Tzimisce, The history

THE BEGINNING

So you wish to know your past, back to the Eldest's
part in this divine dance? It began in Enoch, the city of
Caine's making and his attempt at reparations to the
Almighty. He had already sired thrice in a fit of loneliness
and watched his blood scatter further into the nascent
clans. Perhaps he foresaw the inevitability of his actions,
but if he didn't, then [Tzimisce] itself certainly noticed.
Regardless of their claims and popular outsider accounts,
the Eldest and, thus, its childer emerged from
between the harlot legs of the Tigris and Euphrates and
not the Carpathians. In Enoch's early nights, when skeletons
of builder's wood served as the city's crude battlements
and the Great Flood echoed in the distant millennium,
Caine had just Embraced Ynosh the Lawgiver, the first of
his childer. Ynosh, also known as Enoch, nearly swallowed
by the howling of his heart, sought to rid himself of chaotic
impurities that he believed bound him to the Beast.
Without the tethers, the Beast's grip would weaken, and
it would perish.

Through effort and force of will, Ynosh focused the
most protean and primordial seeds of his flesh and spit
them into a mortal vessel — [Tzimisce], a magician and
seer of some repute. Ynosh intended to kill the Eldest as
carrier of his accursed seeds, his most wild and fierce
aspects. Instead, the Eldest emerged intact and not the
feral Beast Ynosh feared. In a fit of compassion, the
Lawgiver spared the Antediluvian, while reasoning out
the error of his assumptions. Certainly, the Beast howled
in both dieir hearts, but the Eldest was not the monster
Ynosh anticipated, at least not visibly.

To its sire's surprise, the Eldest suffered no greater avarice
or degeneration than that of its siblings. Already strong, it
possessed a fluid nature and perception and controlled flesh
like living clay—full of potential within the sculptor's hands.
More so, the Eldest realized it held no anchored physical
identity. Like quicksilver, its countenance flowed from one
mask to the next. Ynosh, in his attempt to excise his own
weaknesses, transmogrified the Beast's marks upon his body
and spirit into physical form, but the Beast also brought with
it gifts like intuition, whim, expression, imagination and, most
importantly, growth. Tzimisce, whether one or all, bore these
successfully.

The Eldest counted itself among the first
Antediluvians, though it remained apart from them. In its
eyes, the other Cainites stagnated in development. They
possessed no potential to grow or become greater than
when their sires Embraced them. The Eldest, on the other
hand, an oracle in its mortal days, expressed the gamut of
evolution's whims with wondrous flourish. It became the
yesterday, now and tomorrow of humanity's progress,
becoming instead of foretelling. It saw where destiny
intended them to go. Caine's childer and grandchilder,
however, possessed no such promise. Mortals grew stronger,
while we remained stagnant or grew weaker. Eventually,
mortals would rule, forcing the Damned to hide in their
shadows. That was inevitable.

Conversely, the Eldest sensed the change in itself and in
other Cainites, one of minute metamorphosis goaded by the
Beast. At first, the Eldest's thirst allowed it to sup from the
necks of mortal and beast alike. Then, its thirst demanded
more. No longer satisfied with one vessel or a score of herds,
the Eldest longed for thicker and richer blood; it knew only its
progeny would eventually satisfy it. The Eldest realized the
burden of drinking blood would only worsen with each
decade. Eventually, the thirst would preclude the blood of
animal vessels and that of mortals. Only the infanticide of
progeny could sustain the Eldest, and when that time ended,
the Eldest itself would perish.

Distraught over its tethered existence, the Eldest
spent a mortal's age in seclusion and meditation, shifting
and flying through shapes of mortal and legend alike,
seeking out a form free of the accursed thirst. It studied the
scrolls that once gifted it with spellcraft, hoping to find
answers within its fading mortal gifts. It mattered little,
however, for the thirst came of the Beast, and it drowned
all considerations. The Eldest could not escape, for while
it changed forms, it could not change its essence. Cruel
fate deprived it of that one saving grace mortals possessed:
adaptation as a tool of survival.

LEAVING ENOCH

Unlike its growing flock of cousins, the Eldest had no
interest in guiding the mortal masses or glorifying Caine's
name. More so, it did not aspire to protect the kine, not
when they were both food and canvas to it. The others
frowned when the Eldest demonstrated how easily it
played, wove and laced their flesh and sinew like yarn on
a loom. They bemoaned its gifts after it twisted [Nosferatu's]
flesh into the hideous mockery of beauty now shared by
the entire clan. They secretly consorted with it as [Toreador]
had done to earn her uncanny elegance. The Eldest
existed among the unimaginative, while its siblings [Bruj ah]
and Mekhet played shadow games with mortals, delighting
in their own cunning and agendas.

