I bid you...welcome to a new segment where I, someone who knows very little about the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade, read one of the Clanbooks and try to piece together the insane metaplot and backstory of the game and its Gothic Punk setting.
First up: the Brujah. The Brujah are the "punk" vampires of the Gothic Punk World of Darkness. They have anger management issues as part of their specific vampire curse makes them more liable to violent frenzies.
Brujah come in three flavors: Iconoclast, Idealist, and Individualist. The Iconoclasts are rebels to the core, favoring constant violent revolution. Idealists are more philosophical rebels, with hints of Ivory Tower nonsense. Individualists...okay, the book doesn't really give me a good sense of what their deal is; apparently they "walk the line between the Iconoclasts and the Idealists," but in practice I don't know what that is supposed to entail.
One detail that keeps coming up in this supplement is that there once was a city called Carthage that was the dream-paradise of the original vampire named Brujah. It's a bit unclear if this is supposed to be the historical Carthage. The city was betrayed by the other vampire clans and fell--since then the Brujah clan has been doing their damnedest to rebuild Carthage. The closest they've come so far is establishing the "Anarch Free State" in California. There aren't many details about the Anarch Free State here, but I bet it got its own supplement at some point.
The Brujah Clanbook also states that every revolutionary movement has proceeded under the influence of the Brujah, though the book hedges its bets and pulls them out of the limelight when it comes to the American Revolution. (That said, Crispus Attucks is a Brujah vampire!) The American Civil War did see team-up between the Brujah and the younger Ventrue against the older, plantation-owning Ventrue, though.
The section on Brujah activity in Russia is buck wild. The Russian Revolution was backed by the Brujah, but when they couldn't control Lenin they engineered his death and replacement by Trotsky (!). The Brujah would have killed Stalin had they not needed him as a bulwark against Hitler. It was the Brujah who influenced Stalin to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (!!). Apparently Stalin had ties to "mages" and the Sabbat. Oh, and Gorbachev? Totally a pawn of Baba Yaga (!!!).
One particularly silly bit here is the grand scheme of a powerful Brujah called "Smiling Jack." His plan is basically to be a vampire deadbeat dad--go city to city, creating new vampires willy-nilly, and then leaving, making them someone else's problem in hopes that they will destabilize the reign of the city's prince.
An observation: the Brujah are presented as Big Rebels, but they also seem very scared of violating the Masquerade--which makes them feel a little toothless as far as the ultimate rebellion is concerned. It might be the case that presenting them as all talk when it comes to rebellion--at least in comparison to the Sabbat--is a point being made here.
The Brujah have three types of meet-ups: Rants, Debates, and Raves. Rants are held after concerts and counter-cultural events; from the sound of it, they are an excuse for Brujah to yell at each other, making them the worst afterparties imaginable. Debates are the Q&A segment that follows any academic presentation, with people jockeying for position by asking each other asinine questions. Raves...I think are supposed to be like the blood rave in Blade, but require a scavenger hunt to find. I admit my eyes were clouding over at this point.
The Clanbook details a few special powers that Brujah might have. My favorite is Burning Wrath, which feels like a fighting game power-up: it causes a Brujah's face and hands to turn red and they deal burning damages when their V-trigger Burning Wrath is activated.
My favorite part of flipping through the Clanbooks when I was a teenager was browsing the example templates because some of the character concepts are extremely funny. I think they're useful in retrospect as a window into the kind of characters the designers had in mind. Clanbook: Brujah offers the following:
- Anarch Terrorist: your basic violent revolutionary, complete with Desert Eagle
- College Professor: Idealist in training, but with grading to do
- Computer Hacker: It was the 90s
- Elder Representative: Basically a kiss-ass who speaks for an elder vampire who can't be bothered to attend Rants in person
- European Idealist: Eurotrash vampires! This is a fuckin' perfect concept
- Fake Rapper: For when you absolutely must play a vampiric Vanilla Ice; I love how goofy this one is; this is a game of "personal horror," but you have the space to stop, collaborate, and listen
- Rapper: The real kind; the in-voice writing is pretty embarrassing, but again, it was the 90s
- Rogue Cop/Vigilante: They may bend the rules, but they get results
- Skinhead: The first line of their quote is "Hitler had it right"
- Streetwalker: Of course
All right, that's enough for now. Next time we're getting wild with the Gangrel.
