House Sephirot



House Sephirot, formerly known as the Tribe of the Sephirot before nobility, was a house of vampyres that fell sometime before the Second Age. Noted as being intelligent but deviant, their own lack of inhibition combined with an aggressive campaign from House Jovkai and Drakan led to their collapse before they could reach Gilenior.

Overview
House Sephirot where noted for their intelligence and curiosity, exploring vast suaves of uncharted territory on Vampyrium, and then documenting much of the planet’s civilised history when Zaros introduced them to the infernal language. However their curiosity often led the house to engage in acts of public sexual deviancy and drunkenness. The other houses described such acts as “depraving, cardinal mating displays, conducted amongst both vyre and prey with no regard for morality or social order.”

Society
Feeding House Sephirot was a complex affair, preferring an long lasting sweet and sour taste to oily blood, which was only achievable when their prey are intoxicated and a state of ecstasy. They would often capture and enslave ‘harems’ of victims, then gradually intoxicate them with alcoholic beverages until they became willing to engage their captives. Sephirots would retain dominance throughout with intimate tools and techniques, where then the prey was swiftly executed and drained to prevent adrenaline and other undesired hormones to contaminate the supply.

House Sephirot did have strict limitations on what tithes they could use: Forbidding the use of minors, diseased and the physically incapable. They would instead be put for auction towards the other houses. Any vyre caught breaking this act where summerly executed without trial, which then the bodies would be put on display in public areas to discourage others. However it was also common for the executor to be bribed so that the bodies were taken for scientific dissection.

They were also known to be proficient torturers as they investigated the biology of their own species, establishing a successful trade with House Alzeph, who exchanged captured vampyres in return for blood let from experimentation. Early forms of the bloodletter sarcophagus were developed from this.

House Sephirot would eventually indulge in early Haemalchemy, introducing a genetic malformation into several of the houses’ bloodlines when a large vat of blood was accidently infected. This would ultimately attract the attention of House Draken, who wanted to erase all knowledge of the art, starting the house’s decline. Several millennia later this malformation would activate, birthing new Sephirot Purebloods from the other households.

Culture
House Sephirot became wealthy from their trade in prisoners blood and spare tithes, with the higher nobles being able to afford fine cloths and open plan, opulent residences in warm meadows. Outside of their cardinal desires, all classes enjoyed public access to libraries of both fiction and non-fiction content.

Alcohol was commonplace, often including in religious and public ceremony, consuming ales and draughts that had been brewed with blood, while the richest could import wines and aged liquor, mixing in blood for their own taste. Drinking establishments where open-air amphitheatres, lit by bonfires at their centre. Off-duty Vyrewatch where known for challenging each other to drinking contests, where they would try and consume shots of spirits and blood until passing out. It would be a tradition to drink from terracotta chalices, which would be smashed on the floor at the end of the night, grinded down and the sand-like dust used to soak up spillages and unwanted fluids.

Religion was not a major component of House Sephirot, who would offer tribute to Zaros in the same manner as others did. Elements of the tribal pantheon was integrated as annual events, including celebrations of Harvest in the autumn and “Ancestral Day” in the middle of winter. A statue of Despotess Lamia Sephirot was established in the main square city of Lamiai, and would be idolised as a symbol of power and beauty.

Funerary rites included sacraments before the traditional pyre burning, where the corpse would be marked with wine and decorated in wreaths of local fauna: Often hop plants or crimson roses. If the spouse of the deceased was present, they were to cut a slit into their wrist and allow a few drops of blood to flow into the mouth. This was to represent that the deceased still had a part of his family present while passing through to the afterlife.

Decline
As the foundations for modern vampyre society was laid by Lord Lowerniel Vergidiyad Draken, House Sephirot’s scandalous behaviour was compared to be even worse than House Pyrah, and marked for extermination in the grand plan. In secret however, Lord Draken also wanted House Sephirot removed because they had begun to develop Haemalchemy, which could destabilise his envisioned feudalist utopia.

House Jovkai was instilled by House Draken to lead the extermination for political security, devastating the Sephirot’s hop plants they cultivated though disease or torching, publicly declaring the acts where punishment for failing to pay debts. Depriving the House of their alcohol turned their victims unwilling and rebellious, ultimately inciting a civil war for possession of still-willing harems and palatable blood reserves.

Branded as a liability to society, House Draken could directly exterminate the remains of House Sephirot without political stain or military strain, all within a few months. However when the Fortress of Lamiai was conquered, the few remaining Sephirot nobles where not counted amongst the dead, never to be located again.

It least one descendant of the house, Damiocles Pythra Aeschylus Sephirot, was alive on Gilenior as a founding member of Immortues in the Second Age.

Legacy
The legacy of House Sephirot is seen as a stain in early vampyric history: Ironically being omitted from modern records of history despite their passion for literacy and history. Some contributions from the house would percivier, such as the basis for Haemalchemy, Bloodletter sarcophagi and the trade of living tithes.

In modern times, some pureblood vampyres with the genetic malformation introduced on Vampyrium would begin to birth pureblood Sephirots. Despite the strictness of their society, in private this new generation may still desire the old ways, indulging in unacceptable cardinal desire with other sentient races to satisfy their tastes.

Trivia

 * House Sephirot is heavily inspired by Ancient Greece culture, the precursor to the Roman Empire that the Zarosian Empire was based upon.
 * The fortress of Lamiai is named after the mythical Lamiai in Greek mythology: an early interpretation of the vampyre.
 * The Lamiai in Greek legend is also named after a female ruler: Queen Lamia of Libya.