generation Nosferatu in North America as well, as the Wanderer diablerized him after he settled down on the Yucatan. We're not given a date, but it's between AD 250-600. I would say around 500. We're not given many details about this vampire, but we do know he wanted an alliance with the Wanderer to survive the Jyhad. We're not told that he had any progeny, but as an ancient and powerful Nosferatu looking for allies, he probably would have. Like the Gangrel, the Nosferatu are known to survive in the wilderness and have had several prominent members who thrived in lands with Lupines. We don't know when this unknown Noferatu arrived, and one can justify almost anything.

We know the 4th Generation Brujah Menele arrived in the New World before Columbus. In first edition Chicago By Night we're told that after Menele attempted to destroy Helena at Pompeii, he fought her for more than twelve centuries before fleeing to the New World in a specially prepared ship. I always liked to tie this into the mysterious disappearance of the Vivaldi Brothers of Genoa who first attempted to reach East Asia by circumnavigating Africa in the late 13th century. It fits the timeline. We also know Menele moved south and helped build the Incan Empire before Helena finally arrived with the Spanish Conquistadores. But he only predated them by a few centuries.

Then we get the Tlacique which I think were first mentioned in the Revised Clanbook: Followers of Set. I think this was simply as a measure to expand a clan that was originally pigeonholed into a narrow concept. But I like it. In other headcanon of mine, I determined that "Set" was really a 4th generation childe of Typhon who was the clan founder, and his name became that of the clan as a result of all other 4th generation childer being destroyed. So the idea that Typhon somehow made his way to North America and embraced another childer sounds good to me. Their "founder" Tezcatlipoca might be Typhon or it may be the name of his childe. The Revised book makes mention of Gangrel and Nosferatu in Pre-Colombian America as well which is likely a call out to the earlier Diablerie Mexico books. We have no idea when this group of vampires started, so it's entirely possible it is a much younger vampire who arrived here in the same time frame as the others. But I personally like the idea it was Typhon himself and it happened long ago. Perhaps the reason the unknown Nosferatu tried to ally with the Wanderer was because of this (retroactively inserted) founder of the Tlacique? If not him, we have another candidate...

I don't have Chaos Factor, but I know that book says that Huitzilopochtli (also known as Shaitan), a 4th generation Baali embraced in the Eastern Hemisphere, made his way the West at some point and settled in early Mesoamerica, possibly with the Aztecs or the Olmecs. Chaos Factor wanted H to not be able to embrace, so strictly by canon he couldn't breed any more of his clan here. Of course, Chaos Factor has a lot of problems and various attempts have been made to retcon it. The idea of vampires being behind the terrible human sacrifice of the Mesoamericans is one a lot of people like, but the Tlacique are an effective substitute for it. So if you want to throw H out, I don't think it presents any problem.

= =
All of these lines likely predate the rise of Christianity so I think their version of their origins would not reflect the lore we know now. I've stated previously that most of the names and such used reflect Abrahamic origins only because Christianity and Islam dominated that part of the world when the Camarilla and Sabbat first formed. In earlier times, the basic story would have had other figleafs covering it. The core concepts of 1) there was a world before this one, 2) vampirism has its origins in that world before ours, and 3) some vampires survived that time in order to create the vampires we have today. Then take whatever cultural context you want and fill in the gaps. The Biblical Flood, Atlantis, Numenor, Conan's Hyborian Age, etc. In Mesoamerica at least, we have the World of the Fourth Sun as a good substitute. Other Indian peoples have their own myths you can use.

= =
I don't see the need to add any other native vampires. These three (or four if you count the Brujah who arrived much later) clans, sparsely populated, I think are sufficient for any native vampires.

We have small groups of Gangrel that could be anywhere.

We have Tlacique in Mesoamerica and possibly a few other Methusalehs.

Possibly a small group of Brujah in Inca (and Tlacique are said to have also gone here).

