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backTo understand the social and political structures of the Roman Kindred of 14 CE, one must understand something of Kindred history, and something of how the Roman Empire came to rise to such heights of power.
Kindred history is marked by episodic violence. These upheavals, though many believe they can be averted, derive from the nature of Kindred society itself. The Kindred are static and without change, though they draw from and live within a mortal society that continues to change, sometimes rapidly. It is often possible for these differences to build up for many years or centuries, until the culture of the Kindred is radically different from that of the surrounding mortal society. Then begin the markers of the fall: large numbers of young Kindred being Embraced who do not understand, and in fact resent, the lives of their elders; many elders entering Torpor or being destroyed; political volatility in both the mundane and supernatural realms. Eventually, the killing begins. Most of the elders are destroyed either by their childer or by their own unfamiliarity with the contemporary world.
This has happened sufficient times to have become known as Gehenna.
By 800 BCE, two great empires had arisen – that of the Greek city-states, anchored by the trading and cultural hegemony of Athens, and that of Persia. Of course, there had been empires before. The Phoenician traders had spread their alphabet and numerical system through many lands; the Assyrians, Minoans and Egyptians both made significant local conquests. But these two empires combined, for the first time, the wide geographical reach of the trading nations with the militarism and domination of previous military empires. They, for the first time in any Kindred's memory, brought separate groups of Kindred together in the long term.
However, while many Kindred went to places they would never otherwise go, the underlying social structures were not fundamentally changed. Hence the social pressures surrounding the bringing together of individuals from highly disparate clans, with no social or political mechanism to ease the tension and help them find common ground, created many years of slow tension and fighting. With the rise of Alexander the Great, the Persian and Greek empires both yielded before this upstart from Macedonia – and in Alexander's battles, and the in-fighting that followed his death and the division of his empire, the lives of the Kindred changed yet again, as a terrible clan war and bloodshed began – the most recent Gehenna, ending in around 310 BCE.
At the same time, the Roman Republic was quietly beginning to conquer its neighbors. And Rome would do what Greece and Persia did not – create a new set of social and political structures, rather than simple values and culture, to spread among the states it conquered. Some places fell by force, others were easily absorbed, and still others yielded without a fight. In all these cases, the locals were expected to be ruled by the political and social mores of Rome. Rome, Roman citizens and Romanization was supported in a way that neither Greece nor Persia sustained far beyond its boundaries, and would begin the first major change in Kindred society within the memory of most of its inhabitants.
History
and Culture
The true origins of the Kindred are unknown, but many tales hint at the existing clans having fled from some great danger or oppression. While it is unclear what exactly this is or means, the result is well-known: at the time our history begins, the clans were separated by long distances, by reputation and by fear of outsiders. Each clan gathered in a particular geographic area, slowly filling it with their own people. Over time, each group grew from a small band of wanderers to a mighty clan, developing unique abilities and weaknesses during this long period of isolation.
Socially, during this period, clan did not function as it does in the modern nights. Instead of clan representing a particular social role, individuals of a particular clan would have to fill all of those roles, as there was not enough commerce between clans to have all the artists be Toreador, the rebels Brujah, and so on. Each clan had its own leaders, its own warriors, artists, socialites, spies. Clans developed simply from the blood of the Founders, those few who had originally settled in the clan's territory, and they shared some cultural values, but there were no 'stereotypical' members of a clan. A Lasombra leader might function more like a Brujah leader than like most of the other Lasombra he ruled over.
Blood was all-important. One's sire determined what clan one was from, but individual lineages often had more in common with each other than they did with the larger clan as a whole. This was reinforced by the tendency of each elder to settle in one city or town. There they would raise a brood of childer, collecting at the same time a court of hangers-on who were not their direct descendants but were still of the same clan.
Any of another clan living in this city would be extremely mistrusted. Nearly every interaction was based on mutual culture as well as on ties of blood. While an outsider might be able to adopt the values, rituals and behaviors of the clan they lived among, they would never have the ties of blood that fundamentally guaranteed the participation of every Kindred in this social system. No one older than they would have any responsibility for them, nor would they have any way of guaranteeing their word. Prestation was an entirely in-clan game, and outsiders were at a serious disadvantage in playing it – if their word was even considered good at all. Fundamentally, these outsiders were not of the tribe and so could not be trusted to participate in it.
In a given elder's city, his or her voice as tribe leader was paramount. Dissension was met with death, usually at the hands of the elder's brood. Those of other lineages quickly learned to step carefully, especially those not even of the original clan. The elder would make sure that no other challenger could become powerful enough to challenge them, much as modern Princes do. However, unlike modern Princes, who often rule over cities that contain many elders, the preferred solution for these ancient rulers was to simply never allow any in their city to become old enough to gain true power. Those who were lucky got enough warning to leave town; others were simply maneuvered into offending the leader and summarily killed. The only requirement was that the leader saw you as a threat or a potential threat.