The Eldest knew of the kine's potential and grew
angry that the others stubbornly defined themselves in
mortal terms without understanding humanity's greatest
strength, mutability. Only it appreciated kine as both
meal and inspiration, and thus, only it deserved humanity
for itself. The Eldest wished to delimit itself according to
its destiny, as opposed to what it might be now, and
mortals were key to that expression. The Eldest shifted
through physical forms easily, but it lacked that final
adaptation to save it from its thirst, its Beast. To that end,
the Eldest abandoned Enoch, knowing its answers lay in
the primordial world, where Caine possessed no influence
and where mortals were not protected like lovers or herded
like sheep. It needed to witness humanity's struggle for
survival and even be responsible for humanity's hardships.
Only then, the Eldest believed, would it understand what
it lacked to escape its fate.

The Eldest journeyed the lands before humanity
named them, following where its atrophying gifts as seer
nudged it. It first ventured east, to the birthplace of the
sun, where it cursed Kartarirya with unlife. It Embraced
not from loneliness (in itself, it had all the company it
wished), but because it needed vessels through which to
explore the infinite possibilities and forms of adaptation.
With Kartarirya, the Eldest discovered its ability to share
its progeny's senses. Thus, in each of its offspring, the
Eldest bestowed a multitude of curses beyond damning
them with unlife. It divested in them a portion of its
mutable spirit in the form of a sacrament, its own flesh.

Its vitae hid its essence, which granted the powers of
fleshshaping and bestowed the Antediluvian's childer with the
ability to make what they would of their physical forms. In
turn, this bond allowed the Eldest expression through
each of its most-gifted childer. The Eldest secretly became
legion-fold, allowing it to take host in chosen descendents
and reap the knowledge of their exploration.

On the Eldest's return journey through the Fertile
Crescent, it took a second progeny in Gallod, a tribal
chieftain, to monitor the events in the Enoch. During its
subsequent journeys, however, the Eldest discovered the
tribes of humanity thinned in the western forests, thus
depriving it of sustenance. It a fit of hungered frenzy, the
Eldest revealed the last of its malignant curses when, from
leagues afar, it consumed Gallod inside out.

The sacrament that bestowed unlife and allowed the Eldest to
take root in its progeny also allowed it to devour its childer,
scouring them out like an undead consumption. This is
the clan's greatest curse, for should the Eldest fall to the
Beast's thirst, then it will devour its childer from afar like
an unseen demon.

KUPALA

Having learned its lesson from Gallod, the Eldest
gathered tribes of mortals during its travels, so that it would
never want for vitae again. Along its j oumeys, it Embraced
those who best fit its own questing spirit. It made a childe
of Yorak in the forested foothills of the Carpathians and
Byelobog in the northern wastes of Europe.

Along Africa's coast, it took a warrior named Demdemeh, who
subsequently vanished into the primordial African heartland to
pursue his fate; whilst in Cypriot isle, the Eldest welcomed
the creature known only as the Dracon into the fold.

The world may have been open to the Eldest, but it
eventually favored the lands of Yorak, deep within the
Carpathians' bosom. It did not know why the mountain
chain proved so alluring, but this domain entranced the
Eldest with its siren call. It even returned to studying
mortal magics again after a century of disuse, even though
its gifts remained a pale shadow of Cainite potential.

To the east, Enoch still flourished, and its host childer remained
close enough to touch Caine's shadow. Europe
was arena to the Tzimisce alone. Hence, the clan knew
these domains as its own before others did. It spread across
the Great European Plain that stretched from Eastern
Siberia, across the Urals and the Volga Basin to finally
touch the virgin shores of the Atlantic.

The Tzimisce chose their lands well, for the tribes spreading
west used the European Plain and Danube Basin to disperse across
the continent. In particular, the plains south of the inviolable Pripet
Marshes and those north of the Pindus Range became the twin
arteries for kine tribes moving through the region.
The fist of the Carpathians provided a chokehold on the traffic with
the Pindus Mountains in Greece and the icy shores of the Baltic.

The Tzimisce "tithed" the mortal flood flowing past
them. All was not blest, however, for the Fiends did not
claim sole kingship over the lands. Lupines, still potent
from the chaste wilderness, fought the clan for every
forest corner and mountain peak. As powerful as the
Tzimisce were, they still suffered greatly. The Lupines
even harried the great Antediluvian itself and threatened
to rout the entire clan back to Caine's feet.

The Lupines could not deter the Eldest, however. The
Tzimisce progenitor felt an affinity with the Carpathians,
for something within them touched upon its atrophied
gifts as mortal seer, empowering its dreams once again.

The Eldest refused to abandon whatever whispered to it
while it slumbered, and eventually, learned how to
speak to the spirit of the mountains, the great beast
known as Kupala.

Kupala and the Lupines were enemies from the most
ancient of times. The Lupines eventually entrapped it
within the Carpathians, verdant forest grew up around it.
Now Kupala wished for release and spoke to the Eldest
through its dreams. The spirit of the land offered its hand
in allegiance against their common enemies in exchange
for the Tzimisce releasing Kupala from its prison deep
within the Carpathians' spine.

