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The Camarilla's archenemy
is the monstrous sect known as the Sabbat. Perceived as
mindless savages and bloodthirsty fiends by the Camarilla
and independent clans alike, the Sabbat is vilified among
the society of the Damned, and for good reason. They're
just not the reasons other Kindred claim. While the "Kindred"
of the Camarilla espouse concealing themselves among mortals
and maintaining the tattered vestiges of their Humanity,
the Sabbat favors a different philosophy. Not content to
cower like beatendogs from humans, nor to act as pawns in
the schemes of their elders, Sabbat vampires instead prefer
to revel in their undead nature.
As the Sabbat reasons, vampires are a cut above mortals,
who are merely hJod or diversion. Isn't Kindred vitae more
powerlul than mortal blood? Don't vampires have unnatural
poWers with which to assert themselves over the bovine masses?
Who needs petty mortal morality when one is a blood-drinking,
immortal monster ?The Sabbat, though, involves far more
than a simple carte blanche to behave as abominably as one
chooses. Sabbat vampires are inherently alien, and their
behavior reflects this.
Sabbat vampires wish no place among humans or those who
pretend to be humans. They Ioathe humankind except as sustenance,
and they lack the ability to relate to vampires who cannot
accept their natures. They even rebel against their own
solitary unlives, traveling in wild nomadic packs instead
of seeking out secretive, isolated existences. For this
reason, tensions run high in the Sabbat, and the sect's
surroundings often suffer for it.
Cities held by the sect are some of the most violent places
in existence, challenged for this dubious honor only where
Sabbat and Camarilla vie for supremacy. Mexico City, Detroit,
Miami and Montreal are all under the purview of the Sabbat.
Cities in contention include New York; Washington, DC; Buffalo;
and Atlanta. A city under Sabbat controlor conquest is an
explosive, volatile place; murders occur nightly, and rape
and robbery are to be expected at every turn. In the World
of Darkness, these cities have themselves grown toward the
alien and away from the human, abandoned as they are to
the depredations of the monsters who prowl their alleyways.
Thus, the Sabbat threatens every city it touches, creeping
like a cancer into communities that remain oblivious until
the war packs tear the city down around them. Though it
is arguably no more "evil" than the degenerate
elders of the Camarilla, the Sabbat is almost universally
more blatant, terrorizing the kine populace with insidious
games and premeditated destruction. Now more than ever before,
the Sabbat has the Camarilla on the ropes. Many Camarilla
neonates, frustrated by the unattainable power and stagnant
ineffectiveness of their elders, have joined the Sabbat
in open protest. Numerous cities that were once bastions
of Camarilla strength now exist in stalemate or contention.
Camarilla princes fear the swelling tide of the Sabbat,
and with good cause: Their unlives and those of the Kindred
in their cities are on the line. Accordingly, Sabbat members
in a Camarilla city can expect no quarter if exposed, as
princes and primogen ruthlessly quash agents of the infernal
insurrectionist sect. Many neonates, still wishing to please
their sires and build a place for themselves in the Camarilla,
aid their elders in Sabbat persecution. It would seem they
prefer the evil they know to the one they've heard So many
horror stories about.
PRACTICES AND ORGANIZATION
Sabbat culture revolves heavily around the twin principles
of loyalty and freedom. Vampires, as superior beings, are
free to do as they please, but they must also remain rrue
to the Sabbat, lest their freedom be jeopardized by the
machinations of the elders. Above all, the Sabbat refuses
to be placed under the yoke of the Antediluvians; many of
the sect's schemes involve means of frustrating, or at least
surviving, Gehenna. The sect's two founding clans, the Lasombra
and Tzimisce, are said to have diablerized and desrroyed
their progenitors, and the other Sabbat vampires follow
their lead, hoping that they may one night do the same.
Internal rivalries, power plays and ancient vendettas rend
the sect from within, however, and the Sabbat often takes
two steps back for every three it takes forward. The sect
has no true, all-encompassing guidance; it is a hydra, doubling
back to bite itself and its foes even as it gains in membership
and influence.
Sabbat vampires themselves, with the exception of the Lasombra
and Tzimisce shepherds of the sect, mockingly claim to be
"anti-clans," or antitribu, of their parent clans.
Some Sabbat vampires openly involve themselves in Satanism,
paganism or other deviant faiths to spite the propriety
of those who stand against them. Perversion and brutality
are the Sabbat's tools, and the sect uses them with merciless
cunning. The nucleus of the Sabbat's organization is the
"pack," a close confederation of vampires nominally
united toward a single goal. Sabbat packs may be nomadic,
traveling from city to city leaving death and fire in their
wakes, or they may settle in one location on a permanent
basis. Because vampires are primarily solitary predators,
forcing themselves into each other's company for prolonged
periods of time certainly takes its tollon the individual
Kindred who make up the packs.
RITUALS
Sabbat vampires, upon their Embrace, are unceremoniously
buried in the ground. The subsequent rite of having to claw
her way out of the cold, blind earth after having her head
dashed open with a shovel strips away much of a Sabbat neonate's
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