Burakumin
Do you consider me unclean because you find my profession or my nature abhorrent? Regardless, I am prepared to find your answer ironic.
The Nosferatu bloodline that has come to be known as the Burakumin originated in feudal Japan within the social stratum of the same name. Beneath the samurai and the soldiers and the priests and even peasant farmers were those mortals whose professions were considered “spiritually unclean” by the tenets of the Shinto and Buddhist religions. Such professions included tanning, leather-working, butchery and the handling of dead bodies. People who made their living from these professions were declared unclean and legally worth less than other people, and grouped in small hamlets far from their spiritually poor neighbors. (Roughly translated, in fact, the word burakumin means “hamlet people.”) Considered equally impure and valueless by the Kindred Princes of the Eastern domains, Japanese Nosferatu were restricted from feeding on or Embracing from anyone outside that same class of mortal. In time, all of Japan’s Nosferatu were referred to as Burakumin, and the name and stratification spread throughout much of Eastern Asia as Burakumin Nosferatu expanded their influence under the cover of various Japanese imperialistic advances.
Strictly enforced by Kindred of higher station, these mandates kept Burakumin numbers small and hemmed in what influence they could garner over mortal politics. Their low numbers and popular concentration greatly aided in the development of their uniquely grisly necromantic Discipline. As more Burakumin throughout the Eastern Courts learned it, they found that they were able to exert greater influence in their society and even to wrest occasional grudging concession from their superiors. One such concession was the right for their Prisci to petition the Princes of their domains for redress of grievances committed against individuals by younger Kindred of higher station.
The Meiji Restoration abolished official discrimination against mortal burakumin in Japan in the late 1800s, but where mortals have been slow to do away with their prejudices, vampires are stagnant. The changes in the social climate that have swept past them in the century since have not alleviated the restrictions and conditions placed on Kindred Burakumin. Instead, they have had to strike out on their own and forge their own destiny. Leaving their home domains by the handful ever since Commodore Perry “helped” open trade with the West to Japan, Burakumin have worked subtly to insinuate themselves into positions of influence over major exporters of raw materials. They also worked to gain a small but significant degree of influence over certain manufacturing concerns in the early 1900s as Japan became thoroughly industrialized.
Although their status in the East was limited, the Burakumin’s wealth and influence in the West grew considerably. And when Japan struggled to rebuild its collapsed economy and industry after World War II, the Burakumin’s various holdings and enterprises were best suited to bouncing back and achieving relative stability. It was also the Burakumin who were most willing to leave their home domains and seek wealth and influence overseas in areas of exporting and industrial outsourcing. In the West, they’ve come to find status and respect that has long been denied them, and the support they are able to lend their compatriots back East has greatly improved their standing in the eyes of many local Princes.
And in domains where the Burakumin’s industrial and financial influence (or meddling, depending on who you ask) is not as welcome, they can still earn respect and recognition for teaching their unique Discipline or using it to profitable effect.
Strictly enforced by Kindred of higher station, these mandates kept Burakumin numbers small and hemmed in what influence they could garner over mortal politics. Their low numbers and popular concentration greatly aided in the development of their uniquely grisly necromantic Discipline. As more Burakumin throughout the Eastern Courts learned it, they found that they were able to exert greater influence in their society and even to wrest occasional grudging concession from their superiors. One such concession was the right for their Prisci to petition the Princes of their domains for redress of grievances committed against individuals by younger Kindred of higher station.
The Meiji Restoration abolished official discrimination against mortal burakumin in Japan in the late 1800s, but where mortals have been slow to do away with their prejudices, vampires are stagnant. The changes in the social climate that have swept past them in the century since have not alleviated the restrictions and conditions placed on Kindred Burakumin. Instead, they have had to strike out on their own and forge their own destiny. Leaving their home domains by the handful ever since Commodore Perry “helped” open trade with the West to Japan, Burakumin have worked subtly to insinuate themselves into positions of influence over major exporters of raw materials. They also worked to gain a small but significant degree of influence over certain manufacturing concerns in the early 1900s as Japan became thoroughly industrialized.
Although their status in the East was limited, the Burakumin’s wealth and influence in the West grew considerably. And when Japan struggled to rebuild its collapsed economy and industry after World War II, the Burakumin’s various holdings and enterprises were best suited to bouncing back and achieving relative stability. It was also the Burakumin who were most willing to leave their home domains and seek wealth and influence overseas in areas of exporting and industrial outsourcing. In the West, they’ve come to find status and respect that has long been denied them, and the support they are able to lend their compatriots back East has greatly improved their standing in the eyes of many local Princes.
