Tlacinque

Bloodlines

Pronunciation

Tlacique (t-la-see-Kay)

Introduction

An extinct bloodline in all eyes but their own, the Tlacinque played only a small part in Kindred history. Although other clans have forgotten them, the children of Tezcatlipoca have never forgotten those who invaded their home and they've certainly never forgiven.

Kindred who came to Mexico with the Conquistadors found the cities of the New World -- far larger and more prosperous than they'd expected from "barbarous heathens" -- hosted and active population of native vampires. Some were Gangrel, some Nosferatu, but the most influential native bloodline was the Tlacique. They claimed descent from Tezcatlipoca, the Jaguar, god of night, mirrors, smoke and black-magic. They ruled openly, in a fashion not seen since Carthage, in small family groups called cliques. The "nahualli", Tlacique blood sorcerers, removed the hearts of sacrifices atop the great pyramids and drank their blood. The Tlacinque proclaimed themselves gods, and their people worshiped them.

The Camarilla could have claimed a great ally, for the natives treated the Spaniards as honored guests, and the Tlacique were happy to negotiate with the foreign Kindred. And negotiate they did -- until smallpox devastated their people and the Conquistadors plundered their cities and plunged their worshipers into near slavery. This was hardly the fault of the European Kindred; mortal greed, not Cainite influence, steered the course of the Spanish explorers. But the Tlacique, who ruled their own people, could not conceive that the Europeans did things differently. If the newcomers oppressed the natives, it must be so because the Camarilla Kindred wished it so.

The Tlacique soon learned that they could not confront the newcomers alone. They had learned, however, of another faction of Kindred, newly arrived from Europe, a sect that counted the Camarilla among its enemies. The Tlacique allied with the struggling Sabbat.

This alliance lasted only as long as it took to drive the Camarilla from Mexico. The Tlacique soon realized that the Sabbat exalted violence. The Tlacique had innumerable bloody traditions, and rituals, but the Black-Hand was all form with no meaning; their enthusiam for adopting the Tlacique's rites was rooted in sadism, not faith. Their erstwhile allies were more depraved and more dangerous than the Camarilla Kindred they'd driven from their lands.

The Tlacique battled the Sabbat in turn -- and lost miserably. The Sabbat all but eliminated the outnumbered natives and diablerized their elders. The few surviving Tlacique scattered to distant communities. The Black-Hand thought them dead and gone; the Camarilla forgot them in the face of Sabbat aggression. The Tlacique became an obscure legend in the lands they once ruled.

After four centuries of hiding, that "legend" is vengeful and hungry.

Perhaps fewer than a few score Tlacique exist tonight, hidden throughout South and Central America and the southwestern states of North America. Slowly, they reestablish lines of communication. For the first time, they work together as a unified bloodline. They seek the resting places of those slumbering elders the Sabbat missed in their purge. They launch guerrilla assaults on Sabbat enclaves, determined to take back their stolen homelands.

The Sabbat is again at war -- they just haven't yet figured out with whom.

Sect

The Tlacique claim no allegiance to either sect, but they have one budding alliance. Their interest in purging the Sabbat from Central America and their links to the Aztecs and Maya provide common ground with the Pisanob branch of Clan Giovanni. Negotiations remain tentative at this point, bu the elders of the Sabbat and Camarilla would shudder to think of what these two groups could accomplish together, if only they knew the Tlacique existed at all.