As the inevitability of the end approached the world, the Camarilla did the unthinkable.  The pillars of rule among the Kindred, the scorners of Cainites and the beliefs of Nod and the end feared the truth rushing headlong to their Ivory Tower, and to preserve all they had left in power, broke the Masquerade.  Starting with the strongest of the powers, the Ventrue rose up to secure all human holdings and properties.  Feeling that if they could control it all as they did their people, that they could preserve themselves. And for a short, terrifying time, it did.

But then Caine arrived.  As the very fabrics of reality were unraveling, Caine looked upon the fires of the end and decided to absolve himself of his greatest sin and mistake: The creation of the Kindred themselves.  In choosing to be absolved, Caine cast himself into the Oblivion, dragging all his people with him. In one fell swoop every Kindred that currently walked the world fell into a Final Death, their very everything falling towards the forever nothingness with their progenitor.

 

And then She came.

 

Lilith, the Dark Mother, was the first cursed being in creation. It was she who had embraced Caine and taught him all he knew. Long had she been the silent observer of a group that she had no hand making, and yet cherished deeply as any mother would her wayward children. At last, she could abstain no more. She saw the annihilation of the Kindred and pulled every Kindred’s soul into a space between life and Oblivion, proving once and for all that despite what was thought, that all Kindred do possess something akin to a soul.

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In that moment, instead of immediate condemnation, every Kindred held the same shared experience…

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“You, Child of Caine, were busy surviving the end of days that your very father spat upon your existence and sent you to death. Yet I, your loving and devoted Mother, has watched you from the very dawn of your creation and seen nothing but a growing fondness for your perseverance. So, as my gift to you, discarded Childe, I ask you to look upon your existence and give you the option he never allowed you.  Choose your Father and his cold, empty rejection and an end to all you hold dear, or choose me and be reborn for a third time in my image.”

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Each Kindred would find themselves in a long and winding hallway with black marble floors and  grey striped wallpaper.  On the walls hug in a mish mash of frames were living images of that Kindred’s life, reflecting the most important moments of their life. At either end of the hall were two doors, one was black lacquer and cold and finite.  The other was a deep red stained wood that drew all the warmth so that nearing it felt equal parts painful as comforting.  Each Kindred would understand the black door, lead to Caine and to Absolution, a true and final death, and an end to all.  The other door led to a continued unlife of pain, back in a world that rejected all the Kindred knew as true. A world the Kindred knew was cruel, and was struggling its own last breath of survival.  

It is thought that three of every four Kindred chose to stay with Caine and absolution. To this day, they remain unaccounted for. In the eyes of the world, the Cainites of the world ceased to exist.

 

That is not you.

 

Whether you were embraced after the choice or were reborn a third time as a Child of Lilith, you remain in the world, still cursed, forever changed and  stronger for it.

 

(This page will be updated as needed.)

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