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Ancient Bloodlines
Remnants of Ages PastThe Blood isn’t stagnant. It changes with the times, even if the Kindred that carry it don’t. Every epoch leads to new permutations of the five clans. Some of them die out when they are no longer useful, but others carry on, even to the modern nights. Some have been forgotten. Some are ready to reclaim what they have lost. All retain pieces of the cultures and events that created them.Weapons for the PresentTwenty new bloodlines, based on the historical flashpoints presented in Ancient Mysteries New Disciplines, Devotions, factions, antagonists, mysterious places and a variety of other options of Vampire chronicles Two new forms of blood magic — Haitian Kindred Vodoun and Sumerian Mérges Sorcery
160 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2009
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May 27, 2015
This book was kind of an up and down for me.
The Introduction
As usual for these titles the introduction storyline was pretty good. It featured the awakening of an ancient Egyptian vampiress and was well written (albeit the comment on 1903 was confusing) but I think it's kind of a waste since the book is basically an introduction on all sorts of bloodlines throughout the ages and there was no epilogue or so that featured them. Perhaps a story from the Indian bloodlines and their world would have been better.
Big moments in time
These were typically (perhaps stereotypically) American-centric:
Some moments are big: the time Kennedy or Lennon died, the day men landed on the moon or the Challenger shuttle exploded, the morning when two planes struck the towers.
I would have told the authors to add a few more things: the toppling of the Chilean government, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the start of the Suharto massacres, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (a death with much wider repercussions than Kennedy's or Lennon's) or the earthquake of Lisbon and the eruption of the Krakatau or Mount Tambora. Lot's of moments in time that are much bigger than what they chose.
The choice of history flashpoints was interesting, especially since Babylon and Ancient Egypt are kind of a given stereotype, so I don't mind that they chose the Haitian revolution, the Thirty years war, the first kingdom of Thailand and the First World War among others, but it is still weird. Why only those? Surely there is more if these count: World War II, the Mongol conquests, the invasion of Australia etc. etc.
It was a good chapter on storytelling but I was not sad when it was over since I started this book to read about the vampire bloodlines.
The "ancient" Bloodlines
The First World War
The Caporetti bloodline was a nice idea but a few things about their history seemed like quite a stretch.
A similar stretch occurred with the Brothers of Ypres. Albeit stretch might be the wrong word since its not quite clear what the authors meant when they stated that they, in World War II, fed well from some of the most callous evils ever perpetrated by mortals against their fellow human beings. Since if this is supposed to refer to the Nazi gas chambers (as these vampires can only feed on "contaminated" humans), you would need a pretty good story to justify that being even remotely possible. The only possibility that is remotely credible would be with those that have mastered the highest level of their poisonous discipline and even then it would only be for entering the chambers and even that is quite a stretch since the chambers were not so open to allow some human sized cloud to enter unnoticed and even then the chaos inside would sure as hell not allow for undisturbed feeding, if any. And a death/labor camb in and off itself would not have some person entering only at night and feeding on inmates undisturbed. In some areas where the inmates would be used as slave laborers or some quarantine sections of the camps it might work but only at night and that is very unusual. I think who ever wrote that didn't know what s/he was talking about.
But still in and of itself these vampires were good ideas, however, why on earth a full section on a vampire-hunting shadow cult who is secretely controlled by vampires is here, I do not understand. Why is this cult in a book about ancient bloodlines when it's not even connected to any bloodline?
The "Wild West"
The bloodline called Sta-Au is interesting in how they seek to transcend their vampiric state. However one power is weird: it requires Protean 3 to activate, but that power grows claws for dealing damage and the power is for making you temporarily immaterial to avoid damage. The fifth level of Protean, dissolving into mist, would fit better.
The Shepherd bloodline is also interesting, as their role as shepherds of humans (to have save hunting grounds) also causes their vampire blood to grow stronger much more slowly than usual and yet it makes them stand out less to humans. They even have powers to assess the general mood of their herd or grant them protection.
