The Serpents of the Light

Overview

The Sabbat was a shelter against the storm for a time, but what seemed for a time like a fortress turned out to have been a rickety shack with a tin roof.  The wind blew hard, the ground shook, and it fell over.  With our wise guidance the Cardinals and Prisci could have saved the Sword of Caine from itself, but they did not listen to us.  When de la Sombra started murdering Sabbat leaders as part of their blood price of admission to the Camarilla, we saved those Kindred of value we could grab, and stepped backward into the dark.  We lost some of our Houses to the Second Inquisition, but we were always subtler and more careful than the rest of the Sabbat about moving unseen.

We crawled on our bellies in the dirt and got away.   The Sabbat - what remains of it - would howl about this and call us traitors, but they’re all going to die fighting the wrong war the wrong way in the Middle East when they wake up the wrong Methuselah on the wrong night, so who cares what they think?

With the exception of Legba, the Empereurs have gone silent.  Have they been Beckoned?  Have they been destroyed?  It’s an academic question; only Legba remains, and he has cast down the crown of a monarch to take up his proper place as the opener of the gate.  He has but two hard and fast rules for us:

• When a priest establishes a new House in a domain it is theirs to rule over as Mama or Papa.

• Whatever feuds there may be between Houses, we come together to defend each other from outsiders.

While the first of our houses were formed by Setite - I mean Ministry renunciates, and you will still find many of Ministry blood among us, we no longer consider ourselves Ministry Antitribu.  I am one such beast.  We no longer have need of Set to bind us together, even as a hate-object.  We have shed him as the snake sheds its dead and dried-out skin, to reveal something shining underneath.  As the Kine have grown fond of saying, Set was living in our heads rent-free, and now he can pay rent like everyone else.

As for the Ministry itself, our war with them never really ended but at the moment we have established an armistice.  Without the Sabbat, we appear to pose less of a threat to them, and they have other problems which occupy their attention.  We do maintain communication with the Children of Damballah Ministry cult; they are the wellspring from which we flow, and provided refuge to some Sabbat Vipers who sought "reconciliation" with the Ministry - which empowered the Damballans and allowed them to extend their reach beyond the courts of the Laibon and into the West.  Good move.

It is hilarious how the self-proclaimed greatest schemers in the Jyhad got absolutely foxed by the Banu Haqim, though.  An obvious lie becomes a convenient reason to keep the snake out of the chicken coop and lets the Ivory Tower back out on a five hundred year-old blood debt.  Fucking brilliant.  I'm still chuckling.

We accept members of all clans who are brave enough to pass our initiations.  Each of the Clans is smiled upon by its own Saint, and so we do not discriminate.  In my House you will find Brujah, Toreador, and my second is a Hecata of Samedi lineage.  Ogoun, Erzulie, and the Baron.

Think of us less as a religion and more as a Secret Society - or a Societe with Secrets.  Our ultimate goal is to establish ourselves as a sect in its own right, like the Camarilla but more spiritual, or the Sabbat but not insane.  Even now, we are making moves toward this goal in the Caribbean, in South and Central America, in Mexico, in Miami and Montreal - we plan to become an acknowledged power in the Jyhad, the same as the Camarilla, Anarchs, and Ashirra.  The tattered strings of the Sabbat’s old networks are clutched in our fingers and we are knitting them together into a new flag, for our own use.

We are not here to subvert the vampiric order like some Ministry tèt zozo, we want to uphold it.  We want to protect it, for our own unapologetically selfish reasons.  We want a seat at the table.  In exchange, we offer guidance, knowledge and most importantly power, power that we obtain from our communion with the Guides - Orishas, Saints, Lwa.  The spirit world.  We know more about the realms beyond the veil than perhaps any other group of Kindred except the Tzimisce Koldun, and we are far more tractable than those mighty old sorcerers when it comes to sharing the dividends of what we know.

There are roads out there that are traveled by beings that would make you weep blood - or vomit it - just to behold them.

I’ve walked some of those paths.  I’ve seen those spirits.  Don’t believe me? 

Well you will.

Soon.

–

The origins of the Serpents of the Light are murky - the cult’s own history is notoriously multiple choice and liberally swirled with theology and mythology.  It began with a group of Caribbean Ministry vampires whose blood inclinations toward subversion led them to rebel against an oppressive Setite orthodoxy and reject their fabled progenitor.  The ensuing war led them to join the Sabbat in the 1960s, where they quickly assumed the neglected role of favor-traders and influence-mongers for the sect, in addition to being spiritual guides and sorcerers.  The rituals of the Viper Cults were steeped in Afro-Indigenous religion; Vodoun, Santera, Obeah, Candomble, Palo Mayombe, as well as Catholicism and European occult practices such as the ritual work of the Freemasons, and they became rivals to the Tremere Antitribu and purveyors of occult power to a sect that was often starved for it.

