By Myranda Kalis (rhynnmackenna@juno.com)
Refer to Old Clan Tzimisce: The Oradea League.
As the Tzimisce of House Ravensburg are the most "western" of the Old Clan, so House Smatzkhe is the most "eastern," dwelling not in Europe at all but in the older lands of Asia Minor. At one time, their dominion encompassed all of Greater Armenia, the seven kingdoms of Georgia, Caucasian Albania, and part of the Ukraine. Trapped behind the Baba Yaga's Shadow Curtain, weakened by decades of direct persecution, and harried from all sides, they cling tenaciously to the Georgian mountains, fighting to prevent their complete extinction at the hands of ancient enemies.
Smatzkhe is a venerable House, steeped in lore, tradition, and legendry -- as well as an ancient and immovable arrogance. Of all the Houses of the Tzimisce, Old Clan and otherwise, until recently, the Smatzkhe have suffered the least of the changes overtaking the clan as a whole. Spared the worst trials of the Tremere/Tzimisce bloodwar by virtue of their isolation atop the Armenian plateau and the Anarch Revolt by their intense internal cohesion, the Smatzkhe were, for a time, the single strongest of the Houses of the Old Clan. Closely knit both among themselves and with the native peoples of their homeland, they were, and are, keepers of some of the most ancient lore of their clan, and many of their contemporary attitudes and practices are colored by these tales. The two most important of these are the legend of their Clan's founding, for the Smatzkhe believe themselves to be the guardians of the Tzimisce Antediluvian's homeland, and of the House's founding, for it holds the origins of their struggle against the Iron Hag, Baba Yaga.
No one among House Smatzkhe is quite certain of the first legend's origins -- the surviving elders of the House speak of finding the ruins of an ancient city deep in the high reaches of the mountains, and the remains of a written record, though no fragment of the original manuscript today survives. Others speak of an impossibly ancient old man who told them the tale and then vanished before they could ask any questions. It is true that no other House -- even the learned Tzildaris and Elenades -- has knowledge of the story, and the Smatzkhe themselves cannot find any true evidence to support it. It has, nevertheless, wound itself into the collective fabric of their House's beliefs, and rarely do they question its veracity. The legend speaks of an unnamed city that lay in the shadow of the mountains that they call home, a city founded by the strength of a warrior king who brought under his rule the clans and tribes of the region and built a stronghold in which all of his folk might live. The king took to wife, a beautiful and wise woman of the tribes, a priestess of the earth goddess, and from her two sons were born. Nearly from the cradle, the two princes were in constant competition; the youngest chafed against his brother's privileged position, and the elder had no patience with his sibling's anger and petty jealousy.
"This land is large enough for both of us," the elder was wont to say with some exasperation, "Why can you not be content with your place? You are my brother! You will be my most trusted minister, the general of my armies, why must we quarrel so?"
"Because you are not fit to rule!" The younger would shout with the reckless anger of one young and denied something he ardently desired: a throne of his own. "Look at you -- you are more merchant than warrior, with your books and your scrolls, and more woman than man with your gardens and your pretty artifacts! And if some foe comes calling at our gates it will be me who is expected to die to protect your throne!"
As the boys grew older, and their parents aged as well, their disagreements grew more heated and more frequent. The king came to fear the day that he would die, for it he knew in his heart that his youngest son would not accept the rule of his elder brother, and would destroy all that had been built in his rage and bitterness. He cast about for some solution that would keep the peace he had built intact, and found it in the form of a neighboring ruler, who was possessed of a daughter whose beauty was beyond compare and who had no sons to rule after him. The old king wrote to his neighbor and told him of his excess of sons, and suggested a marriage between his youngest son and the daughter whose beauty was so great even the gods were said to worship at the altar of her perfection. He asked no concessions and made no demands; his neighbor, who had long feared to gift his daughter to a lord of his own realm for fear of starting a civil war for control of the throne, agreed to the proposal, and before the spring of that year was gone, the younger prince was wedded to a princess and was himself assured of his own throne. The elder prince was likewise married, to a woman of his mother's own tribe, also wise and fair, and also a priestess of the earth mother. And before the summer was gone, the old king died, and left his son a King; and before the winter was gone, the younger prince was also King.
