Principle

[The Path of Instinct]

The mortals had the right idea when they thought up the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest.  But they got one thing terribly wrong.  They aren't the apex of evolution.

We are.

Kindred - Cainites - hunters that hunt the greatest hunter of all, man.  Yet we are not the end-all be-all; we too evolve, and our ranks will thin and swell as the blade of time cull the weak.  From time to time, that blade swings hard and wide; many die, but those that remain dominate the world...at least until the next Great Culling.

We're at the cusp of a Culling.  Some say our ancestors will rise and devour us all; I fear that but a little, for beings born of the past cannot survive in the future.  The true Culling will come because our ancestors will rise and smash the Kine.  Our prey will die by the millions, and then so shall our brethren - and the ones that will die are those who have been stripped of their most primordial instincts.

Those who cling to the magical arts.
Those who cling to money and greed.
Those who cling to illusions of power.
Those who cling to dreams of the past.

The only ones who will survive are the predators of the future.   Our kind.  Predators that rely not on spirituality, not on powerplay, not on greed but on ourselves - on our instinct.  Neither human nor beast, we will stalk the cities as our forests, make our dens in the subway and our aeries at the peaks of the skyscrapers.  Our plains will be superhighways seventy lanes wide; our jungles the twisting alleys of the city's underbelly.  And our prey will be as they were, and will always be: blind, mewling, crawling ignorants, breeding like rabbits, dying like locusts, feeding our strength and our dominance with their technologies, their cities, their very blood.

Hunt without remorse.
Kill without hate.
Love without doubt.
Live without fear.

The future is ours.  It's time we claimed it.

- Griffin, Ductus of Evolution.  First Vaulderie, August 1991.