And in domains where the Burakumin’s industrial and financial influence (or meddling, depending on who you ask) is not as welcome, they can still earn respect and recognition for teaching their unique Discipline or using it to profitable effect.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
Elder Eastern Burakumin mostly select progeny from among the societal class of the “unclean” from which they themselves were once chosen. More cynical, bitter ones choose from among the beautiful, noble, powerful or traditionally pious in order to spite those who consider themselves so much more pure than the Burakumin. Bloodline members in the West have not made it a habit by and large to Embrace childer, but when they do, they choose those who can help them achieve their business and political goals and to adapt to their foreign environment.
Common Dress code
Appearance: All Burakumin Kindred tend to exude the same disturbing, unclean, inhuman presence, which grows more obvious as their age and Blood Potency increases. As they age, they begin to reek of grave soil, and a stifling tomblike quiet emanates from them when they don’t consciously speak or make noise to counteract it. What’s more, their bodies take on a corpselike aspect that no amount of Vitae can ever banish completely. Over time, their skin withers and grows leathery until it’s no more than a parchment-thin veneer stretched taut over knobby bone. Out of dignified indifference to this condition (or sometimes out of a sense of perverse irony), most Burakumin dress and comport themselves with fastidious attention to detail. They do the best they can to make favorable impressions on Kindred around them so as to set prospective allies and business partners at ease (in the West) and to keep from giving anyone specific evidence to support unfavorable prejudices (in the East). Elder Burakumin in the East tend to favor garb that harks back to the mortal styles of the late Tokugawa Shogunate and early Meiji Era, while younger and more progressive Burakumin prefer more severe and formal Western professional attire.
Art & Architecture
Haven: Eastern Burakumin have traditionally been restricted to communal havens in isolated hamlets populated by those mortals who are considered “unclean” by the tenets of the Shinto and Buddhist religions. Young and more urbanized ones dwell in and beneath large cities, yet well away from Kindred of higher station. Westward-looking Burakumin often wind up competing with local Nosferatu for havens, but as they grow more successful, their new homes come to rival those of the Daeva and the Ventrue.
Major organizations
In their Eastern homes, Burakumin have little choice but to come together with others of their own kind, lest they face a Requiem of maddening solitude. Individual Burakumin defer to regional Prisci, who communicate with ministers responsible for passing on edicts from local Princes. Priscus is usually the highest station to which a Burakumin can hope to rise in the East, and though it conveys significant Status among other Burakumin, that Status isn’t worth quite as much to anyone else. Moving West, these Kindred stick together for the sake of familiarity among strangers and in strange lands, but they adhere to no established internal hierarchy. Some scatter to the four winds, never looking back, while others fall in with other kinds of Nosferatu, lacking the ability to adapt sufficiently to their new environments to forge their own destinies.
Covenant
In the Far East where it originated, this bloodline has traditionally been forced to remain unaligned. Most remnants of The Circle of the Crone covenant were wiped out long ago in favor of Shinto and Buddhist belief structures (or ones as similar to them as local Kindred could bring themselves to uphold). For much the same reason, The Lancea Sanctum has only very recently taken root there, and thus has never been of much interest to the Burakumin — though Kindred roundly disapprove of the unwholesome practice of their necromancies. The local version of The Invictus still proves resistant to accepting the Burakumin, but Western members of that covenant are considerably less so. Many Western Princes fear the strange power that the Burakumin wield, so they graciously invite Burakumin into their domains and grant them rights undreamed of back home. They do so largely to distract and placate these outsiders in an attempt to keep them docile, content and under control, but most Burakumin have been slow to realize how they are being played. The Ordo Dracul goes largely unnoticed by the Burakumin, but the ones who know about it find it baffling and more than a little oblique. The covenant that has had the most impact on Kindred of this bloodline, though, is The Carthian Movement. It proposes a state of true equality in which every vampire is entitled to an equal share in the spoils of the night, which is what the most vocal and active Burakumin have fought for since well before the Meiji Restoration. Carthian ideals have caught on like wildfire in the once-closed Eastern domains, and the Burakumin who introduced them enjoy an upwelling of underground Status and influence unlike any they have ever known.
