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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:03:57 GMT -8
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:06:28 GMT -8
Table of Contents Preface
The Chronicle of Cain
The First Times
The Coming of Lilith
The Temptation of Caine
Caine's Awakening
Zillah's Tale
The Tale of the Crone
The Tale of the First City |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:10:08 GMT -8
 I cannot tell you the naked fear I feel, putting down these words for once and for all. Perhaps I will regret them. Perhaps they will never see print. Yet, it is my nature to report this. It is, as they say, in the blood.
My sire, and his sire before him, followed this great and glorious work. Indeed, our very nature has been shaped by this quest; we are unable to stop searching for knowledge. We are of the Mnemosyne, the Memory-Seekers. Specifically, we have been commanded to search for the Book, the tome of all Kindred lore, which is a collection of writings by Caine, his childer and his grandchilder. It is this Book, supposedly first written in the land of Nod, east of Eden, that captures our daytime nightmares and makes every night a painful journey from ignorance towards truth.
Still, I savor every moment of my unlife. I savor the feeling of the crinkly old skins through silk gloves, turning them page by page. My hands shake with pleasure while holding soft, cool lights and reading ink that was newly dried when Charlemagne was young. I savor the gentle, quiet terror of reading cuneiform tablets that threaten to crumble at my very presence. More than that, perhaps more than immortality itself, is the quest that burns within me. It is the search. I have traveled all over this world, perhaps even more than any other of my bloodline.
Where my eternal quest takes me, I shall know no fear! Though small of frame and frail of body, my heart is strong and my blood stronger. I am not afraid to go to those shadowy places where the far-flung fragments of our Father's teachings lie resting!
I have gotten lost in the raw brutality of New York, sipped tea with the Governor of Kingston, made life-long enemies in Johannesburg, hired the best diggers in all Cairo, fought to get through to Casablanca, learned about ancient steel and ancient monuments in Toledo, dug in the white cliffs of Dover, barely avoided a deadly brawl in Dublin, sneaked past watchful eyes in Brest, and liberated ancient tomes from a monastery in Cologne. I have saved fourteen sacred scrolls from the torch in Berlin, sipped the best coffee and talked to the greatest Austrian scholars in Vienna, learned ancient Sumerian from a Methuselah in the hidden tunnels under the University of Prague, and braved the coldest winters Oslo had to offer.
And yet, I did not do this by my wits alone.
Barely a night goes by that I do not thank our Founder for his foresight in providing me with the secret ways of hiding, the way to see beyond sight, and the voice of command that seems to come so easily to our line, and I have long blessed my warrior friend Karsh who taught me the secret of seeing in the dark and sleeping in the earth.
And yet, I wonder what else our Founder provided us with. My sire and his sire seem to have fallen under a horrible curse. A madness, dark and quiet at first but soon growing to a terrible loss of coherent thought and communication, has seemed to strike them. Can I be far behind? My Tremere friend has written me, saying that the burning need driving my bloodline might be the curse of the madness. It must be true, for I cannot fight the burning desire for more knowledge. It is as difficult to resist as the need for sleep or the need for blood.
It is perhaps this madness, that which I fear the most, which has compelled me to go to press with this translation in haste. Know that I do not intend to break Raphael's fragile Masquerade by putting these words in print. It is my intent that a scant ten score of these books be printed, and that none of the copies of this book be given into the hands of the sons and daughters of Seth (as our Father commands us in The Chronicle of Shadows).
I must publish this now, however. It is the most complete collection of the Chronicles of The Book of Nod that has ever been gathered. No other translation, not even Critias' Codex of Caine, has been as complete.
And yet it shames me to say that this is not the complete text. Far from it. I have seen whole fragments go up in smoke as flames consumed ancient buildings. I have touched a complete Book in the tomb of an Antediluvian, and watched it crumble to dust.
I know that in the catacombs under the fabled Lost City of Gold, hidden deep in the Amazon jungle, there are thirteen stone fragments said to contain specific words to each of the 13 tribes of Kindred, but I only glimpsed them once before I was forced to flee. And so, I can only boast to having part of the puzzle: the largest part to ever be assembled, true, but still only a part of the whole.
I have chose English as it is my native tongue. It is, in my opinion, the one language which most ably dances between the ancient concepts of Sumer, the noble language of Ancient Rome and the stentorian incantations of Medieval Germany. I must beg forgiveness for its glib simplification in some cases. However, I will forever defend my choice. The King's English will serve well, especially since so many of the original texts are forever lost to me.
It is perhaps particularly perverse that I follow the threads of memory to each fragment of this Book, and yet I know that there are those out there who harry me at every step. I know that Amelek has himself had a hand in thwarting me once, and other Methuselahs as well. It is difficult to find, for example, lists of the names of the Antediluvians and the Methuselahs, for they know that in names there are power, and they, out of fear that some mage would learn to control them with it, have blotted their names out of the histories, wherever they have been recovered.
