The Tzimisce

Frank: "Now, Brad and Janet - what do you think of him?"

Janet: "Well... I don't like men with too many muscles..."

Frank: "...I didn't make him FOR YOU!"

-Frank N. Furter (and Janet) - The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The collapse of the Sabbat was a slaughter for the Tzimisce.  Unlike the Lasombra, they had no unified exit from the sect - and unlike the Lasombra, their participation in the Sabbat had always been deeply personal, their stakes almost wholly individual, and when the sect collapsed, with no leaders to guide them, many of the Draculs were crushed. The most careless and rapacious Fiends' gleeful grotesquerie made them easy targets for the Second Inquisition.  Other hardcore Sabbat faithful departed to fight the Gehenna Crusade.  The Draculs who didn't really give a damn about the Sabbat - who paid lip-service to it or only used it for their own ends or who saw their sincere faith repaid with treachery and disrespect - walked out on the Sword of Caine as it fell apart.  They took new names and put on new faces to escape from the Second Inquisition, and found new purpose in the Old Ways of the Old Clan.

The Fiends are treated warily by other Kindred because they are frightening, domineering, possessive, and like the Lasombra, carry the lingering terror of the Sabbat with them.  Unlike the Lasombra, while the clan as a whole remains independent, most Tzimisce in the West caucus amongst the Anarchs.  Draculs stake out domains, build herds, grow their influence, and fight like hell to defend all of it from all challengers.  Often, Princes and Barons find it's easier to simply acknowledge a Tzimisce's domain in exchange for the Dracul not being an absolute pain in the ass.  Sometimes they can even be helpful, as long as you share an enemy with them.  As the song says, it might be nice to have Dracula on your side.  And watching the Tremere sweat at court when the local Fiend rolls in for the monthly airing of grievances is always entertaining.

One would think their independence, obstinacy,  and legendary intractability would leave the Tzimisce destined to go extinct, yet it is not so.  The Draculs not only hang on, something about their natures propels them onward, to fight for every inch of ground and to bite down with the vicious tenacity of one of their hell hounds.  Their customs of etiquette, hospitality and vendetta seem quaintly arcane and are often ridiculed by young Kindred, but when the wolves are howling at your back, a friendly Tzimisce's haven is one of the safest places in the Jyhad.  Never mind the screams in the basement.  If you are theirs - their childe, their friend, their servant, their lover - then you have an ally, a friend, or at least a protector who would take on the world for your sake.  After all, you belong to them, and nobody else can have you.   The same flesh-sculpting powers that made the fools among them easy targets for the Second Inquisition also makes the clever Draculs uncannily good at slipping the hunter's snare, and helping other Kindred do the same.  It is fitting that these legendarily acquisitive Kindred have a legendarily deep bag of tricks to draw on to assault and confound their enemies.  Subtle shapeshifting powers, vicious combat tools, hordes of deadly servants, and deadly blood-witchcraft - the Tzimisce have all these tools at their claws, and more.

Like the Lasombra, many Draculs in the United States are former Sabbat.  Ask them, and they'll tell you all about it.  They're not shy about their former allegiances, or about explaining their individual reasons for leaving the Sword of Caine.   Some don't see themselves as renunciates at all - they say that it was the Sabbat who left them and the proper veneration of Caine behind for whatever the hell the sect's become now.  These Draculs have been very influential in founding and spreading blood cults like the modern Church of Caine. 

Bane - Mine, Mine, All Mine: For all their transitory natures, Tzimisce have feet of clay - they must choose a charge, something that is Theirs that they covet more than everything else; the dirt of their native domain, a coterie, a collection of books, a business, a building, members of a tightly-knit subculture - anything that is clearly defined and limited that the Tzimisce can define as Theirs.  They must sleep ensconced within or otherwise surrounded by this thing that is Theirs, or they sustain aggravated willpower damage equal to their Bane Severity upon waking the next night if they don't.

