Why does Setite Sorcery include multiple, separate branches of blood magic?

[Hello]

I you look up the Setite Sorcery wiki page, you will see it has 4 separate branches of Blood Magic that are practiced by different bloodlines of the clan, as well as the main clan.

Main clan - Akhu

Tlacique - Nuhallotl

Daitya - Sadhana

Serpents of Light - Wanga

Why do the Setites have access to so many different types of blood magic? Now I know that Sadhana and Wanga aren't completely exclusive to the Followers of set. Sadhana is practiced by vampires from different clans in India, usually Ravnos and Venture. Wanga is practiced by the Samedi Bloodline as well. However, it seems the most common practitioners of these blood magics are the Setites.

Better yet, how? How did the setites gain so much power in blood magic? Was it because of how diverse their selection of childer? If so, how come the Gangrel don't have a bloodline that specializes in something like nature magic? Or any other clan for that matter which has a diverse selection process?

[Father Enoch]

My knowledge of Requiem is far better than Masquerade, but my guess is because there are so many offshoots of the Setites (or Ministry).

As for why there are so many offshoots, I guess after about twenty years of books, they just kind of piled up.

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Ministry_(VTM)

[SetiteFriend]

I you look up the Setite Sorcery wiki page, you will see it has 4 separate branches of Blood Magic that are practiced by different bloodlines of the clan, as well as the main clan.

Main clan - Akhu

Tlacique - Nuhallotl

Daitya - Sadhana

Serpents of Light - Wanga

Why do the Setites have access to so many different types of blood magic? Now I know that Sadhana and Wanga aren't completely exclusive to the Followers of set. Sadhana is practiced by vampires from different clans in India, usually Ravnos and Venture. Wanga is practiced by the Samedi Bloodline as well. However, it seems the most common practitioners of these blood magics are the Setites.

Better yet, how? How did the setites gain so much power in blood magic? Was it because of how diverse their selection of childer? If so, how come the Gangrel don't have a bloodline that specializes in something like nature magic? Or any other clan for that matter which has a diverse selection process?

Doylist explanation: Each one of these is very tied to local cultures. So after you had Akhu for Egyptian, you had to get one for Aztec, Indian and Afro-caribbean variants. They are all tied to the Setites because they were usually the clan you'd dump mystical non-westerners into.

Also, the Gangrel had the Lhiannan, with Ogham, their own discount Blood Magic.

[Hello]

Also, the Gangrel had the Lhiannan, with Ogham, their own discount Blood Magic.

Forgot about that, probably cause its not really brought up that often and feels like a mixture of powers from different blood sorcery paths. Do the nosferatu, or other clans have a bloodline that specializes in blood magic?

[Gurkhal]

I would also add that the Setites are more drawn to mysticism than the Gangrel, if we follow conventional wisdom.

It don't matter what your potential is if you're not interested in something. Same why the Tzimisce have their pagan-style Koldun and there was a pagan Tremere branch while the Gangrel have none. It seems that most Gangrel are, and pick childer who are, not very interested in sorcerous arts and that's been going down the ages.

[Hello]

I would also add that the Setites are more drawn to mysticism than the Gangrel, if we follow conventional wisdom.

It don't matter what your potential is if you're not interested in something. Same why the Tzimisce have their pagan-style Koldun and there was a pagan Tremere branch while the Gangrel have none. It seems that most Gangrel are, and pick childer who are, not very interested in sorcerous arts and that's been going down the ages.

Surely the gangrel would be interested in embracing someone who has some magical talent? Or at least someone who has an educational background in ecology, or something similar. They cant all be lone wolf survivalists.

[Father Enoch]

Not an expert, but Gangrel aren't mystically inclined, in my limited experience. They are more "try casting that again without any fingers," inclined.

Then there's that whole thing about using Gangrel to make Gargoyles. That might have soured a lot of them on learning sorcery...

[SetiteFriend]

Forgot about that, probably cause its not really brought up that often and feels like a mixture of powers from different blood sorcery paths. Do the nosferatu, or other clans have a bloodline that specializes in blood magic?

The Nosferatu, Malkavians, Brujah and Toreador all lack a sorcerous Bloodline.

Ultimately, I think sorcerous bloodlines were a mistake, and Blood Magic outside the clans focused on it should have been kept a matter of individual effort, as it is for mainline Setites or Tzimisce who seek to learn their own magic tradition. It is a shame that some clans never got a magic sub-culture though.

[Spencer from The Hills]

Setites tend to ply occult lore anyway and work closely together. That gives them an advantage at teaching eachother sorcery over Gangrel.

The Nosferatu, Malkavians, Brujah and Toreador all lack a sorcerous Bloodline.

There's the Hajj, who use Sihr. Maleficia was made by Malkavians, but that's a 2nd Edition so it's a linear discipline, like Ogham.

[Baaldam]

As others have pointed out, each magic type is associated with one particular branch, that are autonomous to the point of being essentially bloodlines/clans of their own.


- On the Tlacique BJD brings up, more than once might be said, the possibility of their being not really Setites, but a Drowned Legacy bluffing their way into infiltrating/making allies out of them.

- The Serpents of Light are antitribu, connected more to the Sabbat than the Followers of Set - and in fact a pretty special case at that, since they are a sort of latecomer one-clan Anarch Revolt of sorts sprang of a bunch of embraced houngans & mambos that outright rejected setite mythology and values, possibly amidst the mayhem of the Haitian Revolution. So calling them a branch of the "core clan" is very, very messy indeed. The Children of Damballah are simply some "retcon precursor" sprang from the same cultural roots that spawned the Setite x Serpents of Light divide.