Nickname: Unclean
Character Creation: Burakumin don’t tend to have high Social Attributes, especially those who remain in Eastern domains. Neither do they place a particularly high priority on Physical Attributes. Their mental prowess has won them the niche in which they thrive, which leads them to favor Mental Attributes and Skills. Many of them tend to value Social Skills as well, although those propensities do not come as naturally to them. According to their weakness, Status is not a particularly economical buy up front, but other Social Merits (as well as certain Mental ones) can be worthwhile. It also makes sense to buy a second dot of Blood Potency since a character can’t officially join this bloodline or learn Getsumei until then.
Bloodline Disciplines: Getsumei, Nightmare, Obfuscate, Vigor
Weakness: Despite the unique power that the Discipline of Getsumei grants, and the relatively newfound wealth and influence it enjoys beyond its traditional cultural borders, the Burakumin bloodline is a decidedly unlucky one. Not only does it share the weakness of its wider parent clan (though a specific variety of it), but it also suffers social stigmas unrelated to its ghastly appearance. Like other Nosferatu, players of Burakumin cannot re-roll 10’s for additional successes on Presence- or Manipulation-based rolls, and 1’s subtract from successes on those rolls. This weakness is due to the fact that Burakumin closely resemble the decaying corpses that they should be. Upon the Embrace, the Burakumin take on the appearance of cold, hours-dead bodies, and they cannot mimic the appearance of vital life with the expenditure of Vitae. As their Blood Potency increases, their bodies appear to wither and decay as per the natural stages of human decomposition (only matching the pace of the vampire’s progression). This appearance of decay does not hinder the physical functions of the vampire’s body (even though flesh might constrict and split, revealing bone beneath).
Aside from this physical affliction, the Burakumin must deal with a social penalty as well. Try as they might to build up Resources and increase their influence among mortals, line members have trouble fitting in and earning a standing comparable to that of their fellow Kindred. In their cultural homeland, they suffer the long-standing prejudices of an undying elite that cannot keep up with the pace of modern society. While they earn more respect in the West, they suffer a different sort of prejudice for being not only an offshoot of the Nosferatu, but foreigners as well. Young Kindred don’t tend to hold such prejudices, but they don’t tend to be the ones with all the power and influence in the domains in which the Burakumin seek to insinuate themselves. As a result of these various prejudices, purchasing the Status Merit (in all of its forms) costs double.
Concepts: Ancestral avenger, aspiring upstart Primogen, blackmailer, forensic pathologist, grave robber, importer, mortician, private investigator, spectral intercessor, tanner
Parent ethnicities
Bloodline Disciplines: Getsumei, Nightmare, Obfuscate, Vigor
Weakness: Despite the unique power that the Discipline of Getsumei grants, and the relatively newfound wealth and influence it enjoys beyond its traditional cultural borders, the Burakumin bloodline is a decidedly unlucky one. Not only does it share the weakness of its wider parent clan (though a specific variety of it), but it also suffers social stigmas unrelated to its ghastly appearance. Like other Nosferatu, players of Burakumin cannot re-roll 10’s for additional successes on Presence- or Manipulation-based rolls, and 1’s subtract from successes on those rolls. This weakness is due to the fact that Burakumin closely resemble the decaying corpses that they should be. Upon the Embrace, the Burakumin take on the appearance of cold, hours-dead bodies, and they cannot mimic the appearance of vital life with the expenditure of Vitae. As their Blood Potency increases, their bodies appear to wither and decay as per the natural stages of human decomposition (only matching the pace of the vampire’s progression). This appearance of decay does not hinder the physical functions of the vampire’s body (even though flesh might constrict and split, revealing bone beneath).
Aside from this physical affliction, the Burakumin must deal with a social penalty as well. Try as they might to build up Resources and increase their influence among mortals, line members have trouble fitting in and earning a standing comparable to that of their fellow Kindred. In their cultural homeland, they suffer the long-standing prejudices of an undying elite that cannot keep up with the pace of modern society. While they earn more respect in the West, they suffer a different sort of prejudice for being not only an offshoot of the Nosferatu, but foreigners as well. Young Kindred don’t tend to hold such prejudices, but they don’t tend to be the ones with all the power and influence in the domains in which the Burakumin seek to insinuate themselves. As a result of these various prejudices, purchasing the Status Merit (in all of its forms) costs double.
Concepts: Ancestral avenger, aspiring upstart Primogen, blackmailer, forensic pathologist, grave robber, importer, mortician, private investigator, spectral intercessor, tanner