Compulsion - I Must Possess All, Or I Possess Nothing: Called the Curse of Covetousness, every Tzimisce is a clutching, grasping, squeezing miser about those things that are theirs, an undead hoarder who might let their toys get shabby, dirty and broken - they feel no special compulsion to care for the things they covet, just to own them.  When this compulsion triggers, a Tzimisce must select something in the scene - it could be a pen, it could be an entire person - any action not geared toward acquiring this object of fixation incurs a two-dice penalty.  This Compulsion resolves when the Dracul acquires that which they desire, the object of their fixation becomes undisputably unattainable, or the scene ends.

Historical Domains:

When most Kindred think of the Tzimisce they associate them with Eastern Europe, particularly the Carpathian Mountains and the deep, dark forests of Romania.  The Tzimisce are strong in Eastern Europe, but the Old Clan has historically claimed domains in the mountains of Greece, and East through Russia and Turkey into the Caucasus.  The Old Clan has been warring with the Ashirra since the fall of the Byzantine Empire, and the Dracul lords of Turkey and the Caucasus are an especially proud, warlike and isolationist breed, having held their domains in the face of Ashirra domination for over six and a half centuries.  One Zadruga family, the Kindairjan, are a family of Armenians who sealed a blood pact with the Tzimisce to serve them forever in exchange for the Draculs' protection from the genocidal Turks.

The Tzimisce Antediluvian is said to have traveled widely before choosing to settle in the Carpathian Mountains.  It is known to have traveled through Africa and to have sired at least one child there from whom the Egungun and Nagloper lineages spring.  It may have even crossed the Atlantic into South America and sired what became the Lostundo before turning back, though that may have also been younger African Draculs who ventured across the sea.  Tzimisce can be found in former territories held by the Sabbat, particularly in Canada and Mexico.  The clan's territoriality means the Draculs traditionally spread slower than other clans, but where they do stake out domains they are difficult to dislodge.

The Camarilla

The old adage that Tzimisce never join the Camarilla is no longer true.  As a clan they're certainly not going to bend the knee to the Ventrue and the Toreador, but an individual Dracul might take a seat at the table.  In the eyes of many Kindred, the Draculs are a High Clan, members of the vampiric aristocracy.  That makes them Kindred of Quality, if eccentric and... eh, rustic ones. In the Camarilla, that matters.   A Dracul who's seized control of a lush domain or even a whole city might be courted by the Camarilla because bringing them into the Ivory Tower is less costly than trying to root them out.  Also, the Camarilla's cold aristocracy can suit Voivodes of a certain bent.  When a Tzimisce joins the Camarilla, their reasons are always individual and wholly their own, be it to secure their claim on a piece of beloved domain, grow that whch is theirs with Camarilla backing, or simply to antagonize the city's Tremere with their presence and influence.  A Tzimisce in a place of prominence in a domain is a mixed blessing for the Camarilla - the Dracul will fight like hell to maintain their territory against the Anarchs, the Sabbat, the Second Inquisition and anyone else who shows up to start trouble - but their tyranny can also START revolts if the Dracul is particularly intractable, and a Dracul will also bristle and chafe at any attempt to control their domain from above more stern than a polite suggestion.  Every damn time.  It's something in their blood.

The Anarchs

Young Tzimisce who fled the collapsing Sabbat disdained the Camarilla for the Anarch movement, where they are an odd-fit, because Draculs are legendarily poor sharers.   Those who've joined the movement tend to exist on its fringes, Anarch in name-only, or identify it - the whole movement - as theirs, which makes them loyal, but also obnoxious and domineering.  They can succeed among the Anarchs if the rest of the local Anarchs understand that the Dracul... needs their space, and that Anarch communalism needs to have an "ask first" note attached when dealing with the movement's Tzimisce, their domains, their coterie... anything that the Dracul identifies as theirs, really.  They make for powerful allies and stable anarch domains, but unless you're playing with "absolute tyranny as a model on which to build the Status Perfectus" this can't be what the revolution was about.