But as usual for books like these we get a bit of pseudo-correctness in it when the book speaks about a guy called Blackcloud, who had some Blackfoot blood in him (though he largely eschewed any connection to his native peoples). Because God forbid someone goes their own way based on their own choices and does not consider some people he may be distantly related to his people. Such things are bad, you have this and that ancestry so you must act like this and that. I mean emanzipation, what is that right?
Sadly that entry from Blackcloud's journey looked really interesting with its drawing and description of a marked skull; however they didn't give us more. After all the info on the Land of Worms was not that great. It could be any accursed place, really.
The Indians
In the chapter on the bloodlines of the so called Age of Treasury there was a growing problem with the artwork, it was decent sure, but not really fitting the descriptions. You see, that one guy was supposed to be of an Indian bloodline. But how many native Indians have such light brown hair as the man in the picture? The skin might fit, but the hair looked pretty unusual for that region (there was a similar problem with the vampiress on the cover). Thankfully another picture had fit a bit better, albeit he was pretty damn pale. In fact he looks like you would expect a stereotypical French guy to look like.
However their special blood based power sounds pretty interesting.
The Canda Bhanu bloodline with their history of murder, usurpation of a native bloodline and how they themselves forgot that and are now cursed with a bigger suceptibility to other vampires's powers was also pretty good. However that section had no introduction like the others but starts with the parent clan of the line. Also it was really starting to get annoying how they wer constantly speaking of European kindred/invaders when they obiously mean the British.
The information that Indian Kindred often feel they owe greater loyalty to, and derive more of their identity from adherence to their varna and its particular dharma than they do to their clan, was an upward point again as authors often ignore the influence of specific human culture in their vampires, albeit I wished there was more if it.
However there was one big problem with the entire passage:
Why are these considered bloodlines of the Age of Treasury? That "age" was in the mid-18th century and while the events did shape the course of their own history the two bloodlines had existed for possibly millennia before that (making them the first actually ancient bloodlines here). So they actually are ancient (the first of the introduced ones up to that point) but the assignment does not fit as they did not originate during that time.
The Haitian vampires
These two originated during the Haitian Revolution:
1) The Apollinaire is being able to see ghosts and being connected to the loa Ghede. However no idea whether the information on Loa is correct.
2) The tragic Les Gens Libres (or Freedmen).
And from them there was the bloodline that was really making me question the accuracy of naming conventions for these bloodlines.
The Thirty Years war
You see the name of the Austrian bloodline (at least they didn't equate Central Europe with Germany alone as the start of the chapter suggested) is "Geheim." That is a bastardization of the word "geheim," which is an adjective and not a noun and means "secret." I don't believe even for a second that any Germanspeaking bloodline would choose such a name and survive it since it would draw attention en masse. And it's not just the name of the line, but the founder himself was a vampire known to his contemporaries as Count Geheim of Graz. Did these moronic authors chose the word "Geheim" as a name because it is German and therefore sounded cool to these idiots? We are German-speakers, we do not call our kids adjectives and nouns. Later on they have the discipline "Blut Alchemie" which means "blood alchemy. These idiots have written it the way you would write it in English, aka two words, but in German it would most likely be one word.
Not to mention that it makes no sense to have a hedonistic vampire line connected to the royal European lines. And of course they have them be connected to the Thule Society, because why would it be anybody else right? They even had rumors of them beig connected to the Nazis. I really got the suspicion this was written to make Central Europeans look bad. Or it was plain cliché (since the views of the Nazis were widespread over many countries including the USA), and if that is ok they could just as well have created an American bloodline that has delusions of exceptionalism, spies on everyone and bombs its enemies from the face of the earth and justifies that by claiming to spread democracy.
Under the line you could say by this point in the book that you should not trust them with their names nor with history or mythology as their information on the Wild Hunt being apparently restricted to Central Europe is false and if Europe's history of war creates so many ghosts, than Asia would be full of them as well.