All would have been well, had the younger prince been satisfied with his lot. He was not merely a minister and a general, he was a King in his own land, with a wife whose beauty and sweet nature surpassed all others, and whose land was strong and rich and plentiful. But still he cast envious glances across the mountains and sea that separated his land from his brother's and felt himself cheated, denied what was rightfully his, and the worm of jealousy and hatred gnawed eternally at his heart. Within a year, his beautiful wife was with child, and nine months later, the birthing of the prince took her from her husband's side, and he named the child in manner of her people to honor her memory. The young prince was called Vedarttha, and he was the repository of all his father's dearest hopes and dreams and ambitions -- and his hatred of the brother who had robbed him of his birthright. The elder brother was enjoying the grace of his own country and the love of his own lady, and thought little of the old rivalry between himself and his brother, which he felt had died the day they had come to their separate thrones. Under his rule, the land flourished and the people flourished with it; his wife's strength in the lady's regard was great, and the danger of famine and disease receded before her grace. In the fullness of time, his lady grew with child, and, nearly as the Prince Vedarttha was drawing breath in his father's fortress, so too was his cousin born in the temple of the goddess. It was winter, and the gardens that ringed the temple were fallow; as he first drew breath, the plants sprang to life and a warm wind flowed over the city, breathing an early spring that filled the people with awe. The high priestess told the king and his wife that their son was strong in the favor of the goddess, and the king was stunned that his child had such power, so young. He named the child Varijian, to honor the lady for the gifts she had given him.
The Princes grew to manhood, each in his own country, and each showing his own strengths and gifts. Vedarttha was a warrior, and rode with the soldiers of his country, learning the arts of sword and bow, the fierce joy of trial by combat. He had a swift mind, and a firm grasp of tactics and strategy; he found fulfillment in command, and became popular with the warrior-aristocrats whose ways he favored. His father approved, for a warrior heart burned in him as well, and under the tutelage of the finest teachers to be had, Vedarttha became as fine a soldier-statesman as had ever walked the earth: intelligent, cunning, ruthless, born to rule -- but without the fine tempering that a woman of his mother's gentility might have brought to him. And, deep within his heart, his father planted the seed of bitterness that had blossomed and choked the love of his brother from his own: the belief that they had been denied half the kingdom that would have been theirs -- had Vedarttha's uncle not taken the throne, had his wife not borne an heir. Varijian, for his own part, was not the warrior that Vedarttha grew to be. His grandfather had been a great warrior, who had built their kingdom, and to honor his memory he learned the soldier's arts; but he did not have the fire in his heart to be a true warrior. The lady's gifts were strong in him, and through his youth and into his manhood, his power waxed stronger, and his thirst for knowledge waxed greater. Varijian's first love was learning, and he was gifted with a boundless curiosity that could not be slaked; his father called countless tutors and unnumbered scholars to their city to feed his son's quest for knowledge, for his mind was quick and agile, and constantly searching for more. Because he was so closely tied to the earth mother and her gifts, he did not spend all his time with books and studies; he walked among the gardens of the city and the fields and hills of the countryside, and the people were glad to see their prince, for his presence was often enough to cure the ill or sweeten the waters or help the beasts and fields to bear. He was curious about the cousin whose name he knew but whom he had never seen, and wondered if they could be friends, or if their fathers' feud would always poison the peace between their lands. He was young, and he was idealistic, and he was very, very naive.
In the fullness of time, both princes found wives of their own, and, as time is wont to do, it worked its will on both their fathers, who grew older. As the years drew upon him, Varijian's father found himself deeply regretful of the rift that had parted him from his brother in their youth, and he wrote to his sibling, asking that they might see one another again, before they met in the presence of the gods. When he read this letter, Vedarttha's father was elated, for this was a sign of weakness that he had longed to see. He wrote in reply that he would come to meet his brother at the place of his choosing, and would bring his son to meet his cousin, at last. Within a month, the place and time were set, and both kings set out from their palaces to meet at a lonely place in the mountains between their kingdoms, near a spring that was said to possess mystic powers, with their sons and their entourages, and there they pitched their camp and saw one another for the first time in many, many years. Varijian's father wept and embraced his brother; Vedarttha's father smiled softly and clasped his brother to him. They spoke as friends and brothers that night, and for seven nights after, and the people of the court mingled with one another, and the prince-heirs, who were of an age to be friends as well. By the time their week by the warm healing springs was done, the brothers had agreed to share the joys of one anothers' lives again, to send emissaries to one another, and to enjoy what life the goddess decreed they had left as enemies no longer. As a sign of their renewed faith, Varijian would spend one year with Vedarttha's father at his court, and Vedarttha would spend one year at the court of his uncle. The belongings they would need were sent for, and when the kings returned home, each took the other's son with him.
