Kuie-jin Kindred

Kuei-Jin were descended from the Wan Xian, immortal god-heroes of the First Age (and the predecessor to the Exalted). The Wan Xian betrayed the mandate of Heaven and were cursed to live on blood and shun the sun. Since that time, the Wan Kuei, the fallen Wan Xian, have developed a redemptory religion while occupying an ecological niche akin to Western vampires.

Kindred of the East differs from VtM in both theme and mood despite sharing a common game system. Where Vampires tend to lead a solitary existence dominated by their hungers, Kuei-Jin are more elegant kings of the night with a far more complex political system, an extremely formal net of obligations and far flashier disciplines.

Unlike western vampires, Asian vampires are created when a criminal, or someone who dies in a violent fashion escapes Yomi Wan and returns to the land of the living. The Cathayans are not descended from Caine and are closer to a form of Risen than a western Vampire. Once risen, a Cathayan is a chih-mei, a barely sentient creature dominated by its hunger for chi and forced to live on flesh. When chih-mei rise, Cathayans of the various courts capture them and civilize them, reawakening their higher consciousness and turning them into productive undead.

Where western vampires are generally degenerating, the Cathayans follow a set of Dharmas, various religions which define ethical behavior. Each Cathayan has four virtues: yin (death, passivity, intellect), yang (heat, activity, passions), hun (intellect and noble action) and p'o (violence and negative emotion), and each Dharma espouses enlightenment through some combination of these virtues. As a Cathayan advances in their Dharma, they achieve greater power, including the ability to feed on blood, then breath, then the ambient chi of the universe. There are five dharmas, inherited from the Grand Arhat Xue