By Stacey Lawless (8 June 1995)
"The border...that's where we make our homes; on the threshold, at the crossroads, in the place that's neither here nor there. We stand somewhere between life and death, between legend and fact, between the devil and the deep blue sea. Ah, I saw that flicker in your eyes, little one; you've just about decided that I'm mad, as moonstruck as any Malkavian. Well, it's up to you; I surely don't care if you think I'm mad or not. So what will it be? Madness or moonlight?"
The Sluagh are a small bloodline, numbering a few dozen members. They are scattered across North America and the western-most edge of Europe, with the greatest concentrations in northern California, British Columbia, and the British Isles. There are a few among the Sabbat, but for the most part the Sluagh are members of the Camarilla. They do not consider their Sabbat kin to be antitribu, however; all Sluagh hold their clanmates near and dear to their hearts, regardless of sect. They feel, and rightly so, that the unearthly blood they share supersedes all political concerns.
"You must understand, my dear...we are both Kindred, two of Caine's flawed and beautiful descendents, but I am both less and more than vampire. The waters and the wild beat in my veins and I am torn in more ways than I care to think about. Yet at the same time, I am one of the last bright shards of a forgotten age, proud tattered remnant of magic."
The Sluagh are fae vampires, blessed and cursed with Faerie blood. Many of them had faerie ancestors in their mortal lineages, and the Blood of their founder is a strange and heady brew that can confer the touch of the fae upon even the most mundane of humans.
"Ah, this time the flicker is one of curiosity, eh, little one? Maybe I should go back to the beginning. The founder of our line has many names, not the least of which is Cailleach Bheur, the Hag of Winter. But she wasn't always so twisted and wizened, nor so dark. I'll call her Yevaud, for it's another of her names, and believe me when I say her beauty once would have put Helen of Troy to shame. She first set foot upon this earth two hands of years before the Tremere became Kin themselves..."
Sometime between 1010 and 1012, at the height of the Schism Wars of the Order of Hermes, a magus of the beleaguered House Diedne drew upon a favor owed him by an olamh (bard) of the Seelie Court, and she came to the mortal world to aid the Diedne chantry of Averoigne in their struggle against the Tremere and Flambeau magi. Unfortunately, the defenders lost. Magi of House Tremere looted the ruined chantry, hunting for knowledge and artifacts, and they found Yevaud and bound her with the silver strings of her own harp and took her with them as a trophy of war.
The Tremere studied Yevaud, clipped the vis from her bright hair, siphoned off many, many samples of her blood, all to further their studies of immortality. Eventually they concluded that Faerie had little to offer them, being as ephemeral and vulnerable to the loss of magic as their own powers. However, a captive faerie was too valuable a thing to waste, so they imprisoned Yevaud in a room lined with iron, whose only window looked east to a distant church steeple. One of them, however, felt sorry for their bright captive, and often took the time to visit her in her iron room, where they would talk softly of the days long ago when magic was strong and pure. This was Etrius, one of Tremere's Inner Circle.
They kept her imprisoned thus for a hundred years.
Shortly after Tremere diablerized Saulot, Etrius was disturbed one evening by a wail that echoed dimly from a long-disused section of the chantry--the section where Yevaud's iron room was. The Tremere had largely forgotten about her. Etrius himself had not been to visit his friend for some months. He went to see what the matter was and was shocked by what he discovered. Yevaud's beauty had been fading slowly over the years as the iron and the church bells took their inexorable toll, but now, suddenly, she had aged horribly. Where once an eternally-young fae woman had stood, there now crouched a hideous hag who staggered beneath the weight of her own bones and screamed with pain. As Etrius watched the furrows etched themselves even deeper in her skin. It is a terrible thing to watch, one of the Daoine Sidhe dying, and Etrius decided that he would not do it. Instead, without really thinking about it, he slit the palm of his hand and held it cupped to Yevaud's lips so she could drink the potent vitae that welled up.
It is thought that Etrius only meant to make her a ghoul, as she was not yet dead when he gave her the vitae. There are those who say that, had he been of any other Clan, had his Blood not been enriched with magic, it would have been as water to the faerie woman. Instead, it caused a terrible transformation. Yevaud became something that was neither wholly fae nor wholly vampire, who had the power and wild heart of Faerie but was forever trapped in the mortal world; who had the blood-thirst and Beast of vampire-kind but who had never been tempered with humanity. She often likens herself, now, to a butterfly trapped in amber, but this metaphor does nothing to convey her alien nature.
