Editing Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (section)

==The Basics of the Lore==
There is more lore further down, this is just a quick primer.

Vampires, or kindred as they call each other, have lived among humanity since shortly after humanity began. Many believe Caine, the brother of Abel and the son of Adam and Eve, was cursed by god and his angels with vampirism as punishment for the first murder and the first lie. Some kindred believe otherwise, such as the Ministry who claim Set was the first of the vampires.

In the modern day, kindred are everywhere and tend to belong to one of three sects, which are hybrid political parties and governments. The Camarilla is the oldest and can be compared to a lawful evil pyramid scheme. The eldest vampires are at the top, and everyone wants to build up a powerbase by embracing (turning) humans to eventually userp the elders. Camarilla cities are ruled by a Prince (used gender neutrally) and their Primogen council. The Primogen Council includes vampires from the most populous clans in the domain and they advise the prince and represent their clan. The Prince usually has a sheriff to enforce his edicts and deal with those that violate the traditions and the Masquerade.

The Anarchs rebelled against the elders and left the Camarilla. Their organization is fairly loose, varying a lot between domains. Usually, the leader of a domain is a Baron, but they rarely act as controlling as a prince. Their purpose is to settle disputes and protect the domain from rival sects.

The third sect is the Sabbat, vampire supremacists. These lunatics believe that they deserve to rule over humanity and abuse them as they wish. Their leaders are called bishops as they lead the sect in a religious manner. Their numbers have been thinned by hunters in modern nights, fracturing the sect into isolated cells. Notably, they perform a ritual called the Vaulderie where they share blood in a communal cup and drink it together, breaking old blood bonds and forming a shallow one with each other. This frees them from their old masters and makes them like each other, at least a little. The Sabbat are infamous for their mass embraces; they embrace dozens of people and bury them in a pit. Those that climb out and survive the night are colloquially called shovelheads and welcomed into the sabbat. The Sabbat wants to kill the Antediluvians, the 3rd generation vampires from before the biblical flood, for betraying Caine by killing the 2nd generation. They worship Caine and refer to themselves as the "Sword of Caine".

There's also the Giovanni, who are the incestuous necromantic vampiric mafia. They used to be an independent clan that was aligned with the Camarilla sort of. Now they're rolled in with the Hecata clan after the big reunion (and some murder) and fully independent again.