Clan Mekhet

Read Blood and Smoke for an exploration of the Mekhet mindset and relationship with the Beast. Our notes below give an idea of how they function socially and politically within Dark Metropolis.

Please bear in mind that these are still early notes and are not set in stone, especially as more setting information becomes available from White Wolf. However, we do not anticipate deviating from these notes drastically when we run Dark Metropolis.

Clan Mekhet

Who am I?

Mask: The faceless facilitators of Kindred society, the keepers of secrets.
Dirge: The guttering, dying flame of the self, ready to be snuffed out by the darkness of the Beast.

Who Are They?

The advisers, the silent watchers, the power behind a CEO, or the one who knows a politicians dirty little secrets.  The Mekhet are quietly everywhere, watching, listening, taking note.

But by doing this, hiding on the fringes, listening to other people live their lives or experience the highs and
lows of their Requiems, they become something less… something hollow.  The Mekhet feel their sense of self slowly fray away and unravel around them, leaving them clutching to whatever artificial fragments of identity they can claim.  Blood is wealth to most Kindred, but the Mekhet have a significant secondary trade among the clan for anything they can anchor themselves to - be it fake IDs, family photos, or other stolen mementoes and trinkets that remind them of their old life or help them to build a new existence.

And so the Mekhet make Masks – formalised identities and roles they fulfil in the clan hierarchy.  While not literally physical objects, many Mekhet (particularly among the High Court) chose to wear masks to display their identity to their clan-mates and advertise their skills to those who know how to read the clan’s code.  You’re not anyone in the clan until you’ve got a Mask, and stripping a Mask from a Mehket is one of the harshest punishments the clan can hand out.

What Do They Want?

Knowledge.  Answers to the world’s secrets.  And above all, an identity to claim as their own, lest the Beast and shadows decide to fill the void…

Where Did They Come From?

The Mekhet have always been something of a constant in Norwich.  They’ve never reached the heights of power, but neither have they had to slum it in the gutters and storm tunnels of the city.  The Mekhet know things, that that make them valuable to everyone.

Over the last fifty years or so however, the Mekhet have been on a gentle, subtle rise.  With the Daeva’s fall from grace and the other clans scrabbling around for what they left behind, the Mekhet stepped in to claim outstanding favours or quietly remind people of secrets better forgotten.  They’ve managed to secure significant holdings in the city as a result, which have secured the clan’s future in the city.

  

What Do They Do?

The Mekhet perform a wide variety of tasks in the city, and often move fluidly between roles as they change Masks.  Many Kindred understand that the Mekhet value identity, but few understand that the details of an identity rarely matter.  As long as you have something to anchor yourself to, does it matter precisely what it is?

That said, there’s definitely a hierarchy among the roles the Masks portray, and the Mekhet are no different to any other Kindred in their competitive nature.  The Mekhet Beast may express itself a little more subtly than the overt predator of the Gangrel or the creature of passion that is at the core of every Daeva, but it’s still the same jostling, hungry, territorial entity that every Kindred knows.  And so the Mekhet struggle for position, swapping Masks as they move up and down the ranks.  It’s rare that a Mekhet will end up with a role unsuited to their skills, but not unheard of for a competitor to manoeuvre a rival into an undesirable or incompatible Mask.

High Court and Low Court

Of all of the clans, there’s the least difference between the High and Low Court Mekhet.  Sure, the Masks change as you move up the ladder, but fundamentally the core of the clan stays the same - make someone of yourself.  The biggest divide exists at the very bottom rungs of the clan’s status, the gulf that separates those with an officially recognised Mask from those without.  Without a formal identity you’re no-one, to the extent that some High Court Mekhet will refuse to acknowledge the presence of Maskless members of the clan.  It’s one thing to be invisible by choice, but quite another to be forcefully ignored.

As they build their status and standing in the clan and city, many Mekhet begin to build literal cults of personality around themselves.  By getting kine and, where possible, other Kindred to acknowledge, respect, need or even worship your identity it becomes an increasingly solid foundation for your sense of self.  Circle and Lance Mekhet frequently gather congregations around themselves, but those in other covenants are just as prone towards having groups of yes men, starry-eyed rebels or obsessively dedicated researchers to support their identities.

Development Notes

Blood and Smoke highlights loss of identity as a key theme for the Mekhet, and it’s a struggle we wanted to put at the core of the clan in Dark Metropolis.  Rather than making them a bland tabula rasa, we want to have the process of forging an identity and sense of belonging a key element of the Mekhet play experience.

The formalised roles and identities of the Masks hopefully help to give the Mekhet a slightly alien aspect.  You identity is effectively in part clan property, and falling completely out of favour with the clan is something every Mekhet should fear.

Questions to think about with Mekhet characters

Who were you in life?  What have you lost of your mortal identity?  Who are you trying to be now?  What still keeps you connected?

What secrets do you know?  What knowledge do you seek?

How does your character build their identity with the mortal world?  Do they dive headstrong into emotion and feeling to help bolster their own identity, or do they try stand apart from humanity to define their new self more as Kindred than kine?