And especially the beings called Yanussaren are complete bullshit in this scenario of the World of Darkness, especially considered that they are breaking the poor soul’s bones and strewing his organs across the street in a frenzied orgy of violence, since that is too noticeable for this sort of game line.
The next line called "Maidens" or "Septima" at least had a better name, the element of being addicted to martyrdom was also something new, but the fact that their founder Robert had pale blue eyes, long sandy hair and beardless face forever frozen at two decades of age did not surprise me at all, in fact it was pretty cliché. But at least they were an unusal bloodline of vampires.
Sadly it did not really go upwards all the time from there.
The European exploration of the world
You see as interesting as the telepathic Corajoso bloodline is, they did bring one thing to mind: Bloodlines that spread across the globe in these books, especially in terms of direct exploration/conquest, are almost entirely European. Sure some non-European ones that are not old have spread, but none older than 300 years. And that is pretty odd if you ask me, especially considered the history of Asia and North Africa. You would think at least the Mongol invasion would have spawned a few. Also they have a Roman vampire flee to India to ursurp a native bloodline but the other way around is inconceivable?
Also the Linagem power's effect of making use and influencing blood ties between vampires is a useful and interesting technique, but considered that these vampires are called Telepaths, that is not a power I was expecting.
I am also not sure what the point was when the book stated that African gods were known to take on widely different forms, and most of their appearances did not resemble the typical dark-skinned native African. Many gods have downright alien colors and appearances. So is this supposed to imply something? Also you have to wonder why on earth it was stated they had an utter contempt for humanity’s decision to abandon them for Christianity. Why always Christianity in this chapter? Even when you make the argument that they only talk about subsaharan Africa, even there there are still native religions and Islam. So shouldn't they still have found some niches according to their traditional ways? And the first level of their unique discipline of Nburu doesn't fit the other four.
The vampires of Thailand
With the bloodlines of the First Kingdom of Thailand we did get closer to actually ancient bloodlines again. However we didn't get much on the first kingdom and considered that no form of boxing was ever mentioned so far in this book I can only assume that the insertion of the Muay Thai fighting style box (for game mechanics) is there because this is about Thai bloodlines, which sounds a tad stereotypical.
And while the skin tone fits on the pictures; the drawing of the faces does not actually spell "Thai" to me. These poeople could be from anywhere.
Furthermore while the concept of these Kinnaree vampires as demonic protectors of Thailand is ok, I wonder why this section has three story hooks (all involving the USA of course) for storytelling. Actually it is really inconsistent here which chapters have them and which not. Also this buddhist way of vampiric enlightenment and salvation, plus he Buddhist vampire bloodline and the sort of emotional coldness and relative calmness is interesting and truly similar to the covenant Ordo Dracul. But the story hooks once again reminded me how USA centric these books are, so far all where a place was named that was not in the country of origin of the non-US bloodlines it was always a USA place. But still the order's restrictions of being unable to function when taking blood from unwilling victims is a nice change.
The Crusades
One of the best concepts here, the Mystikoi, devote themselves to understanding the universe, both in its base physical and higher spiritual aspects, and reshaping their own forms in what they believe to be God’s image (and using their Beast as their primary guide, which makes sense considered how many spirits behave) were pretty interesting again. And the power they have of drawing out the Beast and at the highest level infusing it into your flesh is really interesting. But the abilities they have at level 5 are contradictory.
Also, like a previous chapter they had, after the Order of Sir Martin (or Leper knights), another order but apparently not a bloodline called Ahl al-Jabal, the martyrs.
And when we came to Iraq they had the scenaripr of an American soldier moving to help a fallen Iraqi citizen only to be hit in the back of the head with a brick by another (a man who is riddled with bullets moments after by the Marine’s squad mate).
Also, just like with naming conventions I must ask whether the authors now what they are writing about. They wrote here: Even were one of these holy killers to develop such skills, her fellows would almost certainly destroy her as one of the enemy. "Her?" The members of this organization of hunters are drawn from the lands where Islam is strong so I have my doubts that it has many women among them. So why is "her" in here? Is that common in English to refer to the feminine when something is unspecific? And despite having said already that these hunters do not kill indescriminately but with precision so not to harm bystanders they apparently had to say that none of them has ever become a suicide bomber, as if this wouldn't have been obvious. And I still wonder why they are in here when they have no connection to the two bloodlines.