Nosferatu are unknown, but we could place an urban group among the Mound Builder civilizations in the US as well as in the wilderness. Cahokia was supposed to have around 20-30,000 people in AD 1150 so why not?

If I was going to do anything with pre-Columbian vampires, I'd just start here and move on.

[AkatsukiLeader13]

Also where do you get the "notion" of the Samedi are wearing protective type of coloration at all, anywhere? They're pretty much walking corpses. Also I don't know why you mention South America, when Samedi activity pre-V5 were literally all in the Caribbean or North America. I never seen anything about South America at all. Most of the Samedi themes and trope were based on the various Zombi myths or Loa spiritualism based from Haiti and West African superstition.

I don't recall anything about them and South America in V5 either. Certainly with the Hecata and their position as one of the Three Heads of the group does put the Samedi in a place where the Bloodline would spread, outside of the Caribbean, they're unlikely to be the local leaders of the Clan as other Bloodlines within the Hecata often already have local powerbases, especially the Giovanni. In Central and South America it would be the Pisanob and Harbingers that hold the most power. The former because that's where they came from and the latter because of their short time with the Sabbat and their war on the Pisanobs.

Though looking at that person's comments, it is possible that they mistook the Pisanobs for the Samedi as it's theorized that the Pisanobs were descendants of the Cappadoicans that arrived in the area long before and integrated into the local cultures.

[Damian May]

In MyWoD Pre-Columbian vampires in the Americas are either Hungry Ghosts or those few odd Gangrel, Nossie, Setite and Cappadocian descendants that made it across, But mostly Hungry Ghosts.

[Erinys]

I would like to know what people think of the Descendants of the Three Sisters. From what little I can find without buying it, they have regular Cainite mechanics and disciplines, but their origin stories are unrelated to Caine, implying they are more like Drowned Legacies. I'm curious if they're based on real Pre-Columbian legends, or are an adaptation of the European vampire concept into Native cultures.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/native-author-brings-cultural-blood-suckers-to-vampire-the-masquerade-game-qblyXCBQiUewJWyaFHMCww

[Trollroot]

True, but the Second City was in Egypt and the First City in the Middle East. The Laibon (for lack of a better name) were primarily affiliated with sub-Saharan Africa.

I actually like your idea. I’m just bored af and playing devil’s advocate. Trollrooting, if you will 😊.

Again, I really like your last paragraph, but it contradicts established canon that the Samedi are a bloodline of the Cappadocians/Hecata. Are you saying that all that stuff about the Baron is fake?

It was presented as a possibility in Becketts Jyhad Diary page 201. I just really liked it. The notion that the Samedi was wearing social camouflage by pretending to be a Cappadocian remnant, and having found a way to hide in the European kindred paradigm. Augustus would probably be in on it, he has explicitly had meetings with the Baron. It is worth noting that the Samedi are said to have had the True Vessel for some time so it is possible Augustus could have been influenced.

Besides that, I don't know what the Samedi could have offered Augustus, but it might relate to Pisanob successes.

The Second City was in todays Egypt, yes. (interestingly, not too far away from the birthplace of Ankla Hotep, I think.) Which had a river running all the way down to Lake Victoria and fertile savannahs with large rivers all the way down to Sub-Saharan Africa. And Africa was where the Kine were, in those days. And it was easier to get there than to Europe and most of Asia.

Because from a purely logical standpoint most of sub-saharan Africa would be a nature preserve for clans and bloodlines. Africa is huge and even today, the urbanized population of africa is low, and for a continent with more than a billion people, it doesn't have many big cities. Historically africa has been plagued by shitty geography and low-teir crops, to the point that europeans would call bullshit when they did find evidence of ancient cities. Given how long vampires can live and how slow they are to change, and just how fucking huge the continent is, it makes sense that much of africa is still functionally in a pre-sect society functionally similar to europe before the Anarch revolt, only with some better technology. That has never mean there is no Jyhad in Sub-Saharan Africa, no doubt methuselah still fight on the regular there, the "laibon" are fine, but for international jyhad there are greener pastures with more opportunities.

