| Contents |
| History • Strongholds • Advantages and Weaknesses • The Ravnos in DC • Ravnos Player Characters • A Note About Terminology |
| Ravnos | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Pseudonyms | Charlatans; Unwelcome |
| Sect | Independents Jati |
| Disciplines | Animalism Chimerstry Fortitude |
| Bloodlines | Phuri Dae |
| Rarity | Rare |
Of all the vampiric clans, the Ravnos are the least numerous and the most hated, although whether or not they deserve these disadvantages depends completely on who you ask. One of the founding members of the Jati, they were in ancient times considered unparalleled magicians and workers of wonders, and they still carry that reputation in spite of the later stigmas they face.
In Europe, the Ravnos are and always have been heavily tied to the Romani people, and just as the Romani have been widely discriminated against throughout history, so do other vampire clans shun, distrust, and mistreat the Ravnos. They are widely reputed to be thieves, liars, and wandering mendicants just waiting to ruin the livelihoods and comfort of the other clans whenever they enter their territories. Every European clan (especially in the Camarilla) treats the Ravnos as the least of the least, and those few who do spend time in Camarilla or Sabbat territories usually do so with the knowledge that they might have to leave for their own safety at any moment. It doesn't help that the Ravnos possess the strange and terrifying power of Chimerstry, which makes other vampires fear them (although they might not ever want to admit it).
Of course, the Ravnos themselves tell a different story, pointing out that they are one of the supreme clans of the Jati and that the European clans have always mistreated them outside of their homeland due to racism, and that if any of them did choose to strike back, they would hardly be unjustified. Traditionally, Ravnos are tolerated in various cities on the understanding that they don't stay too long, and they strike back against the establishment when needed by threatening to cause large-scale chaos, a maneuver referred to as the Treatment, if any of their members are injured or killed, causing most vampires to simply avoid them and uneasily hope that they leave soon.
The vast majority of Ravnos are Embraced from among either ethnic Indian people in Asia, or ethnic Romani people and members of the Indian diaspora elsewhere in the world; most Indian Ravnos remain in their seat of power there, and while there are a very few non-Romani Ravnos in Europe, they tend to be viewed with some mistrust by their clanmates, who often consider them almost as much outsiders as they would members of other clans.
History
The Ravnos claim that their progenitor, the ancient Antediluvian Zapathasura, is divine; according to the epic Ravnos poem Karavalashina Vrana, the depredations of the Kuei-Jin in India were becoming so terrible that Zapathasura, a man who had been harmed and eventually killed by them beyond all other tortures, rose back up out of his grave to fight back against them and restore balance to the world. Referring to the evil creatures as asuratziyya, he began to create his own childer to become a bulwark against the scourge that threatened to destroy vampires and humans alike.
Zapathasura and his five lieutenant childer faithfully protected India, drawing attention and support from other clans and bloodlines who began to surface to band together against the Kuei-Jin threat. The war was constant, brutal, and tedious, and while Zapathasura's unquenchable desire for balance and vengeance could not be swayed, his childer eventually grew weary of endless centuries of slaughter and misery. Four of them left, one for each other major continent, with the human diasporas who would eventually become the Romani, and the fifth remained behind with his sire to create what would become the modern Jati.
Those childer who departed became the ancestors of all Ravnos in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, while the one who stayed behind became the ancestor of all Indian Ravnos; the two "cousin" branches of the clan often treat one another with mild suspicion, but they are still likely to respond to a call for help from clanmembers from far-off lands even if they have never met them. Both groups are fiercely loyal to and protective of their human communities even as they prey on them, an ironclad responsibility they have developed through centuries of insular war against outsiders and discrimination through avenues such as invading warlords or the caste system.
As with most things pertaining to the Ravnos, the visceral racism against them among the European clans has resulted in a secondary origin story; according to the Camarilla, the original Ravnos Antediluvian was a man named Dracian, who was Embraced to help his sire gather information only to immediately betray him, leading eventually to the downfall and destruction of all the elder progenitors above them. The Ravnos consider this just another aggravating attempt by the Camarilla to treat them like born criminals, and tend to ignore retellings of it or point out that their origins in India make this story tenuous at best.
The Middle Ages
According to the Camarilla and Sabbat, the Middle Ages are where the Ravnos earned their reputation as vampiric vermin, infesting cities across Europe and performing crimes and destroying lives seemingly because they couldn't pass up a single opportunity to do so. The Middle Ages propaganda against the clan is so strong in part because racism against their Romani counterparts was similarly powerful and violent during this time period, and most European vampires came to regard them as equivalent to either murdering cutthroats or the eastern powers of Asia that they considered violent infidels.
It is true that the Ravnos were largely nomadic outside of India during the Middle Ages, and that they often committed crimes against established Camarilla and Sabbat cities; but they claim that they were forced to do so by the heavy discrimination they faced, and argue that the clan might not have survived if they hadn't been willing to get their hands a little dirty. Most European Ravnos were forced to go to ground with their Romani communities, and the few who didn't largely served as mercenaries, assassins, and traveling craftspeople to clans who considered them barely a step up from rats.
The Week of Nightmares
In 1999, Clan Ravnos was decimated by the Week of Nightmares, so-called because for several days every Ravnos on the planet began to have powerful nightmares and hallucinations, no matter where or how powerful they were, as a result of Zapathasura himself reawakening from torpor in India and returning to power. The clan is uncertain why he awoke exactly then, but the prevailing theories are either that enough of his descendants had finally been killed by Kuei-Jin or European malcontents to rouse his anger, or that too many Ravnos elders performing illusory magic in defense of their homeland troubled his dreams.
