Let it enter you. Let it use you. Make love to the dark!
— Common chant from the Mystics’ dungeons
Within the courts of Clan Lasombra, Abyss Mystics occupy roles as seers, counselors, spies, and secret weapons used to devastating effect against rivals and enemies. The Mystics come in many stripes, with the only unifying feature being an impossible lust for secrets, and willingness to do whatever it takes to acquire them.
Mystics are responsible for the Lasombra fashion of constructing Oubliettes deep beneath their domains. These impenetrably dark prisons serve a double-duty for the clan, inducing terror in their captured inhabitants, and creating bastions of absolute lightlessness for meditation and study by the Mystics. Within the Oubliettes, claustrophobia becomes a tangible enemy for those unlucky enough to be there against their wills. Some Oubliettes are one-room cells, with walls so tight the inhabitant must remain standing. Others are squat cages, rendering the inmate impossible to do anything other than squat, or bend painfully for as long as she remains incarcerated. The Abyss Mystics’ favored Oubliettes are subterranean labyrinths that wind down, through each other, and farther beneath the earth’s surface than many a mortal or vampire has trod. Each of these Oubliettes — no matter the size, shape, or scale — is unlit. The inhabitants must become one with the darkness, or be crushed by its dominance.
Abyss Mystics occasionally study Oubliette-bound prisoners in seclusion, but prefer to run field tests in which they release up to a dozen Cainites in an underground maze and watch their actions from the safety of their ever-present friend; the oppressive dark. If a vampire let loose in an Oubliette shows tenacity, or embraces the lack of light, Mystics will offer the Cainite their respect and an opportunity to study the dark a little closer. Few survive with their sanity intact. Those who endure the rite of passage open themselves to Abyss Mysticism. A rare few even hail from other clans and bloodlines.
The Oubliettes are the Magisters’ dirty secret. It’s not so unusual for a Cainite Prince to hold a horrifying dungeon of legend in her domain, but Mystics conceal their catacombs’ and prisons’ presence to vampires of other lines. Not all Lasombra appreciate the Mystics’ influence within their clan. Those feeling particularly chafed spread tales of the Oubliette rites being bastardized from those enforced by a dangerous vampire sect known as the Tal’Mahe’Ra. Mystics react poorly to accusations of connection to that group, but their knowledge of the sect is telling.
See also: Oubliete (Background)