In a word, no. For most of Cainite history, Africa has been the most populated continent. Most of it a fertile Savannah with large rivers running through it, and massive lakes. some of which endured into kine history. I doubt other continents exceeded the population density of the more fertile African regions until the Cucuteni-Trypillians. And even then it was only an occasional thing. Even in the middle ages the Mali and west African areas certainly exceeded western Europe in population, and possibly the entirety of Europe. Of course, west Africa was a far more dense and urbanized population than Europe as well.

Kine is the one important resource to Kindred. The Second City was in Africa. South along the Nile and west along the Mediterranean coast were areas that were exceptionally fertile and would one day become the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. To the southwest there was an enormous savanna crossed with rivers and with immense lakes. These were the most population dense areas in the world at the time, with the Levant as a side-area. I can see the Antediluvians that were outsiders and wanderers disperse into the middle east, Europe and Asia. Lasombra, Gangrel, and Ravnos. But I expect most would go where the concentrations of people were at the time.

Which is why I would expect the Jyhad to be deeper in Africa than elsewhere. It is where the Jyhad began, after all, and it is where most of the original players would have been. The methuselahs should have been appreciably older, and there would have been more powers older than them in the darkness behind them. Not the place where otherwise extinct clans dwell and there is little information flow or contact with the outside. It was like the book had bought heavily into the myth of "the Dark Continent" and made no attempt at research.

I did a quick literature survey after WW started getting flamed for its African Dark Ages bloodlines, and there is a lot of interesting stuff there.

[Guest]

Trollroot Fascinating! Remind me again who Ankla Hotep is?

[Trollroot]

The False Caine, from Berlin. A Fifth Generation Ravnos. Apparently both him and his sire was from Egypt, born in the middle of Setite territory. In Gehenna he resides in Sweden and lets the PCs know that the Second City is due to rise from the sands, so he keeps up with stuff in his old home town.

[James_Willoughby]

In a word, no. For most of Cainite history, Africa has been the most populated continent. Most of it a fertile Savannah with large rivers running through it, and massive lakes. some of which endured into kine history. I doubt other continents exceeded the population density of the more fertile African regions until the Cucuteni-Trypillians. And even then it was only an occasional thing. Even in the middle ages the Mali and west African areas certainly exceeded western Europe in population, and possibly the entirety of Europe. Of course, west Africa was a far more dense and urbanized population than Europe as well.

I wish people wouldn't keep repeating these myths. There are a lot of population estimates for medieval Africa from reputable historians, all of which indicate less dense populations, smaller cities, and fewer people in general than Europe. Take Mali; the area which the empire covered now has a population of roughly 37 million people; in 1950 it had 7.1 million people, and in the medieval period, the population was far less. Medieval France, by contrast, had at least 12 million people within its borders. Medieval Kanem could send 40,000 horsemen out on an annual basis, which is greater than any army which a European state could produce; but this was not a regular army, more a collection of slaving bands, and Kanem struggled to managed a sustained war (which is, after all, why they could defeat the Kingdom of Daju, but couldn't manage to annex the territory). Njimi, the capital of Kanem, left so few traces that its exact location has never been determined. West African colonising societies, meanwhile, were fairly effective at producing lots of villages, but tended not lead to towns or cities.

There's a lot of evidence available in regards to medieval Africa, and it would make a potentially interesting game setting for Vampire: the Masquerade, but it would be good if it was based on actual history, and not myths spread by the Internet.