Whatever the reason, Zapathasura's awakening very nearly ended the world; horrific natural disasters accompanied him rising from the earth, including floods, cyclones, and earthquakes that devastated most of Bangladesh and large swaths of India, and the situation only became more critical from there. Confronted by a massed army of enemies (some whisper that the Kuei-Jin decided to wake him on purpose, believing that they could destroy him) made up of not only the Kuei-Jin but also local Mages and shapeshifters, the Antediluvian went on the attack against his ancient foes, and the land itself trembled in the conflict.
Eventually, Zapathasura fell, though not before destroying most of his foes, and only because of a desperate ploy involving a nuclear warhead, a linked group of mages who died in the attempt, and the evil draining powers of the Kuei-Jin combined. His brood promptly went insane. Across the globe, members of Clan Ravnos became wild, feral monsters, screaming in terror and causing horrific hallucinations and tragedies with wanton use of illusions; even worse, every Ravnos also became violently territorial, turning on any other member of the clan in close proximity with murderous rage. Ancient societies and beloved families were decimated, and when the dust settled, there were even fewer members of the beleaguered clan left than before.
The clan's future remains uncertain. Many do not trust the supposed "death" of Zapathasura, pointing out that he had survived death multiple times before and was considered nearly indestructible even among other Antediluvians; it's more likely, most elders pensively worry, that he is simply in torpor again and therefore could reawaken. Since the end of the Week, the surviving Ravnos have been able to regain some control over themselves, with most no longer being driven to violent rage by one anothers' presence. The psychic whiplash has resulted in lingering effects, however, and most Ravnos now struggle with more derangements than they did before.
Strongholds
Traditionally, the Ravnos maintained two strongholds: the Indian city of Varanasi, where the elders of the clan kept the front lines against the Kuei-Jin, and the Bangladeshi city of Dhaka, where Zapathasura rested while his descendants watched over him. The clan's stronghold in Dhaka has been largely obliterated by the Antediluvian's recent awakening, but the Varanasi stronghold remains the clan's greatest bastion.
Those Ravnos elders who reside in Varanasi do so more in the open than their western counterparts would dare; many of them have been there since warring Indian kingdoms recognized them as divine warriors, and they are prone to behaving as if they still hold their own smaller raj in the modern world. (In many ways, they're correct; mortals certainly can't affect them much, and other vampires are wary of being anywhere near the Ravnos base of power.) Opulent palaces and open-air temples surround ancient archaeological sites, and how much of each is really there and how much buttressed by illusions older than many countries is unknown to outsiders.
Advantages and Weaknesses
Advantages
Ravnos are afforded small protection from other Kindred in the form of the Treatment, a city-wide terror campaign that other Ravnos may enact on their behalf if they are hurt; as long as there is more than one Ravnos in the city, the others can expect that their clanmates will avenge them if they suffer, which usually prevents other Kindred from perpetrating anything too heinous on them. Threats of the Treatment are used sparingly, since it loses its potency if it's thrown around for small inconveniences not worth rousing the clan for, but are generally taken seriously when uttered. (One way or another; more than one Prince has decided to respond to the Treatment with a bloodhunt against the offenders rather than addressing the original grievance.)
Ravnos also automatically succeed at most basic Streetwise and Street Influence challenges, although anything complicated still requires them to learn to specialize. Because they exist somewhat outside the normal laws of the Camarilla and Sabbat, they may also occasionally choose to either ignore someone else's positive status, or ignore a Harpy bestowing a negative status on them as a result of their actions (although they cannot do so if their problems form a constant pattern).
Disadvantages
No matter what the Ravnos do, their vices are always disliked and discriminated against by the rest of the Kindred world. Each Ravnos must choose one "sin" or "crime" - not necessarily one that is actually unethical or wrong, but definitely one that others would judge them for - that the rest of vampiric society will continually attempt to punish or denigrate them for. Ravnos "crimes" are not crimes in the sense of actually being acts of evil, but rather in the sense of doing things that the establishment in power at the moment attempts to control, ban, or punish.
Ravnos vices discriminated against by other vampires range from benign pastimes such as gambling, promiscuous sex, minor shoplifting, political protests, hacking websites, or harmless pranks, to large-scale and dangerous ones, including larceny, malicious and dangerous tricks (usually played on those the Ravnos thinks deserve it), daredevil acts that could result in serious injury, and so on. Other clans claim that this kind of behavior is why they are justified in viewing the Ravnos as criminals waiting to cause problems, while the Ravnos point out that there is no vampire clan that doesn't do these things on occasion, and it mysteriously seems that none of those clans are uniformly considered evil.
The Ravnos in DC
The Ravnos have no real power or presence in DC, as they don't most places; although there are a few members of the clan in residence for the moment, and others passing in and out of the territory without staying for long, none are permanent residents or particularly influential. The Prince is somewhat lenient with Ravnos in his domain, allowing them to spend (brief, reasonable amounts of) time there where other Princes might hunt them down; some whisper that he does so because, as a Lasombra in the Camarilla, he sympathizes with their position as so widely disliked by the sect, but others more pragmatically assume that he simply doesn't want the aggravation of managing the Treatment in the politically delicate environment of DC.
Ravnos Player Characters
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| Anastasia Aderre | Dominic Vaughn | Maeve Glaistig | Pieter van Reise | Xavier Tulloch |
A Note About Terminology
Although the real-life Romani people and the fictional Ravnos are both traditionally referred to by outsiders as "G*psies", the term is considered an offensive and derogatory slur and should never be used to refer to any Romani person without their explicit consent. Some Ravnos use the term within their own ranks, but they do not appreciate others using it (although, unfortunately, almost all other Kindred still do).