Kraaloak

Kraaloak, Caledonis, and Karsoth are set and based off of the Gangrel clan from the classic World of Darkness setting. This will take a bit to explain, but the question gets asked quite often, so for those up for a bit of quick reading here: It's about 10-15 minutes of reading, maybe something to be read when waiting between posts if you feel inclined.

Now, for those who don't want to click the link, please continue reading!

In the old World of Darkness setting (pre-reboot basically), the Gangrel are a clan of Cainites (vampires descended via embrace from Caine himself), their Antideluvian, or clan founder, was called Ennoia. Ennoia herself was the daughter of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, the earliest history is very Old Testament basically. Caine murdered Abel and turns out God didn't like being lied to and cursed Caine to always drink the blood of his children, walk the night, and to never die (all pain inflicted upon Caine is returned seven times over, the Seven-fold curse). Skip forward a bit and Caine finds the city of Enoch, the fabled first city, he sired three childre (yeah that's that it's called and how it's spelled, ignore auto-correct here), those three became the 2nd Generation vampires. Those three later sired several more, the 3rd generation Cainites, who ended up being cursed by Caine because they all kinda fucked up and got the first city destroyed and because Caine was living the high-life being worshiped as a god, he wasn't too pleased, each clan founder suffered a curse unique to them which got passed down to those they sired. The curse for clan Gangrel is that whenever they Frenzy (getting injured enough or low enough on blood that a supernatural demonic entity inside every Cainite takes over and acts like a wild hungry animal wearing the vampire's skin), they run greater risks of getting an animalistic feature on their body. This ranges from red wolf-like eyes, to their hands becoming turned into claws, larger and sharper fangs, patches of fur on their skin as in oWoD all/most vampires are humans (go ahead, call any New Tzimisce a human, they love that joke) so it makes it harder to blend in with everyone else. There are various bloodlines and offshoots to each clan, and some bloodlines, like the Country Gangrel, who prefer to stay and hunt in the wilderness, even in Werewolf country, don't particularly care how bestial they look, the City Gangrel prefer to blend in with others, stuff like that.

The history of each Gangrel is told through stories, each story tends to be a mixture of embellishment and fact, like what you would expect from the Vikings, an understandable idea since the earliest Gangrel, the 4th and 5th generation Methuselahs ended up migrating towards modern-day Russia and Scandinavia back after the fall of the second (unnamed) city. They essentially became the basis of Proto-Vikings, teaching mortals how to hunt, fight, and some beliefs that would ultimately suit their needs. One of these 4th Generation Gangrel was called Odin, and yes, it's -that- Odin, the one from Norse Mythology. That's kind of the thing with a lot of the lower generation Cainites like Odin, Gilgamesh, etc, they tend to want their plans and such carried out in ways that don't really get questioned by the mortals and if that means posing as gods or godlike beings as the power of a Methuselah is such that such claims aren't too far off the mark as far as a normal human, especially back then is concerned. They didn't teach the mortals how to be Proto-Vikings out of the kindness of their own dead hearts mind you, the Gangrel clan as a whole has this whole blood-feud/war going with Clan Ravnos. The hate between those two clans is such that each wants the other super-dead, and Gangrel love hunting, vicious combat, all the hallmarks of the Vikings (with a few awful things thrown in on the side) and teaching a bunch of humans to fight and act like them while teaching them to hate Clan Ravnos and all the servants of Clan Ravnos is certainly something they would do, they hate the damn Gypsy vampires.

You should be noticing an overarching theme here, in that almost all of the history and such of Clan Gangrel is really difficult to tell just what exactly is fact and what is an embellishment and this is intentional. That's how they told history to each other during the Gangrel Gatherings, to both newer embraced members of the clan, and to others who are just as old to tell their own individual stories. There are some things that are absolute fact, such as Ennoia being the daughter of Lilith and the progenitor of all Werewolves in the setting (werewolves and Gangrel are much less hostile towards each other than werewolves and every other Clan, but that's not saying too much) and that they all really hate the Ravnos clan, that they are capable of shapeshifting, talking to animals (barring the City Gangrel, fuck those pussies, Animalism all day every day!), stuff like that. In fact, them telling their history in such a way lends them an air of mystique that rivals that of Clan Ravnos (do not mention this to a member of either Clan Ravnos or Clan Gangrel), but that goes for just about every Clan since keeping records back then was almost impossible in general. It happened sure, but not enough to where you can clearly state something regarding the Clan's more embellished stories.