Gangrel (Old World of Darkness)

Gangrel (Old World Of Darkness)

The Gangrel are a clan of vampires, often associated with the Camarilla, from White Wolf Game Studio's Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, and books and role-playing games.

The Gangrel are nomadic shapeshifters whose magical Discipline, Protean, allows them to transform their physical substances. Emulating animal forms, fusing with the surrounding elements or becoming a cloud of mist are all legendary examples of this power, but even more radical and bizarre transformations are possible. Their mastery of Protean is so much greater than any other Clan that Gangrel can assume virtually any animal form, providing it is a scavenger or a predator. Other vampires with the Protean Discipline are limited to the forms of Wolf and Bat; no one (not even the Gangrel) know why this is so.

According to Second Edition sourcebooks, the Gangrel, despite living in the wilderness, are attacked much less often by Werewolves than other vampires; some speculate that the Werewolves and Gangrel have a shared origin. This, however, was retconned in Revised edition.

In the Dark Ages, the Gangrel were the vampires most commonly associated with the Road of the Beast, a system of morality centered around necessity, based on instinct and inspired by wild animal behavior (living in the immediate present, killing whenever necessary but only then).

In the modern setting, Gangrel, originally one of the seven Camarilla clans, severed their ties with the sect. Dissatisfaction with the sect and a desire for independence had been long brewing among Gangrel and in 1999, the clan's Justicar (and his followers) broke away from the sect after the inner council refused to help him fight a creature he identified as an Antediluvian (the god-like progenitors of the vampire clans). The initial exodus dragged more and more Gangrel away from the sect as the alluring prospect of independence and general mistrust of he establishment spread across the clan.