Chapter 1 – The World of Darkness in Jyhad

The world of “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna” is much closer to ours than you can imagine. If the world of “Vampires: the Masquerade” in the Last Nights was similar to our world seen through a pair of dark eyes, in “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna” the real world, its social structures and its immortal residents, becomes the new tangible evil.

With the evolution and removal from the moral values for a more pragmatic view than the previous centuries, the human being is moving towards to establish a new anthropocentric system much more quickly, where innovation and triumph over new limits dictated by physical laws are in the middle of the universe.
The third millennium faces a new Renaissance coming up to the wars that, with the rapid movement of the technological evolution, brings man to go more and more further. The Futurism is back in vogue, coupled with an evident evil, that of the Mal du Siècle, the Capitalism and Individualism.

“Vampires: the Masquerade” has always been a clear metaphor of modern society’s monstrosity. “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna” confers, for the first time, the monstrosity to mortals, allowing the damned to be seen not more as not – dead men of the night, but as damned who must be careful where they put their feet.
It is not uncommon to find a mortal with a lower humanity than that of a vampire, whether she is a housewife or a serial killer. The violence, corruption fear facing a new millennium and the constant anxiety for the Gehenna’s coming are just some of the aspects of “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna”.
The mortals’ society, totally focused on the war, bases its choices on the new beliefs disseminated by the media, that see a world divided in a big religious Jyhad, manipulated by the most important capitalist lobbies.
The world goes on, falling into the chasm millimetre by millimetre, in a declivity towards the futurism, that transforms the traditional Punk Gothic of “Vampires: the Masquerade” in Gothic Sci – fi.

In “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna” the machines don’t fly. There aren’t spaceships, it is about a next futurism, available to everyone, studied on the basis of the most important physicists, engineers and experts’ intuitions. Describing the world in a hundred years is a challenge for the most awarded specialists. Describing it in the World of Darkness puts a strain on the most passionate of “Vampires: the Masquerade”. It is not easy to understand in which directions the globe will evolve, neither how to direct the futurism in the territory of forced Gehenna.
Ten years old predicting in what ways technology would have influence on our society was very difficult, to date following constantly trends and the evolution’s development is very complex.

Youngs, and even before the youngest, are living this period of change without any peculiar inconvenience. But in every big change many crucial events happened in the course of a decade, almost like a dynastic cliché. After the Jubilee of 2000 the world parted into North and South and terroristic organizations started to undermine the balance and safety of the world powers, as for example the United States of America.
The developing countries become emerging markets, those underdeveloped (that represent a gluttonous result for the capitalists and investors), on the contrary, harbour terroristic organizations united by religion. The Third millennium shows the obvious symptoms of an imminent Jyhad, announced to the world with the massacre of 11 September.

Many start to discover new awareness investigating beyond, while others remain serenely focused on their microworld, sheltered from worries and well protected by the media’s filters. The economic crisis accelerates some procedures, while the immigration rate increases unreasonably (favouring the globalization) also from European countries, compressed by the obligation to be equal to the other community or federated nations.
Greece, Spain and Italy are the first victims of the world crisis and they represent one of the first Jyhad’s cradle: whether of damned or mortals. It is no coincidence that these three countries symbolize the heart of the history of Damned and respective traditions’ origins. Particular social and political changes convince Damned, closed in the Status Quo, to make drastic alterations, as for example reconsidering the Clans’ balances in the Camarilla, closing ranks in the Sabbat and moving elsewhere, by focusing on the New World, leaving the Old one to the utter destruction, admiring the slow Ivory Tower’s shattering from afar.
The independent Clans, shaken by the new truths, start to live their own no – lifes differently, by searching to be a more active and aggressive part the dread dance that binds all.

