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Vampire: the Masquerade

Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom

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Domains Long Hidden

Africa has long been a bastion of mystery in the World of Darkness. Finally, the domains south of the Sahara are revealed - and the laws of Western Kindred hold no water here. Out of the Kingdom of the secretive Laibon come the monstrous Guruhi,the atavistic Naglopers and the wise Akunanse - and untold other horrors.

Still Children of Caine?

Created in the tradition of Kindred of the East, Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom offers an all-new take on the race of Caine. Although presumably still descended from the FirstVampire, the Kindred of Africa have evolved a very different society - one completely alien to Western Kindred. Many mysteries of the Cainite race play out here in the Ebony Kingdom, and just as many rise to take their place.

205 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2003

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Justin Achilli

87 books44 followers

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Andre.
1,420 reviews102 followers
February 16, 2014
What can I say?
I really liked this book. It was easy to read and entertaining. The artwork is good and the style, well styles to be precise, very appealing.

Now maybe some people would call… whatever on this book especially when they do not know the game line this plays in, but I learned that you will always find someone complaining about anything even if there is no need for it. I guess there are some elements of this book that can be considered weird, I get to them later, but all in all I think this is definitely one of the better books in this line and it’s a shame that the line ended so soon after this was published.
Now, before anyone gets any ideas, the authors made clear that this is not a representation of real Africa but simply an extension of the World of Darkness into that geographical area direction and in my experience this is a good sign, since the authors for this game line are usually at their best when they make stuff up from scratch.
The Africa you see here fits very neatly into the wider World of Darkness and definitely looks like such a place would look in this dark world. Now as the title suggests, this book is about the vampires, or "Laibon" as they call themselves, of Sub-Saharan Africa and so does not concern itself with the sections of northern Africa that are mostly inhabited by white people.
And don't worry, it doesn't treat that part of Africa as one giant homogenous mass, quite the contrary, it simply can't go into the detail of all these different cultures and therefore has to work with some generalization. Actually it was surprising not only how much they actually highlight this diversity (by e.g. having a Laibon travel through several countries) but unlike their Kindred counterparts, these Laibon seem way less rigid in their very nature. Many of the game rules regarding them actually seem like a pretty good idea to keep them hidden since when you see a guy with e.g. goat eyes you probably won't think vampire first. And on a continent so entrenched in the believes of spirits, shapeshifters and all sorts of monsters, a vampire could easily be mistaken for something else. Actually one part of this book deals with exactly that. An informed observer might spot the Laibon in question but many others will think they are thieves, thugs or sorcerers, or who knows what local folklore has to offer.

Now before I write an essay on this, I will go into what I liked best:
1) The Legacies; these "clans" of the African vampires are an interesting take on African mythology and the major vampire clans they spawn from
2) The Tenets. These are the basic laws of the Laibon, the fundamental rules that apply to all regions of the kingdom, albeit their interpretations vary, sometimes drastically. I think you can give the writers credit for having rules that sound so easy but in application can be so difficult and have so many ramifications.
3) The unique disciplines. The majority of disciplines (vampiric powers) function the same in the Ebony Kingdom albeit their names and administration might differ (e.g. praying before calling an animal). However there are two disciplines who are different from their Kindred counterparts and one that is unique to the Laibon. And these three are actually quite impressive.
4) The morality system. Unlike the Kindred the Laibon function totally different on a basic morality level. They have two traits, called Orun and Aye, and where on these two charts they stand affects their mystic powers and how they look. Also the laws of these two traits are ecqually interesting.
5) The merits and flaws. They reflect how much more malleable in nature these Laibon are and how much more spiritual of a "people" they are. And this leads to the last point.
6) The different looks on what being a Laibon means. The Kindred basically come from Judeo-Christian, respectivley Muslim, stock or are atheists shapes by those believes. So there is not much variation. But while Laibon can belong to these faiths as well, there is the strong element of animism in the Kingdom and that shapes how these Laibon see themselves. Some think they are damned, others general monsters, others as part spirit and others as demi- or even gods (based on a famous origin story they have). And this has remaifications on how they act and see the world around them.
I think all in all they give these vampires a very unique flavor and show them as not just another version of Kindred but a variety on the vampire myth
PS. No they do not ignore HIV and all, they incoporate that pretty neatly into the book. Trust me.

But sadly, from the points that I like best about this book and that make it a really good book in my mind, there are some flaws it has:
1) The spelling has been bad a few times.
2) From time to time the book speaks about the more primal nature of many aspects of Laibon in contrast to the Kindred. Which is weird if you ask me since the rest of the book doesn't actually show that. But even then I think things like the merits and flaws, their laws, the designs of the legacies and especially the Laibon special disciplines more than make up for that.
3) I found it weird that when referring to Egyptians they put the word "white" in quotes as if that is somehow ambiguous. Sure for a time they were ruled by people from the South, but on average they were white people, they simply weren't pale.
4) If Sangoma and Inyanga are traditional healers from South Africa, why does this book treat them as universally Sub-Saharan African from time to time?
5) Why are they the same species as the Kindred (this also means you need at least the Vampire The Masquerade corebook or wiki to understand some stuff in this book)? Sure it is an interesting picture on how different these vampires can be (the Laibon culture feels in many ways pretty different, more like family, and they can practice their powers more openly), but still all the powers, the morality traits, the laws and all, would have easily made for a new sort of monster. Especially since it was never stated why the Laibon became so different from the Kindred. Religion and philosophy are one thing, but these vampires function fundamentally different from all other ones.
6) There is the old flaw this whole game line has: the older vampires are always more powerful and stay so. That is set. There is a certain number of vampire generations and the higher the generation number the weaker the vampire. And with all the malleability that is inherent in the Laibon culture and all I think they would have fitted the new World of Darkness better.

