Most vampires consider members of the Sabbat to be nothing more than bloodthirsty monsters and in some regards that is correct. We are the Sword of Caine after all, violence is something each of us is familiar with. The problem comes in that most only see us in the light of shovel-heads and blood rituals. A bit on both of those though… Shovel-Head is the term used for mass embraces during times of conflict. The tradition is to get a bunch of folks, mass embrace them, and then bury them while dead into pits near enemy lines. The thought is that the bunch of angry, starving, childer come digging their way out and head for the enemy lines to feed. Those that survive the encounter are taken in and trained. I have only seen it done once and it was during an assault on Toronto and it wasn’t pretty, nor did any of the newborn blood suckers come back. C’est la vie as they say. Blood Rituals though are something I’m intimately familiar with. There are the Auctoritas Ritae, think of them like church rituals and there are 13 of them. The most famous of course is the Binding which involves the collective pooling of the Sect’s blood to create a watered down blood bind between all the members in attendance. The lesser rites or the Ignoblis Ritae are pack rituals. My pack, the Crimson Eclipse had a few of our own, though they mostly just involved sex, blood, and drugs. You can’t imagine the trouble a pack of vampires whose blood is impotent will get into.

Back to the original thought though. Sure we deserve a lot of our bad rep but there was more to the Sabbat than blood thirsty psychopaths preparing to fight a war at the end of the world. We were scholars, historians, priests, warriors, and family. Montreal was special… Our Temple was the center of learning for our Sect. Sure we did terrible things to the mortals but their lives are fleeting anyways. My pack studied Paths and Thaumaturgy and despite what the Tremere thought we could match them in Blood Rituals and Magic. Now though it was all gone. Burned by the Inquisition as they cleared us out of our stronghold. I managed to save a few things including the artifacts I had created through the use of Spirit Thaumaturgy but I gave up quite a bit. Most of my books, my home, and the love of my life. Yes we can have romantic attachments, there are even Rituals for it. Goes to show that even monsters have deep inner lives I guess.

So where does that leave me? Somewhere in southern New York state on the back of my motorcycle heading south. The Sabbat had fled to join the Crusade thanks to the Beckoning and despite having been in a relatively high position as the Ductus of a powerful pack back in Montreal I refused. As an Ahrimane my blood ties are relatively weak due to the nature of what we are and how we were made. That is why I’m heading south… Many years ago before moving to Montreal I was a Sister in our commune. We were all Gangrel, gathered together to become something new. By Blood Rituals, which I still carry with me, we were separated from our previous clan and given a new family. Kinda culty right? Well said cult was better to me than the mangy Gangrel pack I had been reborn into. They gave me the thing I wanted more than anything… a connection to Gaia again. Then they were taken away from me. I am pretty sure I know by who, at least kinda. As we came from Gangrel and tended to run mercenary missions for the Sabbat I’m fairly certain it was Gangrel who took my sisters away. So now that the Sabbat is off fighting in the Old World it’s time to wage my own war here in the New World. Step one, get as far away from the humans that torched the temple. Step two is to return to my old stomping grounds. Step three is to find out if anyone remembers my sisters and acquire a target. Step four is to kill that target.

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I honestly had no idea what I was going to do after that if I survived though. Maybe start a new family? I had the rituals for how to turn female Gangrel’s into Ahrimane but was there a place for us in this world? Maybe thoughts for later. I’m sure my mom and brothers are still alive back on the West Coast. Shifters didn’t age like humans did but odds are they would just kill me on sight if I showed up. I’m wyrm-ridden after all and even if I can speak with and work with Spirits unlike other Cainites I’m still the enemy. It’s kinda sad that the only human child of a Kitsune mother turned into a vampire. It was getting early and it seems I didn’t plan my trip nearly as well as the first day because there was no interstate pull off this time with a cheap motel to crash in. Seems I was post coal parts of the state so with nothing legit on the horizon it was time to find me somewhere abandoned and bunker down.

The motorcycle pulled off the main road and into the ghost town. All around me were images of the 70s with the main street looking like it came right out of Silent Hill, without the fog thankfully. Shuttered stores, abandoned rust buckets and after pulling up my visor and sniffing the air no humans were in range. While sipping on meth heads isn’t my idea of quality dining a girl had to eat so it seemed like it would be another bottle night for me. At the rate I was going the next human I found might need to be fully drained to refill my stores but hunting would be pushed to the side in favor of a safe place to sleep.

Said place came into view about 7 minutes later in the form of an old gas station. Those things always had a cooler space out of sight of the sun so maybe my luck was going up? Pulling my bike up behind the building I turned it off and checked my bag first to make sure I did indeed have a bottle of the thaumaturgically preserved red stuff as well as a weapon. Said weapon came in the form of a curved single edged short sword that screamed weeaboo. Unlike the trash you buy on the internet though this one was sharp and a pretty vicious spirit of death was bound to it. While it didn’t look threatening, the wounds it inflicted refused to heal and could cut even Garou hide when activated. It though wasn’t my only tool. With a hum the air next me shimmered before a spirit in the same of a cougar materialized. My bloodline provided many special tools and one of them was the ability to summon spirits to my aid and this beauty was Nala and she was a good girl.

“Nala, check the perimeter and see if anything harmful is around. I’m going in to see if we have a place to sleep today.” My helmet came off allowing my cursed ears to scan the area like radar dishes before heading inside. Hopefully the storage area was still intact because I didn’t want to sleep underground as the dirt always got into my clothes. Next to me the spirit cat nodded and then slinked off with mischief on her feline face.