After the Nightmares Week and the slow Tzimisce, Tremere and Assamites’ disappearance, many are the elders, but also the smart Ancillae, to propose a new way to face the night, by accepting that silent and unbridled comprehension of the Eternal Struggle as real and tangible. Especially dangerous.
No more immortal puppeteers who pull the humanity’s strings, but literally damned who awaken from a dream of quiet and control to rediscover themselves at the centre of a vortex of terror.
Victims of damnation and of their own elders and mentors, Jyhad players’ pawns, Players in turn, piece of meat or ancient blood to usurp with the Amaranth, all the damned are executioners and victims in the World of Darkness.

Narration Box: Adine speaks to E-Childe
“Gehenna: the moment when the Antediluvians – Cain’s nephews, to be clear – will awaken to consume the blood of all the youngest vampires, so All of them”. The woman who everyone called Ephemera had a quite concrete posture: she got to the point.
“Which one of you have ever read the Nod’s book? Which one of you have ever hear of that? Which one of you knows the several sides that accompany this full of darkness world, children?” the Elegant begun: “Nobody because you don’t need this. You are just dickheads, but you distinguish from other because you are my dickheads”.

It was much more Elegant, in this way.
“Some of you Cainites know well tales and a good part of you knows also that they are not necessarily lies, as those of Ivory Tower believe. We of the Sword really know that the Jyhad has been fought for many centuries, the pawns are moved from elder hands, that the Sword repudiates and fights. However, the difference between the Sword and Tower is that the second, even if it had the Father before its eyes, would still laugh asserting ‘You don’t exist, you are a lie invented by the Elders to frighten me’. Foolish, in its fake anarchy”.

“Instead, I’m in front of you every day, and you say to me ‘Oh, good morning Elegant, how can I appease you today?’. You are at an advanced stage of the damned society because members of E-Childe, therefore now you listen carefully, because what I’m going to tell you has to be law. If you won’t understand everything, you will die by my hand and if you won’t die by my hand, you will die by the elders’ hand. The real ones”.
That was fucking Elegant.

We were in the Meeting room of the Mansion: a black room surrounded by the abyss, that in the eyes of the common Cainites looked like a normal living room.
Red couch, paintings. Papers, actually.
Our biggest problem was standing there keeping the Beast at bay, because Adines’ Darkness wasn’t as like as the other Shrouds of the Nights. Hers was darker, gloomier. More endless.

“They said that the same Creator will come down to destroy all of us, we that wear the Whyrm as if it were our own skin, and they said that the Dark Mother, Lilith, will come to require her revenge on Cain and his progeny. They said that the Tower will collapse revealing its mysteries to the bottles’ eyes, while the Elders Fathers will open their eyes to rule or destroy the majority of what steps on this ground”.
The Ephemera holds the painted mouthpiece in her violet mouths. She was beautiful as the most particular of the Toreador, spectral as the older of the Cappadoci.
“The Black Hand is well known as a Sword’s political instrument. Actually, few people know that powerful Cainites circulate in the Black Hand and in the same Sword, but they serve another Clan: the Real Black Hand.

They are probably also in the Ivory Tower’s ranks. It’s about at least two hundred Cainites and, in the Sword, there are approximately sixty of them, while forty are in the Tower. The others are scattered around the world. The Real Black Hand, Tal’Mah’Ra, follows the principles dictated by a complex code of honour and their aim is protecting the humanity from their own Blood Brothers. The Real Black Hand protects the Antediluvians and runs its business by manipulating the Clans since the beginning. They are the main enemy: they hide in the Earth of Shadows and, for this reason, we will be helped by Costancia and the Heralds’ Clan. Many of them are True Brujah, others ancient Tzimisce. Ancient, distant, but close. They could be next to you, listening our words. They are everywhere and we can’t allow this”.
Adine emerges from the shadows once again: “While we face the Idiots with their mouths still dirty of the first blood, those bastards work to manipulate Me, therefore my Sword, those assholes of the Tower and everything else. For this reason, the oldest of you worked maybe chaotically, in their small and blurred eyes, illogically, until today, to corrupt and dismember the angles of that armoured box, sinking small groups and coterie. Now we will go directly in the heart of the matter. We will eradicate the root. Rather, I will the new root. Does anyone have anything to say?”
Her Elegance was pretentious, even compared to the gramophone’s sound that gives life to the ancient voice of a certain Edith Piaf. A woman of the awakening’s century. She seemed a fucking trucker compared to the Elegant.
“Searching the Nod’s truths, by using any resource and analysing them following the Path’s parameters. Founding the position and activity of each Antediluvian. Looking for the Methuselah elders: massacring them”.
All the elders had to die, because all – or almost – of them was preparing the Gehenna. We didn’t have to stop her, but we had to prepare ourselves. If we were Elegant enough, we could have been the Gehenna.

