Clans and Bloodlines of the Kindred (Modern & Dark Ages) v2

THE CLANS OF CAINE
Whether I am a god or a demon, it does not matter. Holiness still follows in my wake.
Since time out of mind, the Danava have made
India their primary home, and with that
weight of age comes power. Where Western
Cainites hold that the masters of Sadhana are
the distant descendants of the Ventrue, the
Children of Danu know another story. Their
exact origins are as murky as the Ganges,
and yet some of their eldest purport to
be descended from the blood of those
that resided in the most ancient and
forgotten of the cities that have fallen
to ruin upon India’s landscape. Some
still claim an unbroken ancestry to
the primordial goddess Danu, carried
through the blood from sire to childe
and on through the ages. Others spin
tales of being demons made flesh,
asuras bound into human form. A
second side purports to be devas,
the divine will of their ancestress
and the gods they revere made
clear through prayer and the
brutalities of Sadhana. These two
sides maintain an adversarial role
within the bloodline, but both still
pay their tithes to the deities that rule
India. Each Child of Danu seeks to rip
away their mortal forms and transcend to
something more through Sadhana, using it
as a cleansing fire to achieve some manner
of enlightenment.
The Danava believe that the drinking
of blood imbues them with prana, which in
turn fuels the Thaumaturgy they wield that
has existed for far longer than the sorceries of
the Tremere. In death, the Danava remain the
same artists, priests, warriors, and teachers they
were in life. They maintain some dregs of that
mortal status, and provide spiritual services to
their respective Cainite communities. As the
custodians of Sadhana, the sacred and profane
rites that allow a Child of Danu to twist their
animating humors into something stranger still, they
rule India’s nights as priest-kings.
Sadhana demands grueling austerities performed
with each new rank gained. Even those that claim
demonic origins adhere to the multiplicity of Hindu
gods, making oblations and sacrifices as required
throughout the yearly cycle of holy days and
festivals. Many Children of Danu believe
that with the blood of their vaunted ancestry—both
kine and Cainite—these
devotions allow them to harness the
maya inherent to the universe, and in
so doing become masters of it in more
than just name.
Whether they are the children of an
ancient goddess or the distant descendants
of demons, the gods of their land, nevertheless,
are real. Even if a handful of atheists
speckle their ranks, it is impossible to deny
the presence of something wholly other
within them when they are in the throes
of Sadhana. They twist and bend into
yogic and tantric configurations, utilizing
mudras with the hands or the entire body as
common methods of accessing the various
aspects of their Thaumaturgy. With each
new undertaking, the Danava consult
grains, throw purified butter onto coals,
and examine solar and lunar charts in
order to divine just when the time will be
right. Observing their ritual calendars
and the oaths they make to their gods
with the utmost seriousness, breaking
a vrata is beyond the pale, even for
a demon.
Nickname: Children of Danu
Appearance: A Danava is unmistakably
regal. Each and all are
permeated with the sweet smell of
holy attars, perfumes that hang in
the air and infuse their clothing long
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