These Viper Cults established their bona fides as a “concordant body” of the Sabbat, scrupulously maintaining amity with the orthodoxy of the sect while quietly allowing any Cainite who could pass their grueling initiations to join.  Many Sabbat inquisitors became suspicious of the lack of heresy found when they investigated the Serpents of the Light.  Everything was too clean, the ritual was too correct, the grins were too wide.  In the minds of the paranoid, the complete  absence of evidence is itself a warning sign, but if their true intentions were treacherous, the Inquisitors never found anything on them.  Whatever plans the Serpents of the Light might have had for the Sabbat, they were cut short by the New Burning Times.

When the Sabbat collapsed, only a few of the Viper cults were caught in the conflagration - the rest retreated into the dark, and accrued a laundry list of debts by throwing life preservers to scrambling Sabbat vampires looking to escape the Sword of Caine as it burned to the ground.

It was during this time that three of the four Empereurs, the demigod-like leaders of the bloodline, disappeared, leaving only the Empereur Legba behind.  Legba decentralized the Viper cults, investing ultimate authority over a House in its high priests, though Legba remains the cult's supreme leader, the Opener of the Gate and Keeper of the Royal Highway - while his authority is more spiritual than temporal, to the Vipers one is as good as the other.  The keeper of the Royal Highway also promoted numerous vampires of other clans to the level of High Priest, officially renouncing the title “Setite Antitribu”, though a number of vampires of Ministry ancestry are still part of the viper cults.

The war between the Serpents of the Light and the Ministry never really ended, but it has decayed into an armistice.  The Ministry has itself become decentralized, and those hardcore Setites who would continue to prosecute the war if they could are a continent away, dealing with the problems the Clan of Faith is facing in its own heartland.  Any grudges between Ministry vampires in the Viper cults and Ministry vampires loyal to Set are now considered personal vendettas.

The ultimate goal of the Serpents of the Light is to become a sect in their own right, with domination over the humid nights of their spiritual homeland.  In Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica, they’ve already launched their silent bid for power, and their cold reptile gazes are set on other domains, including New Orleans, Miami, Montreal, Ifẹ̀, and Lagos.  To those who don’t realize the true extent of their ambitions, they present themselves as a Secret Society, one that offers its influence and mystical acumen to Kindred in need.  Some members of the Viper Cults have hung out their shingle as Sabbat hunters.  After all, who better to catch a rat than a viper?

“Past associations?  Are you really going to trust some crack-addled Ministry bouzan who’s given you nothing but grief when there’s a Sabbat pack on the rampage through your city?  My offer of help is genuine and my rates are reasonable - money and blood and future consideration, and nothing more.”

O - The Viper Hunts the Rat - You have inside knowledge about Sabbat methods, signs, cyphers, and networks, either because you were taught by another Viper or because you yourself were once a member of the Sabbat.  You gain +2 dice to all rolls to analyze or investigate Sabbat activity.

OO - Shelter from the Storm - You are a fully initiated member of a House, which counts as a three-dot haven for you.  Drawback: Your loyalty to your House is expected.  Endangering it will result in the loss of this Loresheet benefit until proper restitution has been made.  Occasionally you will be charged with tasks on behalf of your House.  While you have broad latitude in how you complete these tasks, failure to do so will result in losing the benefit of this Loresheet benefit until you have made proper restitution to your High Priest.

OOO - Legba’s Favor, Carrefour’s Curse - Your practice of magic gives you sway over the tides of fortune.  Once per story, you may either choose to succeed on one roll that you fail or cause someone else to fail a roll where they otherwise would have succeeded.  Either way, suffer an immediate compulsion of your choice.

OOOO -  Friends on the Other Side - Your communion with the spirits has given you an affinity for blood magic.  You treat either Blood Sorcery or Oblivion as a fourth in-clan discipline (pick one). Drawback: You are in permanent hock to the spirits in exchange for the secrets you have been given.  Once per story a Spirit or a Wraith will make a request of you.  You have broad latitude in completing the request but if you fail in the task or ignore the spirit’s demand you will be aggrieved by a three-dot spirit SPC until you have made proper restitution.

OOOOO - Papa Legba, Open the Gate - You have mastered the Vipers’ ultimate secret, a blood magic ritual that allows you to access the spirit world.  This grueling ritual takes one hour to cast, requires a successful Stamina + Occult roll, and immediately causes you to suffer a compulsion.  In exchange, you may step into the spirit world, a place beyond the reach of most other vampires.  Returning from the spirit world can be done at any in-between place, such as a crossroads, which will eject you from the spirit world into the analogous location in the material world.

The spirit world is an alien and dangerous place, where conventional notions of time and distance have little meaning.  Here you may treat with the Guides themselves, bargaining with them directly.  Many such spirits will shun the Kindred, ascertaining its monstrous nature, but malevolent spirits will be drawn to it, as will spirits of desire, passion, death, hunger, and other concepts that align with vampiric nature.

Vampires in the spirit world are advised to step carefully and not linger overlong.  Spirits can be unpredictable and dangerous, and Lupines and mortal magicians are both known to walk the Royal Highway themselves.  Despite the dangers, valuable secrets can be plucked from the spirit world, some of which would otherwise be lost forever.  For the viper brave and skilled enough to brave the dangers of the Royal Highway, the rewards can be rich indeed.