 

The War has always been the object of benefit for many damned, it represents one of the most favourite moves of the skilful Jyhad’s players. It is not uncommon to find, in the historical archives of a Clan, praises for an Elder’s choice to support a military faction and to make ghoul all the generals to strengthen the performances, or to facilitate the results hiring some Assamites paid with their damned enemies’ blood, but finally the Elders understood this game, realizing that it is a double – edged sword: during the first half of the ‘900, many vampires, ancient or not, have fallen under the mortals’ fury, no longer armed with blades and cruelty, but with bombs and indifference. The mortals razed entire properties, without ever know the existence of the Cainites, in the two World Wars that brought the most important power agglomerations of damned, that were standing for ages, to their knees.

In Jyhad things don’t get better. The work initiated by the Sethites in order to awaken Seth, sees the birth of a real and powerful war of moral and intention, conspired and favourite by the Ventrues, greedy for power: the western powers as the United States of America, Germany and England, glimpsed in the Middle Eastern countries an excellent instrument of benefit in the energetic field and this opened a war without borders of religious ideology, resulted in the Middle Eastern rage that, reorganising itself in terrorist cells formed exactly in the American prisons in Iraq, has built the biggest antagonist that West could ever imagine: the Islamic State.

If in the first decades of 2000 the terrorist attacks had been sporadic – even if they were huge – it’s in 2026 that Isis excogitates the chain attack that allows the entire system to collapse. The majority of the Western capitals was damaged with extreme violence under attacks very similar to those of the Twin Towers: the most influential Elders’ properties and possessions were destroyed along with the rest.
And that’s not all. In this general Chaos, where the people turn their back on the governments and hide panicked, the most influential politics and Vatican decide to form an alliance, called K12, to counter the enemy: the III World War is declared and the Elders know that it will be at least twice as fearsome as the previous one.
The Attack on Pearl Harbour had conducted to the use of atomic bomb. With the new terrorist attacks, the West decides to intern all the foreign immigrants and who practices the Muslim religion. Not only, the world comes to a point of dramatic tension, where the nuclear alert is just around the corner: how far have the Damned push themselves in their manipulations and power games?

The Bayer is a Pharmaceutical Corporation that has already demonstrated its quality during the Second World War: indeed, the company has already drawn some Elder’s attention – it doesn’t matter to which Clan they belonged – considering their foresight and scientific application at the expense of Jews, used as test subjects.
The German company has always considered the war a useful instrument to improve and expand its proceeds: it is thanks to the War, carried on after the terrorist mass attack, that the Bayer sends immediately its own elements in humanitarian missions supported by the Church and Western countries, to take control of the situation and to occupy cities in Chaos.

The Bayer’s purpose is to increase its power on the one hand, to fight the terrorism and destroy the economic hegemony of some Saudi Arabia’s powerful leaders, on the other hand.
The existence of Al Qaeda, and then that of the Isis, will be a godsend for the corporation that, after organizing a cabinet of the western countries under the spiritual direction of the papacy, will prepare a own militia using the best German, Russian and American biotechnologies to restore a military order in the affected areas and more.