So all in all this is a pretty good and inspirational book and I really like these vampires and all, albeit the book has a few flaws and so it, again, will only be 4 stars instead of 5. Too bad the game line was pretty much stopped.
Profile Image for Brian.
669 reviews86 followers
August 1, 2018
Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom is a lot like Kindred of the East, in that it's an attempt to create a different kind of vampires for a part of the world with other traditions and histories, but unfortunately falls prey to a lot of the stereotypes about that region in its attempt.

Let me start with the good. The Legacies--African Clans--of the Laibon are very well done. They come in two major groups: Equivalent to a Kindred Clan with a minor change, and separate enough to be a bloodlines. In the first group are the Followers of Set, who are just Setites who are south of Egypt; the Kinyonyi, African Ravnos; the Naglopers, Tzimisce who need to bury themselves beneath the soil when they sleep; and the Xi Dundu, Lasombra who have no shadows rather than no reflections. In the second group are the Akunanse, like Gangrel but with the old Laibon Discipline of Abombwe rather than Protean, and who adopt the animal features from the places where they live rather than as the result of frenzy; the Guruhi, the rulers of Africa, like Nosferatu but with Presence instead of Obfuscate, whose appearance is always obviously supernatural rather than always monstrous; the Ishtarri, Toreador with Fortitude instead of Auspex, who have an easy time becoming addicted (there is no system for this); the Osebo, Brujah with Auspex instead of Presence; and the Shango, Assamites with Dur-An-Ki from Blood Sacrifice instead of Quietus.

Though, since these are groups of Africa, maybe its the other way around. Maybe the Guruhi were the original and the Nosferatu came later, or so on for the other Legacies? The Osebo even have a note in their description about methuselahs waking up after having slumbered for millennia on the shores of the Mediterranean and coming south with stories of a glorious city where vampires and humans lived together in harmony.

All of that is great! Diversity of local vampirism for everywhere in the world is a good thing, rather than something like "Here are the Assamites, the vampires of the Middle East. Also Europe gets ten Clans."

The power structure is interesting as well. The Guruhi are the rulers, that's just how it is. Most of the time, though, they don't actually do the ruling--the local ruler, known as a magaji (in Hausa, "heir, successor") holds the power in trust from the Guruhi and makes all the decisions. The eldest members of the Legacies, known as the Kholo (in Sesotho, "big") advise the magaji. Pretty similar to the Prince and Primogen.

However, the book heavily leans into the Darkest Africa cliches. Africa is violent. Africa is cut off from the world, filled with dirt roads and isolated villages, so the Laibon can use their powers with somewhat more ease than elsewhere. Africans believe in the supernatural and are more willing to accept the Laibon in their midst (though only somewhat--a blooddrinker is still a blooddrinker). There's a travelogue in the middle of the book written from the perspective of an Akunanse Embraced in the 17th century and then a Cameroonian man accompanying an American Peace Corpse volunteer on vacation, and both hammer on the same things. Violence and war everywhere, roads filled with potholes, guards and officials that need a bribe before they'll do anything, barely-controlled chaos being the order of things, grinding poverty, and in probably the most obvious distillation of the problem, there's this quote when they visit Dakar:
The city was a mixture of European sophistication and local squalor.
That's a hell of a way to characterize Africa in a book about Africa, right?

There's also that sometimes Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom treats Africa as a continent with a wide variety of societies, languages, cultures, and governments, like it is, and sometimes talks about "African people," which is about as useful as talking about "Asian people." That is to say, not at all, not to mention it buys into the common stereotype of Africa being all the same--violent, poor, backward. The Dark Continent. The...Ebony Kingdom?

Hmm.

I kept thinking as I was reading that so much of the talk about Africa being less connected from the world no longer apply. They didn't install a lot of land-line infrastructure, but they skipped forward to smartphones, whose penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa is now at 40%. Not much space to operate unhindered for Laibon when they're just as likely to find someone who can film them and put them on Youtube as they are anywhere else in the world.

I appreciate the effort and the new vampires, but 200 pages isn't nearly enough to cover a continent, and it shows.
Profile Image for Anscar.
129 reviews2 followers
June 30, 2022
I certainly enjoyed the fresh attempt at new types of vampires from the familiar 13 clans, whilst it still being clear which progenitor they originated from. Still things felt a little off though, like how Malkavians and Ventrue aren't prevalent in the continent despite thousands of years of contact. And how homogenous many of 'legacies' are despite the vastness of the continent and thousands of years of cultural separation (the Shango, who revere only a Yoruba-specific god, is a good example of this), and could have benefitted from at least a cursory glance at 'bloodlines' and legacy variants that have developed across the millennia.

The stereotypes of the 'dark continent' are leaned into here, but that didn't bother me too much, since I understand that this is the World of Darkness, and all the darkness of our own world is dialled up to 11. So of course government corruption, civil war and smuggling are going to be emphasised in a WoD book about Africa, just like how police corruption, government surveillance, gang warfare and terrorism are emphasised in WoD books about Europe and North America.

On the whole I enjoyed this book but felt it could have gone further and deeper and more detailed with its lore to improve the depth and realism of Africa in the WoD.
Profile Image for Gamal Hennessy.
Author 31 books60 followers
October 9, 2019
Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom translates the urban Eurocentric horror RPG into a broad African setting. The sourcebook maintains the classic secret-supernatural conflict as a metaphor for real world politics found in all the Vampire books, and the “unique” aspects of the game mechanics often feel like reskins of traditional Vampire tropes. But there is enough here to throw a welcome curve to players and storytellers alike who are looking for something different*.

*P.S. The book is more than fifteen years old, so I doubt it’s compatible with current versions of Vampire.
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