Setting Changes
Our story is set in the year 1454
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It is the beginning of the early Renaissance - Holbein’s picture has not yet been painted - but the next century will see science and culture boom in unprecedented fashion. By this time the traditional feudal institutions have broken down, and those of lower birth find themselves able to elevate their positions from trade and economics.
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The fall of the great Byzantine empire last year shook the continent, leading to an exodus of people and vampires further west. Many might see this gathering of vampires for an auction in Italy (and discovery of such abnormal mortals) as an opportunity to recoup power, desperately so, or at least a sign that change could reap some benefits.
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There were those who believed in “The Dream” and its mission, the vampiric Eutopia that Constantinople hoped to be, and even after the destruction of its once-leader, Michael, many years ago now, there were vampires who lasted through to Constantinople’s final death throws. Hoping, grasping at any lifeline through which they might establish The Dream again, and pull themselves back to its shore. Alas, with the Ottoman invasion and the fall of the Byzantine era, that dream is now officially dead.
(It was dying before - now The Dream is dead and steaming, on fire, crashed and poisoned and kicked several times. The vampires who stayed on as the believers probably feel very bad right now, looking for a home and something new to pin their ideals and even their spiritual hopes on.)
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A note before we press on...
*Most people in this era know nothing about other countries and their ways of doing things.*
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When you come to create your character we will focus in on one comparatively tiny part of the Renaissance and work out how living there affects you, unless you are one of the rarer travelled mortals or progressively modern vampires. You might be from a tiny village and have never left it, or live in thriving center of a city state. You may even be from abroad!
(The Giovanni vampires collected our auctioned mortals from all over the globe, it should be said; they have an especially unusual way of travelling.)
Vampire characters have a year or more notice to attend the auction, tie up affairs and make the travel, which is made much easier in this era with the trade routes overland or by sea, even for those vampires not capable of stranger travel.
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The Hundred Years’ War has also just ended, with the French emerging victorious in 1453. British vampires and humans will have experienced the subsequent turmoil in England as these events lead up to the War of the Roses in subsequent decades. There is a lot of British-French tension socially. As if there hasn’t always been. But the British are especially sore.
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There was even a foreboding lunar eclipse - visible during the siege of Constantinople itself, in an eerie parallel to the solar eclipse that led to the births of the many strangely gifted mortals that find themselves under Claudius Giovanni’s care today.
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One major way in which our setting differs from established historical records is the period of the Black Death. In this world, the plague did not officially "end" until 1385 (though as with real world, there were bouts of it in places after), and the catastrophic death toll was not only slightly worse, but spread over a period of 30 or so years. This leads to even greater destabilisation of institutions throughout Europe - pushing this hunger for change ever harder. It is a creeping, insidious disease that kills slower, but the suffering exacted on the populations of Europe is no less disastrous. On Friday, 17th of November 1385, our darling humans were born (yes, you are a Scorpio). This means that by the time our game begins, if you are playing a human, you are technically 69 years old.
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Humans born with gifts of the Black Sun age at a different rate to normal humans - in such a way that even Giovanni’s researchers have been unable to explain. Some reach a certain point and then find their ageing slows to a snail’s pace - many affected mortals might appear to be in their 20s or even younger. It does not happen quite the same way for everyone - to the point that Giovanni’s dungeons are filled with mortals that look to be of varying ages despite their common birth date. Consider how this might have influenced the way mundane kind treat you - as you remained youthful and strong whilst they peaked and began to wither.
Your human can also look 69 - or more! It’s entirely up to you.
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Canon Changes for Vampires
If you’re new to Vampire: the Masquerade - or just unfamiliar with this era - don’t worry, the following is unnecessary detail for your character, unless you are specifically playing an elder whose unlife ties into these events, and even then, your own personal brief will key you into what you need personally. Most vampires, as with most humans, are ignorant of the wider world’s rhythm and its ebb and flow across countries. Many elders pay more mind to their own spider web as they grow fat on it; worse, the Dark Ages and the Crises have thrown everyone into a more selfish focus of their immediate homestead and life, less so on expansion. That is changing now as the era dawns, but only the most progressive, political vampires might know or even care about the wider world of Cainites.
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Saying that, for the purpose of creating vampire characters, here are the most important things you need to know that we have altered from how things played out in canon.
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The worsening impact of the Black Death has created a butterfly effect into the vampire world. Notably: some major events are delayed.
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Why?
There are a surprising number of contradictions concerning the timeline of the Anarch Revolt, even within the same editions. The VTM: Encyclopaedia Vampirica states that the Lasombra Antediluvian was killed in 1205 and that the Anarch Revolt started in 1240. This cannot be correct, for all other accounts state clearly that [Lasombra] was destroyed after the uprising began, and Dark Ages: Vampire begins in 1230 – well after the year given for the attack on the Antediluvian. The diablerie of [Lasombra] is more commonly stated to have occurred either in 1405 or 1483, though the former is almost certainly correct since the supposed diablerie of [Tzimisce] occurred in 1413. A ploy perhaps of the creature itself?