If in the past the Bayer produced one of the most lethal essence for the mass slaughter of human beings, the Zyklon B, and it supported Nazi cause (making available Methadone, Heroin and nerve gas) to pursue its brutal Policy, asking to Hitler the permission to make experiments on the Jews and other prisoners of the Nazi extermination camps, today it continues with a stronger and more brutal line than ever that, without having never put aside the nature for the experiments clearly non-conforming with the Geneva Convention, by putting on the market the only declared legal medicines and by obtaining all the companies related to the energy world, ranking at the top in Stock Exchange and monopolizing the Marketplace.

Around 2025, the Bayer will put on the market also the Tech Implant, Technological Hardware components with a subcutaneous or overcutaneous implant, that may be a support to those who use them not only at the medical level, but also allowing them to improve their cerebral status. It is because of this important technological progress that mortals can observe the biggest evolutionary leap after millennia of history: man becomes one thing with technology and through the Energy, a particular substance synthesized by blood, he will be able to use the amazing talents allowed by the nanomachines thanks to the Applications called Devices.

This is not the only thing a damned should worried about: the Bayer carries out tests on Damned and it works to the Vystfalia project – a Tech living weapon made with a very powerful vampiric vitae, the Nodblood – to deal with the Damned destruction. Probably the Thin Blood are right: the Bayer is the Gehenna’s precursor.

Vampires, dark creatures that wander in the night, for a long time considered terrible monsters ready to bite the fragile and tender mortals’ flesh.
Monsters.
However, each of them was a cow, part of some unaware herd, before being snatched from the day and thrown away as a waste paper in the real World of Darkness. Everyone has its big and long story to tell, made of nights that pass one after another, as vitae drops by a hanging body. These experiences, preys of the Jyhad’s gravity, stray down, becoming a single entity with the others in the big Blood Tank that everyone calls Not – life. An eternal, scarlet gift, whose price is considered too high to pay by a lot of people.

Everyone had a life that, more or less, led them into the end of their days very slowly. Family, affects, a job and some ambition: some more, some less, everyone was part of a normality far from the Masquerade’s sketch, but all of them, for some reason, have received, one night, the damnation and they became the new monsters, those beasts that they were afraid of as kids: monsters that, step by step, wandered among the Elisei, learned by their Kings, looked at the world with the eyes of a Damned. They succumbed to the thirst in order to control it, they felt humanity moving away at every lacerated innocent under the Beast’s rage.

Prior to the Camarilla’s foundation, the Elders lived their no – lives controlling the herds in their undisturbed kingdoms, while the Leopoldo’s Society was preparing to exterminate them; the Camarilla’s Fathers announced the traditions and laid the foundation of the universal society that would protect every single damned from the mortals’ fury and Inquisition. Anarchists and the future Sabbat’s Cainites screamed their resentment for the new elders’ game loudly, the poor infants hung on the words uttered by the first ancillae who stood in front of them.

No matter when, where or why. Each vampire was, and still is, member of a Clan, a Cult, a social caste that characterizes the damned society. Whether they are called Brothers or Cainites.

And no matter how far the centuries in which the ancient fathers’ first sons wandered for the world can seem, today nothing has really changed.
The Jyhad, the biggest struggle among the most fearsome, darkest lords of the night, never ended. Each vampire is a Jyhad’s player, whether he is hand or pawn, it doesn’t matter: he can be both, at best. Gehenna is coming, it is obvious. The Jyhad’s players start to betray, they continue their manipulations in the increasingly anxious research of good allies, with whom they can share the anxiety for the victory, but also ready to turn their back on them when they least expect it.

The Antediluvians are no longer a mythical memory and the Cows stop being a simple herd used to obtain Vitae. The entire world is moving, it is becoming darker than ever, it reminds damned that the Masquerade isn’t enough, just like lying to themselves.
They are monsters and, even if they don’t want to accept it, the Last Nights are here, ready to devour all the damned, chewing their innards and regurgitating the useless ashes.