PS. "Satan" is the Christian name, for Islam it would be "Iblis" or "Shaitan."
Babylon of course
At the very least the Babylonian bloodlines were actually ancient in the actual sense of the worlds, as stereotypical as it is to have Babylon being ruled by dark powers from the shadows and even having demons consort with vampires. And while the bloodline of the En sounds a bit too powerful with their demonic symbionts to not ruling all vampires by now the the Mérges Sorcery of the Iltani with its various ways of creating posion to affect vampires in various ways sounds like a good concept.
And while you can argue why these Edimmu are in this book to begin with at least they are connected to the two bloodlines unlike the previous organizations.
The Egyptians
Like the depicted vampires among the En are whiter than white the depictions of the Egyptian Usiri vampires seem to overdo it as one of the two Egyptians is rather looking like a statue instead of a vampire. Also while other Egyptian bloodlines got names in other books we still only get fleeting information on them here and focus on the Usiri and the Bak-Ra and their status as fallen kings who lost their memory. And while it is a nice storytelling concept to have the Bak-Ra being originally swindlers and now believing their own lies I had hoped that we would get more information on the other Egyptian bloodlines.
Conclusion
I must say that I had expected more from this book. Sure many bloodlines were interesting in an off itself and had some pretty good ideas and can surely be used for good storytelling and as inspirations but when it comes to actually connecting them to history the book is severely lacking, just like in its execution regarding story hooks and fitting artwork.
And of course it's incredibly American centric. They really could have put more effort into this and chose some other points in time. Maybe the book "Ancient Mysteries" will shed some light on this for me and show why they chose these and no others.
That is actually a minus point as well: Normally you would only need the World of Darkness Rulebook, the Vampire the Requiem corebook and whatever additional VtR title you have, but here you seem to need two to actually understand what was chosen and what not.
The Introduction
As usual for these titles the introduction storyline was pretty good. It featured the awakening of an ancient Egyptian vampiress and was well written (albeit the comment on 1903 was confusing) but I think it's kind of a waste since the book is basically an introduction on all sorts of bloodlines throughout the ages and there was no epilogue or so that featured them. Perhaps a story from the Indian bloodlines and their world would have been better.
Big moments in time
These were typically (perhaps stereotypically) American-centric:
Some moments are big: the time Kennedy or Lennon died, the day men landed on the moon or the Challenger shuttle exploded, the morning when two planes struck the towers.
I would have told the authors to add a few more things: the toppling of the Chilean government, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the start of the Suharto massacres, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (a death with much wider repercussions than Kennedy's or Lennon's) or the earthquake of Lisbon and the eruption of the Krakatau or Mount Tambora. Lot's of moments in time that are much bigger than what they chose.
The choice of history flashpoints was interesting, especially since Babylon and Ancient Egypt are kind of a given stereotype, so I don't mind that they chose the Haitian revolution, the Thirty years war, the first kingdom of Thailand and the First World War among others, but it is still weird. Why only those? Surely there is more if these count: World War II, the Mongol conquests, the invasion of Australia etc. etc.
It was a good chapter on storytelling but I was not sad when it was over since I started this book to read about the vampire bloodlines.
The "ancient" Bloodlines
The First World War
The Caporetti bloodline was a nice idea but a few things about their history seemed like quite a stretch.
