# Africa
Africa
of the diviner’s arts, secrets of concealment and disguise and some forms of blood magic. Auspex in particular is as common among us as Obtenebration, which I gather confuses hidebound classifiers of clan.
Vampiric immigration came to a nearly complete stop for centuries after Rome and Han China fell. Climatic changes dried up old routes, and various internal conflicts among the “Cathayans” made it difficult to develop new ones. The existing lineages settled into an isolated existence, drawing intellectual stimulation from their mortal environs rather than the interplay of kindred thoughts. Some, like my own line, flourished in great cities, playing subtle games of influence and study. My own sire and grandsire still compile their notes for a comprehensive mathematical model of human behavior, with enthusiasm not noticeably dimmed despite centuries of data collection. The Yangtze lineage I mentioned earlier occupies itself by acting as oracles, flitting here and there to answer prayers and petitions.
A small brood ranging through the northwestern desert seems to spend most of its time desecrating tombs in the search for evidence of elders in torpor. Whatever keeps one’s attention focused, I suppose.
Contact with Europe resumed in the 15th century, and an era of purges followed once more Lasombra arrived. Some Asian lineages had become just plain peculiar and not dedicated to behaving in ways conducive to survival. Word of the Antediluvian’s destruction and rise of the Sabbat came less than a century after the initial contacts with Lasombra who’d come on Portuguese and Spanish vessels, and it was a deeply confusing time. The fact that I am here now, comfortable among you, shows that the Sabbat view prevailed, but I can and do still regret that nearly half of the Lasombra lineages active in 1400 had to be destroyed by 1600 for their refusal to adjust to the new reality.
In a way, the news that one of the founding Cainites had been destroyed helped win us relief from some confrontations with the native Cainite-spirits. Their mythology teaches a version of the Wheel of Ages in which, as time passes, more demons arise. Creatures capable of slaying the eldest are sufficiently demonic for many “Cathayans,” and while they didn’t like us much, they left us alone at least some of the time, as harbingers of the age. We were of course glad to exploit this belief to secure ourselves.
Industrialization was a boon for us. Large urban populations in a condition of extreme alienation make wonderful prey and also sometimes cast up just the sort of humanity-hating visionary who becomes an asset to our clan. The smoke of factories, particularly the old coal-burners, makes a marvelous night sky, all cloud and Clanbook: Lasombra reflected fire, much more interesting (at least to my eye) than irrelevant stars. I myself was one such visionary in the wake of the Taiping Rebellion, bitterly disillusioned by the manifest failure of my revered leader and by association disillusioned with all of Chinese tradition.
I threw myself into Westernization wholeheartedly, though it did not relieve my soul. My sire spotted some of my poetry — why, Bishop Emory, you smile. You too?
Heh. Once again we find that the Toreador hold no monopoly on the arts as a tool for recruitment.
In any event, when I speak of the desirability of the wretched age, you must understand that I have a personal attachment to it all. I give thanks for the circumstances that brought me here.
Lands Around China To the best of my knowledge, few Lasombra flourish in Japan, the Koreas, the Indochinese peninsula and elsewhere in Asia, nor have they ever done well there.
My sire used to speak of bands of “feral” Lasombra who roam the New Guinea highlands, encouraging tribal warfare and feeding on the fallen. I didn’t hear the phrase “urban legend” until much later, but even at the time I suspected a tale.
Africa Discussing Cainite history in Africa before the colonial powers’ arrival is a mess at the best of times.
In recent years — the last generation or so — mortal scholars have argued quite passionately and sometimes entertainingly about the real ethnicity of this civilization or that, the flow of ideas from one civilization to another. They don’t realize that arguments over who owes what to whom have been going on since before anything their history records.
The best person I know of to talk with you about this would have been our packmate Liu Dou, who resided in Kenya from 1575 until 1976. Unfortunately, last year he ran into a mid-level bureaucrat whose view of herself as a monster hunter in training proved much less delusional than we would have guessed. She’s dead now, but Liu is ash. I will do what I can to pass along his thoughts, along with my own study.
It’s very difficult to distinguish early Lasombra from early African Cainites of any other sort. As the saying has it, they all look alike to European-based chroniclers.