Antediluvians: ancient vampires, considered a legend since forever. They are the Third Generation’s vampires, children’s children of the First Vampire: Cain. They are awakening from their long torpidity, ready to complete the Jyhad, that they have led until today by manipulating everything they can, using their divine powers, and prepared to achieve simply by wanting it. Nobody knows who they really are, or where they are, but everybody fears them. The Thin Blood talk about them constantly, they know that many took their first steps by rising up from their unknown tombs. They are already among the damned, but who is able to understand their unknowable essence?

Methuselahs: they are the main Jyhad’s players. Nobody knows if they play on behalf of the Antediluvians or for their personal ambitions. They are mythical figures, from a thousand to two thousand years Old vampires, great experts of the darkest and the most unknowable thaumaturgic. The closer Gehenna gets, the further those people dare, losing track of patience and prudence that they have preserved for many centuries.
Many of them, now more than ever, prefer to hide in their graves, manipulating all their Jyhad’s pawns, making their crucial moves as far as possible; others walk undisturbed in the Camarilla and Sabbat’s gatherings, pretending to be stupid Ancillae or passing nomads. Surely, they are the most terrible among the vampires, they feed only on their own kinds’ blood and they consider the World of Darkness a big vortex in which it is possible to arrange their order in chaos.

Elders: Elders are the most feared by the young vampires who have discovered the disadvantages of being not dead a few decades ago. Detested by the young Anarchists, ignored by the Independents, served and respected by their own Infants and Camarilla’s Ancillae and Neonates, they represent the real paradox of being vampires. They feel, know that Gehenna is coming. They fear the Antediluvians’ arrival just as an infant is afraid of their judgment: a blade that hangs over their heads.

Victims of the hate of many, Methuselahs’ pawns and in turn ambitious Jyhad’s players, the Elders are paranoid, smart, blood-thirsty and particularly more fearsome than Methuselahs, because they are not tied to the torpidity that afflicts those who have the most powerful blood. They know that Gehenna is not a legend, they smell the Jyhad’s manipulations – if they are not an active part of them – and they exercise control according to these two factors. The Elders are the real actors in “Jyhad: Not Yet Gehenna”, they conclude negotiations, engage wars and move Clans from one faction to another preventing the youngest vampires from interfering. Their power structures are collapsing and they don’t want that to happen.

Ancillae: Elders of tomorrow, the Infants of yesterday. The Ancillae are vampires embraced in the last century, those who have seen the world change from the careful eye of those who have received the gift, but didn’t spent too many centuries in the dark to stop understanding the mortals’ world. They are certainly the most numerous in the damned society, all embraced during the great World Wars or the last wars of the 19th century, they know well how much terror mortals can spread with their weapons and fury.

They know what Jyhad is and they learned to be a part of it, jumping and dancing, impregnated with desire to become the real manipulators in order to change things. In their favour, of course.
Infants: Infants are very young vampires. They represent the beating heart of the damned society, although they live as the fifth wagon wheel. They don’t know the Jyhad, they are still too busy enjoying the gift, giving free rein to their own desire of revenge on the mortal society, or they are seized by overwrought upset, dictated by the horrible way in which they fed on the first mortal. The infants, over time, are ever closer to the Jyhad’s essence, being a part of it without realizing it. There’s a lot of them, they are masses that move from place to place, weapons and meat for slaughter, in the Elders’ eyes, against their enemies, but also future and powerful allies to be grown, in their small garden of dust, blood and intimate dread.

Novices: Novices or Infants, are newly reborn vampires, but they are no longer those simple rag dolls considered nonentity by the vampires’ society. Times have changed, just like mortals. Caught in the grips of the dark gift, these new damned, children of an obscure time, full of changes, tragic political manipulations, terrorism and misery, they are creatures so in line with the apprehension of the World of Darkness in life, to represent themselves the World of Darkness.
Many of them have a much lower humanity than that of a common damned and they learned to dig their own corner in the mortals’ society without any kind of dark powers and eternal life. Receiving the gift is a way to improve for them, to be able to give free rein to what they feel to be, showing the aggressiveness that the mortal society has allowed them to harbour. These very young damned hide an incomparable beast and willpower even enough to face the elders.
Perfect weapons but the real Gehenna’s quintessence.