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Archons & Templars states that Tyler killed Hardestadt in 1335, but by all accounts this is before Tyler's Embrace, which occurred during or after the Peasants' Revolt in England per Children of the Inquisition, and specifically occurred in 1381 per both editions of Chicago by Night. It also contradicts Giovanni Chronicles I which has Hardestadt crashing Claudius’ ill-timed party with the founders in rather good health.
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A Small Gripe
We adore the Dark Age setting of VTM and it’s clear a lot of love has gone into it. The Dark Ages source materials are conflicting across developers with varying understanding of European history, sometimes with glaring anomalies which are not accounted for by the poetic licence of "vampires tell it differently." Sadly, the actual facts themselves as given on an off-game basis to the Storyteller are the things that are inaccurate or confused. It varies across the material, of course.
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When the canon refers to The Dark Ages it cannot seem to agree on when or what that is - while throwing around a lot of Renaissance era ideas, culture and education into the wrong periods of time and even into the wrong place in the world. We are holding to historical reality, not the chronology in several of the Dark Ages books like Three Pillars which put the neoclassical resurgence centuries earlier than it should. The trade routes which gained Europe this knowledge have not yet opened to the degree required, and any of the mathematical texts referenced do not see their gain - let alone the Latin translation for European use - for well until the 1400s.
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Roman and Greek ideas were not circulated properly until the 15th century, and certainly not on the scale the vampire source books suggest during the actual Dark Ages or at the onset or heart of the Crusades. Given the material has not offered any vampiric (or alternative) reasoning behind the change we have to presume it was mixed research levels between developers. By the time our game setting is fortunately we have all of this, since we are in the truer onset of the Renaissance, in the 1400s with the sweeping changes we would recognise as being culturally of the era.
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It contradicts too much history to keep the original canon chronlogically and rewrites the early Renaissance unintentionally, without incorporating any financial, legal, socioeconomic or even occult consequence; it removes a lot of nice historical accuracy and demeans the original real-world motives behind the same events. We have put things back in place and brought vampiric life into line with human advancement. Given that this era deals with themes of racism and slavery we do not feel it appropriate to hand-wave the realism for how and why certain milestones became apparent across the Dark Ages into the Renaissance. (We have an in-depth fly through on our website for this, with a plunge into the era for you.)
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A lot of the books pick and choose pretty inconsistently which bits of the middle era go where. My general impression reading a lot of the Dark Ages canon is confusion, but not the thematic confusion of clan opinions in narrative conflict as sometimes happens with inter-clan debates; the facts in conflict are provided on an off-game basis to the reader and Storyteller.
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Whole centuries and countries are off. The Renaissance is a blurred time for academic agreement about when it begins - and there were multiple Renaissances globally in different countries as well as differently timed advances for different industries i.e. the literary Renaissance, the economic, the art, etc. - but there was not the resurgence of neoclassical ideas and eastern mathematics acquired in the 13th century as painted by source material. That would have so colossal an impact on the human world as to entirely change all of its events thereafter - which the canon has not taken into account.
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To marry up the contradictions with better chronology, and make use of some wonderful history in this period, we have made some quality of life adjustments. So please follow historical accuracy for the purposes of Giovanni: The Last Supper, as well as any information on our Settings pages on our website (to come! ) and your personal brief.
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So What’s Actually Changed
In reality the Inquisition stretched on over a long period.
Since in our chronology the Inquisition has not yet hit the vampire species - they being one of the best supernatural creatures at hiding among humans, or because they avoid them for the most part in their remote castle fiefs - the Anarch Revolt has also not yet got its teeth. Hardestadt has not been diablerised. However, Tyler's mortal birth (and the embrace of his wife who would go onto take his name as a vampire) has occurred as with the real-world Peasants' Revolt. The elders are still refusing to acknowledge the threat of the Inquisition and that is spurring some young vampires on under Tyler to create a - as yet - fragmented rabble. That will change in the years to come. The Brujah have a big part in the Peasants’ Revolt, though.
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So the battle at Castle Hardestadt has not occurred. The young Brujah of Spain have not yet turned against their sires in their frenzy. Some of them haven’t even heard of Tyler. The Anarchs have not yet begun to call themselves the Anarchs. Gratiano de Veronese has not joined them in any plot to kill his sire, the Lasombra Antediluvian. He has not yet led a group to the Castle of Shadows in Sicily. Meanwhile the Romanian Front of the Anarch Revolt has also not seen its Anarch Revolt. Lugoj has not stormed the Monastery of Sernog. No war has broken out between the Anarchs and the Tzimisce Szlachta. The Tzimisce Antediluvian has not been Diablerised, willingly or otherwise.
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The Tzimisce Anarchs do not yet exist. They have not brought with them the secret of the Vaulderie to other clans. And mostly notably...
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The Camarilla, suffering no unifying threat to incite any lethargic elders, has not been founded. The founders - a number of vampires, led by the Ventrue Hardestadt - have not yet been founded. There is no need yet to unify the vampires against the joint extinction factor of the Anarch Revolt, the Inquisition and the pre-Sabbat as it forms. Consider our game as taking place on the eve before the eve of so much to come; this is the gathering breath before brutal redistribution, the silence before the storm. Some oracles among the vampires may foretell dark times ahead - the Nosferatu are tense and afraid, themselves more capable of seeing the forest for the trees - but nothing has yet kicked off. The founders have not even been chosen, though they each hold the same sway or influence that they did before those major events.
