Pelinka was the Malkavian artist who drew the heraldic shields for each of the clans.
Biography[]
He was an autistic child from Styria. His sire, Daguienne, took him before his fifteenth year, presumably from pity. Then again, it's entirely possible that she'd already known of his unusual savantism before she drained his blood and gave him Malkav's gift. He was unlettered and mute, and might have seen a knight's shield twice in his life. But he could draw — from memory, it seemed — marvelous symbols that would have made any scribe weep with envy.
His sire gave him paint and paper and ink and blood, whatever he required, and in return Pelinka drew up manuscript illuminations and coats of arms as resplendent as any king could commission. Finally, as something of a curious jest, Daguienne asked her childe to draw up her own family's coat of arms. His answer startled her. As she looked on the device in question, she saw nothing of her own personality reflected there — instead she saw images that reflected her, her sire and every Malkavian she'd ever met. Somehow, Pelinka had seen her true family by watching her, and had tapped into the symbology of her shared wisdom and madness.
Of course, Daguienne couldn't let an opportunity such as this pass her by. Half of a mind to try a prank and half-consumed by curiosity, she gave her childe an exacting challenge — to draw up coats of arms for each of the clans, as a series of "presents" to her elder allies. Daguienne visited him once a night for 12 nights, and each time he had a new design for her before sunup. Without ever meeting a Brujah, Pelinka produced a badge of war and broken chains. Without ever seeing even the crudest representation of Egyptian art, he drew a cartouche with unholy Set inside. Each time his sire described a clan in even the most cursory terms, he tapped some unknown font of knowledge and symbolism to produce something appropriate.
When they were all completed, Daguienne took the collection with her to a conclave of elders, and presented it as a whole to the assembly. They were largely delighted, and although representatives of all 13 clans weren't present, those that were present agreed that even the clans in absentia were well represented. The only one who took the heraldic devices personally was the Toreador, Rafael de Corazon, who didn't care much for the idea that a Malkavian had produced a work insightful enough to challenge the work of any of his own childer. But public opinion wasn't with him, and Pelinka's creations were soon popularized throughout much of the clans.
Pelinka's designs finally fell out of popularity after the Convention of Thorns, for the split between "loyalist" and "antitribu" was so bitter that few vampires liked having any reminder of their clans' failed unity. It wasn't until much later that at another conclave, another Malkavian decided to mark the seating arrangement with a broken mirror here, a wilted rose there, and so on.
These symbols, which fell out of use after the Convention of Thorns, are the shields featured in the Dark Ages books.