True Brujah?

[Shura]

While hunting online for resources I came across two different versions of the True Brujah bloodline. Is one unofficial, or just older than the other?

This one, I believe was tkaen from a black hand sourcebook:

The True Brujah claim to descend from Brujah him- self and not from Troile, who supposedly committed diablerie upon her Antediluvian sire. The True Brujah resent the claiming of their sire's name by Troile and her bastard lineage. They long for the night when they will reclaim their heritage from the false Brujah. Until that night, they must falsely claim lineage to other clans or simply call themselves Brujah.

Consequently, they rarely interact with each other or other vampires; instead, they spend much of their time gathering information and developing their powers. They continue to prepare for war against the false Brujah but, since they have been preparing this way for at least 5,000 years (and probably more), such a feat is unlikely.


Nickname: Elois


Appearance: Even those who exist and work among the Brujah clan dress conservatively. The younger ones occasionally dress in black leather, spikes and chains, but this is not condoned within the Black Hand unless doing otherwise would jeopardize their missions or Alternate Identities. Most prefer expensive, custom-fitted suits, usually in black.


Haven: They like large estates, mansions, and other big, comfortable, isolated places where they can be alone. Their havens for their Alternate Identities are smaller city dwellings, often subterranean and well-guarded.


Character Creation: Most are dilettantes, outsiders or professionals (mostly scholars) though they can have any concept. They can have any Nature and Demeanor except Conformist. The choices should reflect their strong and unique personal outlook on (un)life. Mental At- tributes are usually primary, as are Knowledge Abilities. They often have higher than average ratings in Alternate Identity, Contacts and Resources.


Clan Disciplines: Potence, Presence, Temporis


Weaknesses: True Brujah are passionless beings -- cold, detached and morose. They seldom show any emo- tion, and even when they do, they are still far less passionate than most. They understand good and evil from a philosophical viewpoint, but not from one of conscience. Regaining Humanity is always twice as diffi- cult for them once it is lost -- double the experience points necessary to regain lost Humanity or Path of Enlightenment ratings.


Preferred Paths: Most prefer the Path of the Scorched Heart or the Path of Self-Focus, but some follow the Path of Power and the Inner Voice or the Path of Lilith.


Organization: They view themselves as scholars and share professional respect for one another, though they often disagree on various issues. Small groups of True Brujah gather to discuss politics, philosophy, religion, art, music and all other avenues of mortal and immortal interest.

Unlike the Childer of Troile, all the True Brujah manage to meet twice a century at some mutually agreed upon location. The True Brujah not of the Black Hand hear of this meeting also, and most attend. Together they tell stories of their past, talk of the atrocities of the false Brujah, rant about their own efforts against them and debate other topics of interest.

In times of trouble, members call upon one another without worrying about the Rite of Prestation. They strongly believe in solidarity, claiming it is the only thing that has allowed them to survive against the divided False Brujah.


Gaining Clan Prestige: They also gain respect by thwarting efforts of the false Brujah, by winning debates against one another and by increasifig knowledge through their research, thoughts, and writings. Those who collect information that might lead to tracking down Troile are also awarded with prestige.


Quote: We bear a great atrocity. In addition to stealing the blood of our clan father , they have stolen his name. We are the True Brujah, and one night the streets will flow with the blood of Troile's bastards.

[Shura]

here is another, which I suspect may be unofficial, but storytellers may find interesting all the same:

Carthage was utopia. It is a living dream. Millenia ago, we Brujah created a city where Kindred and kine could live together. We strove for the heavens only to see others grow jealous. They betrayed us and destroyed the dream. Now we are divided, and we have gone from being scholars and philosophers to cretins and clowns like your sire, Smiling Jack

- Critias to Dre, newly Embraced Brujah.

At one time the Brujah were not all rebels. At one time they sort to understand, not to destroy.

Before Carthage. To many of the Brujah of the time, this was a dirge. Their dream destroyed, their plans unravelled. Many were claimed to Hunters, to the plots of the Jyhad, as they fell into despair, and so into carelessness.

Some, however, did not grieve. They were angered, seeking vengeance. These Brujah were the basis of the High Council of Clan Brujah. They met in secret in the ruins of Carthage, and formed their plans for revenge.

Each time they had given their dreams flesh, the other, jealous clans came and destroyed what they had built. Even with their wide powers over the elements, their powers of Presence and their Potence-enhanced strength, they did not have warriors to fight the other clans.

A plan was conceived to give them these warriors. From this point onwards, the High Council would conduct a 'breeding' program for Brujah warriors. Those who Sired were to find those with the fighting spirit, who were high of temper, who could defend their Elders. They were no longer to be taught their Sire's powers over the earth, but instead were to be taught to move with the speed of lightning.

The Council believed that the combination of Potence and Celerity would give their warriors the ability to defend them, to create a warrior- class within the Clan. Those who created Childer against the Council's edict were held to be in violation of the Third Tradition and were either destroyed along with their Childer or ostracised and no longer granted the clan's protection.