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This is all to come. This is a beautiful time in vampire canon, and wonderfully grim - with a false light at the end of the tunnel. The infancy and the shadows of everything to come can of course be brought into roleplay, as can the divide that is forming between the Brujah young - spurred on by Tyler's passion - and the elders as they sink into hubris, but as of yet, the elders feel very little threat from their young, and most of the more hopeful (or prized…) neonates indeed do not harbor any ideas that their elders are holding their futures in a choke hold. Quite a lot of neonates still get on with their sires, probably to Tyler's disgust.
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What about The Conspiracy of Isaac?
Lady Jadviga Almanov of Bohemia, a Ventrue elder who admires the business sense of the Giovanni family, has not yet approached Claudius Giovanni with the plan to betray the Cappadocian parent clan. The events of 1444 have been delayed as with several key events of the 15th century, as the world recovers from the plague and enters the early Renaissance. The original Last Supper has not occurred because Claudius has been up to his eyeballs in fanatic greedy excitement tracking down all these mortals in secret, much to the shock of the Cappadocians, who have discovered this at the same time (very unhappily) as the rest of the world.
The Bite may still bloody the future of poor Clan Cappadocian, but it has not happened yet; these events are a prequel to it.
The canon has been delayed rather than changed in essence, and all the tensions and simmering political issues which are prevalent in the 15th century remain for roleplay. Think of the name as a spiritual nod to the original. It may be that the Children of Isaac are still to come, but our special mortals are likelier to take center stage.
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This means Cappadocians are playable characters
Most of them are on good terms with Giovanni, who are themselves Cappadocian. However, the once-tight relationship between the Clan of Death and the Clan of Kings (the Cappadocians and the Ventrue, respectively) has by canon been breaking down over the unrest of the previous few centuries. In the recent few hundred years, the Cappadocians have become consumed with their mystical quests and neglected many of their joint enterprises with the Ventrue.
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The Ventrue had considerable difficulty working with the Cappadocians though most of the Middle Era (Gio Chron. I) and rather blame the change on Japheth. They enthusiastically approved (and still approve) of the merger with the Giovanni, believing that an alliance with the greatest shipping house in Italy would restore a healthy dose of sound business sense back to the distant Cappadocian Clan and make them sit up and at least take an awareness of the damn world once more. With this auction coming up, certainly, the actions of the young Giovanni have shaken a lot of Cappadocians into wakeful attention.
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Cappadocius is currently based, at least for what rumours can paint, in Rome somewhere, though only his closest followers can be sure. The Cappadocin Clan has great ties to Venice currently, where they are minding (and protecting) their young new bloodline: the Giovanni. Meanwhile in Florence there are remarkably few Cappadocians.
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Summary
The Camarilla has not yet formed. The Inquisition is alive, but has not yet harassed the vampire species to any collective point that it would be considered a threat worthy of an extinction event - it will turn its eyes to them in the coming years, spearheading Tyler’s revolt into greater heights as the elders ignore the threat, until they belatedly panic and sacrifice countless childer. It has not happened yet, however. This is only a twinkle in anybody’s eyes for now. Feel bad for the werewolves, who don’t slip beneath human notice so well. Or don’t - they’re werewolves.
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The founders have not yet styled themselves as the founders, and they can be present at the game. There has been no unifying threat to do so, and the vampires are focussed on rebuilding and licking their wounds after the Crises of the Middle Ages, tremendous civil unrest, the Hundred Years War and mass plague. Progressive clans are blinking into the new era with a sense of relief.
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The Anarch Revolt is only in its infancy. The Anarchs do not call themselves the Anarchs yet, though it might be an idea in Tyler’s rebellious mind.
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The Giovanni have not purged the Cappadocian Clan of their betters. The Giovanni have not yet entered into any traitorous agreements to do so. What is going on in Cappadocius’ mind is unknown. Japheth is still about. Cappadocius was last seen in Rome.
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You can play a Cappadocian for the game.
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Tyler’s around. Lugoj is about, undead rather than dead. Quite a lot of the movers and shakers of the future are able to be present at this auction as player characters, because they are rather un-famous as of yet. (Well, Tyler’s famous among the mortals.)
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We hope this provides the rare opportunity for fans of both Clan Cappadocian and Giovanni to roleplay them together in a unique setting. The Giovanni are, for all intents and purposes, possessively protected by their parent clan still, who view them entirely as Cappadocian; and as any good worried parent clan, they are worried who among the other clans will threaten their new bloodline, now that the Giovanni have gone and done something this questionably intelligent with advertising all these humans that Claudius has. If they have gripes with their Italian bloodline, it will be in private, probably with them at the game.
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Please finally discount events of the German supplement from our world's canon (unfortunately we could not find an English translation and its chronology is not widely known by the global V:tM community, so we have left it off). We have created domain events independent of it. The Ventrue Vinzenz von Stalburg does not declare himself Prince of Florence. None of that supplement is canonical to our world.