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Troll... I understand your impatience with me, when you wrote to me you were looking for the hard facts of what the Gangrel are. Perhaps my years weigh too heavily on me, for I find that my slow moving ways frustrate the more youthful and energetic. You view my old stories much the same way a young man views his aged grandmother. Something that must be endured. They sit in the corner, festooned in a lace of old cobwebs, having outlived their usefulness. Perhaps that is why I have not birthed a child in so long, for I fear they would not have the patience to sit through what I have to say. Still, indulge me a bit longer. The story I have shared does, indeed, have a point. A purpose other than to speculate or shed light on our shadowed origin. Think back to those first kine, betrayers of their mother, forced to flee from both her vengeful lover and their own sisters and brothers. That same movement that compelled our distant ancestors still resides within each of their children's children. We are the wanders of kindred society. Today most of the Gangrel know not what compels their feet. Some of us see that relentless wanderlust that pulls us along as a result of being ostracized from Kindred society, but it is not so. It is infused in each of us at the time of our making. A strange, relentless desire to move. Not to search for any truth or any thing, but rather to move simply for movement's sake. We are like the tide licking against the sandy shore, ever-present and ever in motion. We are the outcasts of kindred society; not for any past transgression, but because that mercurial sense of movement runs so strongly through us and reminds the lesser clans of that part of their nature they have suppressed. They look at us and see the wild, restless soul that lies buried within them, sacrificed for comfort and safety. They see us as dangerous, for were they ever to give in to their own desire to join us, like the children following the piper, their world would crumble beneath their feet. We are the walkers between worlds. We spend our lives passing through places and glimpsing things that most of vampire society would scoff at, were we to tell the tale at one of their dinner parties. Attend a conclave of ours and you would hear our tales, not only of our garou kin who guard the wild places and keep our fellow kine penned up like animals in the city-cages of their own making, but of other things. I myself have run with the garou in my time, known a few of them as well as I know my own childer. I have seen the creatures of the earth through veils of moonlit mist, and see them still from time to time. And moreover I have seen the shades of things long since passed out of this life. Even the most generous of the other clans think of us as "rustic" or "simple", while our critics call us uncouth and savage, one small step above the animals some of us can come to resemble. But if you look closely, you can see the fear in their eyes when they speak of us. We are what they should be. We are the ultimate nature of all kine, uncorrupted by the forces that shape this world. We are the earthís dark nature, in all its horrific grandeur and glory. Not a clear answer; not even a truth, perhaps. Still, it is all the tale I have to offer. Until next time, I remain, Ara Aquila |