Brujah



The Brujah are one of the thirteen vampire clans of the old World of Darkness. Quick to anger and always passionate in the Modern Nights, they have fallen from their former position as a clan of lofty philosophers and activists and are often painted as merely a rabble of "angry young Kindred" and revolutionaries. Despite their rebellious nature, the Brujah were one of the founding clans of the Camarilla, and they have remained a pillar of that sect throughout its history.

History
Scratch the surface of a Brujah thug, and these days you are more than likely to find a Brujah thug underneath. However, the clan is a fallen clan, still mourning the death of their Carthaginian paradise and decaying from their era of warrior-scholars to the petty rebels common today.

Early History
Little consistent is known about the Brujah Antediluvian because the stories may confuse two individuals: the original founder of the Brujah, Ilyes, and his diablerist, Troile.

According to most records, Ilyes was a callous and fiercely logical creature. Dispassionate in the extreme, the Antediluvian sired a clan of equally dispassionate childer. Among these, however, was a less controlled whelp - Troile the rebel. What events caused the Embrace of Troile are unknown, but clan history holds that Troile diablerized her sire and claimed the clan as her own. A small bloodline, the True Brujah, claim descent from Ilyes and hold this grievance close to their dead hearts. It is said that a southern Greenlandic vampire by the name [|Immitus Frost] is one of the last known Methuselah of the True Brujah and that his lineage is among the last of their kind. Immitus holds the princedom of a city in Greenland called Ilulissat. Historians have him chronicled in the lineage of llyes.

Following the death of Ilyes in unrecorded history, the clan's next major moment is also its greatest moment. The Brujah built or co-opted a Phoenician colony, Carthage, for a grand experiment. The Brujah say that Carthage was a utopia — a city where Kindred and kine lived in harmony, and where justice reigned.

Other clans, and history, tell the story somewhat differently. The Carthaginians were cowed by their gods, offering their children to the flames of Moloch; and, apparently if the blood of sacrifices should flow down the gullet of a Methuselah, Moloch won't mind. Exactly what happened in Carthage is dependent on who speaks of it - the Brujah claim paradise, the other clans claim the presence of Baali and sacrifice. Some Brujah who were there, however, admit and acknowledge the truth.

Carthage fell during the Third Punic War, when Scipio Aemilianus, aided by the Malkavians and Ventrue of Rome crushed the shell of a city hollowed out by two previous wars. The earth was salted (preventing those Kindred who had melded with the earth from rising), the land was plowed and the Brujah experiment ended.

Dark Ages


During the Dark Ages, the Brujah were considered part of the High Clans, a clan of warrior-scholars noted for their fierce devotion to radical philosophies. The Brujah viewed themselves as the practitioners of a Greek philosophy of total mental and physical discipline (commonly called entelechy), and would often train their neonates in combat and the classics with equal discipline. Brujah of the Dark Ages were associated primarily with politics, especially in Greece. Their historical association with Carthage gave them a dim view of Rome and her heirs.

Brujah of the Islamic faith were known as Bay't Mushakis, and many were the childer of the Carthage kindred. They spread throughout North Africa in particular, with the younger ones declaring jihad and looking to punish the Roman kindred who had destroyed the great experiment. It seemed to work; most, if not all, of the Ventrue were pushed from the Islamic lands and spent much of the Dark Ages trying to regain a foothold there. Other Mushakisins sought to use Islamic teachings to re-construct their great experiment.

Final Nights
In the final nights, the Brujah are the clan of rebels. The ancient traditions of the clan are all but forgotten, with a few reluctant throwbacks like Theo Bell and undying artifacts like Critias to remember the clan's history and tradition.

For the Brujah, the twentieth century is marked by a sequence of failed projects. Two daring projects defined Brujah culture throughout the final nights: The Anarch Free State and the Soviet Union. In the first case, California was turned into a new kindred society, led by the Brujah Jeremy MacNeil. The AFS was almost a separate sect for the Kindred for nearly 5 decades. However, under the weight of Camarilla influence, the invasion of the Kuei-jin and the eventual betrayal by Brujah such as Tara of San Diego, the Free State largely collapsed.

The Soviet Union was another, arguably more daring, and ultimately more frightening experiment. In the early twentieth century, the Brujah pitched in with the Soviet Revolution, eventually forming a separate council which managed the entire USSR's vampiric affairs. This Brujah Council was destroyed overnight, however, when Baba Yaga rose from torpor and mystically separated Russia from the rest of the world. Only with the Little Grandmother's death at the hands of a Nictuku have vampires been able to cross the Shadow Curtain and survey the ruins of vampiric Russia.


 * VTDA: Veil of Night, p. 120-121

Organization
As a clan, the Brujah have next to no organization. Outside of the clan, the Brujah adore building structures, and then other Brujah adore tearing them down. Among modern Brujah, the primary structure is the division between the Iconoclast and Idealist factions of society.

Iconoclast
The iconoclasts are rebels and almost uniformly young Brujah. They fulfill the clan's stereotypical image as mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Idealist
In contrast to iconoclasts, idealists are the intellectuals and theorists of the clan. They are usually elders or ancillae, and the elders are idealists simply because their habits haven't changed since their embrace.

Brujah antitribu
The Sabbat-aligned Brujah are perhaps the ultimate degeneration of the Brujah and potentially what they may become. Violent to the extreme, they often comprise the bulk of the Sabbat's cannon fodder.

Bloodlines

 * The Osebo, the unique expression of the Brujah found only in sub-Saharan Africa.
 * The True Brujah, who claim to be descended from Brujah rather than Troile.

Embraces
The Brujah are infamous for ignoring the Tradition of progeny, and consequently Embrace whomever they feel like whenever they feel like. Brujah are stereotypically the source for most Caitiff because they are presumed to neglect training their childer.

Version Differences
The 1st edition of Vampire: The Masquerade included pronunciation keys for several of the unique terms in the game. That key gives broo'-Zhah as the proper pronunciation of the Clan's name (as heard in voice-overs in Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption), although in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines numerous characters pronounce it as broo'-Hah.