Neither prince was quite prepared for what he found in his cousin's kingdom. The lands that Varijian would inherit were calm and peaceful; war had not troubled their borders in years, and even the warriors of the kingdom had not tasted true battle. The high mountains that cradled their homes were proof against most invasions and the idea of the rush of warfare brought no joy to the people. Vedarttha, true warrior prince that he was, was first bewildered by the passivity of his cousin's country, then chafed against it, then held it in contempt. The land was rich and fertile, the people were as a flock of well-tended sheep, and he loathed the thought that his cousin -- his strange, witchly cousin -- should inherit such bounty when his armies had to fight to retain every foot of land they gained beyond their borders. He conceived, then and there, that his father's dream of uniting their two nations beneath his just rulership would not die with him, but would be accomplished in his lifetime. Varijian, for his part, was nearly as bewildered by Vedarttha's country as Vedarttha had been by his. It was so different from his homeland, harsher, fiercer, with a cold and hungry power in it that horrified him to the soul. They prized war, and the loss of life that came with it, even though such death tore at the heart of the world and what was gained was never equal to all that was lost. It disgusted and horrified him, though his hosts kept the worst of it from him, and they themselves regarded him with thinly veiled fear and loathing, and whispered "witch" behind his back and made their signs of warding against evil, unnatural powers. Even his healing touch did not win them over fully, since it was an honor among them to die in the torments of war, and no one would so unman himself as to weep over the pain of an unfeeling patch of earth. Before half a year was gone, the princes returned to their homes, and both knew that their paths would be thorny ones once they took the throne.
Within two years, both of the old kings fell, Varijian's father to illness, and Vedarttha's succumbing to an old wound that had always weakened him. Both were set in their fathers' seats within a month of one another, and both immediately cast eyes toward the other. Varijian feared that his late uncle's late affection for his brother had been all that held Vedarttha back; he did not know that his father had told his brother, in the intimacy of brothers that had also been kings, of certain passes through the mountains that separated their kingdoms, that, should any enemy press them too fiercely, Vedarttha and his father could flee to safety through. Vedarttha had long before made certain that his armies could cross through those same passes with little difficulty -- but he had no illusions that his cousin did not expect treachery from him in the end. So he continued his father's policy of friendly relations between their kingdoms in an effort to lull Varijian into complacency, for he knew his cousin was weak enough to believe his good intentions in the end.
A year later, a guest arrived at Varijian's court by night, escorted by Vedarttha's personal guard and bearing a letter of introduction from the king. He was Jrad of Nod, a travelling warrior and scholar, and his arrival was Vedarttha's drop of poison to his cousin's kingdom. The wanderer was tall and pale and strangely accented, his body corded with the strength of a born fighter, but he was erudite and well-travelled, and Varijian was fascinated by him, as Vedarttha had known he would be. They would often sit long into the night, speaking of philosophies and history and a thousand other topics until the sky nearly grew grey with dawn. Jrad's knowledge and wisdom seduced Varijian with little effort, and the young king came to appreciate his nocturnal confidante and advisor more and more. It was Varijian's Queen, who was as wise as her husband and who fiercely distrusted Vedarttha that suspected the scholar was unnatural, and who watched him hawkishly while he kept company with her husband.
Within a half-year, the king's health began to fail; he grew pale and weak, sometimes for days at a time, and the kingdom suffered with him, for his bond with the land was such that, when he was ill, so was it. His wife, whose concern for her husband was deeper than for her own health, as she was heavy with child, sent for every healer within a day's ride of the city to come and attend the king, and all of their efforts availed little. He remained weakened, and pale, and only recovered when in the presence of his foreign advisor, who could often distract him from the weight of both his illness and his duties with some new scrap of knowledge, some tale that he had never heard before. The Queen softened towards Jrad, and gave up trying to watch him every minute of every night, for she was herself often unwell, for the babes she carried were the restless sort. It was her most grievous error, and shortly after, the king's condition worsened and he grew more direly ill, and drew closer and closer to death with each passing night.
As he lay dying, his body too weak to move, to even speak, he felt the first steps of Vedarttha's army as it crossed the hidden passes into his kingdom and began the slaughter. As he struggled for the strength to speak, he opened his eyes and saw Jrad's pale face above his own. "I can save you," the scholar said, eyes burning with an unnatural light, "but you will belong to me thereafter, you will come with me to my father's city and you will walk at my side as my childe."