A similar stretch occurred with the Brothers of Ypres. Albeit stretch might be the wrong word since its not quite clear what the authors meant when they stated that they, in World War II, fed well from some of the most callous evils ever perpetrated by mortals against their fellow human beings. Since if this is supposed to refer to the Nazi gas chambers (as these vampires can only feed on "contaminated" humans), you would need a pretty good story to justify that being even remotely possible. The only possibility that is remotely credible would be with those that have mastered the highest level of their poisonous discipline and even then it would only be for entering the chambers and even that is quite a stretch since the chambers were not so open to allow some human sized cloud to enter unnoticed and even then the chaos inside would sure as hell not allow for undisturbed feeding, if any. And a death/labor camb in and off itself would not have some person entering only at night and feeding on inmates undisturbed. In some areas where the inmates would be used as slave laborers or some quarantine sections of the camps it might work but only at night and that is very unusual. I think who ever wrote that didn't know what s/he was talking about.
But still in and of itself these vampires were good ideas, however, why on earth a full section on a vampire-hunting shadow cult who is secretely controlled by vampires is here, I do not understand. Why is this cult in a book about ancient bloodlines when it's not even connected to any bloodline?
The "Wild West"
The bloodline called Sta-Au is interesting in how they seek to transcend their vampiric state. However one power is weird: it requires Protean 3 to activate, but that power grows claws for dealing damage and the power is for making you temporarily immaterial to avoid damage. The fifth level of Protean, dissolving into mist, would fit better.
The Shepherd bloodline is also interesting, as their role as shepherds of humans (to have save hunting grounds) also causes their vampire blood to grow stronger much more slowly than usual and yet it makes them stand out less to humans. They even have powers to assess the general mood of their herd or grant them protection.
But as usual for books like these we get a bit of pseudo-correctness in it when the book speaks about a guy called Blackcloud, who had some Blackfoot blood in him (though he largely eschewed any connection to his native peoples). Because God forbid someone goes their own way based on their own choices and does not consider some people he may be distantly related to his people. Such things are bad, you have this and that ancestry so you must act like this and that. I mean emanzipation, what is that right?
Sadly that entry from Blackcloud's journey looked really interesting with its drawing and description of a marked skull; however they didn't give us more. After all the info on the Land of Worms was not that great. It could be any accursed place, really.
The Indians
In the chapter on the bloodlines of the so called Age of Treasury there was a growing problem with the artwork, it was decent sure, but not really fitting the descriptions. You see, that one guy was supposed to be of an Indian bloodline. But how many native Indians have such light brown hair as the man in the picture? The skin might fit, but the hair looked pretty unusual for that region (there was a similar problem with the vampiress on the cover). Thankfully another picture had fit a bit better, albeit he was pretty damn pale. In fact he looks like you would expect a stereotypical French guy to look like.
However their special blood based power sounds pretty interesting.
The Canda Bhanu bloodline with their history of murder, usurpation of a native bloodline and how they themselves forgot that and are now cursed with a bigger suceptibility to other vampires's powers was also pretty good. However that section had no introduction like the others but starts with the parent clan of the line. Also it was really starting to get annoying how they wer constantly speaking of European kindred/invaders when they obiously mean the British.
The information that Indian Kindred often feel they owe greater loyalty to, and derive more of their identity from adherence to their varna and its particular dharma than they do to their clan, was an upward point again as authors often ignore the influence of specific human culture in their vampires, albeit I wished there was more if it.
However there was one big problem with the entire passage:
Why are these considered bloodlines of the Age of Treasury? That "age" was in the mid-18th century and while the events did shape the course of their own history the two bloodlines had existed for possibly millennia before that (making them the first actually ancient bloodlines here). So they actually are ancient (the first of the introduced ones up to that point) but the assignment does not fit as they did not originate during that time.
The Haitian vampires
These two originated during the Haitian Revolution:
1) The Apollinaire is being able to see ghosts and being connected to the loa Ghede. However no idea whether the information on Loa is correct.
2) The tragic Les Gens Libres (or Freedmen).
And from them there was the bloodline that was really making me question the accuracy of naming conventions for these bloodlines.