The physical change, too, was startling. Its effects seemed to be random, but ultimately made an eerie pattern. Yevaud's skin took on the exact color of the sky just before it snows, and her hair became a mass of tangled white and silver strands. Her eyes became the fathomless black of an icy river in the dead of night. Her fingernails took on the color and sharpness of flint. Etrius later wrote in his journal that it was as if the trees of summer had been blighted by an early frost.
Iron still bound her, so Etrius left her in the room for a few more nights, while he brought her animals to feed upon. When he could no longer stand to look at the strange creature he had made, he led her from the room and watched as she vanished into the first snow of winter.
A few years later, Yevaud paid Etrius some visits, and they became friends once again. She is one of the very few Kindred to whom he can tell his fears, and he is one of the few non-Sluagh whom she trusts with the location of her Sidh.
"You see, after she took her leave of the Tremere, she wandered the world for awhile and found that her Sire had both blessed and cursed her. The loss of magic would not kill her. However, it had driven all others of her kind--the Daoine Sidhe and the other pure fae--out of the mortal world, and she couldn't follow. She was all alone, and the world was getting uglier and smaller and harsher."
Yevaud grew desperate with loneliness, and turned to the last fading traces of Faerie for comfort. She found there were some few men and women who had fae blood in their veins, though it was far from pure. She also found that some of the sites still retained a little power. In Ireland in 1202 she discovered a Sidh (a Hollow Hill) that was still mostly intact. Some humans had built a church atop it, but a Sheela-na-Gig graced its door and it was friendly to her. And inside the Sidh there was a gate to Arcadia.
Yevaud's joy at this discovery was short-lived, for she could not get the gate open, try as she might. Grief and frustration overwhelmed her, but after the wave of grief had passed, she realized how lonely she was for her kind...and that, if nothing else, Etrius had given her a means to make others. They wouldn't be true Faerie, but neither was she any longer, and they would be better than nothing.
"And this is where I come in, sweet child, for I was one of the very first. My great-grandmother, it was said, was of the Tylwyth Teg, and from her come these green, green eyes of mine...I was the younger son of a knight and I was to become a Benedictine, but Yevaud came for me on the road to the monastery. It was...no. The only way I can describe it is to say it was like eating ergot-tainted bread, and then drowning."
Yevaud Embraced several Childer, all of whom had been fae-touched mortals, and she taught them of their origins; taught them about vampire-kind and blood, and the lore and music of the Sidhe. She and her Childer refurbished the Sidh and made their home there, though they were still unable to open the gate.
"She eventually got tired, I think, of being so close to home but unable to get there, and she took to wandering. Oh, she still checks in, and we make sure there is always someone at the Hollow Hill to welcome her. It's become the home of my kind, our refuge from this stale, decaying world."
The first Childer of Yevaud began to Sire also. They found that their fae Blood was potent enough to make another Sluagh out of a human with no faerie blood at all, but that such Childer had a difficult time adjusting to their new state. Humans with faerie blood had an easier time with the transformation. One thing all Sluagh had in common was an aching longing for Faerie: for magic, for beauty, for Arcadia. Even if a particular Sluagh had been thoroughly human in life, she still felt this draw towards the unattainable, and the fledgling bloodline reasoned that their strange Blood sensitized them to the death of mystery in the world.
"It's like going mad from trying to remember a tune you heard as a child, a tune that no-one has sung in two hundred years. Ah, that hasn't happened to you yet? Don't worry; it will if you live long enough, and may the gods pity you when it does...We struggle with this every night. It gives us some hope; maybe soon we'll find a way to open the gates between here and Arcadia...but more often it just edges our lives with despair."
The Sluagh bloodline slowly grew in size and power and began to spread out from Ireland. They developed a close-knit, familial society with an emphasis on hospitality. The aid they gave one another, coupled with their unique Discipline, saw them safely through the Inquisition and witch-craze. It was not until the 1700's that factions arose in the bloodline.
The Sluagh found that three groups had formed in their ranks, and that each Kin fell into one or another. The differences lay in the philosophy of the members. As is their custom, the Sluagh gave each group a decorative name.
"The Mathremail--the word means 'like my mother'--all felt the lonesomeness and yearning for Faerie keenly, and they all felt, still feel, that this world is a forsaken place, best left to the machines and the humans. You see, we all saw Reason sweep through the West, and it kicked the legs out from under even the Church. The Mathremail feel like prisoners and hate it; they want nothing so much as to find a way into Arcadia, and they devote a good deal of time and energy towards this goal...Of us all, they are surely the wildest and strangest, and they know many secrets.
"The Wild Night Company care little for Arcadia; they prefer revelry and power. Many of these Sluagh were completely human in life, and they appreciate this world as it is more than the rest of us do. The Wild Night Company would like to see the bloodline compete more with the other Kindred for power and influence, and they see our faeness as an advantage. They do tend to be young as the Kin go, though, and not very patient. All of our Sabbat Kin are in the Company; that sect's ways tend to suit the Wild Nighters well.
