In the
Mage: The Ascension role-playing game,
Massasa is the term used by the Tradition known as the
Order of Hermes for the creatures we commonly think of as
vampires. The vampires, of course, have other
names for themselves.
The Order of Hermes has long had difficulties with the massasa, but these difficulties culminated in 1022 when an entire House fell to the lure of immortality and became vampires. A tribunal of Quasitori in Transylvania uncover evidence of the vampirism of House Tremere in 1199, and after a formal acknowledgement of the news in Doissetep in 1201, the other Houses of the Order of Hermes pronounce the punishments of Censure, Interdiction and Requital. This marked the beginning of the Massasa War, which continued openly for another century and still exists in a muted form into the Modern Nights.