The attacks came fast and without warning. Sometimes they would last hours….days….
There is no underestimating the hatred a vampire can generate in others by simply existing. There were always hunters. My family knew this, accepted it and together we triumphed over it. We were Malkavians. But this time was different.
They were organized, and unrelenting. Too cowardly to face us one on one, they enlisted the aid of mercenaries, destroyed our friends and galvanized our enemies. They found the lowest of factions and fired up their hatred, their bloodlust, unleashing it upon us with a fury we had never seen before. As one group of enemies rested, another took their place, and yet another attacked those who would come to our aid.
My wounds had no time to heal. Malkavian blood, the blood that forged the bond between my siblings and I, flowed in a constant stream.
Each hour awake was spent in anxious expectation. There were no hours of sleep.
It became clear that to stay meant anihilation. We had to leave.
Having been forced from our home, we scattered like leaves in the wind, desparately seeking a safe place to rest. Where we went, they followed.
Our strength had always come from our sense of family, but I was also learning that our sense of family was inextricably linked to the security of home. Already battered, battle worn and unstable, we began to lose who we were.
Fights broke out amongst us. We began to split, fractionalize into groups. The cohesiveness with which we had weathered the storm, survived the onslaught of our enemies, was eroding rapidly. Famly members began to drop away, one by one, as the Malkavian madness which we all once shared and understood became something different, more powerful and less familiar… Many gave way to it and were lost.
I cannot fault those who succumbed. I too felt its power.
Alone in the world, we stood no hope of survival.
Along the way there were rays of hope. Many of those that had seen the writing on the wall and left before the war heard of our exodus and sought us out, guiding us to the places where they had found safety. Some that we thought lost forever returned to us and were welcomed with open arms.
We found that these Malkavians had, in a way, become the keepers of our souls. They reminded us, in our darkest time, of better days. It was only though their intervention that I was able to fight off this new madness.
But it was not enough for the family. One group tried to establish roots here, another there. Arguments broke out over what land to call home. Each group had valid claims, but unless we could come to an accord, the family faced extinction.
A few of us realized that the only way to return our sense of self was to establish a homeland from the ground up. With the blessing of our queen, we sent a search party to find such a place.
They spread out, connected to each other only by use of the Malkavian hive mind…the old ways. But it was enough to sustain them during the quest.
One sister found a place that seemed right, felt right. She put down her stakes and waited for the others to find her. Another did the same. Discovering a piece of land that called to her, she set up camp and waited for her family members, certain that she had found our home.
One after another each found a place that spoke to them, each one convinced that, if the others would only come to them, feel what they felt, see what they saw, they would know that this…this was home.
Several weeks past, and the contact between the search party and the Malkavian leadership slowed to an occasional plea from one of the search party for the family to join them.
It was then the leadership called upon me to find my sisters, and end the stubborn stalemate.
Find them I did. Camped, entrenched …. each steadfastly waiting for the others to join them. All sitting in a ring around a 16,000 square meter patch of land.
There was no question. Each of them felt the same pull, the same connection to this land. Each faced inward, toward the center.
And on this spot, Malka was born.
My mother used to say that to know something with absolute certainty was to close one's mind to possibilites. I know now the truth of that, for I was as certain as the rest.
We knew, with absolute certainty that we were safe. We knew, with absolute certainty, that we were home. We were half right.
All of the security measures we put in place, all of the precautions taken against outside invaders, mean nothing against the ones that were already here.
The ones that hunted us before hunt us now. They come as asassins, they come as raiding parties, they come masquerading as friends…as us. That battle rages on, and I fear it always will.
But now as we sit and wait for the familiar enemies the rumblings beneath us grow stronger. We hear the voices, whispers in an ancent tongue, and ask ourselves if it is the Malkavian madness, or something we all hear, yet will not speak of.
I have heard some say things did not go as planned. That is not the case. They went exactly as planned. It simply wasn't our plan.
We have done exactly what we were told to do.
Malkavian Historian
Booyah Bing
