On this day, I have chosen to speak to the first of my colleagues on the nature of vampirism, particularly in reference to the First, who, unless specifically noted otherwise, shall be called Caine.

Hela is the oldest Kindred I know personally. Although he is slow to speak up whenever a fight breaks out amidst a debate, his opinion is highly respected in Brujah circles, perhaps because he does interfere so seldom. He goes by the name Haarlan, a name he picked up while in Amsterdam a decade ago.

We meet at my haven, a small room below an apothecary. At this time at night, the store is closed, and we are wrapped in privacy. He presents himself well, dressed in fashions a few years out of style, but that still look dignified on him. He is average in height, with black hair and rich brown eyes. We sit, and he speaks.

"I have agreed to talk to you, Wilhelm, because I fear for the future. Too many Anarchs are rising up with notions of destroying the old order and the older traditions that created them. The Masquerade has prevented the written history of Vampires from being expressed, but with the sudden appearance of folklorists, like the Grimms, perhaps if prying eyes catch glimpse of this record, they will think it fiction.

"I was born on the Spartan plain over 2000 years ago. The son of a farmer, I was no different from the hundreds of boys compelled into the militia. If ever there was a people that embodied the Brujah, it was the Spartans. I would have died there, with my guts slashed open on some forgotten battlefield or dead in a field, my heart exploded, as my father's had, had it not been for my youthful impertinence.

"We were practicing formations on the field when two commanders walked past to check on our status. One had been challenged by an Athenian to open debate on the concept of a union of city states. To refuse would have meant utter humiliation, but the commander had no skill. I quickly voiced my opinion, and was quickly smashed down by the other commander for speaking out of turn.

"The first, however, agreeing with my thoughts, picked me up, and asked me what else I thought. I spoke frankly, and he was impressed, so much so that he agreed to take me to Athens, to be his..." Haarlan cleared his throat, "boy. He won the debate, and was asked to stay on, in a place of honor. Lost without me, he compelled me to stay. I never saw my family again.

"Word of a clear-thinking Spartan in Athens spread to all corners of the world, and we were visited by thinkers from around the world. This is how I met my sire.

"I never learned his name. All I know is that he was a Childe of Troile himself, and saw that it was I with the clear mind, and not my master. He took me from there, and he waited for me to mature into this present form before Embracing me."

"So much has passed from this date on, that I will not bore you with details. I will now progress to the nature of the question: who is Caine?

"From the other four whom you will talk, I can see that I am at an advantage. I was Embraced before the Christian Explosion, and thus have a slightly more broad perspective when it comes to the matter. Make no mistake: Judaism and its dogmas were heavily researched in my country, if not for the fact that we wished to see what made a group of desert nomads so damn arrogant. They possessed some of the progressive attributes of other faiths, such as monotheism, a dialectic between good and evil, and a law code that limited the charismatic power base of the clergy. Were Christianity so...

"So what did I learn from my sire about what we were? To be honest, very little. Whenever I broached the question, he always grew distant, as if to indicate it was not the right time. It never seemed the right time. I did however glean this: Hrakot."

"Hrakot?"

"It was our name for him. 'Caine,' as we are wont to call him now. The strange thing is that it is in a language completely incomprehensible from any I have known. In essence, it does not mean anything. Which is why I give it so much credence. We seldom said that name, instead opting for 'The One,' and 'The First.' The special name was reserved for... intimate moments, away from prying ears. Some believed that the name itself held power, power essential to vampiric existence, and it was its widespread use that was diluting the generations, making each progressively weaker. Oh, well.

"So you're saying, here and now, that Caine is not the Biblical Cain, the firstborn, and slayer of his brother?"

"Ah, a good story. A good moral as well. The basis for mercy, you know. The punishment does not have to fit the crime. No, sometimes it can be far, far worse. Unfortunately, too simplistic... far, far too simplistic.

"No, I believe that it is, as they say, an allegorical reference to the very basis of all that is vampirism. Do they not call a wise leader a "Solomon," or a strong man "Samson," or, even more specific, a 'giant-slayer' "David?" Each has a specific reference, a specific image that fills the mind.

"From the allegory, we can glean a few clues as to what's going on. Cain was firstborn, created only because his parents sinned against God, and in doing so, realized their freedom to know themselves. To explore the deepest depths of the soul, from the highest aspirations of the mind, to the blackest pits of the bowels. Cain was the result of their... experimentation. First conceived of pleasure, first born of pain. In every way, man made flesh."

