Caitiff
Many Kindred incorrectly assume all Caitiff are created accidentally, that the clanless target no mortals for the Embrace. This view is outdated and ignorant.
These nights, the clanless are increasingly becoming a force to be reckoned with. Though more disparate, individualistic, and chaotic than their cousins, they are all survivors, and they have begun to gather, build alliances, and make childer of their own.
The Caitiff who seek out mortals to perform the Embrace generally target the strong-willed and those used to uncommon hardship. A Caitiff’s position in the hierarchy of Kindred is at the bottom, just above the thin-blooded who should not have been born at all, and they are forced to fight for their place or fall and be forgotten. The Caitiff see little point in Embracing mortals unlikely to make it through the night on their own.
While the Caitiff have begun to purposefully increase their numbers, most are still created when a fledgling Embraced into one of the clans does not form an attachment with their ancestral Blood and does not exhibit the tell-tale signs of their clan’s curse. When other Kindred talk of the Caitiff, they tell tales of Nosferatu abandoned for weeks on end without ever developing any hideousness, painfully sane Malkavians, and young Ventrue able to feed from whomever they want. Unwilling to accept such a childe as one of their own, the clan abandon them.
Or the childe senses in their Blood that they do not belong, despite their sire’s protests. The creation of a Caitiff is not an exact science, and many abandoned childer still manifest some of the characteristics of their parent clan despite the absence of their bane.
Caitiff in Baltimore
Caitiff have always had a home in Baltimore. It's relative unimportance kept the city off the radar of most major powers, making it a natural haven for the most persecuted of Kindred. Things shifted in the 1970s, when the Civil Rights Movement came to a head within the city. Stephanie Freed and Jacob Steinbeck, two Caitiff, came together and formed the Baltimore Caitiff Underground, dedicated to defending Caitiff from prejudice. Stephanie and Jacob ruthlessly hunt down anyone who threatens their brothers and sisters, and since the BCU's founding, Caitiff have lived in the open in Baltimore, proud of who and what they are.
