Early History
Scratch the surface of a Brujah, and these days you are more than likely to find a Brujah thug underneath. However, the clan is a fallen clan, still mourning the death of their Carthaginian paradise and decaying from their era of warrior-scholars to the petty rebels common in the Final Nights.
Little consistent knowledge is known about the Brujah Antediluvian because the stories may confuse two individuals: the original founder of the Brujah (named as "Ilyes" in one account and as "Troile the Elder" in another) and his childer and diablerist, Troile.
According to most records, Brujah was a callous and fiercely logical creature. Dispassionate in the extreme, the Antediluvian sired a clan of equally dispassionate childer. Among these, however, was a less controlled whelp: Troile the Rebel. What events caused the Embrace of Troile are unknown, but clan history holds that Troile diablerized her sire and claimed the clan as her own. A small bloodline, the True Brujah, claims descent from Brujah and hold this grievance close in the Final Nights.
Following the death of Brujah in unrecorded history, the clan Brujah lived among the mortals, letting themselves revere as kings and gods, trying to recreate the glory of the Second City and the harmony between the Children of Seth and the childer of Caine. The first place that became an experiment of the Brujah was Greece, specifically Athens. Learning from and discussing their ideals with the Athenian orators and philosophers, the Brujah found countless impeti to improve society. The Brujah allowed other Cainites to enter their city and to share Athens's glory. Conflict with Spartan Ventrue led to discord and the first Brujah War. After that, many of the praedicandi, the rulers of the Clan, left Greece, convinced that the experiment had failed and that they should start again elsewhere. Many of the praedicandi seized the moment and followed Troile's example, diablerizing their sires to leave no witnesses or patrons to what they regarded as a failure.
The clan's next major moment is also its greatest moment. The Brujah built or co-opted a Phoenician colony, Carthage, for another grand experiment. The Brujah say that Carthage was a utopia — a city where Kindred and kine lived in harmony, and where justice reigned. Other clans, and history, tell the story somewhat differently. The Carthaginians were cowed by their gods, offering their children to the flames of Moloch; and, apparently, if the blood of sacrifices should flow down the gullet of a methuselah, Moloch did not mind. Exactly what happened in Carthage is dependent on who speaks of it – the Brujah claim Paradise, the other clans claim the presence of the Baali and human sacrifice. Some of those who were present in Carthage admit and acknowledge the truth.
Carthage fell during the Third Punic War in 146 BCE, when Scipio Aemilianus, aided by the Malkavians and Ventrue of Rome crushed the shell of a city hollowed out by two previous wars. The earth was salted (preventing those Kindred who had melded with the earth from rising), the land was plowed, and the Brujah experiment ended.
Dark Ages
During the Dark Ages, the Brujah were considered part of the High Clans, a clan of warrior-scholars noted for their fierce devotion to radical philosophies. The Brujah viewed themselves as the practitioners of Greek philosophy of total mental and physical discipline (commonly called entelechy), and would often train their neonates in combat and the classics with equal discipline. Brujah of the Dark Ages were associated primarily with politics, especially in Greece. Their historical association with Carthage gave them a dim view of Rome and her heirs.
The Renaissance proved to be one of the turning points in the history of the Clan when the division between the various ideological strains within the Clan exploded in the heavy infighting that strain them today. The cultural explosion within Europe resulted in ecclesiastical and civic strife, that the Brujah were only too willing to follow.
Victorian Age
During the Victorian Age, the Clan was divided into those few who lived true to their legacy as the Learned Clan, and those bulk who were mere troublemakers and criminals in the eyes of their sect, as many neonates rebelled against the oppressive and stagnant politic of the Camarilla. The closeness of the clan to mortal passions brought forth the best and the worst of the Age within the clan. Many Brujah started to regard themselves as the proletariat of vampiric society and wanted to change this through revolution.
Many Brujah during this time were fierce supporters of various ideas like Marxism, collectivism, syndicalism, and Darwinism and engaged in various revolutionary groups to topple the rising pauperization during the Industrial Revolution.