"My wife and children...my homeland...my people...." Varijian whispered hoarsely. "I must..."
"You can do nothing. If I leave you here now, you will die beneath Vedarttha's blade, as he intended." Jrad smiled thinly. "That one also has potential."
"My wife!" Varijian's tone was almost a command. "If you will save her...I will do as you wish."
"You are not in a position to bargain, princeling...." Jrad considered for a moment, watching the pain and struggle for life crossing Varijian's face. "But I will do this thing for your cooperation."
Varijian nodded weakly in acceptance of the bargain, and Jrad embraced him there, and took him from his city and his homeland and his people, and when Vedarttha reached the city and found his cousin and his wife gone, and the people fled, his fury knew no bounds. He cursed Varijian's name, and swore that he would know no peace or rest, if Vedarttha had to pursue him to the afterworld itself to keep him from it; he ravaged his cousin's country, and, in the fullness of time, drew upon himself the attentions of another of Jrad's kind, and became the founder of the Clan today called Ventrue. Varijian, the Shaper, founded Tzimisce, and has not known a night of peace since Vedarttha was granted eternal life. For this reason, the Smatzkhe hate the Ventrue with a passion, and would very much like to deal with their treacherous cousins in a manner befitting their betrayal.
The second tale that has shaped much of Smatzkhe is as dark, if not darker, than that of Vedarttha's betrayal of his cousin. It begins in the terrible nights after the corruption of Baba Yaga and her willing fall from damnation into true monstrosity. The former priestess of the earth mother had summoned forth the dark powers of the earth in doing battle with her Antediluvian sire and they still stalked the land, ravaging it with little to stop them: the terrible Zmei dragons; the creature called Talon of the Wyrm by some and Koschei the Deathless by all. In the fullness of time, champions rose to oppose them -- the tribe of werewolves today called the Silver Fangs, and the mighty warrior-sorcerers remembered in legend as the Bogatyrs. One by one, the Zmei dragons were put down, captured and bound into their prisons, never to be set free. The Antediluvian who had birthed the twisted and defiled Baba Yaga had vanished. The Hag herself had, for a time, retreated into seclusion, mourning what she had done with the last fading remnants of her human soul. Finally, only the Koschei remained -- Koschei, the most deadly and powerful of their foes, Koschei the Deathless, thought to be an unslayable devourer of souls.
Werewolf and wizard alike tracked the creature with spell and by more mundane means, seeking and finally finding it consuming the life and souls of all that it encountered. The battle that followed was truly titanic, and, by the time it ended, the battlefield was strewn with the dying and the shattered bodies of fallen heroes, their power broken. But broken, also, was the power of Koschei the Deathless, trapped and bound and howling curses at his captors, borne away to never again be found. Among the fallen on the field that night lay the bogatyr of the south, the shaper, who could assume the form of any other creature in the world. As he lay breathing his last, he felt a mighty power moving among the fallen, and felt their souls, freed of their suffering flesh, fly to whatever awaited them beyond life. The presence, which he now recognized as a powerful and ancient vampire, knelt at his side and spoke to him. What truly passed between them, none among the Smatzkhe can say, but their House's founder was Embraced that night upon the field of Koschei's defeat -- and he kept that secret even from his fiercely loyal descendants. The bogatyr, now dead and filled with the terrible power of his Antediluvian sire, travelled again to his homeland in the shadow of the southern mountains and there established his brood, to act as its guardians, forever.
And so, for the most part, they have -- though the definition of guardianship has, over the ages, tended to vary with the ambitions of the House. Their sole example of truly imperialistic excess -- the bold usurpation of the Byzantine throne in the tenth century -- briefly succeeded in displacing the descendants of the Dracon in favor of the Smatzkhe as the preeminent Tzimisce line of Byzantium. This success was, however, both tenuous and short-lived as an unlikely alliance of severely irritated antagonists joined forces just long enough to crush any Smatzkhe ambitions of empire. The Smatzkhe withdrew from the fray of western politics and remained within their traditional borders in haughty isolation for most of the next five centuries. They ignored the existence of the Tremere as inconsequential and offered no coordinated support to the bloodwars, though individual Smatzkhe of martial temperament offered their service to worthy lords across the East. In the revolt that followed, the Smatzkhe were almost entirely unscathed, with, they claim, no member of their House defecting to the anarch or Sabbat causes. As the rest of the Clan teetered on the brink of absolute collapse, the Smatzkhe condescended to join the Oradea League, not because they needed it, but because it amused them to see first-hand the depths to which their clanmates had sunk: cowering in fear of their own childer, weakened by centuries of debauchery and excess, reduced to clinging to each other for mere survival. Smatzkhe contempt for the rest of Clan Tzimisce knew few bounds in those years, and they collected boons from the weaker Houses in return for their support in matters of both politics and practicality.