There was more to this policy however, that met the eye. For the most-part, it was Troile's Childer rather than Brujah's that had somehow learnt the discipline of Celerity, and thus it was they more than their siblings that Sired Childer. As a result, over the following two centuries the number of true Brujah fell, and the number of Troile's Childer increased.

These Childer were taught nothing of their Sire's original abilities, but simply assumed that they too were masters of Celerity. They were also instructed to destroy any Kindred they saw using the Elementalism discipline, described to them as a form of Blood Magic.

The years passed, and the warrior-Brujah's childer became more populous. They either forgot or did not learn their Sire's heritage, and the High Council faded from sight, so as not to present a target to the other clans. The Ventrue, the Malkavians, the Toreador, all assumed that the elder Kindred of the Brujah had been destroyed or had fled, or melded with the earth, no longer a factor in Kindred politics.

The other clans of the kindred noticed this change in the younger Brujah, but did not pay it much heed, often to their dismay when these new Brujah went mad, destroying all in sight. For since the fall of Carthage, the Brujah had been always on the edge of Frenzy. Some theorised it was the rage of Troile, echoing down through his bloodline. The High Council considered it to be an unfortunate side-effect of their new Childer's posession of Celerity, one that may reap its own benefits when they used their Childer in battle in the centuries to come.

This situation continued for a thousand years. The High Council, from their various Havens and hiding places watched, and their warrior- childer ravaged the Kindred world, increasing in numbers and generation. The Council cared not for their Progeny's fascination with the Anarch movement, regarding the battles against the other Elders as good training.

Indeed, when the Sabbat was formed, they would have collected their Childer and fought against the Ventrue and other clans. Except for one thing.

The Inquisition. Their fascination with their own Childer, their tweaking of their destinies, led the inquisitive mortals to themselves, the evil ones who sat in the background like the puppet-masters. And why, came the argument in the mortal councils, destroy the puppets when you may destroy the puppeteers

By flame, by stake and by sunlight, the mortals found and destroyed the true-Brujah, one by one. Their secrecy from the world of the Kindred, long their shield, became the sword used against them, as they could not even call for their warriors.

And so the majority of the High Council passed away, their plans flapping lose in the winds of history. Without their subtle control upon their behaviour, their childer raged unchecked... the Sabbat, the wars of the Jyhad, all would have been lessened with the intervention of the High Council.

Not all of the council was destroyed. A small number of those that knew the truth escaped the flame, and fled into hiding, seeing this as a repetition of the destruction of Carthage. They lost much of their will to live, and slipped into Torpor.

The years passed, and their grief lessened, even in Torpor. The remainder of the High Council awoke, and took stock of the world around them. Times had changed since the dark ages of the Inquisition. New Empires had arisen and fallen, new thoughts and philosophies to light.

First in priority was regaining their control over their breeding experiment. This was complicated by the existence of the Sabbat. No longer was there a single Clan Brujah, but now there were the Brujah antitribu. These childer had conceived a plan to free themselves from tyranny, and in this they mirrored the true beliefs of the High Council - freedom and self expression.

Yet once again, a Brujah's dream was shattered by the other clans. The Tzimisce and Lasombra clans took control of the dreams of freedom and turned them to anarchy and chaos.

Even their warrior-childer had split into several factions. The Iconoclasts were the chaotic and devastating warriors that the breeding program was designed to bring about. The Idealists on the other hand were extremely suspect to the High Council. Many of them decreed them to be the "legacy of Veddartha", and their attitudes of controlling all of the Brujah were termed "Ventrue-syndrome."

It was the Individualists that surprised the High Council the most. Even after 2,000 years, the true Brujah spirit seemed to spring anew from their chaotic childer. Many individualists were secretly sponsored by the High Council, and the most promising were led subtley towards an 'apprentic- ship' - an apprenticeship that ended in them being taught the true history of the Brujah, and led into their full legacy.

[Jayce Vallintine]

True Brujah do exsist. However they are Elders, and serve the Antidulvans. They have some strange power that controls time so they are not push overs.

[khyron1144]

The first one is the one that I know from Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. I suspect that it may have reapeared with minimal revision in the hardcover Storyteller's Handbook for the revised editon, which I never got.


I never saw that second version before, but it looks like all flavor text without stats.

[LittleBano]

True Brujah can be very fun to play. I played one for a while that was a spy in the Camarilla, the other characters just thought I was some sort of rogue Tremere after convincing them that Temporis was just a path for Thaumaturgy.

[AtlanteanAscendant]

Temporis has to be one of the bigger pains in the arse as far as vampiric disciplines go. And in regards to the True Brujah, something mentioned in the Clanbook and in Gehenna that i particularly found amusing was that Troile didnt diablerize Brujah, Troile IS Brujah and the whole thing was little more than a con game.

good thoughts...