"And then there's me and mine. We're called the Icenii--look it up, little one!--and like the Mathremail we want to find the way to throw open the gates to Arcadia. The difference is that we don't want to flee this world. We like it here fine, but we think it was better in the old days, before iron and cross burned away the magic and turned the humans into sheep. We want to open the gate and pull Arcadia and the Earth back together, and shut the machines down once and for all. Sure it's ambitious, but the Faerie were gods once, so why not again?"
Despite the differences in philosophy and opinion, the three factions coexist well, and often trade information. The Sluagh are proud of their "family" and feel that a group as small as theirs can't afford ideological feuds.
In Kindred society, Sluagh frequently make themselves useful as mercenaries ("gallowglasses"), information brokers, smugglers, and fences. These occupations afford them access to information and artifacts that they might not otherwise have been able to find. They also often require the Sluagh to deal with the other denizens of the World of Darkness, and thus some Goblins find themselves serving as unofficial diplomats to the non-Kindred inhabitants of their cities. Needless to say, this does make unlife a bit more perilous.
Nickname: Goblins, Gallowglass
Appearance: The Sluagh are overwhelmingly European and predominantly Celtic. They really don't care what a prospective Childe looks like, though, and in recent years several non-Caucasians have been Embraced. Many Sluagh, particularly those of low generation, have faerie marks which make them look very strange to humans, though only the most extreme marks detract from Appearance. Sluagh don't seem to favor any particular style of clothing over the others, but what they wear tends to be colorful and comfortable. They all tend to wear a lot of jewelry.
Haven: Sluagh prefer to live in underground caverns and halls, though they will make do with basement apartments and other such dwellings. They furnish their havens in as grand a style as they can afford to, often following personal whims in decoration. Wherever possible they make their havens as far from the center of the city as possible, as the concrete and noise and machinery bother them. The older ones have been known to keep emergency havens at the bottoms of lakes.
Background: Whenever possible Sluagh Embrace mortals with faerie blood, both because these humans find the transition to Sluagh a bit easier, and because the Sluagh feel it is their duty to preserve the last bits of Faerie from the harsh mundane world. However, these individuals are extremely rare nowadays. Sluagh take creative people and outcasts, and often look for those humans who seem to have an air of the supernatural about them. This sometimes gets them into trouble with Garou Kinfolk and mages.
Character Creation: Nearly all Sluagh have Outsider or Dilettante concepts, though there are some Drifters among them. They are often Deviants in Nature, and Bon Vivant is a common Demeanor, though they are by no means limited to these. Social Attributes and Talents are often primary; Knowledges are nearly always tertiary. If the Storyteller allows Merits and Flaws in the Chronicle, Faerie Marks (see below) and Anachronism (Vampire Player's Guide) are two Flaws common to the Sluagh.
Faerie Marks: The transformation into Sluagh sometimes causes physical changes in the body of the Neonate. These usually echo deformities common to the true Faerie, and in addition to making it harder for the Sluagh to pass as human, can also tip off hunters to the nature of their prey. As a -1 Flaw it would include eyes that are oddly colored or shaped (bright green, rounder than usual) and easily concealed marks (overly hairy legs). A -2 Flaw might include such things as pointed ears, oddly colored hair, or small tails; -3 and -4 would include such things as long tails and feet that point backwards, while -5 Flaws would make the Sluagh look very inhuman. -3 Faerie Marks may subtract 1 from Appearance; -4 Faerie Marks always do; and -5 Faerie Marks subtract 2 from Appearance. The Marks don't necessarily cause the Sluagh to be ugly, but they definitely make her seem weird and unsettling.
Clan Disciplines: Auspex, Elphame, Presence. Sluagh using Auspex can discern faerie traces in auras, etc. with little difficulty. Also, at the Storyteller's discretion, the fae Blood of the Sluagh may cause minor changes to the effects of the Disciplines they learn. For example, a Goblin who learns Protean 3 might be able to meld with trees instead of earth, and at Protean 4 might become a rook instead of a bat, or a black dog instead of a wolf.
Weaknesses: Sluagh have the traditional faerie vulnerability to iron. They can handle it without ill effect, but weapons of pure iron (not alloys) cause them aggravated damage. In addition, Kindred who drink the blood of a Sluagh find themselves overcome by a deep melancholy and nameless longing, which lasts until the Sluagh blood has left their systems. (Though this might not be considered a weakness by some...)