I have luckily managed to discover a few of them, but I suspect these to be falsified names that where created by the Antediluvians to throw me off the trail, so I offer them here. This may be the only way in which we may identify certain Antediluvians. Furthermore, I have fallen into the habit (regrettably) of referring to the founder of a clan with a nominative of the can's name. For example, "Malkav" equals "Malkavian." This is, admittedly, sloppy scholarship but I have been left with no choice. Once I learned the true name of Brujah's Antediluvian and discovered my own name carved in my forearm the next evening. I promptly swore to never again seek the names of those founders.
I am quite sure that, even as I write these words, there are agents of the Jyhad who are following me. I will not join the common room downstairs tonight, for last night it was her, watching for me, searching for me, sent by Ventrue to harry me. No matter. I will write the truth and the rest of you be damned!
I have attempted to compile these textual fragments into some kind of coherent story, at least within the contexts of the various Chronicles. Where you see an ellipsis, know that there are more words on that particular scrap, but that it has somehow been lost, erased or hidden from me.
I wait now only for a package from London to finish this missive and have done with this book. This package will carry one of the only copies of the Codex of Caine left in existence, and will be the last piece in my complex puzzle. I look forward to touching it, holding it, with great expectation. And if any of my brothers or sisters comes near it, I will ... I will send them to the death of fire! Let Michael's holy sword brand them, for all I care. No one has come this close. I will reign triumphant amongst my kind.With triumph, Aristotle deLaurent  |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:14:40 GMT -8
  It is unimportant that this part of the Book of Nod is not comparatively accurate with the standard biblical canon. What is important is that we have, perhaps for the first time, a personal viewpoint on the events surrounding the days after the Fall.
Caine tells us in his own words what his motives were, and although it is quite possible that this story exists only to shape our idea of him, we can assume that there must be some element of the truth in his tale, His account is, after all, the only eyewitness report we have to rely upon.
Ah, our dear Father. In some Islamic myths, the translated Satan figure is thrown from Heaven not because he hates mankind, but because he loves God too much to bow to any other but God, and he will not serve man. It is perhaps that Caine shares in this love: he so loves his brother that he cannot think of any other worthy sacrifice to the One Above. Surely Caine could not have had any other reason to sacrifice his brother. He could not know death, having been born before Death was something humanity had experienced.
Other figures of that time also play instrumental roles in the Book. Surely it is not purely mythological transliteration that causes Lilith to appear in this story, for she is a figure in the oldest of the Hebrew Midrashim. Having been cast out of Paradise first, she would recognize Caine for one who had been in the light of heaven and subsequently cast out. There are those among my colleagues who believe that this stanza should represent the idea that Lilith, mother of magick and demoness herself, taught the first Disciplines to Caine. Others see her role as being a midwife to our Father's awakening to his own magickal potential.
What remains to be discovered is the fabled "Cycle of Lilith" which supposedly describes the time Caine spent with Lilith as her servant and lover. Was it merely a dalliance, or could it have been some kind of mystical apprenticeship, during which Lilith gradually drew out of Caine the limitations that the Divine had placed upon him, and slowly Awakened him to his own magickal powers? The fact that she shows trepidation at his drinking her own blood from the Awakening cup might point her lack of total understanding as to what, exactly, this might do to the First Son of Adam.
We cannot afford to speculate whether the cup causes a hallucination in Cane or whether Caine is actually physically transported to a wilderness somewhere in the Darkness. This is not understood, neither is it explained by the translation of the original text. The original phraseology essentially means "breathed in" or "moved." Both meanings of the word point to either explanation. And we cannot gain much in the debate: it matters not whether Caine was physically transported. Like shamanic visions recorded as a result of ritually consuming hallucinogenics, Caine's experience was as real to him as any journey might be to you or me.
My childe, Beckett, continues to restate his opinion that the Chronicle of Caine is a vampiric parable. I totally disagree, but Beckett is a beloved childe. I will include his studies and findings here, below. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:17:26 GMT -8
 Because of the literary distance between the current translations of the text (Dr. deLaurent's translation included) of The Book of Nod, the original intent of the Book has been lost. It is my theory, based on my own researches, that the stories of Caine and Abel, Caine's curse,
and his subsequent meeting with Lilith are parables created to tell the tale of the first Kindred in such a way that even the simplest of us can understand them. Through my own scholarship, and drawing upon the work of the fundamental Caine scholars in the world (including some captured writings by a Black Hand worshipper of Caine), I have created a story which I believe harkens back to the original parable of Caine.
