A BRIEF WORD ON THE CHRONICLE OF SECRETS
This is perhaps the shortest of the three Chronicles, but it contains prophecy and visions, and our kind are not generally given to superstitious mutterings, only Saulot had the gift of prophecy. It is possible that Zillah, Caine’s wife, also had this gift.
I have often commented that the things which affected the Antediluvians thoughts also continue to affect our thoughts today. Surely these prophecies of Gehenna, thin blood, Lupines, and the like have begun to cause "self-fulfillment” of these prophecies. Because their worries are passed down from Generation to Generation, a ripple of paranoia and fear continues to reverberate through the Cainites, and through the Canaille.
THE CHRONICLE OF SECRETS
THE SIGNS OF GEHENNA1
Quiet! Hear the raven's cry!
The stillness of the wind
rising hot on the street
the towers hide
the darkness of the day
When Lasombra's dreams come true
on the day when the moon runs as blood2
and the sun rises black in the sky,
that is the day of the Damned,
when Caine's children will rise again.
And the world will turn cold
and unclean things will boil up from the ground
and great storms will roll, lightning will light
fires, animals will fester and their bodies,
twisted, will fall.
So, too, our Grandsires will rise
from the ground
They will break their fast on the
first part of us
They will consume us whole
On the second day, Caine will return
And call his Children to the meeting place
on the site of the First City he will beckon
them, sitting on his basalt throne.
And Caine will call aloud the names of those to be destroyed,
for their crimes are too great
and all those who have consumed the heart's blood of their sire
will be brought before the Black Throne
and made to drink of Caine's blood
And Caine's blood will eat their blood
And the Dark Mother3 herself will be brought forth
and there, in the valley of Enoch, will there be a battle
a duel of Dark Father and Dark Mother
The Demon Queen will bite deep
The Damned King will bite deeper
We will not know the thing which will happen,
but the sky will tear apart, and the earth below
And the forces of Hell will pour up out of the ground
On the Third Day, there will be silence
the crows will feed on the carrion
plague will dance amongst the ruins
the last of the Wild Ones will leave this place
the last of the Moon-Beasts will fight
and fall
And the Antediluvians will make for themselves
an Empire of Blood
They will rule with iron talons
They will wrench the hearts of all still alive
And the full sum of the earth's living will come
and live in the Last City, called Gehenna.
And there will be a reign of one thousand years,
and there will be no love, or life, or pity,
the mighty will be as slaves
the virtuous will be made foul
every good gift, and every perfect gift will be tainted
by the Father of Darkness, whose power will come from
the nether realms.4
When the snows consume the earth
and the sun gutters like a candle in the wind
then, and only then will there be born a woman,
the last Daughter of Eve,
and in her there will be decided the fate of all.
And you will not know this woman, except by the
mark of the Moon on her,
and she will face treachery, hatred, and pain
but in her is the last hope.5
And you will
know these last
times by the
Time of Thin
Blood, which will
mark vampires that
cannot Beget,
you will know them by
the Clanless,
who will come to rule6
you will know them by the Wild
Ones,
who will hunt us even in the strongest city7
you will know them by the awakening
of some of the eldest,
the Crone will awaken and consume all8
you will know these times, for a black
hand will rise up and choke all those
who oppose it9
and those who eat heart's blood will
flourish
and the Kindred will crowd each to
his own, and vitê will be as rare as
diamonds.10
Mark these signs, they are coming! Gehenna will be on
earth.
Mark the
shadow which
flies
mark the dragon
which rises11
mark the darkness
which moves
mark the shadow of the
moon
mark the angel that dies
mark the maiden who weeps
mark the children Em-
braced
mark the Clanless who
run.
And there will be
a time,
when Sire will
drive out Childer
when Sire will
abandon Childer
to the sun's mercy
and there will be no
mercy for the Clanless
there will be no mercy for
the Clanless,
mongrel though they be
upon their forgotten Sires
shall be the curse
of Auriel
upon their hateful Sires shall be
the curse
that comes of crossing
Caine
upon their lazy Sires
shall be the curse
of the hunters
hunted
Those among the Clanless will have no
path to follow
no family to name
no generation to hold
no traditions to keep
no customs to give
no hospitality to give
Why do you make these orphans?
Why do you leave them in the street?
They are the dark seed of our undoing
they will band together with those who
hate us
they will follow Brujah's Childer
they will make the blood run red
they are going to kill the dead
they are going to eat our kin
they will scream and bash our doors
they will cry aloud for justice
Clanless, all, they will wash over our
walls
Clanless, all, they will know secret ways
Clanless, all, they are Lilith's foul get
Clanless, all, they are newly Awake
Clanless, all! No family, no sign, no
loyalty, no elder.12
Beware those who walk without a clan,
for they will be our undoing.
Pity them! Adopt the orphans where you
can.
But watch them. In them is the bad seed
of their Sire.
OF LOVE13
And they asked Caine the old Father,
“Why do you command us to not Embrace
those we love?”
And Caine said to them, “Love is the sweet rain
which falls down from the One Above.
Love is the gift of life.
Remember ye not Auriel's Curse?
That we are to eat only ashes, drink only blood?
Blood is not sweet rain. Our drink takes Life.”
And then Caine's eyes got the look of Visions,
and he quieted, then he spoke:
“But if ever one of us
is gifted
with the love of a mortal
without Command
or Awe,
without compulsion
a Love given freely,
then that Love will be as
the gentle rain
to even the lowliest of us.
And though we shall not Embrace it,
it will feed us as if we supped at our Father's table
it will satisfy our deepest thirst.