The Cults, considered a modern invention by the most, important in an Infant’s eyes and excessive but essential to keep control in the Elders’ eyes. The Cults are the main instrument by which the Jyhad’s plots move, using the common ideology of the vampires that are part of it. If before the Great anarchic revolt, the vampires were lonely, reluctant to share nights and properties, with others of their kind, today they are connected to each other by traditions, ideologies, rituals and why not, fear of the Last Nights.

During the 16th century, the damned were convinced that staying still in their ideas was becoming counter-productive, the fear of the incessant power of the Inquisition and Leopoldo’s Society roused the elders, because the most temerarious and autocrat died under the cows’ power, bent on destroying all the fearsome lords of the night who terrorised their sleep and oppressed their lives. Today, at the turn of the 21st and 22nd century, mortals prove to be, again, a too big danger to ignore, considering that it feels in the air: the fathers are reawakening.

The first two World Wars destroyed large part of possessions and properties of the most prudent Masquerade’s actors, predicting a surely worst future. The third world war, fought between West and East, or to be fair, between Christians and Muslims, is a real apocalypse for the damned. Camarilla, which kept its infants away from the truth, is the one that suffers the most damage, for its geography position but also for its maniacal habit to interfere in the mortal’s businesses.
The Sabbat, on the other hand, even if loses important cities including the fundamental seat in Mexico City, to say nothing to the United States’ east coast, was always ready to face the worst nights, becoming stronger and united than ever. After all, what is a world war, compared to the great war against the Antediluvians?

The Inconnu and the real Black Hand lose their tracks, maybe committed to make crucial changes to the Jyhad or maybe because they are the first Eternal Struggle’s victims, while the most desperate Cults of Gehenna and Infernalism lose their edge, trying desperately to grab on to the power of the new damned, infants sons of the last century’s horrors, prepared to do anything to Be the Gehenna.

The independents are focused on themselves, their ideals and their struggles, more than before, continue their shady businesses getting out dramatically. Sethites that corrupt and poison everything that stands in front of them, Youngs involved in internal fights, while they move close to the most hidden secrets of the Shadowlands; bloodthirsty Assamites that embrace the Clans’ faith against those that, on the contrary, apply Haquim’s precepts without ever taking their eyes off him; Nosferatu and Gangrel finally aware, finally free from the old Justicar’s decisions. After the Nightmares Week, no Ravnos was saved: maybe the first victims of the Antediluvians’ awakening. This is denied by the Camarilla and yelled out by the Sabbat. The Independents are cautious, resolute, but probably, they will be the next.

In these hard times nobody trusts anyone, but for a greater good it’s better to find some nice allies. Although the Damned rarely like to stay with other Damned, it seems to be very useful belonging to a Drove or a Coterie. The Cults organize expeditions of Coterie and Droves constantly in order to pursue the purposes set by the Elder with method and strategy; many Ivory Tower’s Elders are organized in political Coterie, that meet opposing groups… and not to negotiate a plea bargain and allocate properties in exchange for Favours. A game far from the Ancillae and Infants’ eyes, a game that makes almost useless the Cult’s existence.
There are a lot of Nosferatu or Malkavian Droves that don’t consider that their own members belong to a Cult: in any case, the Vaulderie remains a practice frequently used even outside of the Sabbath, under the name of “Joint Agreement”.
Among the most popular Droves in Jyhad, there are the Restorers, a Coterie of Justicar Camarillici that aims to encourage the Giovanni Clan’s entry in the Tower and to make good agreements with the Sabbath in the New Continent, and E-Childe, Droves run by Cainites descended from the Ruler’s blood or otherwise very closer to her. There are plenty of Free Droves – or Brothers – that run around in the dark nights, strengthened by the Fraternity, that makes impossible for a Damned to use his disciplines in their Free Ports. How they succeeded in that undertaking is still subject of numerous conjectures.