In the time after humanity went from a hunter/gatherer society to cultivating farm animals and developing agriculture, there were two tribes, named for their chiefs., They were called the people of Caine and the people of Abel. The people of Abel were herders and animal husbanders, and were more primitive than the people of Caine. They worshipped a great Sun God, who was a warrior who lived in the sky. The people of Caine were agricultural, and were more civilized than the people of Abel. Because it was so important to time the harvest, the people of Caine worshipped the Moon Goddess, the Dark Mother who was both the fertility of Earth and the mystery of the Moon.
Yet, not all of the people were happy. Chief Abel attacked Caine's people, telling them that they were inferior and cursed because they did not hunt like their Sun God hunted. Caine's people did not know much about fighting, but Caine taught them how to use the sharp things that they used to till the soil to kill. When Abel's people came back to torment them again, Caine's people fought back. All of the men, women and children of Abel were killed.
The Sun God of the people of Abel then called them cursed as a people, and laid a blood-curse on all of them, that they would wander without a home in the wilderness. He burned their villages and salted their fields, and told all to turn away from the people of Caine.
The people of Caine were unable to recover. They wandered in the curse for many weeks, until they had no food to eat and had many troubles. Then the priestess of the Dark Mother, who lived beyond the Moon, came. The priestess offered Caine's people respite, succor, and surcease. She taught them magic, taught them how to hunt, and taught them to drink blood.
The Sun God came to Chief Caine in dreams, and told him and his people to return and subjugate themselves to the will of people of Seth. Caine refused. Then the Sun God told him that all the people of his tribe would be cursed forever, and it was so. But the Dark Mother said that there would always be a way to overcome this curse: of the people of Caine would come to Her, through her mystery, she would free them from the curse of the Sun God.
In this parable, Caine's people (and Caine) represent our need for civilization, the Humanitas that we constantly seek. Abel's people (and Abel) represent our animal natures, our wild selves, the Beast that lies within us. The Dark Mother represents the mystery that guides our very existence: the magic of our blood, the power of Disciplines. We must seek the mystery of Dark Mother while dealing with the legacy left behind by the Sun God -- the curse. Ergo, "A Beast I am, lest a Beast I become." Golconda is held out as a final goal, perhaps balancing all these things and showing the transcendence of the Beast Within. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 0:22:03 GMT -8
  I dream of the first times the longest memory I speak of the first times the oldest Father I sing of the first times and the dawn of darkness In Nod, where the light of Paradise lit up the night sky and the tears of our parents wet the ground. Each of us, in our way, set about to live and take our sustenance from the land. And I, first born Caine, I, with sharp things, planted the dark seeds wet them in the eart tended them, watched them grow. And Abel, second-born Abel tended the animals aided their bloody births fed them, watched them grow. I loved him, my Brother. He was the bightest. The sweetest. The strongest. He was the first part of all my joy. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:32:52 GMT -8
 Then one day our Father said to us, Caine, Abel to Him Above you must make a sacrifice - a gift of the first part of all that you have. And I, first-born Caine, I gathered the tender shoots the brightest fruits the sweetest grass. And Abel, second-born, Abel slaughtered the youngest, the strongest, the sweetest of his animals. On the alter of our Father we laid our sacrifices and lit fire under them and watched the smoke carry them up to the One Above. The sacrifice of Abel, second-born smelled sweet to the One Above and Abel was blessed. And I, first-born Caine, I was struck from beyond by a harsh word and a curse, for my sacrifice was unworthy. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:35:34 GMT -8
 I looked at Abel's sacrifice, still smoking, the flesh, the blood. I cried, I held my eyes I prayed in night and day. And when Father said the time for Sacrifice has come again And Abel led his youngest, his sweetest, his most beloved to the sacrificial fire I did not bring my youngest, my sweetest, for I knew the One Above would not want them. And my brother, beloved Abel said to me "Caine, you did not bring a sacrifice, a gift of the first part of your joy, to burn on the alter of the One Above." |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:37:23 GMT -8
 And the Blood of Abel coveredAnd the Blood of Abel covered the alter and smelled sweet as it burned. But my Father said "Cursed are you, Caine, who killed your bother. As I was cast out so shall you be. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:38:56 GMT -8
 And He exiled me to wander in Darkness, the land of Nod.
