The Mystikoi are a heretical bloodline of Gangrels who pursue enlightenment through communion with the Beast. The roots of the bloodline lay in Albania, where a dualistic heresy influenced by Gnosticism and Manicheanism arose near the end of the first millenium. These heretics were eventually welcomed into Byzantium, and the Kindred among them were mostly converted by the Lancea et Sanctum. A couple of holdouts, however, were granted permission to continue their philosophical studies, and were granted the title of Mystikoi. The bloodline scattered after the fall of the eastern Empire, but reunited around the Ordo Dracul in its earliest days due to a shared interest in the Kindred condition.