The Coterie and Droves don’t share only the purposes, but also the Refuges. In Jyhad keeping a low profile is very difficult, especially under the careful control of the military and paramilitary forces: for this reason, it is always useful to have a Damned with the right contacts and a good concentrate of financial resources in the drove. The individual Shelter is always the most common choice among the Damned, but many, having failed to find another appropriate one or free spaces, have preferred the Agglomerates, that are Nosferatu type shelters in the ghettos and suburbs, to take cover from the risks of the day. The Agglomerates are in bulk shelters, on the heels of people’s residential complexes, where the day is the local mafia orthodoxy – ghoul, of course – in order to deal with businesses as the safety.
In any case the Coterie and Droves prefer to join forces in order to create safe, spacious and located in convenient positions shelters. For this reason, in the game system, it is possible to differentiate the shelter for Size, position and safety and to spend the points accumulating them with those of the other Drove or Coterie’s members.

Gehenna is coming, and it is on everyone’s lips. There are those who pretend not to listen, those who, on the contrary, prepare the weapons against the Antediluvians and those who prey for their coming and mercy. Satanic cults, as the Lilith’s one, that are persecuted ferociously by the Sabbath, are increasingly popular even among the very young novices in search of a space in the World of Darkness and a far from the Cults’ strictness. Many of these are embraced as acolytes during the rituals under the New Moon, if they are not sacrificed as mortal gifts for the Dark Goddess, who believes to be the real Gehenna’s bearer.

The maneater’s ritual, that doesn’t represent a ritual of cannibals but of Diablerists, it’s a cult of Renegade Damned belonging to the most disparate Clans: outcasts in search of revenge and power, many of them cowards or thin blood.

There is also the Real Sons’ Cult, Damned who pray for the Father’s arrival with the same fanatism of a Setit: the cult provides that the young acolytes kill their brother – or sister – to re – invoke the events of the First Vampire: Cain.
There are many Cults that search in faith an answer to all the doubts that the Last Nights bring: this woke the attention of the Leopoldo’s Society, that hunts them.

“The Cowards are fucking worthless. Thin Blood are worth even less”. This is what any Damned who have lived enough to understand how things go would say. But one thing is true: they are many, probably too many.

The cowards managed to dig their own recesses, especially in the Sabbath, after causing a new Civil War that saw the Pander Clan’s birth, but Thin Blood are cruelly hunted by the Camarilla’s elders. The hate of Thin Blood, that see the future and the coming of the night in which the Fathers will eat the sons in their prophetic dreams, grows excessively until it bursts. The Thin Blood, gathered under the redemption’s flag, attack Venice and Mexico City tearing down the secular Cults. Underestimating them was a mistake: a big mistake.

This paragraph explains the Antediluvians’ position and their Manipulations in terms of Jyhad. It was written on the basis of the manual “Vtm: Gehenna” but it was enriched with elements present in “Vtm: Jyhad”. For this reason, you don’t have to consider the following events as a dogma but as an interesting spark, that the narrator can change as he pleases.

Haquim – [Assamites]
Haquim woke up and his lineage, the Methuselah Ur-Shulgi, exterminated all the Assamites that strayed from the way to embrace the Islamic faith. The little diplomacy of Ur Shulgi, who asked to the Assamites to abandon the faith immediately, brought many of these to run away seeking a shelter in the Sabbat or Camarilla: for this reason, the Assassins’ Clan replaced the Gangrel Clan in the Ivory Tower. It is a manhunt, a matter of time before the infidels die, but Haquim doesn’t care about this worthless issue: his awakening is motivated by the Wizard of Time’s presence, a mysterious and powerful Damned who travels through time, thwarting many Antediluvians’ plans. Haquim wants to find and destroy him.