I flew into the Darkness I saw no source of light and I was afraid. And alone. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:40:23 GMT -8
 I was alone in the Darkness And I grew hungry. I was alone in the Darkness And I grew cold. I was alone in the Darkness And I cried. Then there came to me a sweet voice, a honey voice Words of succor. Words of surcrease. A woman, dark and lovely, with eyes that pierced the Darkness came to me. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:42:43 GMT -8
 I know your story, Caine of Nod." She said, smiling. "You are hungry. Come! I have food. You are cold. Come! I have clothes. You are sad. Come! I have comfort." "Who would comfort one so Cursed as I? Who would clothe me? Who would feed me?" "I am your Father's first wife, who disagreed with the One Above and gained Freedom in the Darkness. I am Lilith. Once, I was cold, and there was no warmth for me. Once, I was hungry, and there was no food for me. Once, I was sad, and there was no comfort for me." She took me in, she fed me. She clothed me. In her arms, I found comfort. I cried until blood trickled from my eyes and she kissed them away. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:46:41 GMT -8
 And I dwelt for a time in the House of Lilith and asked her "Out of Darkness, how did you build this place? How did you make clothes? How did you grow food?" And Lilith smiled and said, "Unlike you, I am Awake. I see the Threads that spin all around you. I make that which I need out of Power." "Awaken me, then, Lilith." I said. "I have need for this Power. Then, I can make my own clothes, make my own food, make my own House." |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 11:52:31 GMT -8
 Worry creased Lilith's brow. "I do not know what the Awakening will do for you, for you are truly Cursed by your Father. You could die. You could be forever changed." Caine said, "Even so, a life without Power will not be worth living. I would die without your gifts. I will not live as your Thrall." Lilith loved me, and I knew this. Lilith would do what I asked, though she did not wish it. And so, Lilith, bright-eyed Lilith, Awakened me. She cut herself with a knife bled for me into a bowl. I drank deep. It was sweet. And then I fell into the Abyss. I fell forever, falling into the deepest darkness. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 12:19:54 GMT -8
 And from the Darkness came a bright and shining light fire in the night. And the archangel Michael revealed himself to me. I was unafraid. I asked his business. Michael. General of Heaven, weilder of the holy Flame, said unto me, 'Son of Adam. Son of Eve, thy crime is great, and yet the mercy of my Father is also great. Will you not repent the evil that you have done, and let his mercy wash you clean?" And I said to Michael, "Not by [the One Above]'s grace, but mine own will I live, in pride." Michael cursed me, saying "Then, for as long as you walk this earth, you and your children will fear my living flame, and it will bite deep and savor your flesh." |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 12:26:09 GMT -8
 And on the morning, Raphael came on lambent wings, light over the horizon the driver of the Sun, ward of the East. Raphael spoke, saying "Caine, son of Adam, son of Eve, your brother Abel forgives you your sin will you not repent, and accept the mercy of the Almighty?" And I said to Raphael "Not by Abel's forgiveness, but mine own will I be forgiven." Raphael cursed me, saying "Then, for as long as you walk this earth, you and your children will fear the dawn, and the sun's rays will seek to burn you like fire where ever you hide always. Hide now for the Sun rises to take its wrath on you." But I found a secret place in the earth and hid from the burning light of the Sun. Deep in the earth, I slept until the Light of the World was hidden behind the mountain of Night. When I awoke from my day of sleep, I heard the sound of gentle rushing wings and I saw the black wings of Uriel draped around me - Uriel, reaper, angel of Death, dark Uriel who dwells in darkness. Uriel spoke to me quietly, saying "Son of Adam, Son of Eve, God Almighty has forgiven you your sin. Will you accept his mercy and let me take you to your reward, no longer cursed?" And I said to the dark-winged Uriel, "Not by God's mercy, but my own, will I live. I am what I am, I did what I did, and that will never change." And then, through dread Uriel God Almighty cursed me, saying, "Then, for as long as you walk this earth, you and your children will cling to Darkness You will drink only blood You will eat only ashes You will be always as you were at death, Never dying, living on. You will walk forever in Darkness, all you touch will crumble into nothing, until the last days." |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 12:55:56 GMT -8
 I gave a cry of anguish at this terrible curse and tore at my flesh.
I wept blood. I caught the tears in a cup and drank them. |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 13:02:52 GMT -8
 When I looked up from my drink of sorrow the archangel Gabriel gentle Gabriel Gabriel, Lord of Mercy appeared to me. The archangel Gabriel said unto me, "Son of Adam. Son of Eve. Behold, the mercy of the Father is greater than you can ever know for even now there is a path opened a road of Mercy and you shall call this road [Golconda]. And tell your children of it, for by that road may the come once again to dwell in the Light." |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 13:04:50 GMT -8
 And with that, the darkness was lifted like a veil and the only light was Lilith's bright eyes. Looking around me, I knew that I had Awakened. When my energies first surged through me, I discovered how to move like Lightening (Celerity), how to borrow the strength of the earth, (Potence), hot to be as stone (Fortitude). These were like, breathing once was to me.
Lilith then showed me how she hides herself from hunters (Obfuscate), how she commands obedience (Dominate), and how she demands respect (Presence). |
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Post by Maelthras on Feb 10, 2017 13:12:23 GMT -8
 Then, Awakening myself further, I found the way to alter [Protean] the way to have dominion over animals [Animalism] the way to make my eyes see past sight (Auspex) |
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