Politics
Kindred leaders tended to have a fair amount of interaction with the mortal society of their city, but not in the form of influence that modern Kindred would recognize. Certainly at least some Kindred preferred to subtly own or dominate mortals, but most functioned more like kings or war-leaders, openly making decisions about how the city should be run, even if most ordinary people had no idea of the true source of these decisions. The aristocracy of a given city, and certainly its military leaders, would often be aware that they answered to someone or something dark and powerful, though they would not be aware of the precise nature of the Kindred even under this system, for reasons of Kindred self-preservation.
In terms of power and influence, most influence in a given city was reserved for the elder who led it, though he would often delegate significant authority to his brood, and less significant authority to other clan-members. Members of other clans were almost never granted any power whatsoever, as even if an elder would have been willing to risk it, they would have ensured themselves revolt from those below. However, this doesn't mean that Kindred of other clans had no power whatsoever. Often, dangerous or undesirable tasks would be delegated to them, or they would be given power 'under the table' that the elder would never acknowledge or publicly support. During this period, a member of a non-dominant clan had to appear weak in order to survive, even if they had significant debts or power.
The types of power and influence available were quite similar to those available in the modern nights, though this varied quite a bit by region. Some areas, like Gaul, were mostly inhabited by roving tribes and by small villages of farmers and herdsmen. There was little artistic culture except in items manufactured for religious worship. As for religion, each area tended to have its local cult and worship a locally popular god, providing little scope for Kindred to gain power and influence this way. Overall, Gaul and the areas like it were generally inhabited by the Gangrel, Skadi and Nosferatu – who found the limited kinds of mortal power available sufficient for their needs, though the more cosmopolitan among them did tend to migrate to other areas. These other areas, such as Greece, Egypt or North Africa, had significant trading cities, art, state religions, law, military might – all the things you would expect. The clans who maintained such areas (Setite, Hamsin, Brujah, and, to some extent, Malkavian, Cappadocian and Assamite) considered themselves far more civilized than the other clans for this reason, vestiges of which attitudes have survived to the Roman era and even to modern times.
In these more civilized areas, the Kindred did have a more familiar relationship with the mortals, and for much the same reason as in the modern nights: a small tribe of Germans could be influenced to accept their blood-drinking warrior god, but the entire might of Athens could hardly be expected to do the same. Nevertheless, power tended to be much more concentrated in the hands of a single elder in these cities who formally doled it out with preference to those with ties of blood.
As mentioned before, there was little migration or travel between clans, and this occurred for a number of reasons. First, there was little need for it. Each culture tended to be perfectly sustainable on its own. Even those cultures that did significant trading had enough difficulties with that trading that it would be far more inconvenience to a Kindred to travel than gain they could get. The idea of moving from one culture to another was very simply out of paradigm. That is why barbarian cultures could grow up alongside civilized trading societies, both having contempt for the other, and yet an odd stability prevailing – the Kindred did not often go to war.
The Empires
The Greek and Persian empires changed this: both were predicated on the idea of spreading their own culture and world-view. The Greeks did not take over the government of those areas that they conquered – in fact, it could hardly be said that they conquered them at all, pre-Alexander. However, they did found Greek cities everywhere they went, and began to trade all over the world. Suddenly these strangers – Brujah – were living among many other clans. At the same time, the Persians adopted a deliberate policy of population-mixing within their empire. Of course, they hardly had the power to uproot Kindred, but many chose to follow their mortal ties into exile, causing even more mixing of the clans. As the Brujah and Hamsin spread, others began to migrate to Greece and Persia as the two centers of the world. The Kindred at the time did not know it, but it was the beginning of the end of their old ways.
Alexander's forces, over a period of just eleven years, conquered almost all the known world, despite attempts on the parts of many local Kindred to stop him. It seemed like the end of the world to most elders – suddenly, this strange mixing of clans would be permanent and far more widespread. But despite their best efforts, they were unable to stop him while he lived. Only after Alexander's death and the breakup of the empire were the Kindred able to affect events – and then mostly only their own internal affairs, resulting in a near-genocide against the Brujah (who were blamed for much of this), and terrible, racking civil wars.
In the wake of this destruction among Kindred, a new order began to rise – a new vision of Kindred society, led by the quiet Ventrue of Rome.
Summary
Before we pass to the Roman period, let us pause for a very brief summary of the major ways that clans differed during this tribal period, and for any major notes about the roles they played in these wars, the Gehenna of Alexander.
The key things to understand about this period are insularity (each clan living a mostly autonomous life), clannishness (blood trusted more than those not of the blood), and hierarchy (fewer elders, more neonates, resulting in an even more pyramidal system than normal). Differences in the clans' experiences are noted briefly below. Note that this does not take into account specifically Roman interactions, which will be detailed after the section on Rome.
The Clans
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