| Contents |
| History • Strongholds • Advantages and Weaknesses • The Kiasyd in DC • Kiasyd Characters |
| Kiasyd | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Pseudonyms | Weirdlings |
| Sect | Independents Sabbat |
| Disciplines | Dominate Mytherceria Obtenebration |
| Rarity | Rare |
Few vampires, even those who try very hard, are quite as strange as one of the Kiasyd. A tiny bloodline of essentially very specialized Maeghar that resemble incredibly tall, thin, distressingly inhuman aliens, they are scholars and researchers with eldritch and fairy connections that make them incomprehensible even to the rest of the undead, let alone to humanity.
Very few Kiasyd exist, and those who do tend to live scattered and spread out across the globe; they have very little society except for the once-every-fifty-years meeting they call the Symposium, at which they share their new knowledge from the past half-century before going their separate ways again.
History
The Kiasyd came into being around the middle of the fourth century, when their founder, a Lasombra elder named Marconius, drank a specially prepared potion that caused him to metamorphosis into the first of the bloodline. Marconius, an ambitious Mage before his Embrace, had been researching the strange phenomenon of Maeghar, who most vampires barely recognized or understood at this time, in the hopes of creating a perfected being, a vampire with the powers of the fae who could counterbalance both beings' native curses and emerge stronger. Aided by his research-mate and mortal sister, the mage Hrotsuitha, he scoured the continent and eventually managed to find two things: an Unseelie fairy creature who he was able to capture and bleed dry, and a secret, deeply-hidden bottle that claimed to contain the blood of an ancient Slavic god of the underworld.
Like the mage he had once been, Marconius crafted a ritual and prepared to change himself into a perfectly ascended being, which he did by feeding the components to Hrotsuitha and then draining her dry, causing himself to begin to rapidly transform. While the Lasombra he had once been clanmates with immediately rejected him in horror at the strange mutation he had become, his sire recognized in him the beginnings of a new bloodline, and protected him long enough for him to go into hiding and begin siring his own brood. Marconius discovered that his new powers bred true, and the Kiasyd became a true bloodline, with each childe receiving the same powers and effects from their forbears.
Marconius and his brood paid very little attention to the Anarch Revolt, and in the absence of an official position, the Sabbat claimed the Kiasyd as their own, citing their origins as an offshoot of the Lasombra who led the sect and pointing out that the Camarilla could not claim to have any on their side. This campaign worked, insofar as the fact that most members of the Anarchs and Camarilla now consider the Kiasyd to be a majority Sabbat bloodline, but it had little impact on the Kiasyd themselves; while there are technically more of them among the Sabbat than anywhere else due to their proximity to Clan Lasombra, the majority of them are Independents or Autarkis.
Strongholds
The only but major stronghold for the Kiasyd is Strasbourg, a city with a history of cultural and scholarly accomplishment and a position that has seen it change political hands countless times over the centuries. The city is nominally Camarilla, with Marconius considered established as its Prince, but in practice the sect doesn't meddle with their affairs, and the fae-blooded weirdlings seldom venture outside their borders for anything other than research trips and field work. The city is generally considered a neutral zone, but in spite of the temptation to take advantage of a city with few protectors, most vampires don't want to be anywhere near it thanks to the stories of bizarre Kiasyd powers and endless traps and games.
Strasbourg's many museums and libraries are favorite haunts of the Kiasyd, most of whom take one on as their own personal responsibility, often placing their havens beside or beneath them for ease of access. A given Kiasyd may have very different interests from their fellows, but whatever they want to know about, they are patient and dogged in pursuit of both learning and preserving what they learn afterward.
Advantages and Weaknesses
Advantages
The Kiasyd may be bizarre, but they nevertheless find ways to use it to their advantage. They are generally considered neutral by almost all sects wherever they appear; there simply aren't enough of them to be a threat, and their weird behavior and appearance discourage other vampires from trying to prey on them, giving them a sort of informal status as neutral scholars and information brokers (although convincing a Kiasyd to part with a secret for payment is considerably harder than it might be to buy information from, say, a Nosferatu). Few other vampires want anything to do with them, which gives them a safety net that keeps them out of nasty political situations and dangerous altercations.
Kiasyd also have access to the stored occult knowledge of their clan, which they pride themselves on being the most eclectic and complete in the world (no matter what the Tremere may think). Any Kiasyd can find lore on a supernatural or sorcerous topic with a bit of research or by reaching out to other Kiasyd scattered around the world, although they cannot necessarily always get exactly the information they want exactly when they want it.
Disadvantages
Unfortunately for Marconius, his bid to create a perfected being was unsuccessful: Kiasyd still share the drawbacks of other vampires, such as vulnerability to fire and the need to rest in deathly sleep all day, but they also suffer from several of the ailments of the fairies who contributed their blood. They are allergic to iron, finding it difficult and uncomfortable to be anywhere near, and are badly burned on any physical contact with it. Similarly, they are all uniformly inhuman looking, with most topping seven feet tall, skeletally thin with white-to-purple skin and huge, pupilless eyes; these features can be briefly hidden with costuming, glamour, or disciplines, but they can never actually be escaped. All Kiasyd suffer the exact same appearance, since their creation as a formal bloodline has solidified the Maeghar tendency to manifest random fairy traits.
The Kiasyd in DC
While most people would say that there are no Kiasyd in Washington, DC, a few have recently sighted Walter Black, a notorious Sabbat city-breaker and siege-crafter, lurking around the city's edges, perhaps planning for a renewed assault on the once-Sabbat zone. .
Kiasyd Characters
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| Talia | Ulricha Weber | Walter Black | Yuri Mueller |