Category:Sabbat BNS

The Sabbat is a loose organization of Cainites who reject the Traditions. Unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat believes in the Antediluvians and Caine. Also known as the Sword of Caine, as they believe they will be the army Caine will use to destroy the Antediluvians once Gehenna arrives.

The Sabbat was founded in 1493, largely in reaction to the Convention of Thorns which founded the Camarilla. They are the remnants of the Anarch Revolt of the time.

Leaders of the endeavour were the Tzimisce and the Lasombra, two Clans that had ostensibly destroyed their Antediluvian founders and had accepted that there was no turning back for them. The Tzimisce would not cede their lands to the hated Tremere and submit the philosophy of Metamorphosism for the limited ideals of Humanity, while the Lasombra had invested too much in the Revolt to surrender their success to decrepit Elders of other Clans (in the words of the Clan representative at the Convention of Thorns: "I came to negotiate, not to surrender."). Delegations of both Clans met at the island of Mallorca and began their own negotiations, aided by several malcontents among the Anarchs, who refused to surrender to the Elders or did not share the view of their main Clan. Others joined to escape the practice of the Blood Bond, among them venerable Elders like the Malkavian Vasantasena, the Tremere Goratrix and the Ventrue Dominique Touraine. These groups existed as small packs in the wilderness that harassed the holdings of the Elders and those who had submitted to the Camarilla, called "Sabbats" by the superstitious mortal population for their rapacious behaviour and proud display of their inhumanity. Slowly, these disparate packs were brought to heel by the spreading of the Vaulderie, uniting the remnants of the Anarch Revolt as the Sabbat, a sect devoted to warfare against the Antediluvians and the tyranny of their catspaws.

Bitter war raged between the vampires of the newly formed Sabbat and the not-much-older Camarilla. The Inquisition continued to claim victims while all of Europe’s Cainites drew lines in the sand to mark their allegiance. As the Camarilla consolidated their hold on the major European cities, the Sabbat was thrusted into the defensive. Within the Black Monastery in Switzerland, the sect formalized the modern Paths of Enlightenment in 1666 out of the old Roads that were no longer applicable. Despite open protests against it as a tool of the Antediluvians, the Sabbat Elders realized the worth of secrecy in the modern night and the real danger of falling into Wassail in the face of the demands of the Beast, so they sought to accommondate to these circumstances without pretending to be human.

Besides Spain, which was controlled by a majority of Lasombra, and territories in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, which were claimed by the Tzimisce, most packs traveled across the sea to the New World. For a while, the sect flourished in the evolving colonies. Amid a revolutionary and radical mortal backdrop, the Sabbat’s presence was easy to hide among the insurrectionists, fighting against the Cainite masters of the Aztecs, the dreaded monster Huitzilopochtli and his peers, as well as against the native Lupines.

In the Modern Nights, the Sabbat has undertaken great offensives against the Camarilla, but also faced several internal crises. The destruction of the Tremere antitribu and the attacks against Mexican Sabbat holdings by unknown perpetrators have been damped by the arrival of new allies, the Salubri antitribu and the Harbingers of Skulls, who joined the Sabbat to exact vengeance against their enemies. The Black Hand, once a bastion of stability, shakes with the destruction of the infiltrators of the "True" Black Hand, as two Seraphs vanished and several Assamites abandoned the sect to return to Alamut under the leadership of ur-Shulgi. Tensions between the Sabbat Elders of the Old World and those of the New World arise. The Regent has been slain, although this is known only by the Cainite who impersonates her until the charade will be revealed.