Was the Ravnos antediluvian a wight?

Question

I am talking here about Zapathasura, the Ravnos antediluvian:

Yes, he is that black thing. Not really beautiful.

He woke up in 1999, and after a terrible rampage — during which he destroyed his own children first — he was destroyed by the Kuei-Jin and the Technocracy. The exact details of the story can be read here.

Considering this image and the story:

• his Appearance was very low (1)
• his Humanity also wasn't really high, surely below 3
• he completely lacked social skills. He didn't communicate (or not meaningfully), only rampaged.
• there wasn't any apparent rationality to his killings. It seems he tried to kill everybody he could. He killed even his own children, only because they were near.

Considering these, I have a strong impression that the Ravnos antediluvian was a wight. I think it is probably an undecidable question (which is also an acceptable answer), but is there any reference in the White Wolf Canon which proves or disproves it?

Answer 1

There's no in-canon reference for either, however I think there are strong points for Zapathasura to not be a wight.

First, a breakdown of the history before Zapathasura awakened:

• Ravnos and Kuei-Jin were fighting it out for quite some time in India
• Ravnos were on the losing side and decided to use mass embracing as a tactic
• The fighting became bloodier, with the new embraces dying almost as soon as they were created. Each death releases a "death cry" through the generational lines. This cry slowly crawls up the generation ladder. What exactly is contained in this cry is unknown.
• Methuselahs awake due to the massive amount of Ravnos that die
• Zapathasura awakes

Zapathasura awakes because thousands of his children have died (for humans probably equivalent to a massive cluster headache). Its bloodline is in danger of extinction.

This leads to the second part: the Week of Nightmares (see the "Time of Thin Blood"), summarized below:

1. Zapathasura is hungry, so It snacks on everything nearby (and due to age it most likely needs kindred blood)
2. Goes on the counter offensive
3. Is confronted with three Kuei-jin Bodhisattvas (≃ Eastern Antediluvians), a mighty brawl ensues
4. The Technocracy says "Nope!" to the brawl and uses magical neutron bombs and orbital mirrors to wipe everything away.
5. In Zapathasura's dying moments it calls Its blood back, which causes all surviving Ravnos to go into a blood craze (= Frenzy).

Sidenote: we're talking about an Antedeluvian, walking plot devices... We're ants compared to a being of that level.

Onwards now, to tackle the post's points:

• Appearance is irrelevant for a being with Chimestry 10. Zapathasura can look however It wants to look.
• I would think that Zapathasura follows the Eastern version of the Road of Paradox (probably my personal opinion)
• For the lacking of social skills: see above (the infamous death cry could have given it a good idea of what was going on) and with Animalism 10 does It really need to interact with anybody to learn something?
• With regards to the killings: see above