                                    GHUL



   By Stacey Lawless

   See the Dakini bloodline for more background.

   There is a sort of decayed branch of the Dakini, wretches who most
   Indian Kindred feel would be better off extinguished. The Dakini call
   them "Ghuls" after the fashion of the Moslem invaders of India. They
   also refer to the Ghuls as "untouchables".

   When the Dakini can be persuaded to discuss the Ghuls at all, they say
   that seven hundred years ago, a bandit chieftain made his lair
   somewhere near Benares. He was a vile, cunning and depraved man,
   ravishingly handsome and splendidly rich. He was clever, too: though a
   particular Dakini who called herself Sindha had long been trying to
   control him and his bandit army, he had been able to resist her wiles
   and worm out of her traps at every turn. Sindha could not help but
   admire the cunning and evil of her quarry, and finally she came to him
   in person and asked what she could offer him to entice him into her
   service. The Kiss, he named as his price, for he found the power it
   offered to be too much to pass up. And Sindha, more fool she, agreed
   to it.

   Hardly had the bandit king died and been reborn, when he twisted in
   his Sire's arms and, grabbing the sabre he had carefully hidden for
   just such an occasion, struck off her head. He only had drunk a little
   from her corpse before it withered into dust, so he stormed into the
   night to rouse his men. The hunger and blood had made him drunk, and
   he fully intended to drink and slay any and all his army came across
   that night.

   But he had killed his Sire before she could tell him anything of the
   race he had joined, and no matter how he ripped out the throats of the
   hapless travellers he found and slurped down their hot, still-living
   blood, his hunger was not satiated. In fury, he beat his own men 'til
   scarlet ran from them, but this living blood did not ease his thirst
   either; it was like water to a dope fiend. He frenzied then, ripping
   into his men and their horses, til the sun rose. The bandit king fled
   its burning rays, and still in frenzy ran to shelter. The many of his
   army who had not been lucky enough to escape lay as mangled wrecks on
   the earth, interspersed with raw chunks of horseflesh, and became a
   feast for the flies and kites.

   At dark, the bandit king returned, ravenous. Though he was no longer
   in frenzy, the Beast, always close to his heart, had dug its claws in
   deep and its feral light glimmered behind his dark eyes. He was unable
   to find anything alive to rend and kill, and hunger beat at him until,
   desperately, he fell upon the bodies of his former servants. The
   little blood left in their veins was thick and clotted, stinking and
   laden with the eggs of flies, but it was laced with the cool dark wine
   of death, and he was, at last, able to ease his hunger. But the horror
   he felt at drinking from the spoiling bodies eroded the last of his
   sanity, and the Beast claimed him.

   Thereafter he scavenged from cold funeral pyres, from slaughterhouses
   and battlefields and the vulture-towers of the Parsees, and murdered
   anyone he could for their fresh amrita. He was no more than a brute,
   but a vile and cunning one, and he eluded the Rakshasas and Sindha's
   avengers for nearly a century. During that time he now and again grew
   anxious for company, perhaps from a last glint of cultured
   sensibility, and would dishonor the Blood in his veins further by
   feeding it to a beggar or brigand after slaying them. Sometimes he
   would later devour these companions; more often he drove them away
   after a few nights. These wretches went on to scavenge and murder as
   their Sire had taught them, and some of them Sired, and the more
   clever ones learned how to be cunning and hide, so that when the
   disgraced Dakini came hunting, they could never be certain they had
   eradicated the bloodline.

   These Ghuls, as the Dakini came to call them, learned to hide among
   beggars and lepers and feed from the dead wherever they could. Many
   took to following merchant caravans, killing and robbing any
   stragglers, and sleeping in the cargo by day whenever they could.
   Along with these caravans, the Ghuls spread across India, into Persia,
   and beyond.

   Ghuls still exist, and can be found in India, Bangladesh, and
   Afghanistan; rumors also place them in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iran, and
   every now and then, Iraq. They are not many in number, but they are
   very good at hiding and at not drawing attention to themselves. They
   are craven and nearly as opportunistic as cockroaches. All of them are
   lost to the Beast, and most of them would barely qualify as sentient.
   A handful, however, have managed to hang onto their minds. These are
   usually the ones who Sire, are almost always the oldest Ghuls around,
   and can be truly dangerous.

   Habits: Ghuls usually scavenge their amrita from any dead they come
   across, but they will kill for it and do so fairly often. Occasionally
   they will eat the flesh of the victim as well, but no-one is sure why,
   as they cannot possibly derive any nourishment from it. Some lurk in
   the countryside, feeding from and terrorizing villagers, but most
   Ghuls keep to the cities, where they can avoid the Cat Rakshasas and
   have more plentiful food.

   The more intelligent Ghuls hide in slums, where they blend in with the
   urban poor and diseased. Some of them have organized gangs of human
   wretches as Retainers. Bestial Ghuls make their dens wherever they
   can; in New Delhi, one popular place is beneath the stone ghats (huge
   stone steps) that descend the Ganges' banks and into the water, and
   the ghat-Ghuls will swim the river at night and climb into boats
   (though they must be wary of the Caiman Rakshasas, who kill every Ghul
   they catch).

   Organization: Generally speaking, none. In fact, they seem to have
   little regard for their brethren and regard other Ghuls as not much
   more than competition or potential amrita.

   Rumors persist, however, of large gatherings of Ghuls deep in the
   jungles or high in the mountains, of the remains of bonfires replete
   with charred bones (human, animal, and otherwise) near where the Ghuls
   are supposed to gather, of weird and unpleasant carvings on earth and
   trees, and sometimes flesh, of chants carried on the wind that sound
   almost like Latin learned by rote, or like less pleasant things, of a
   corpse found in a shack in Lahore, killed in a darkly ritualistic
   fashion, the blood used to paint strange symbols on the walls.

   It is unknown if these rumors point to the existence of a Ghul cult,
   or are falsehoods spread for some mysterious purpose. Little evidence
   has actually been put forward to prove the rumors. Many of India's
   Kindred, however, fear that something evil has come to make its home
   in their country.

   Appearance: The Ghuls share the dark skin of their Dakini forb ears,
   though they frequently seem pale due to the dust and dirt that often
   coats their skins. Their hair is matted and filthy, their eyes and
   cheeks hollow from mortal disease or malnutrition. They are
   universally skinny, and between this and the dirt it is hard to say
   what age any given Ghul looks like. The ghat-Ghuls of the river cities
   are usually a bit cleaner by virtue of spending time in the water.
   They wear rags, or nothing.

   In the last hundred years, a few Ghuls have been caught who displayed
   stranger appearances than their fellows: leathery, withered skin
   stretched tight over the bones, caved-in noses, and receded gumlines.
   Their blood was found to contain traces of embalming fluids and
   spices, leading their Ventrue captors to speculate that the strange
   appearances resulted from the Ghuls (or perhaps their Sires) feeding
   on embalmed corpses. With the spread of the Samedi bloodline, some
   Kindred have noted similarities between these Ghuls and the
   "mummified" type of Samedi, and wonder if there is a connection.

   Disciplines: Usually the only one these debased Vampires ever develop
   is Celerity, although a few seem to have picked up the rudiments of
   Auspex. Rumali is completely unknown among them, despite their Dakini
   origin.

   Every so often a tale drifts around of this Ghul who displayed
   Potence, or that one who Earth Melded, or the one who vanished in
   plain sight. These tales are given little credence; after all, where
   could these degenerate beasts find anyone to teach them Disciplines?
