Sabbat

The Camarilla's archenemy is the monstrous sect known as the Sabbat. Perceived as mindless savages and bloodthirsty fiends by the Camarilla and independent clans alike, the Sabbat is vilified among the society of the Damned, and for good reason. They're just not the reasons other Kindred claim. While the "Kindred" of the Camarilla espouse concealing themselves among mortals and maintaining the tattered vestiges of their Humanity, the Sabbat favors a different philosophy. Not content to cower like beaten dogs from humans, nor to act as pawns in the schemes of their elders, Sabbat vampires instead prefer to revel in their undead nature.

As the Sabbat reasons, vampires are a cut above mortals, who are merely food or diversion. Isn't Kindred vitae more powerful than mortal blood? Don't vampires have unnatural powers with which to assert themselves over the bovine masses? Who needs petty mortal morality when one is a blood-drinking, immortal monster? The Sabbat, though, involves far more than a simple carte blanche to behave as abominably as one chooses. Sabbat vampires are inherently alien, and their behavior reflects this.

Sabbat vampires wish no place among humans or those who pretend to be humans. They loathe humankind except as sustenance, and they lack the ability to relate to vampires who cannot accept their natures. They even rebel against their own solitary unlives, traveling in wild nomadic packs instead of eking out secretive, isolated existences. For this reason, tensions run high in the Sabbat, and the sect's surroundings often suffer for it. Cities held by the sect are some of the most violent places in existence, challenged for this dubious honor only where Sabbat and Camarilla vie for supremacy. Mexico City, Detroit, Miami and Montreal are all under the purview of the Sabbat. Cities in contention include New York; Washington, DC; Buffalo; and Atlanta. A city under Sabbat control or conquest is an explosive, volatile place; murders occur nightly, and rape and robbery are to be expected at every turn. In the World of Darkness, these cities have themselves grown toward the alien and away from the human, abandoned as they are to the depredations of the monsters who prowl their alleyways.

Thus, the Sabbat threatens every city it touches, creeping like a cancer into communities that remain oblivious until the war packs tear the city down around them. Though it is arguably no more "evil" than the degenerate elders of the Camarilla, the Sabbat is almost universally more blatant, terrorizing the kine populace with insidious games and premeditated destruction.

Now more than ever before, the Sabbat has the Camarilla on the ropes. Many Camarilla neonates, frustrated by the unattainable power and stagnant ineffectiveness of their elders, have joined the Sabbat in open protest. Numerous cities that were once bastions of Camarilla strength now exist in stalemate or contention. Camarilla princes fear the swelling tide of the Sabbat, and with good cause: Their unlives and those of the Kindred in their cities are on the line. Accordingly, Sabbat members in a Camarilla city can expect no quarter if exposed, as princes and primogen ruthlessly quash agents of the infernal insurrectionist sect. Many neonates, still wishing to please their sires and build a place for themselves in the Camarilla, aid their elders in Sabbat persecution. It would seem they prefer the evil they know to the one they've heard so many horror stories about.