Independent Tzimisce:

The Tzimisce remain a dominant and largely independent clan in Eastern Europe.  The Old Clan elders there created the Oradea League, a smaller sect that rules most of the Baltic state domains and controls domains in a ring around the Black Sea.  The Camarilla is trying to negotiate with the Oradea League to form an alliance the same way the Ashirra did, but so far the Old Clan and their vassals continue to hold out, though the war in Ukraine has stressed the Oradea League's domains there badly.  Other Tzimisce lords appear in unusual places, such as Mayumi Shibasaki, Shogun of Tokyo, who has united the Gaki Kindred there under her rule and is also being courted by the Camarilla to formally join the Ivory Tower.  Many Independent Tzimisce are also drawn to blood cults such as the Church of Caine or the Houses of Lilith.

The Koldun

The Koldun, a word spread across different Slavic languages that directly translates to sorcerers, are Tzimisce who practice the discipline of Blood Sorcery.  The Draculs have always had a strong contingent of witches and sorcerers among their kind, even though the territoriality of the Tzimisce prevented them from ever organizing to the extent that the Tremere or the Banu Haqim did.  The native style of the Kolduns is rooted heavily in Slavic paganism and witchcraft, but any Tzimisce who practices the discipline of Blood Sorcery is a Koldun, regardless of their personal style.  Kolduns are generally respected by other Tzimisce and feared by everyone else.

The Metamorphosists

The Metamorphosists were a philosophical faction of Tzimisce who were heavily influential in the Sabbat, with their own Path of Enlightenment dedicated to apotheosis through unlocking the deepest secrets of the Protean discipline, techniques which came to be called "Vicissitude" - a rapid, usually unpleasant change.  However, since they were all inhuman in ways that would make Cronenberg puke, the Metamorphosists were easily spotted and among the first targets of the Second Inquisition.  Aside from some lingering influence on Dracul philosophy this faction of the clan is now functionally defunct outside of the Sabbat, and its Path of Enlightenment effectively lost.  As one Tzimisce put it, "If their experiments were worth anything, they would've devoured the hunters.  Instead, they were easy prey.  That's how you spot an evolutionary dead-end."  The remaining Metamorphisists in the Sabbat are led by Sascha Vykos, the Martyr of Caine.  Some Metamorphosists persist in hidden places, fed by attendants while they conduct weird experiments with no relevance to the rest of the Jyhad.  Others, forgotten and starved, have gone mad and degenerated into truly monstrous wights.  Angry Tzimisce have dug a word up out of their clan's ancestral lore to name those who exhibit excessive fascination and veneration of their shapechanging powers rather than treating them as a tool to be mastered, used, and then put aside until needed again - they are called Asakku, the sick ones.  And the Draculs will never consent to their misrule again.

The Sabbat

A large number of Cainites of the Sabbat are of Tzimisce lineage, though they have renounced that name, history and custom.  Draculs no longer, these creatures are better called Wurms - wriggling poisonous things that a true master of the estate will salt and crush under their heel.  They are lead by the deplorable, self-obsessed, self-indulgent Asakku that calls itself Sascha Vykos, a creature that seems able to transcend everything except its own monstrous vanity. 

• Tzimisce SPCs of Note:

  • The Voivode, Anarch Dracul of Joliet

Lexicon:

Asakku: An old Babylonian word for demons of disease.  A perjorative term for Tzimisce who develop the shapechanging sickness - an all-consuming obsession with the clan's metamorphic powers.  See Metamorphosist.

Azhi Dahaka: Also known as Zahhak, a demonic three-headed dragon from Persian mythology.  A metaphor used by Metamorphosist Tzimisce to describe the perfected state they seek that will transcend the failings of the vampiric form.  Many members of the Old Clan now just call it "Bullshit."  You can't transcend Caine.

Bayt al-Taneen: "House of Dragons."  The name for the Tzimisce used by the Ashirra.

Dracul: "Dragon" or "Devil." An old-form nickname for the high-clan Tzimisce that has come back into common use.

Egungun: "The Masked Ones."  Sometimes erroneously corrupted to Eggun.  Another name for the Tzimisce of Africa.  The Egungun tend to dwell amongst Laibon courts as feared and respected witches.

