Nephilim of the Western Tradition as Bohemians?
In a prior post I briefly recapped the Bohemians (Roma; the g-word is a slur like the n-word so I'm reticent to use it) from the French version and some ideas for salvaging their lore from its racist conceptions. Since then, I've done a lot more thinking and revising of my setting to make my Nephilim true composite beings rather than body-snatchers. One idea that came to me was to rename the "Western Tradition" as it's called in Major Arcana to the Bohemian Tradition: i.e. the Western Nephilim who adopted the Major Arcana would be known as the Bohemians, to contrast them from the pre-Arcana Western Nephilim and to denote their philosophical origins as refugees from Akhet-Aton.
So where does that leave Roma and other nomadic ethnic groups? It leaves them in the same place as everyone else. Depicting Roma as having magical powers due to their ethnicity is racist drivel and I'm not using it in my campaign settings. In my campaigns some Roma are Nephilim and some Roma are initiates of secret societies, but no more than anyone else is. Roma are no different from other ethnic groups in the secret history and have no special knowledge of the occult compared to any others. White people are racist against Roma because they're racists, not because they're jealous of magic.
Now let's get into how they interact with the secret history without being racist about it: There are some Immortals and secret societies (like HIOTES) that associate specifically with Roma and other nomadic groups, but this is entirely incidental to the Roma's ethnicity. Like all human beings, they have Solar-Ka that makes their blood useful for evil magic like awakening Orichalc. Due to depredations by The Devil and the cults of the Black Moon during the Dark Ages, some Roma developed the practice of vampire hunting based on misunderstandings of occult encounters. Strength Initiates who incarnated as Roma may have contributed to the practice, covering up their fights against Devils and Selenim as vampire hunts.
I do intend to translate the Nephilim: Revelation supplement on the Bohemians, but I will not be using it as is due to the racist nature of the material. So far I borrowed some of the jargon and apply it to Nephilim instead: Mahrimè for Nephilim seized by Khaiba and Sapmulo ("snake ghost") for those seized by its Lunar Entropy form.
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