Okay, first, spoiler alert, the Sabbat’s not really my thing.
I begun playing when Revised edition came out (but I read a good deal of 1st and 2nd editions) and the Sabbat, well, they shouldn’t be even “playable”. I mean, it’s like playing the barbarians in GoT, you have such amazingness and you go with the other side :/
The Sabbat, as a “mechanic”, was created in a very odd way ; first they were the “other group, the antagonists”, and then the authors expanded on it idea at the time, and so it ended up being some other organization that wasn’t written with a clear idea in mind, just adding a bunch of groups together.
It’s really hard to make a proper sense of it. Like French Grammar.
No seriously, the Sabbat can be really interesting to play in, the politics and mechanics can be brought to life with some work, but you’ll first have to sort the bullshit from the rest (defining what’s the bullshit is another job on its own!).
This guy summed up my feelings on the whole thing pretty well so please have a read :
http://home.earthlink.net/~esasmor/blacklight/sabbat.htm
First, one huuuuuuuge criticism isn’t “in game terms” but rather on how the clan was “built” from a game designer/writer perspective. And this uncovers another awful horrible thing about the game itself, which really depressed me.
The HQ for the Sabbat is Mexico City, and the Lasombra are/were in control of the Catholic Church. So there’s always this message of “Catholicism BAD, Protestantism* GOOD”, as well as placing the Sabbat in Mexico makes me ring a bunch of Racist/Xenophobic redflags all over the place. A very cynic part of me even gets to think that while the game was aimed at LGBT and other teen minorities, if you’re latino, catholic, jewish, or black, you’ve got just about no representation in the game. The Camarilla is presented, by default, as WASP.
*FYI, random personal rant, “Muricans” have no idea of what Protestantism is, but this blog ain’t about theology discussions so let me sum it up this way: a protestant is “me, my book, my god, my goddamn problem”. Anything else is just fluff, and most fluff consists in following some pastor/priest’s words. A pastor, in core Protestantism, is just someone who stands out in a group and who says they’d want to discuss a passage. Anglicans and “large churches” are.. Catholics. Not in the theological sense, but in the organisation sense. They follow one guy (or girl, but let’s admit it, mostly a guy) stating their truth about religion and how they should live their faith.
Okay, let’s go back to business.
The Lasombra clan (La Sombra in two words, in Spanish, means “the shadow”). They’re generally presented as the counter part of the Ventrue in business, influences and relations alike, except the Lasombra tend to be a bit more.. “brutal”.
The main difference is mostly how Lasombra tend to choose their childer: unlike the Ventrue who kinda help their future progeny blossom and then embrace them, the Lasombra strike them down, break them and see them struggle back to the top. This means a few things :
1) Many Lasombra are individualistic fighters that will do anything to get back on top
2) They deprive themselves of useful members of the clan that just don’t have that much drive/will (doesn’t matter, that’s what ghouls are for)
3) Lasombra compete with each other rather than working together (most of the time). Ego competition much.
To me a good Lasombra must be fairly individualistic. Shady bastards, of course!
There’s a trait they should share with the Tremere, I believe, which should be fearless. A Lasombra is never “too clean” to do just about anything. They’re the nobility that will get their hands dirty to make a point, then make sure they’re obeyed next time they tell their packs, followers, retainers and herd to do something. This is why they have Potence as a Discipline. Dominate’s just when needed.
Their relation to Darkness is something I’d like to discuss in a conceptual way. So please bear with me and forget all that shit about the Abyss, Elysian Fields and whatnot.
Lasombra were created as “teh Dark Ventrue”, as antagonists. The Ventrue are Anglosaxon Anglicans while the Lasombra are Iberic Inquisitors (Catholics) and part of the Invincible Armada (not so invincible but that’s another issue). It’s hard to break through this, especially considering how Dark the Ventrue can be already (if played properly, obviously). Was another layer of black really necessary? I don’t think so.
As a PC, a Lasombra must have a good valid reason to work with others Kindred (or make sure everyone agrees that the Lasombra is superior by default).
As a NPC, the Lasombra is seen as the chaos factor, the problem solver, and the dealer. Go see him/her, he/she’ll poke something, and it’ll turn the tables around (to his/her advantage of course), and after, the players will be thanked with a good old.. haircut. What did you expect?
When I think of a good character embraced by a Lasombra, I get this Loki image (even tho I'm not a comic person at all, and I’ve not seen the movies, it’s just this recurrent.. stuff…)
So what’s interesting about the Lasombra is to press their individualistic merit, their cutting edge approach to nobility, and their stepping down and solve the issue instead of sending worthless henchmen.
Most older, higher society characters will rely on other people to do their shit. Lasombra tend to be smarter than that and deal with the issue directly and bluntly. Surgical strikes are BS, and sacrificing other kindred, other Lasombra or any other resource is worth it. A Lasombra won’t hesitate, even if a more efficient solution existed, the Lasombra are the best to recover from losses (retainers, ghouls, herd…), because that’s how they were embraced (they were destroyed by their sires to see if they could make it back to the top, and if they did, they got themselves a good old nice spot in the Sabbat). Their drive and their thirst for power doesn’t blind them: they will use those resources, they will sacrifice them, and they will rebuild their base of power in an even greater way.
A Lasombra is everything but safe. They can be even more hard to read than the Malkavian because they’re so good at making their way back to the top, in a stronger way too.
For me, any Lasombra must have many Knowledge abilities as well as quite a lot of wits. Of course, it all depends on the reason why the character was embraced, and you can have pretty slow, street thug Lasombra, but there’s still this drive, this thirst and this hands on approach. Dusty, hesitating people who play it safe won’t interest them.
I must do “how not to” to certain things as well, don’t hesitate to tell me about your ideas or your requests!
Want to read more clans? Check them out here
http://secretsofthemasquerade.tumblr.com/welcome
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