Every culture will develop its own twists on local religion, mystics, priests & sorcerers. The Setites might be no Tremere or Giovanni but their cultic bent does make them prone to embracing a number of those people and occasionally "going native", with varied degrees of blending of local beliefs and ideas that might or not mesh well with setite ethos.

But clans with an interest in religion or penchant for producing cults of personality - like Cappadocians, Lasombra, Toreador or the occasional Malkavian for example - might occasionally go down that rabbit hole too. What doesn't mean it's limited to them, as shown by Baba Yaga, Mithras and others.

[Matt the Bruins fan]

I think it's likely the result of a clan invested in occult mysteries that doesn't have a ubiquitous pressure focusing their research on a particular occult tradition the way the Tremere do with hermeticism or the Tzimisce do with almost all their great sorcerers living in slavic countries of Europe. You see something similar in Necromancy with the various Giovanni subfamilies, surviving Cappadocians, and Nagaraja specializing in different Paths and having different cultural approaches to them.

[Shadeprowler]

I you look up the Setite Sorcery wiki page, you will see it has 4 separate branches of Blood Magic that are practiced by different bloodlines of the clan, as well as the main clan.

Main clan - Akhu

Tlacique - Nuhallotl

Daitya - Sadhana

Serpents of Light - Wanga

Why do the Setites have access to so many different types of blood magic? Now I know that Sadhana and Wanga aren't completely exclusive to the Followers of set. Sadhana is practiced by vampires from different clans in India, usually Ravnos and Venture. Wanga is practiced by the Samedi Bloodline as well. However, it seems the most common practitioners of these blood magics are the Setites.

The Followers of Set are a spiritual, don't forget, an inherently and deeply spiritual clan
They are the Clan of Faith
Mesu Bedshet, the "Children of Rebellion" how they refer themselves, but they are spiritual and relegious.
And their magic come from this

The main clan's Akhu came from the time, when magic was commonplace, practised by mortal and vampire alike. Practitioners of Akhu are known as Lector Priests, and they believe their magical power is drawn from Set himself. Their practices are near-identical to those of mortal Egyptian sorcerers, involving images, effigies, stories, names and words. Their most important tool, however, is the blasphemy-shrine, a ritual chamber in which the lector-priest defiles the bodies and belongings of the dead in an emulation of Set's blasphemous dismemberment of his murdered brother Osiris. This perversion of traditional Egyptian burial customs unleashes power which fuels the lector-priest's spells, allowing them to perform sorcery without the expenditure of Vitae. The magic need not be performed at the shrine, but it must be maintained for the magic to work. Its a magic deeply rooted in their faith

The Tlacique's Nuhallotl - well if they are even a Settite bloodline and not a Drowned Legacy that is - is based on religious doctrines and offering sacrifices of blood and hearts to the Aztec gods, who must be given daily sacrifices in order to keep the sun alive and prevent the end of the world. Like Akhu and the main Clan's traditions, this too is relegious magic, tied to faith

Sadhana is not Daitya exclusive, but it is too a relegious magic. Just like a mortal Hindu mystic, a rakta-sadhu - practicioners of Sadhana - must engage in long meditation and grueling austerities to unlock the mystic power of the Blood. Typical exercises include: fasting nearly to the point of torpor; yoga exercises; breathing exercises called pranayama, such as breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose at the same time; and exposure to heat, cold and other unpleasantness. Rakta-Sadhus revere Shiva and Shakti above most other Hindu gods, in their incarnations as Bhairava/Mahakala and Kali. Others pay respect to Vishnu and Lakshmi and a host of lesser gods, like Agni, the god of the flame

Wanga is not Serpent of Light exlusive either, but - you guessed it- Wanga is a collection of religious beliefs stemming from the slave communities of the Caribbean (like Voudoun). Also, the term applied to the schools of sorcery that stem from these religions. At its core, Wanga is a syncretic magic system based on the folk rituals and spiritualism associated with the various “slave religions” which evolved among whose victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade who ended up in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the antebellum U.S. slave states. The most prominent of these religions today are Vodoun (Haiti, New Orleans, and several regions of Africa), Santería (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Florida), and Candomblé (primarily Brazil). Wanga is similar to Setite Sorcery in that it is a religious form of magic practiced by Kindred indigenous to any of the regions where the associated religions are practiced, but it is distinct and separate.

Its actually pretty understandable the Snakes have these, very fitting to their Clan

[adambeyoncelowe]

The question I've recently been asking myself is why the Setites have Serpentis (or Protean) and not some form of blood magic. Necromancy would be way more fitting for them.

[AnubisXy]

Every culture will develop its own twists on local religion, mystics, priests & sorcerers. The Setites might be no Tremere or Giovanni but their cultic bent does make them prone to embracing a number of those people and occasionally "going native", with varied degrees of blending of local beliefs and ideas that might or not mesh well with setite ethos.

That seemed like the whole deal with the Witches of Echidna who went around collecting and sharing as much of the clan's mystic rites and occult knowledge as possible with all of the various Setite groups, before they were ultimately wiped out for being heretics.

[Prometheas]

This is true of Every blood magic.

Thaumaturgy is branched out into Anarch Sorcerery and dark Thaumaturgy(I'm 100% sure it's called that because it originated from the tremere) in modern nights.

Koldunism is broken into Old Koldunism(Kraina), New Koldunism(Ways), and Ogham(technically a branch of Koldunism as per DAV20).

Assamite Sorcery even has separated versions based on the clans caste system.