Ennoia, according to legend, was a child of Lilith who was Embraced before the biblical Deluge, and came to be the fabled progenitor of the Gangrel clan.
Biography
Tales of the Clan
There are many different versions on who exactly Ennoia was, the fractured nature of the Clan making a depiction much more difficult. Bloodlines like the Anda or the Noiads have their own origin story that is intrinsically tied into local beliefs and has few things in common with the Noddistic tradition.
The Beast
The name Ennoia means "the female half of God", and it is said she was a child of Lilith. However, she was abandoned by her mother to a pack of wolves. The animals raised her to become a great predatory hunter. According to Lord Ashton: "Ennoia took a mate from the pack and... bore him children... and it is from them that Lupines trace their ancestry". Eventually, Ennoia left the wolves and traveled to the City of Enoch where she was Embraced, becoming the Gangrel Antediluvian.
Some Toreador scholars presented a version of the vampiric mythology in which Ennoia was a male figure. According to this version of the vampiric mythology, the Gangrel Antediluvian apparently answered by the name of "Enkidu" (although this was actually the name of one of Ennoia's brood), and that "he" possessed the Tablet of Destiny until Ishtar tried to take the item from him. Outraged by this action, the Gangrel Antediluvian set out to kill Ishtar.
As Ennoia tracked Ishtar to Sumer, she embraced Ereshkigal to help her in the attack on her sibling. When the Gangrel came to confront Ishtar, her childe-lover Tammuz interceded, and ultimately gave his unlife so that Ishtar could flee. She then sought aid from the king of Sumer, Gilgamesh. However, he had already been embraced by Ennoia. The Toreador fled from the pair, but no before unleashing upon them some great monster known as the Bull of Heaven, while she escaped to Crete.[3] Ennoia decided to stay in Sumer, where "he" established a large brood of Gangrel.
The Tiger Queen
Legend has it that Ennoia and Ravana were siblings. After all the fallout of the Second City, the siblings wandered westward onto the vast steppe of central Asia. While Ennoia established her time in Sumer, Ravana encountered native tribes, mostly nomads and wanderers. They Embraced childer, known as methuselahs of the Gangrel and Ravnos clans. A reference to a "Great Spider King" and a "Tiger Queen" was found on a pre-Alexandrian inscription deep within an empty tomblike cave, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Some Gangrel scholars are led to believe that the Spider King was Ravana, and Ennoia the Tiger Queen.
Inscription of Ravana and Ennoia
Eventually, Ennoia and Ravana had a falling out. Something happened to drive them to one another's throats. They fought for decades; they flung their childer at one another, and even encouraged their childer to Embrace new fledglings as soldiers. By all accounts, Ennoia's broods were far stronger, but Ravana was far more cunning and wielded the powers of deception.
At last, Ravana called down some kind of unholy devastation from the sky to destroy or disable most of Ennoia's forces. The handful that survived fled west into Europe or Africa. The survivors then fought amongst themselves, scattering north, south, and west. Those who went north latched onto the progenitors of Siberian tribes and the Vikings. Those who went south prowled the African plains above the Sahara to become the shapechangers of the Serengeti. The few vampires who fled eastward were presumably destroyed. The majority went west; it is from these that most of the Gangrel clan traces its lineage.
The Tale of the Twin Gods
According to Gangrel myth, thousands of years ago, there was a god who had many children and his children fought as children are expected to do. Ennoia and Churka, the youngest and a pair of twins, chose to leave their quarrelsome siblings and travel east to the lands of their mother.
Unable to escape their quarrelsome nature and without a father to control them, the twins came to blows. Evenly and perfectly matched, they could not face each other directly with a definite victor. And so the twins began to recruit armies – Ennoia recruited an army of the bravest warriors, and Churka, the most cunning.
They battled at night so that the other gods would not learn of their feud. These two armies fought for centuries but at some point, when it was believed Ennoia's army would finally have victory, she was betrayed by her two best warriors, Laibon and Lhiannan. Without two of her generals, however, the battle tilted in the favor of Churka's army.
Saddened by this betrayal, Ennoia left her childer and disappeared. Soon, without the support of their progenitor, and battling Churka's get – who were aided by the demonic Giants of the East that served him – Ennoia's army was eventually defeated and pushed out of their lands in the east.
From that night on, they called themselves the "Gangrel", and traveled west, meeting their other Cainite cousins. Even today, some Gangrel believe that when Churka and his army are destroyed and the betrayers punished, Ennoia will finally come back to her children.
Other accounts
The Tale of the Einherjar
The northern Gangrel had a very different explanation for their origin. According to them, they descended from Canarl, a warrior who was cursed by a rune-mark that prevented his death and who had been given the blood of Odin and were destined to stand by his side when Ragnarök would come. Sadly, few of their tales survived, making their record (such as how the different Clans had been spawned) incomplete.
The Tale of the Traitor
A story told by the Indian Ravnos, in a non-canonical version of Karavalanisha Vrana, the Gangrel Antediluvian (also named Ennoia) was created by the gods as a second undead monster next to Zapathasura. She is called the most dangerous of warriors, supposedly mastering the art of shapeshifting in order to better combat the asuratizayya. When the gods told her the price of her existence, she cursed them for making her an unliving beast and turned her back on the duties they had charged her to fulfill. Enraged, the gods cursed their second creation to "dwell among the beasts and find no safe haven anywhere in the world." They also gave her bestial features, so that no human would be deceived by her appearance. Following texts relate how the Gangrel, enraged at their loss of purpose, cannot abide the sight of the Ravnos for showing the strength and resolve Ennoia lacked and continue to harass them out of hate born out of shame.
Final Nights
Ennoia apparently drifted in and out of torpor for millennia after the fall of Enoch. It is suggested that Ennoia fell into a long torpor around the time of Christ and there is debate as to whether she has woken up from it yet.
Time of Judgment
Ennoia appears in two Gehenna scenarios. In "Nightshade", Ennoia has allied with the Setite Antediluvian and appears as a hellish amalgamation of bestial features. She is destroyed along with the other Antediluvians. In "The Crucible of God", Ennoia has fused with the Earth itself to transcend the limits imposed by vampirism via her supreme command of Protean. She causes earthquakes in her quest for vitae to escape the Withering and complete her transformation.
Version Differences
Clanbook: Toreador Revised refers to Ennoia in the male context, saying she used the name "Enkidu" while residing in Sumer.[3]
Gallery
References
- ↑ VTM: Clanbook: Gangrel, p. 11
- ↑ VTM: The Book of Nod, p. 130
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 VTM: Clanbook: Toreador Revised, p. 15-17
- VTM: Clanbook: Gangrel Revised
- VTM: The Kindred Most Wanted
- VTM: Gehenna - "Nightshade" and "The Crucible of God" scenarios