The Eldest: The Tzimisce term for their Antediluvian founder, also possibly named "Mekhet."  Was supposedly diablerized by Lugoj Blood-Breaker, though the clan now knows this was not the case.  "Came Back to Itself" and departed East to "Take Council with its Siblings."  Whatever that means.

Fiend: A nickname for the Tzimisce that arose after the formation of the Sabbat.  Remains in popular use.

Hellhound: Ghoul animals, usually dogs, shaped into lethal configurations by the Tzimisce and commanded through a combination of blood bonds and the Animalism discipline.

Koldun: "Sorcerer."  A Tzimisce who practices the discipline of Blood Sorcery or more rarely Oblivion.

Lostundo: A Tzimisce lineage found among the Drowned.

Metamorphosist: A once-influential school of transcendental thought within the Tzimisce who believed that the key to a post-vampiric existence lay waiting to be discovered through advanced knowledge of the Tzimisce's shapeshifting powers.  The Metamorphosists were among the most inhuman of the Tzimisce, with the most twisted and monstrous forms.  All but wiped out by the Second Inquisition.  Surviving Draculs blame them for the clan's degeneration; see Asakku and Azhi Dahaka.

Nag-loper: "Night-Walker".  A name for the Tzimisce among the Laibon courts of Africa.  See also Egungun.  Nag-loper tend to exist on the fringes of Laibon society in a manner similar to Gangrel compared to the more urbane and sorcerous Egungun.

Old Clan, The: Once a faintly perjorative term for Tzimisce who held most stringently to the clan's most ancient customs; as the Old Clan survived the Second Inquisition's purges more adroitly than other factions and has reasserted much of its influence over the Draculs, the nickname has come into vogue for the clan as a whole.

Revenant: Modern.  See Zadruga.

Szlachta: "Nobles."  An ironic term the Draculs use for ghouls crafted into freakish war configurations using Vicissitude.  Once Tzimisce prided themselves on creating the most bizarre and terrifying szlachta, but this practice has fallen out of favor in favor of subtler enhancements that are less of a danger to the Masquerade.

Tzimisce: The modern name of the clan, derived from a lineage of Byzantine nobles, and also from the slavic "Zmei" or "Zmaj", which literally means "Dragon."

Vicissitude: Applications of the Protean discipline pioneered by the Tzimisce that allow for the rapid manipulation of flesh - one's own or that of others.

Voivode: "Warlord."  A Tzimisce who rules a domain, whether that domain be a single neglected park or an entire city.  A Tzimisce's domain is traditionally called a Voivodate.

Vozhd: "Leader." An ironic term the Draculs use for gestalt wrecking-machine ghouls made of fused-together Szlachta.  Once a nasty living engine used by the Draculs to break sieges and shatter enemy lines of defense; now a quasi-lost secret as a Vozhd can be as threatening to a Dracul as it is to their enemies, will invariably rip the masquerade to shreds and draw the Second Inquisition like flies, and very few Sabbat wurms who might be inclined to do so have the skill or knowledge required to create a Vozhd, though the most powerful Asakku like Sascha Vykos still do.

Wurm: Tzimisce Antitribu of the Sabbat.  A term of contempt - a wurm in mythology is a poisonous, limbless snake-like dragon that crawls in the dirt; the wurms of the Sabbat have renounced the spiny-winged glory of being a Dracul for the lowest possible common denominator of existence, proving themselves unworthy of Caine's blood.

Zadruga: Roughly analagous to "Clan" or "House."  Old-form.  The family lines from which the Tzimisce have traditionally drawn favored ghoul servants.  See Revenant.  The largest remaining Zadruga are the Bratovich, Grimaldi, Zantosa, Kindairjan, Oprichniki and Obertus.  Many members of the Zantosa and Bratovich families are still in thrall to the Sabbat, though the Kindairjan and Oprichniki have always served the independent Tzimisce, the Grimaldi have aligned themselves completely to the Old Clan and the Obertus appear to have withdrawn completely.

Zhupan or Zupan: "Sir." A title of esteem among Tzimisce, tantamount to an informal knighthood.  An indicator of martial prowess.