House Smatzkhe's world came crashing down around its ears early in the twentieth century, with the start of the First World War. Their arrogance had, over the years, made them no friends; it had, in fact, alienated many who might otherwise have been their allies. In one case, it made a deadly enemy who wished to see them destroyed to a man: Konrad von Ravensburg, Voivode of the same House. For the first time in centuries, the Smatzkhe found themselves under attack within their own homeland -- the Turkish pogrom, which was later to be called the Armenian Holocaust, devastated Smatzkhe possessions, herds, and younger childer. It nearly obliterated the strange and sorcerous i'Tzimisce revenant line, which the Smatzkhe had always considered one of their special protectorates. When they attempted direct opposition, they found their havens being burnt around them, or being dragged into the full light of day by invaders well equipped and prepared to deal with vampires, some of advanced age. Smatzkhe numbers were devastated, and were devastated again when the Brujah Council came to power in Russia and moved to consolidate power within all the Russian states. By the time of the Second World War, the once-overweening House Smatzkhe was a broken shell of its former strength, and still too proud to ask for more than the most minimal of assistance from their fellow Oradea League members. Under the heel of the Brujah, their numbers were strictly regulated and they barely managed to cling to power in their two traditionally strongest enclaves, Tiflis, Georgia and Erevan, Armenia.
Then, in 1991, the Baba Yaga awoke from torpor and the Smatzkhe were forced to laugh even as they wept. The Hag achieved in a few nights what they had been unable to accomplish in eighty years -- the absolute destruction of the thrice-damned Brujah Council. Then she turned her attentions upon the rest of her enemies, and the Smatzkhe were again at war, trapped behind the Shadow Curtain, and facing a foe of such overwhelming power they trembled to contemplate it. Then the homeland shrieked as one of the Zmei was freed from its prison -- and shrieked again as Maura of House Tzildaris, locked in mortal sorcerous combat with the Hag, was defeated and utterly destroyed. Their destruction almost assured, the Smatzkhe have resolved to die as they have unlived -- with honor, with pride, and with a struggle that will not be forgotten easily.
Brujah: (spits, glares, dares you silently to say a damn thing)
Followers of Set: Who?
Gangrel: (snarl) Call them what you will, but I will call them the Hag's boot-licking lapdogs.
Giovanni: Who?
Lasombra: Even if there were any dwelling within the homeland, it would not matter. The true Darkness belongs to another here.
Malkavians: We are all madmen, my friend. Why the fuss over a few more?
Nosferatu: (a deep-throated growl that makes you think, 'Do I really want to go there?')
Ravnos: It is my understanding that the Ravnos and the Ventrue share a certain common ancestry of origin. Coincidence? I think not.
Toreador: Are they any good in a fight? No? Then what good are they?
Tremere: I believe they have sufficient numbers of Tzimisce already baying after their blood. We have a much more significant danger upon our doorstep.
Ventrue: We have a saying in Georgia, 'The children of lions are lions all.' The same is true for the children of traitorous kinslaying scum.
House Brankovan-Waivadi: I hope, I pray, that they are strong enough to face her, but I do not think they are.
House Ruthven: (snort)
House Tzildaris: They sent us their most powerful sorcerer. (shell-shocked silence)
House Vardalek: Soon they will listen to the homeland's screams as well as its voices.
House Von Klatka: Leave your battle with the Tremere. A greater struggle requires the strength you spend so wastefully.
House Venizelos: (contemptuous silence)
House Djilas: Another waste. Let them destroy one another if they cannot do anything else.
House Frasheri: Again, what I would not give for a Frasheri -- or a pack of Frasheri!
House Bathory-Nadasdy: When I consider that the name Tzimisce has become so debased as to be attached to worthless creatures such as this, it almost makes me wish for the fangs of the Baba Yaga.