Cabal

The Cabal is the oldest, most secretive and cryptic vampire bloodline in the world. Their line can be traced all the way back to the city of Ur and the Black Priesthood.

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Higher Mysteries

The Cabal is a highly secretive bloodline of vampires, whose goals are as cryptic as their traditions are ancient. Unlike the Umbrals, Cabal vampires are not reclusive and often participate actively in vampire politics, though they play the game different than other groups. Cabal vampires seem content to be given smaller territories and secondary titles and will rarely plot for power. Often even, they will help other bloodline or group achieve these goals without asking for any rewards except a favor to be repaid in the future. That makes them a very well connected bloodline, with access to power even when not directly holding it. The cabal uses this access to secure what they need, which often seems unimportant to other bloodlines. Access to certain areas, the possession of some artifacts or asking for the life or death of a prince's prisoner. Princes know that breaking faith with their deals with the Cabal can have disastrous consequences long term, and so even as they don't understand these requests, they still acquiesce to them.

The Cabal is a presence in almost every important city, though usually in smaller number than other bloodlines. They are few but they are everywhere and can be often found as sheriffs or seneschals of a Prince, and some times mediators between clans that are often in conflict. The powers granted by the cabal bloodline are the mastery of the thin, blurred line between life and death. Powerful Cabal vampires are able to use their blood to temporarily reanimate corpses, speak with the echoes of the dead and peer into the darkness of a corpse's eyes to divine events of the recent past.

Characteristics

Vampires of the Cabal have the usual two sets of fangs, a smaller lower set and a larger upper one. When a mortal is turned by the Cabal, they lose the coloring on their eyes, turning a pale grey, and with time, their skin also grows grey and emaciated. Cabal vampires are not particularly strong or weak, but they prefer not to rely on physical violence if they can solve a conflict in another way. While a Cabal vampire is not reclusive necessarily, they are seldom an open book and will prefer to keep any exchange to a 'need to know' basis.

Turning

Cabal chooses new blood to turn with care. They see turning as a gift rather than a curse, and one that forms a sacred bond between Sire and Children. Newborns are often put through ceremonial rituals of acceptance into the Cabal shortly after their first night. Unlike most Bloodlines, who are loosely connected by familial ties, the Cabal operates like a unified cult. Being turned by then is not just being made into a new form, but also being embraced by a millennia-old society with a mysterious long term designed for the world. Living within the Cabal, a vampire is often given tasks and missions as they perform, elevated in Rank within the group, which allow them to learn a bit more about the group goals and peer a little deeper into its inscrutable mysteries.

Relation to other Bloodlines

View on mortals

Bloodline Gifts

• Echoes:Cabal vampires can use their essence to infuse power into a room and speak to 'ghosts'. These are not the souls of departed beings, but merely an echo or impression their passage left in a place. Their knowledge is thus limited and their existence fleeting.

• Blood-Puppet:By feeding essence charged blood to a corpse´s mouth, the Cabal can reanimate the creature temporarily, and command it telepathically. The creature will have perfect mobility but be incapable of higher intelligence, doing only its masters bidding without the ability to make its own decisions.

• Corpses Divination:By tasting the blood or staring into the eyes of a dead creature and focusing their energy, the Cabal is able to divine the event immediately before and after the creatures death.

• Spirit Summoning:The most powerful within the Cabal can use their blood to do more than echoes, and they are able to summon the spirit of dead beings to serve them. In combination with blood-puppet, this could be used to give a mortal new life...Of sorts.

Bloodline Weakness

• Dead Sea Salt:Salt extracted from the waters of the dead sea will not only burn is they come into contact with a Cabal vampire's skin, but its presence can make it more difficult or outright nullify their bloodline powers.

History

Origins

Somewhere in the depths of the City of Ur, a group of sorcerors stumbled upon a great dormant power. In their attempts to control or bargain with it, they found themselves cursed and changed forever. The boons sought were obtained, immortality, mastery over life and death, but the price was heavy. The sorcerors unleashed their power over their lesser man and took control of the city. Their leader reign as a God-King for generations, unaging. The people of the city sacrificed to sustain their overlord's unnatural life. By the end of the centuries of blood, a warrior was visited by a spirit who whispered about silver and sunlight and armed with knowledge, he killed the God-King and many of his retinue. The people of Ur, seeing them as not indestructible, raised against them, and after a bitter, bloody but short conflict, they were all destroyed. Or so it was believed.

The surviving members of the Cabal went underground, in the most literal sense. Ambitious sorcerors still sought the power they had obtained, and their ability to commune with spirits drew the griefing and the desperate. The Cabal learned the hard way a lesson to be passed on to every vampire bloodline; Mortals are many, vampires are few. Daylight belongs to them, and puny as they are, a lucky blow through the heart or a cut with silver was all that was needed for a mortal to destroy one of the Vampyr. The Cabal's knowledge is their most precious possession and they guard it jealously. Some whispers that they are the first vampires and the common ancestor of other bloodlines, and that could well be true. Since the times of Ur, they had not tried to reveal themselves, they have found in secrecy and darkness a place to first survive, and then to thrive. And they adapted to every society, they kept records and with their bloodline, they passed on their lore.