[Trollroot]

I wish people wouldn't keep repeating these myths. There are a lot of population estimates for medieval Africa from reputable historians, all of which indicate less dense populations, smaller cities, and fewer people in general than Europe. Take Mali; the area which the empire covered now has a population of roughly 37 million people; in 1950 it had 7.1 million people, and in the medieval period, the population was far less. Medieval France, by contrast, had at least 12 million people within its borders. Medieval Kanem could send 40,000 horsemen out on an annual basis, which is greater than any army which a European state could produce; but this was not a regular army, more a collection of slaving bands, and Kanem struggled to managed a sustained war (which is, after all, why they could defeat the Kingdom of Daju, but couldn't manage to annex the territory). Njimi, the capital of Kanem, left so few traces that its exact location has never been determined. West African colonising societies, meanwhile, were fairly effective at producing lots of villages, but tended not lead to towns or cities.

There's a lot of evidence available in regards to medieval Africa, and it would make a potentially interesting game setting for Vampire: the Masquerade, but it would be good if it was based on actual history, and not myths spread by the Internet.

Personally, I go with the UNESCOs General History of Africa. They seem the most accurate. Volume IV has a section on Mali and they give a population of Mali around 1250 as 40 - 50 million, but do note that Mali was not the only nation in the area, and the whole area was exceptionally densely populated. The river valleys of the Niger and the Senegal is called out especially for their exceptionally dense population. The entire west African river valley system sustained very high populations and the Sahel was more fertile at the time.

If you feel that UNESCOs General History of Africa series are, as you put it "myths", you can contact them at https://en.unesco.org/contact. I should note though that I expect they get a lot of the whole "Africa was primitive" objections from laypeople of a certain sort.

In general I am not sure the term "Myth" or the phrase "reputable historian" meas what you think they mean.

[MyWifeIsScary]

In a word, no. For most of Cainite history, Africa has been the most populated continent. Most of it a fertile Savannah with large rivers running through it, and massive lakes. some of which endured into kine history. I doubt other continents exceeded the population density of the more fertile African regions until the Cucuteni-Trypillians. ]

Wrong and undeservingly rude, wrong, correct but misleading, so you're open about cherry picking but you're still acting like you speak for the entire continent?

-West africa is not most of Africa
-Actual population doesn't matter to most vampires. Urbanized population matters to vampires. Anything less is just good grounds for lupines or the dominant local equivelent (either the Hyenas or Lions) or the clans I listed earlier.
-Having fertile savanah doesn't mean shit when your local crop equivalent to wheat or corn is garbage and you don't have potatoes. Having fertile savanah doesn't mean shit when you have diseases all the time screwing your crops, and not having a great situation with animals isn't helpful either. African kingdoms and empires could never support significant advancement in urbanization because their food situation was perpetually shit until modernity. Until colonization, African kingdoms and empires were technologically roughly equivelent to europe during the medieval period... forever . Africans stagnated while the rest of the world moved forward. That's the history of pre-colonial africa; stagnancy. They had metalwork and textiles, but that's not what vampires care about. Vampires just want large urbanized populations, which Africa historically did not have to any great extent.
-West Africa is not most of Africa. I just feel the need to establish that again because you've... let's not get into that. You might as well say the entirity of the Americas were controled by the mesoamericans and enjoyed mesoamerican conditions. The conditions of the majority of africa weren't nearly so good for urbanization; southern africa and eastern africa did not enjoy so many civilizations, the continent is massive, and today africa is the least urbanized continent.
-two thirds of the continent's population are working in agriculture today. Africas product yields are some of the lowest in the world, and that's even with the inclusion of better foreign crops. Even ignoring the myths and misconceptions, African farming is far from ideal. You're very much overcorrecting here.

look, maybe when white wolf wrote their Laibon books they had all the misconceived ideas about all the "kids starving in africa" in mind, but as facts go what I said in my last post still stands.
Also, first and second city are almost certainly going to be in the middle east, as mesopotamia was the first cradle of civilisation according to experts. Egypt has a small chance of hosting one of the cities, but do note that northern africa is more in line with the middle east than sub-saharan africa. I think you're letting your IRL ideals get in the way of the facts. If you wanna make africa the site of cities one and two, go ahead, but don't act like it's divine truth and we're all fools for believing otherwise.