Brujah – [Brujah]
It is said that the antediluvian Brujah is dead under the Troile descendants’ canines and that the Temporis’ ancient mystic power has been destroyed with him. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Brujah was saved by a mysterious figure who lived almost 10 thousand years ago, who appears exactly at the moment when Troile is going to numb the King saving his life. Brujah will run away with this figure to whom he will teach Temporis in order to come back and save him over and over again: this figure is called the Wizard of Time or Brujah’s Sister.

Ennoia – [Gangrel]
Ennoia is no more a Damned or an Antediluvian. Ennoia refused his Vampire nature fusing himself with the incandescent core of the Earth. Now he is something different, that the same Xavier had the misfortune to meet. Ennoia is much more fearsome than all the Antediluvians and he is somewhere, searching for something. What exactly, it’s a mystery.

Augusto Giovanni – [Giovanni]
Augusto Giovanni is no longer alive from the Sixth Maelstorm, in which the Cappadoci came back to take revenge on their own sons’ betrayal. Risen from the Shadowlands, as Skull’s Heralds, these powerful necromancers came back to destroy all those who supported the Cappadocio Clan’s patricide. Augusto was the first, naturally and now Leopoldo Giovanni rules in his place, who sold half of his family to the Cappadoci.

Lasombra – [Lasombra]
Lasombra is dead, of course. Now he is part of the Abyss, ready to come back when his plan will be complete. And we know that the Keepers’ projects are particularly elaborate, don’t we?

Malkav – [Malkavian]
Malkav is buried in Jerusalem, but with his will and mystical powers, is able to travel through all his sons thanks to the Madness’ Net. And not only, with this the Malkavian carry out the Father’s will without even realizing it: their actions are part of a bigger plan. In order to play screwles with the Wizard of Time, and all the others, of course.

Absimilard – [Nosferatu]
Absimilard is so good in the art of Oscuration that all the world forgot his existence. He lives on the sea bed, away from everybody. Deprived of the desire to live, he spent centuries in reflection and loneliness without being able to reach Last Death. The knowledge of the First Seejungfrau, a characteristic bloodline of combining Nosferatu and Lasombra Sirenidae in shade, changed his nights. Now Absimilard supports the cause of the First Seejungfrau against the Wizard of Time, that deprived her to the powers exiling her in a temporal imprisonment, centuries away from her existence.

Ravnos – [Ravnos]
End of Games.

Set – [Seth’s disciples]
Seth’s disciples have made the Typhoon God a spirit of blood, pain and corruption so powerful to be far away from an Antediluvian’s power, but these will fail to reawaken him unless they make some specific choices: when they succeed the Wizard of Time will come to make things right, just a while before. This is what the Sisters’ prophecies suggest and, for this reason, the Disciples want to find the Wizard of Time to kill him.

Arikiel/Ishtar – [Toreador]
Arikiel is searching for his one true love: [Brujah]. She, or he, depends on the points of view and the right angle, travels everywhere and everywhen thanks to the power learned by his secret companion Brujah to find him. Arikiel often travels pretending to be an infant, passing through all the princes’ properties without being noticed.

Tremere/Saulot – [Tremere]
A Long story, that you will soon discover, unfortunately.

Tzimisce – [Tzimisce]
Tzimisce is so much a son of a bitch that he was able to fuck even himself. He is part of the Saulot and Tremere’s game, but the darker part of himself, [Mekhet], who had separated from himself before the conflict is elsewhere. For this reason, Tzimisce will lose his fight against Saulot, even if [Mekhet] is still alive. In the Wizard of Time’s blood, of course, but this is a detail.

Venture – [Ventrue]
Who is Ventrue? Oh, yes. That guy who died many centuries ago. It is said that it was Wizard of Time’s fault, but probably the Wizard of Time had no time to lose with such stupidities.