But harken ye, my children!
The Children of Seth will always hate us again and again,
for we are their predators
we are their Masters
and they know this, deep in their soul.
Look not for Love among them! They will not give it.
Be not a fool.”
OF THE MOON-BEASTS
What of the
Moon-Beasts who
hunt us, Father?”
“There will come a time, in
the last days,
when the Moon-Beasts will grow uneasy
and they will be dying out
like a sick wolf who must leave the pack
they will
fight rather than die sick
and so they will find us
and they will kill us.
Mark ye well, the Clan of the Beast!
For they will hold the key
they will make the way of protection
they will make the way of trickery
they will make the way of peace.”14
THE TIME OF THIN BLOOD
There will come a time, when the
Curse of the One Above
will not be tolerated further
when the Lineage of Caine will end
When the Blood of Caine will be weak
and there will be no Embracing for
these Childer
for their blood will run like water,
and the Potence in it will wither
Then, you know in this time that
Gehenna will soon be upon you.15
THE AWAKENING OF THE DARK FATHER
There will come a time,
when the heads of three Princes
will watch the burning of the dawn
on a pillar of white.16
There will come a time
when an ancient hunger will awaken
deep in the northern woods
and consume all her childer
There will come a time
when an Elder Darkness will stir
deep below a city which has forgotten
and will surprise the Elder, its children.
Of these signs, you will know,
the Dark Father, bastard of Caine,
will awaken, and drink deep of blood
sacrificed to it
Of these signs, you will know
that the time has come to lay claim
to your Clan's safety,
to fight the Dark Father.
On these signs, you must know,
that Gehenna waits, even at the door,
as an actor waits in the wings
It is coming! It is near!
Shine black the sun!
Shine blood the moon!
Gehenna is coming soon.
NOTES TO THE CHRONICLE OF SECRETS
1. This prophecy was supposedly written down, word for word, by the scribe of the court of Enoch. It is a prophecy that was spoken aloud by Saulot, after a period of fasting and cleansing. It is said that Saulot vanished soon after pronouncing this vision, and this is probably the reason why the original clan of Saulot was not as prevalent. I was able to come by this through the intervention of a Salubri who showed me to a secret grave beneath the Westminster Abbey. Inside, written in Sumerian, like many of the Antediluvian writings, was the prophecy, scribed on papyrus that was almost magically preserved. While translating this piece. I frequently had dreams of Gehenna, and I am glad to be rid of this writing.
2. It is well known that Lasombra wishes the death of the Sun, the blackening of the day-time sky.
3. I left it translated as Dark Mother, but there can be only one name for the Dark Queen of the Dead - Lilith.
4. This seems a blasphemous patchwork transliteration of many important Biblical verses. but this is how the passage translates, and I let it stand.
5. Who is this mortal woman? No one can tell. Many Tremere. it is said. search the world for mortal women with crescent moon birthmarks.
6. A Caitiff prince - who would think of it? Yet this is one of the signs of Gehenna.
7. This is a common theme about the time of Gehenna. The Lupines stay in their countryside. but I have seen a few here and there living in the darkest parts of the city. Do we dare share a city with the Changing Breed, who fight us at every turn?
8. Could this be the Crone from the Chronicle of Caine? Perhaps she did not die in the sun as Caine thought. Or perhaps this bespeaks another Crone: there are certainly many Methuselah vampiresses who fit the description.
9. Several Toreador I have shown this manuscript to complain that this is a direct allusion to the Sabbat, the Black Hand, and that surely Gehenna is upon us.
10. Certainly this is already happening!
11. Count Vlad Tepes, Dracula, has been called ”the Dragon” before. Could this bespeak him?
12. The strangeness of the Caitiff continues to disturb me. Where they come from, none know, although I have traced a few of them back to Malkavian and Brujah sires who have simply abandoned them. Still, some seem to be made by shadowy figures who may or may not be of a clan themselves. These verses explain the Antediuvian’s obvious prejudice against the clanless, and this prejudice has been carried down through the ages to the Kindred as a whole.
13. I place this here because it is pure speculation and is attributed to Caine’s prophetic powers. Certainly Love is a powerful force, one that I am not familiar with, but I have heard tales of the newly Embraced being rescued by those they loved, and subsequently Rebithed into mortal form.
14. This, in my opinion, is the Antediluvian foundation of Kindred thought regarding Lupines .It is a reason why ail Kindred array themselves against the Lupines, and why the Gangrel are given leave to have truck with them. Remember that the thoughts of the Antediluvians become the customs of the Methuselahs, which become the laws of the elders.
15. This was written on a stone cross in Norway, in old Norse runes, and was barely translatable when I saw it decades ago. I include it for completeness: I'm not sure whether it was intended as part of the Book of Nod or if it was a separate creation. It seems quite old.
16. I have placed these prophecies together in a grouping I call "The Awakening of the Dark Father." This is because I discovered them all in a sealed crypt inside the Smithsonian Institution's Art History wing. I don't believe that the curators would have been pleased to learn that a Ventrue friend of mine had Dominated their well-paid guards into allowing me to explore down there. The translation of the tablets I found there took seven nights, and I believe them to be the most cryptic and most prophetic of all the collection of Secrets that I have. I have no way of knowing whether or not these prophecies are connected. My childe, Beckett, believes that it is perhaps a collection of different visions linked together with a loose literary bridging. I can see where many of these visions may be the root of several Antediluvian plots (certainly the Dark Father must be some Antediluvian that Caine isn't particularly pleased with - perhaps even Brujah's founder).