The Thirty Years war
You see the name of the Austrian bloodline (at least they didn't equate Central Europe with Germany alone as the start of the chapter suggested) is "Geheim." That is a bastardization of the word "geheim," which is an adjective and not a noun and means "secret." I don't believe even for a second that any Germanspeaking bloodline would choose such a name and survive it since it would draw attention en masse. And it's not just the name of the line, but the founder himself was a vampire known to his contemporaries as Count Geheim of Graz. Did these moronic authors chose the word "Geheim" as a name because it is German and therefore sounded cool to these idiots? We are German-speakers, we do not call our kids adjectives and nouns. Later on they have the discipline "Blut Alchemie" which means "blood alchemy. These idiots have written it the way you would write it in English, aka two words, but in German it would most likely be one word.
Not to mention that it makes no sense to have a hedonistic vampire line connected to the royal European lines. And of course they have them be connected to the Thule Society, because why would it be anybody else right? They even had rumors of them beig connected to the Nazis. I really got the suspicion this was written to make Central Europeans look bad. Or it was plain cliché (since the views of the Nazis were widespread over many countries including the USA), and if that is ok they could just as well have created an American bloodline that has delusions of exceptionalism, spies on everyone and bombs its enemies from the face of the earth and justifies that by claiming to spread democracy.
Under the line you could say by this point in the book that you should not trust them with their names nor with history or mythology as their information on the Wild Hunt being apparently restricted to Central Europe is false and if Europe's history of war creates so many ghosts, than Asia would be full of them as well.
And especially the beings called Yanussaren are complete bullshit in this scenario of the World of Darkness, especially considered that they are breaking the poor soul’s bones and strewing his organs across the street in a frenzied orgy of violence, since that is too noticeable for this sort of game line.
The next line called "Maidens" or "Septima" at least had a better name, the element of being addicted to martyrdom was also something new, but the fact that their founder Robert had pale blue eyes, long sandy hair and beardless face forever frozen at two decades of age did not surprise me at all, in fact it was pretty cliché. But at least they were an unusal bloodline of vampires.
Sadly it did not really go upwards all the time from there.
The European exploration of the world
You see as interesting as the telepathic Corajoso bloodline is, they did bring one thing to mind: Bloodlines that spread across the globe in these books, especially in terms of direct exploration/conquest, are almost entirely European. Sure some non-European ones that are not old have spread, but none older than 300 years. And that is pretty odd if you ask me, especially considered the history of Asia and North Africa. You would think at least the Mongol invasion would have spawned a few. Also they have a Roman vampire flee to India to ursurp a native bloodline but the other way around is inconceivable?
Also the Linagem power's effect of making use and influencing blood ties between vampires is a useful and interesting technique, but considered that these vampires are called Telepaths, that is not a power I was expecting.
I am also not sure what the point was when the book stated that African gods were known to take on widely different forms, and most of their appearances did not resemble the typical dark-skinned native African. Many gods have downright alien colors and appearances. So is this supposed to imply something? Also you have to wonder why on earth it was stated they had an utter contempt for humanity’s decision to abandon them for Christianity. Why always Christianity in this chapter? Even when you make the argument that they only talk about subsaharan Africa, even there there are still native religions and Islam. So shouldn't they still have found some niches according to their traditional ways? And the first level of their unique discipline of Nburu doesn't fit the other four.
The vampires of Thailand
With the bloodlines of the First Kingdom of Thailand we did get closer to actually ancient bloodlines again. However we didn't get much on the first kingdom and considered that no form of boxing was ever mentioned so far in this book I can only assume that the insertion of the Muay Thai fighting style box (for game mechanics) is there because this is about Thai bloodlines, which sounds a tad stereotypical.
And while the skin tone fits on the pictures; the drawing of the faces does not actually spell "Thai" to me. These poeople could be from anywhere.
Furthermore while the concept of these Kinnaree vampires as demonic protectors of Thailand is ok, I wonder why this section has three story hooks (all involving the USA of course) for storytelling. Actually it is really inconsistent here which chapters have them and which not. Also this buddhist way of vampiric enlightenment and salvation, plus he Buddhist vampire bloodline and the sort of emotional coldness and relative calmness is interesting and truly similar to the covenant Ordo Dracul. But the story hooks once again reminded me how USA centric these books are, so far all where a place was named that was not in the country of origin of the non-US bloodlines it was always a USA place. But still the order's restrictions of being unable to function when taking blood from unwilling victims is a nice change.