"But what of Adam and Eve? If we suppose the story to be true, which we are at the moment, what of them? Were they not flesh?"

"No. They were created through the direct action of the Will of God. They were not... flesh, at least not as we know flesh. Caine was the first to be truly human, to experience a time of darkness when he knew nothing of himself, and the first to spend his entire life dreading the onset of death.

"What happens next it interesting, however. Adam and Eve had many more children - how many is not particularly relevant, since we only need worry that there was a son younger than Cain known as Abel. Both chose, of their own will, to honor God, in his own way. Both sweated and toiled all day long, but if anyone believes that Abel's task was harder than Cain's has never spent a day in the field.

"The time of sacrifice had come. These creatures were willing to give offering to the God that had cast their parents out of Paradise. Whatever the case, both offered up the fruits of their labor. Cain offered grain, a renewable resource, with many purposes. Abel offered blood. Death. Death back to the Death-giver. God chose Abel's gift.

"Could anyone blame Cain for what happened next? If God wanted blood, then he would have it in abundance. Some would call it jealously, others would call it devotion.

"Whether or not God was pleased or displeased with this action is up to debate. All we know is that God imparted a fraction of divine power. A strange punishment, to be granted perpetual asylum. The point of the tale is that the Hell one's mind makes is infinitely worse than any man-made, or God-delivered, for that matter.

"And of course, it is here that the story falls apart. God grants power to Cain. Why is Cain able to arbitrarily pass out that power to anyone regardless of inner character? I suppose it goes to the free will of Cain, that he is not limited in who can become his child, but what of the free will of the Child?

"No, the Caine/Cain argument is false, to say the least. Caine is a simple way to recount all the passion of what it means to deal in blood. Blood for blood's sake, as it were. The coinage of God."

"So if you do not accept the Judeo-Christian argument, what do you ascribe to?"

"If I told you, you would laugh. Nevertheless, I must be honest. Caine is...a god.

"Well, let me define that a bit. The world I come from is very different than this. Beyond the merely temporal, the entire feel back then was different. Some say the time known now as "the Dark Ages," were actually the "Age of Myth," and now we dwell in the "Age of Darkness." Pot calling the kettle black, if you asked me.

"When I was new to this, I met others who were much older than I. They spoke of a world I had just missed, like a carriage I did not know about, thundering away in the distance. It was a world of true myth, when gods walked with mortals. Many were the explanations for what precisely they saw. Some said it was vampires, walking amongst men, while others saw it to be men touched by the true gods, ethereal beings of true power. Whatever the case, they were rather reckless in their use of power, since they were no longer around to discuss it with the rest of us.

"Then I came across Sinon. He was a strange fellow - he even claimed to be at the Trojan War. He told me that he saw the gods walk the Earth in that war, and whenever they did, everyone knew, for the skys turned black, and the sun was obscured. The people claimed that when that occurred, Zeus was watching up there. Sinon, for his part, claimed that the gods were actually vampires, who used the overcast sky to fight during the day.

"I laughed at this ridiculous notion. But then I began to think of it. I have seen magi wield their spells. Humanity is capable of feats of great power. However, in our world, the magi have lost most of their power. I now feel like those I talked to, so many years ago, explaining how you could find the treacherous Order of Hermes looking under every rock for their precious vis.

"Perhaps, then, this is the nature of it. Mankind is a natural being, and, when suffused with unnatural power, becomes far more than human. A simple statement, but one that must be said before we go on.

"Of all the groups that once wielded great power, only the Garou and the Kindred remain. Both are infused with great inner power, the Garou gaining theirs at birth, the vampire gaining theirs at death. There is a place for both, I think, in this world.

"Thus, whereas the magi derived their power from an external power source, the Kindred gain theirs internally. It is a self-sustaining engine that needs blood to grease the gears. Note that blood does not power the engine; it merely makes it run more efficiently. Anyone who has gone through torpor will tell you that they simply do not "turn off" when the blood fades.

"In any event, somehow something entered the blood of a human, a piece of divinity perhaps, and caused an infusion of unlife, which could bring the dead back to life. Did not Jesus the Christ state that his blood, supposedly partly divine, could bring eternal life?"

"To the soul, and not the body!"

