# A Tale of Two Childer
A Tale of Two Childer
of Note
Like the other Antediluvians, Lasombra created countless childer, for reasons of his own. Many he slaughtered for weaknesses of character — that is, for lack of the virtues that interested Lasombra, including a ruthless determination to power. I suppose that were he still walking the earth, he would judge me one of the unfit as well.
The eldest of Lasombra’s childer still active in the world is Montano. I met him once and was struck by the weight of sorrow on his shoulders. I read in the Bible that the Messiah was to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and I think of Montano. No single mortal lifetime, no matter how tragic, could begin to approach his state. Montano was once a boy on the steppes of Kenya, more than a thousand years before Christ.
Lasombra came there seeking a worthy heir. When Lasombra set about torturing the people of Montano’s village, seeing who endured, Montano volunteered to become Lasombra’s servant in exchange for the freedom of his people. Lasombra accepted. Never again would the Antediluvian go there or torment those people (though he performed the same deeds in other lands).
Montano hated the vampiric condition and still does. He is no happy childe of Caine. But he is honorable and even now stands by his agreement to uphold his sire’s interests, even though (as you shall read) his sire is gone from the world. Montano traveled throughout the Old World with his sire, learning languages and skills undreamed of on the steppes. When the two returned to Lasombra’s favorite haven in Sicily, Montano led mortal armies and senates as well as Cainite forces. For a very long time, everything he did prospered, no matter how much his jealous siblings tried to sabotage it.
Still, Lasombra never understood his childe’s soul and continued seeking some other who might be his heir.
You may think that this is strange language for a woman born less than forty years ago in an American Clanbook: Lasombra city, and you would be right. But it’s impossible for me to put it in any other terms. I write of gods and demons among men, and the jargon of a scientific society would contain countless lies by inference about it all. When I write this way, I hope to tell you something of what I have felt as well as what I know.
Lasombra had many other childer, some of whom may still exist, but they don’t matter to the story of the clan as a whole. The childe who matters is Lasombra’s last. Not even a thousand years ago, Lasombra bestowed the curse of vampirism on an Italian noble named Gratiano, an ambitious young man who showed the sort of ruthless dedication that Lasombra treasured. (Who was Lasombra in life? Perhaps he was himself a man of power. I suspect, however, that he was a pathetic failure, Embraced (as we call it) for some trivial reason, who flourished unexpectedly. Someone who had lived with real success would surely not be so obsessed with the matter forever after.) Gratiano was perhaps what Lasombra wished he had been.
Gratiano, for his part, understood how to be a successful courtier. He gave Lasombra endless flattery, praising the Antediluvian’s own accomplishments and those of the clan, making a great show of studying it all so as to be a “worthy successor.” Montano quickly saw that Gratiano sought to take Lasombra’s place, but their sire wouldn’t hear of it. Senility seems to come for Cainites as well as for mortal men and women. We may call you “kine” and “prey,” but we are not so different from you in some ways. For something like two hundred years, Lasombra’s oldest and youngest childer fought a covert war of influence against each other, trying to win support for their respective agendas. Montano lost.
The elder childe realized that he couldn’t forestall Gratiano’s rebellion. He alternated long years of wandering with quietly desperate efforts at the Sicilian court to awaken others to the threat. It didn’t work. Gratiano used the clan’s institutions for judgment to destroy his rivals, all the while impressing Lasombra.
Finally Gratiano struck. He had allies from other clans and his own native treachery. The court filled with blood, and Gratiano himself destroyed Lasombra in the Antediluvian’s favorite crypt. In one stroke, the clan had no head. Montano fought a vigorous defense, but once his sire fell, the childe escaped. Around him coalesced the heart of resistance to Gratiano’s redefined Clan Lasombra, those Cainites still loyal to the old notions of clan order. Montano would not claim to be Lasombra’s true heir, but felt still bound by his oath to act in Lasombra’s best interests.
Gratiano and other rebels created a sect of rebellious clans, whose founders dubbed themselves the Sabbat in appreciation of human stories about demonic terrors. Most Lasombra surrendered their dignity and honor and joined up. They bound themselves by unholy rituals. Only the loyal remnant, dubbed mockingly the “anti-tribe” or antitribu, carried on in the older style.