Vampire clans are essential to understanding the vampires who inhabit the world of Vampire: The Masquerade , the popular role-playing game created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Game Studio in 1991. Vampires are by nature individualists, loners. However, according the myth of the game, the challenges of survival have forced the development of social units upon the vampires from the city to the international levels. Integral to the organized aspect of vampire life at every level are the clans. Also, with very few exceptions, the vampire character assumed by the player is a member of a clan and that clan identification carries with it a set of characteristics that are imposed upon the individual character created by the player as his or her persona.
The clans are the product of the bloodlines derived from the third generation of the vampire community. According the vampire myth, vampires originated with Caine, the biblical character who slew his brother Abel and was cursed with immortal life and the blood thirst. In time, Caine created three vampires who constituted the second generation, and they in turn created 13 vampires who constituted the third generation. After the fall of the city where the vampire community had resided, the third generation scattered and began to create a progeny, the fourth generation. This newer progeny, however, rose up and slew their elders (only a few of the third generation survived) and went on to build a second city. (Babylon?)
After many centuries, the fourth generation fell victim to a popular uprising by the mortals, and their city was destroyed. They scattered around the world and created the fifth generation (a generation being defined by the number of people between the individual vampire and Caine). Today all of the vampires of the third through fifth generations have removed themselves into seclusion. The individual vampires that compose the vampire society of today are of the sixth to twelfth (or even thirteenth) generation. Over the centuries these vampires developed a loyalty to those of the Kindred with whom they shared an ancestry. Those of the same bloodline also shared characteristics seemingly passed in the blood and eventually found it in their self-interest to identify themselves as members of a particular vampire family or clan. The importance of clan ties rose in times of social stress.
Such a time of stress arose in the fifteenth-century as the Inquisition turned its witch-hunting skills on the vampire community. The Inquisition forced not only a new unity among the clan but closer connections across clans lines. For their own protection, many of these vampires organized themselves into what is termed the Camarilla . The Camarilla involved a coming together of the leadership of seven prominent clans. For the protection of vampires as a whole, the Camarilla established a set of minimal rules by which vampires were expected to live and through its conclave set up structures to enforce those rules. The Camarilla, and other structures at the local level, provide a structure in which vampires can work through their conflicts without disturbing the masquerade under which they live.
Each vampire is the creation of a blood line which can, more or less, be traced back to one of the vampires of the third generation. Each blood line can be distinguished by its distinctive and in some cases physical differences, but more importantly by variations in personality makeup. There are seven major clans that constitute the Camarilla. They are:
The BrujahThe Gangrel , the rootless wanderers, forever moving about and surviving by their wits.
The Malkavian, somewhat insane, with tendency to destructive and nihilistic behavior.
The Nosferatu, least human of the vampires, recreated in the image of Count Orlock of the 1922 film Nosferatu
The Toreador, impassioned lovers of beauty and fashion, and all the eccentricities of a temperamental artist.
The Tremere , the best organized of the vampires, manipulative, intelligent, and aggressive.
The Ventrue, the aristocratic elites, possessed of rare good taste and sophistication. (The Ventrue are most frequently found at the top of the Camarilla).
Beside these seven most prominent vampire clans there are others including the Ravnos, the Assamite, the Setite and the Giovanni as well as the now defunct Cappadocian clan. There are also the Caitiff, or clanless, vampires, usually the result of having been abandoned by the ones who made them vampires. The only group truly large enough and powerful enough to challenge the Camarilla is the Sabbat, an organization that holds sway in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Like the Camarilla, it is a multi-clan organization, but is dominated by two different clans, the Lasomba and the Tzimisce. Members of the Sabbat approach much closer to the image of the horrific vampire held by mortals. The Camarilla is constantly challenged by the generation gaps, its younger members, the Anarchs, who have no respect for their elders and periodically have risen in revolt.
Playing Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, the card game based on it, revolves around the political intrigues between the various clans, the number of which continue to increase. The clan structure from The Masquerade was explored in a short-lived television show, The Kindred , in 1995.
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---. Clanbook: Cappadocian. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1997. 72 pp.
Brown, Steve. Clanbook: Toreador. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1994. 72 pp.
Crow, Steve. Clanbook: Brujah, A Past of Treachery/A Future of Flames. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1992. 70 pp.
Freeman, Brad. Clanbook Gangrel: From the Forests of Mystery. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1993. 66 pp.
Grame, Davis. Clanbook: Assamite. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1995. 70 pp.
Greenberg, Andrew, et al. Clanbook: Venture. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1994. 72 pp.
Greenberg, Daniel. Clanbook Malkavian: Method in the Madness. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1993. 67 pp.
Hatch, Robert. Clanbook: Nosferatu. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1993. 72 pp.
---. Clanbook: Tzimisce. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Game Studio Game Studio, 1996. 72 pp.
Herder, Keith. Clanbook: Tembere. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1994. 72 pp.
Rein-Hagen, Mark, et al. Book of the Damned. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1993. 138 pp.
---. Vampire: The Masquerade. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1991. 263 pp.
Vampire: The Dark Ages. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 1996. 286 pp.