I myself cannot readily distinguish the various tribes that produced Liu’s childer, or even predictably identify an African as Bantu or Nilotic or what have you. Many observers, particularly those with axes to grind, fail to make important distinctions or create divisions where none exist. I am quite certain, for instance, that while some of the members of the African bloodline sometimes called “Laibon” do refer to one of their distinctive gifts of Caine with the Swahili name “Abombwe,” none of them did so before the invention of Swahili, and that even now Cainites inhabiting all the places in Africa that do not speak Swahili are unlikely to do so. In some eras, mania for grand syntheses arise, often at the expense of particulars.
When dealing with Cainites, the problems that affect the study of mortal cultures only get worse. Few of us exist, and when we get powerful enough, our delusions become very hard to shake. In his final decades, for instance, my grandsire refused to acknowledge that the Ming dynasty had in fact fallen to the Qing. And within his haven, it hadn’t, or at least you couldn’t tell that it had. His hapless, mind-controlled guests created artifacts to support his views, and no one in the area could disagree without a tremendous act of will. So the fact that an elder believes it was a great force in the land in the time of this dynasty or that does not itself constitute proof, even if you find the account credible in some ways.
So you must understand that everything I have to say on these matters is tentative and conditional.
Proceed carefully.
Where No Lasombra Have Been As nearly as I know, there has never been a significant Lasombra presence in Egypt. The Setites have always thrived there, as have Lupines with a particular fetish for hunting Cainites. Even more so than their kind’s general obsession with that pastime, I mean. Only the advantages of Sabbat practice make it possible for a band of Lasombra to venture in reasonably safely on a particular errand, and even then they shouldn’t linger.
Likewise, I know of no Lasombra presence among the Pygmy peoples.
Ancient Kingdoms Now, clear-cut evidence places Lasombra in eastern Africa south of Egypt even before the post-Thera dispersal. Half a dozen words in the ancient language of Meroe, far up the Nile from Egypt, reflect names of known childer of the Antediluvian. Pottery from the Khartum Mesolithic culture, around 10,000 years ago, sometimes depicts scenes of shadows flying under the moon, images that look familiar to anyone who knows our powers. The Antediluvian’s Sicilian stronghold contained silver artifacts crafted in styles that flourished in Nubia and Meroe in Mesolithic and Neolithic times, and as nearly as I know they came across the sea not long after their making. One of them, at least, features in Pompey’s account of his attack on Sicily’s pirates as Chapter One: An Unmirrored Corridor “a chalice of great antiquity, ascribed to the power of a night spirit from far to the south,” which the pirates filled with blood and drank before their raids.
A little further south, we find similar evidence of Lasombra presence in Ethiopia. It is, of course, well known that the Antediluvian’s eldest surviving childe, the great failure Montano, came from one of the tribes wandering through the land that modern maps divide between Ethiopia and Kenya. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that the stories speak of previous experiments by the Antediluvian among those various tribes. The nomadic peoples who settled Kenya 4,000 years ago almost immediately took up maritime activity. I strongly suspect that the Antediluvian’s interest in seafaring had something to do with this, with it using them for its sundry ventures. I find intriguing hints of an ancient Lasombra presence in what’s now Mozambique, but the migrations that settled Kenya also wiped out preexisting societies on the southeastern coast. Too little evidence exists to settle the question.
Shadows Among Many What interests me most is that once our clan arrived in Africa (or returned to it, depending on your preferred theory of vampiric origins), our predecessors never made much of a mark on the mortal societies they preyed upon. The Antediluvian itself engineered catastrophes of various sorts but gave that up after the second dispersal, and few or none of its childer attempted to do the same. Did the Antediluvian fear the creation of some destructive rival? The ironist in me wants to believe that it did, and that this set the scene for its destruction thanks to the absence of a real challenger to Gratiano, later.
Cainites of other clans set themselves up from time to time as kings and sages. We did not. We inspired fear. Our influence was indirect and indeed undirected.
While you may trace the evolution of myths about dark gods and night powers and show how they stem from our activities, you will find precious few accounts of any of those powers speaking to fearful mortals, providing explicit lessons or commands. We were what we were, and they reacted as they deemed fit.
You will also find a surprising number of havens — literally dozens, if not hundreds — inhabited by tightly bound brood lineages for centuries or millennia, that seem to have had no impact on any nearby kine.
They fed, chose childer, pursued their philosophical or religious ambitions and passed without a trace. Abyss mysticism flourished among the African lurkers, along with research into the nature of our blood-borne powers.
Perhaps if some strong leader had risen among them,