"Ah, but isn't that all you really are? A soul and a bag to carry your blood in? A callous way of saying it, but a truth nonetheless. Harm to the body does no true harm to the soul; it will grow back, just as harm to your possessions does no harm to you when you were alive.

"Back to the argument. Blood, tainted with the divine, flows within our bodies, but grows more dilute with each exchange. The power is within the soul, and not the blood, as evidenced by the need for diablerie to gain the purity. Somehow the first infusion of Vitae changes the soul, stopping blood production, but allowing new blood to be converted.

"There has to, then, be a point of origin for this power. One who had the power put directly in his soul, but with the means of passing it on. That being is Caine. But I do not think the Caine we knew was ever truly human. Noddists claim that even after the Change, he walked amongst men, without the fear of the sun. I'd like to group him with those demigods who terrorized Greece so many years ago. Ideas made flesh, as it were, and like Jesus the Christ, Caine left a part of himself on earth."

"Left? So you mean you believe he is no longer with us?"

"Gone. Gone with the Age of Myth. He was too unnatural for the world that was to come, and so it refused him. I believe that long ago, a being with divine power wished to walk amongst the men, and so created an incarnation, to know their fears, their pains, and their sorrows firsthand. He witnessed the pains of new life, and the terrors in the eyes of the people as they witnessed death, and he wanted to teach them that perhaps death should not be feared. It is only a state, after all.

"So he took one of those who died, and fed him some of the blood. Nothing had changed. He had been made more efficient for his pains. He still needed to feed, but fed off the food of the gods, the food of sacrifice, the food that would fuel the divine: blood. Is it any wonder that most faiths offer blood to their gods?

"The people he was with did not understand. They drove him and his Childe out. The incarnation went on to another group, and repeated it, again and again. Mankind was not ready for this news, that death was but a doorway, and that one could be brought back.

"The incarnation eventually gave up, and decided to show everyone that a society whose every actions were not done in fear of death could exist. He created a city, the Second City, since it was modelled after his city in the heavens. Alas, he grew tired of this world in time, and left. And that was Caine.

"His children soon discovered that they could repeat the trick of their father, and create more. But since it was not a god bestowing the power on a mortal, the transition was less than perfect. Humans are not a very good repository of divine power. To put that much into such a frail shell required the body to adapt, and take on weaknesses.

"The sun scorched their skin, since it was a powerful source of life. Fire pierced their soul, since it was a powerful source of destruction. The blood of animals did not sustain them as well as it did the Second Generation. Instead, they were compelled to use the closest thing to their own: human. And it is here that sin crept into the hearts of the Kindred. Humans were no longer their fellows. They had become their herd. To maintain their divinity, they had to... insist... on blood offerings from humans.

"Had we been able to sustain on animals, then the world would be a very different place. The Lex Magna Mille began, and the Jyhad was waged. The rest, sadly, is history."

"So you're saying that Caine is a god, who made himself flesh, and came down to teach humanity that there was no fear in death?"

"Yes. He taught us not to fear death, and we learned to instill it within others like never before. How different is it than the teachings of Jesus the Christ, who preached universal equality, and yet has been the motivation for some of the greatest persecutions the world has ever known. Nothing is wrong with the message, just the execution. Perhaps it is a good thing that the gods no longer walk the earth. We as humans just screw up what they say anyway. We can do that well enough on our own."

"So where was the Second City?"

"Anywhere. There are vampires virtually all over the world. Reading accounts of the American Indians, it is interesting to note that the vampires they encountered seemed to be of European origin. Unless we are to interpret "white skinned" gods differently." He smiled.

"So, the Indians thought the Conquistadors were... vampires?"

"Beings of great power. Beings that were few and far between. Strangers, who had to cower from the sun. Strangers that they sacrificed blood to daily, in their memory. When these new strangers came, some with pale skin, and who did not fear the sun, and carried fire with them, the Indians, with their long memories, learned to fear. They just feared the wrong thing.

"But to the Second City. Its location is not important. It is here." He pointed to his heart. "It is in the soul of every vampire who wishes the Jyhad would not have to be. It can be rebuilt, but to do so would mean forgetting the past, with all its faults, slights, and vendettas, something immortals hesitate to do. Perhaps we shall still do it. Perhaps we can build a Heaven on earth. Caine knows we made a Hell on it."