The Antediluvian agreed
and spent the next year exploring the mountain's forgotten
crags, while Kupala taught the Eldest magic it thought
lost following its Embrace. The Eldest, in turn, passed the
lessons on to its most powerful childer and used them in
the great congress that freed Kupala itself.

The Lupines fought hard and would not allow
Kupala easy escape. In the twisted cavern where the
demon lay, champions of the Lupine clans fell upon the
Antediluvian and its fleshly brood. Eventually, however,
the Tzimisce triumphed when Kupala broke free
and fled.

The demon-spirit did not escape completely,
however, for it had been interred in the mountains for
so long that it remained bound to the soil. Kupala could
not retire to the courts of the spirits or to whichever hell
it once claimed as home.

Instead, it took the Carpathians
as its new domain and shared its existence with the
Tzimisce. The region's Lupines, while still formidable
in the centuries to come, never recovered from this
devastating blow. They lost the lands they sought to
protect and watched Kupala's black blood twist the soil
and forests.

FLOOD, CURSE AND EXODUS

While the Tzimisce prospered and continued to
watch the mortals mill about beneath their mountain
peaks, all was not well in Enoch. Caine's childer rebelled
against him, just as he had done against the
Almighty, and reddened the streets with their blood
and that of others. Then, in the Almighty's divine act
of retribution against mortals, the Great Flood engulfed
the world. In Europe, it was no different; the mighty
rivers that fractured the land invited the Deluge across
such low-lying plains as the Danube Basin, the Po
Valley and the Rhineland.

Those who survived the swift rise in waters fled to the highlands.
Mortal and Cainites alike sought refuge on higher and higher
grounds, turning the Carpathians in particular into an
island ark ruled by the sovereign Tzimisce lords. The
Fiends extended hospitality to their new arrivals, taking
in payment a sacrifice of one child from each family. To
show their compassion, they rarely took the first-born
son. Instead, they claimed the youngest for feast, experiment
or servitude. In some cases, Tzimisce voivodes
claimed entire families from the larger tribes. Thus
came the indentured servitude that would eventually
give rise to the revenant families.

Following the flood, the Fiends noted die passage of
mortal tribes under the influence of solitary Gangrel and
Nosferatu from Enoch. The new tribes refused to pay fealty
to the Fiends and drifted through the Tzimisce's mountain
passes without offering amends. The Tzimisce claimed
preeminence over the region— not unreasonable considering
that they ruled the land in the centuries before the
fall of Enoch. They alone freed Kupala from its prison and
kept the Lupines at bay. The intruding Cainites, in their
arrogance, held that the world and all mortals came of
Enoch and were, thus, by right, theirs. They could go
where they wished, and that included the domains of the
Tzimisce, whom they'd rarely encountered.

When the floodwaters receded, the Tzimisce lost
vast domains to new mortal tribes who rushed into the
void and took territory once held by Fiend-indentured
families. The Gangrel were of little consequence, since
they wandered and rarely stayed in one location long
enough to threaten the local blood-stock.

It was the Nosferatu and the occasional Malkavian patrons who
proved difficult. The Fiends dealt with these interlopers
and their servants harshly, whether through mortal
tribal skirmishes or torture. They littered their borders
with still-living forests of bodies impaled on bone trees
or fleshcrafted messengers to the backs of their horses
before sending them riding back to their masters.

The Tzimisce eventually realized they couldn't
slaughter everyone journeying through their domains
lest the mortals unite against them. They allowed their
cousins passage through to the western lands thick with
tribes so long as nobody broached their territory. Other
Cainites recognized the Tzimisce claims to domain, but
only for the while it took the warring clans of the
Second City to call Caine's anger upon them.

Caine's curse took the Tzimisce by surprise. Their
dealings with the soil-bound Kupala, as well their territorial
nature, became the clan's anathema when the
curse forced them to sleep upon their native soil for true
rest. Even the Eldest nearly perished in the journey back
home to claim indigenous "dead water" from its birthplace.
Its return to the Carpathians, however, heralded
a greater flood of mortal herds and Cainites who had left
the Fertile Crescent in shame following Caine's edict.
Knowing they faced a threat to their territories, the
Tzimisce fortified their domains and fell into isolationism.

As a unified front, they might have survived both
mortal and Cainite claimants to their territory. Divided,
however, they allowed their brothers and sisters
to fall while protecting their own havens through
harsher measures. The Eldest was the sole tie the clan's
members had to any others of their bloodline.

Selfevolution, like the quest for truth, proved a solitary path
for many. The Tzimisce ruled from their isolated manses
like tyrants over the mortal communities blossoming at
their feet. The Antediluvian, however, knew a time
would come when its clan would drift apart like flotsam.
Already, its childe Byelobog had retreated into the
Pripet Marshes while Yorak meditated deep within the
Carpathians, taking counsel directly from Kupala itself.