The Crusades
One of the best concepts here, the Mystikoi, devote themselves to understanding the universe, both in its base physical and higher spiritual aspects, and reshaping their own forms in what they believe to be God’s image (and using their Beast as their primary guide, which makes sense considered how many spirits behave) were pretty interesting again. And the power they have of drawing out the Beast and at the highest level infusing it into your flesh is really interesting. But the abilities they have at level 5 are contradictory.
Also, like a previous chapter they had, after the Order of Sir Martin (or Leper knights), another order but apparently not a bloodline called Ahl al-Jabal, the martyrs.
And when we came to Iraq they had the scenaripr of an American soldier moving to help a fallen Iraqi citizen only to be hit in the back of the head with a brick by another (a man who is riddled with bullets moments after by the Marine’s squad mate).
Also, just like with naming conventions I must ask whether the authors now what they are writing about. They wrote here: Even were one of these holy killers to develop such skills, her fellows would almost certainly destroy her as one of the enemy. "Her?" The members of this organization of hunters are drawn from the lands where Islam is strong so I have my doubts that it has many women among them. So why is "her" in here? Is that common in English to refer to the feminine when something is unspecific? And despite having said already that these hunters do not kill indescriminately but with precision so not to harm bystanders they apparently had to say that none of them has ever become a suicide bomber, as if this wouldn't have been obvious. And I still wonder why they are in here when they have no connection to the two bloodlines.
PS. "Satan" is the Christian name, for Islam it would be "Iblis" or "Shaitan."
Babylon of course
At the very least the Babylonian bloodlines were actually ancient in the actual sense of the worlds, as stereotypical as it is to have Babylon being ruled by dark powers from the shadows and even having demons consort with vampires. And while the bloodline of the En sounds a bit too powerful with their demonic symbionts to not ruling all vampires by now the the Mérges Sorcery of the Iltani with its various ways of creating posion to affect vampires in various ways sounds like a good concept.
And while you can argue why these Edimmu are in this book to begin with at least they are connected to the two bloodlines unlike the previous organizations.
The Egyptians
Like the depicted vampires among the En are whiter than white the depictions of the Egyptian Usiri vampires seem to overdo it as one of the two Egyptians is rather looking like a statue instead of a vampire. Also while other Egyptian bloodlines got names in other books we still only get fleeting information on them here and focus on the Usiri and the Bak-Ra and their status as fallen kings who lost their memory. And while it is a nice storytelling concept to have the Bak-Ra being originally swindlers and now believing their own lies I had hoped that we would get more information on the other Egyptian bloodlines.
Conclusion
I must say that I had expected more from this book. Sure many bloodlines were interesting in an off itself and had some pretty good ideas and can surely be used for good storytelling and as inspirations but when it comes to actually connecting them to history the book is severely lacking, just like in its execution regarding story hooks and fitting artwork.
And of course it's incredibly American centric. They really could have put more effort into this and chose some other points in time. Maybe the book "Ancient Mysteries" will shed some light on this for me and show why they chose these and no others.
That is actually a minus point as well: Normally you would only need the World of Darkness Rulebook, the Vampire the Requiem corebook and whatever additional VtR title you have, but here you seem to need two to actually understand what was chosen and what not.
August 20, 2015
I give this book a resounding "eh." There are some unique concepts I plan on incorporating in my games (Kindred Vodoun and Edimmu most notably), but by and large this is not a necessary addition to a VTR library. The writing is often exceptionally dry, the content is very Western/Anglo-centric, and in parts it's just downright racist (the entire section on the Ahl al-Jabal, for example). I really can't recommend it to any but the most competionist of VTR readers.
June 2, 2009
A lot of the ideas in this book were really interesting. Connecting various bloodlines to different flash points in history did a good job of showing how some Kindred might handle sociopolitical upheavals in the mortal world.
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