Organization: The Sluagh have little in the way of formal organization, but do defer to those of their number who are older, wiser, or more powerful than themselves. Sluagh living in the same city generally dwell apart from each other but socialize often. The bloodline has possession of a Hollow Hill (called Baile-Na-gCeard, the Town of the Artificers) in Ireland which serves as a headquarters. Every seven years the Sluagh hold a week-long festival called The Ceilidh there, and all members attend. Much of The Ceilidh is taken up with revelry, but matters important to the Sluagh as a whole are also dealt with, with the entire bloodline taking part in the debate.
Gaining Clan Prestige: The Sluagh as a whole award Prestige for good storytelling and skill in magic (this includes Disciplines.) Discovering a faerie artifact, adding to the bloodline's body of fae lore, and finding (and Embracing) fae-touched humans are also ways to gain respect in the eyes of the bloodline. In recent years, due to the efforts of the Wild Night Company, the Sluagh have also begun to award Prestige to those Goblins who increase the bloodline's temporal power.
The Camarilla: "The politics and infighting are rather fun, provided you keep in mind it's all a game. We hate the Masquerade, though--it is the greatest blasphemy, hiding the supernatural from a world that so desperately needs it. We ignore it whenever we can, and work to make it less necessary."
These odd Kindred could be a problem if there were more of them. As it stands now, they are harmless dreamers, forever searching for a world that no longer exists. More's the pity. --Anne, Ventrue Queen of London
The Sabbat: "Who cares about the Antedeluvians? At least when they awaken things will get lively. We like the emphasis on freedom, and the Sabbat does play merry hell with the Masquerade, but war is only fun if you win."
The Goblins are more useful than the Toreador and nearly as so as the Ravnos, but they need to quit living in the past. And I don't like the way they fraternize with their "Kin" in the Camarilla. That's going to come to an end... --Joseph Pander, Sabbat priscus
The Malkavians: "You'll pardon me, but the Malkavians don't know their arse from a pile of silver. There's more to Faerie than madness! All madness is, is the last refuge of the weak, and carte blanche to those who can't be bothered to take responsibility for their deeds. I'll admit they are insightful, but a broken mind is too high a price to pay for insight."
Who died and made the Goblins God? They're so blinded by their fairy tales, they don't even realize we're on the same side...'Lord, what fools these mortals be'! --Solomon, "Pander" priest of the Sabbat
The Tremere: "The Tremere are our Kin, though many of them don't seem to know it. We can usually get along with them, but many of us resent their high-handed ways. They also promote the Masquerade, and they have some strange notions about keeping the magic all to themselves, so more often than not we end up at odds with them despite our best intentions. They seem to like our Cailleach Bheur, though."
Often I regret giving the Blood to Yevaud; her Childer grow in strength and challenge the very institutions we stand for, and if my role in this were to become well-known, I would suffer for it. But how could I not have done it? We became vampires to preserve our magic and immortality; how could I have denied her that option? --Etrius, magus of House and Clan Tremere
The Other Clans: "Tolerable, for the most part, but they need to learn that we aren't pawns."
The Changing Breeds: "A real mixed bag. Some of these creatures are the most horrendous monsters you'll ever have the misfortune to meet, and most of them hate the Kindred, but here and there you'll find some who you can work with. Of them all, there's a group of Rooks, were-ravens, who make the best company. We get along with them fine. Then there's a group of Lupines called Fianna who have hated us since the early days in Ireland. They have the blood of the fae in them; don't ask me how, but they do. I don't know why they hate us so, but some of the Mathremail think that we might be competing with them for resources."
Mages: "Little one, if you ever shake hands with a mage, count your fingers afterward. We certainly respect them for their power, and we'd like to know more about it, but they don't seem willing to share. And many of them have the unpleasant habit of viewing us as resources--spell ingredients and whatnot. Funny to hear a vampire complaining of that, isn't it?"
Wraiths: "We know they're around, poor things, but we seldom get a chance to interact with them."
The Faerie: "The greatest tragedy of our existence is this: that the Faerie do come into this world still, though rarely; and we are known to them; but that they scorn us and play us as mere pawns in their eternal game. Many of us are descendents of Seelie fae, but that Court seems to hate us for our vampirism, and the Seelie who visit the earth will have nothing to do with us.
The Unseelie are more willing to accept us, provided we do their dirty work in this world. I tell you, it's a sad thing to be Unseelie; it's like being trapped in the Arctic snows with only the memory of summer to warm you. None of us talk about it much, but it's almost a relief, sometimes, that the Faerie find it so hard to return to this world, and that they come through so rarely. The Mathremail hope to find acceptance in Arcadia, and we Icenii hope to find it here when we tear the barriers down, but the doubt gnaws at us still."
View the Elphame discipline.