Among supernaturals, the term "Burning Times" is a recent term to describe the period of the Inquisition from the 14th century to the 16th.
Overview[]
While most learned supernaturals have accepted that the death-toll of the Inquisition was greatly exaggerated in later periods, to those living in the early modern period, it was nothing less than Armageddon and shook their self-image to the core.
Vampire: The Masquerade[]
Among vampires, the term was first coined in popular jargon by the Tremere scholar Aisling Sturbridge. Before, Elders had used the term poetically to describe the methods of the witch-hunters that stalked them.[1]
Werewolf: The Apocalypse[]
While werewolves are more resilient than vampires, this does not apply to their Kinfolk, whose Gaia-worship was seen as heresy and witchcraft and persecuted accordingly.[2] The Black Furies regard this event as the result of the influence of the Patriarch. They did not notice the growing menace until it was too late, and thus lost many Kinfolk. They developed a secret network of Furies, Kinfolk, and other sympathizers called The Sisterhood to smuggle women into Greece and other locations. The Black Furies suspect that the Get of Fenris may have aided the witch-hunters out of spite, but this has never been proven.[3][4]
The Silver Fang house known as House Wyrmfoe may have arisen during the middle part of this century.[5] Alternatively, they may have been officially recognized in the 1200s for their efforts to save many Garou Kinfolk (of a variety of tribes, not only those of the Silver Fangs) from the Inquisition.[6]
Mage: The Ascension[]
The Verbena claim to have suffered the most under the Burning Times, and still hold it as one of their justifications for their enmity against the Order of Reason and its subsequent organization, the Technocratic Union. As they tell it, it was a concentrated effort of the forces of Reason to extinguish the line of the Aeduna and the Wyck. While some Verbena have accepted modern scholarship and are willing to concede that some of their historical accounts might be exaggerated, others refer to the fact that their Avatars and memories of Past Lives paint a different picture, and that the death of any mage, in the face of their already low population, was a tremendous loss.[7]
Trivia[]
The term "Burning Times" originates in early Wiccan and neopagan literature and is these days generally accepted to be a historical inaccuracy and a conflation with other victims of separate inquisitions, like the Albigensan Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition and the Reformation. Guide to the Traditions points this bad scholarship out.[8]
References[]
- ↑ VTM: Encyclopaedia Vampirica, p. 40
- ↑ WTA: Tribebook: Black Furies, p. 22
- ↑ WTA: Black Furies Tribebook, p. 18
- ↑ WTA: Litany of the Tribes Volume 1, p. BF: 18
- ↑ WTA: Silver Fangs Tribebook, p. 38
- ↑ WTA: Silver Fangs Tribebook, p. 36
- ↑ MTAs: Tradition Book: Verbena, p. 23
- ↑ MTAs: Guide to the Traditions, p. 119
- MTAs: Cult of Ecstasy Tradition Book, p. 20