Vampires of New York from 1999 to 2022

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New York City

The Camarilla Toehold

The Camarilla's hold on much of North America would crumble within days if they were barred from Wall Street and Madison Avenue. The consequences of losing control of the markets and the media are too terrible to ponder, so the Camarilla holds onto the heart of Manhattan with a grip as tight and terrible as rigor mortis. There are over 100 Camarilla vampires crammed into this zone, equally divided between those who manipulate the boardrooms, those who patronize the arts and those who are soldiers in a battle that simply cannot be lost.

The current "Prince of New York," a seventh-generation Ventrue known only as Michaela, has temporarily managed to halt the rapid turnover of princes. She has also stabilized the borders of the Camarilla quadrant of the city (though not a night goes by without the Sabbat testing her defenses), and she has also received carte blanche from the Ventrue Justicar to create progeny for the defense of the city. It is not lost on Michaela's critics how closely this permission imitates the tactics of the Sabbat, and certain cynics among the seven clans wonder how hospitable a postbellum New York is likely to be if it's knee-deep in eighth-generation Ventrue.

The Prince

The Primogen Council

Officers of New York

Brujah

Gangrel

Not surprisingly, the Gangrel presence in the city is miniscule. A few run on Long Island, but there the deadening sameness of the tract housing drives most of them out within weeks, screaming with boredom.

Malkavian

Nosferatu

The secret masters of New York, however, are the Nosferatu. The Sewer Rats have their talons firmly sunk into the machinery of the city itself. The day-to-day (and night-tonight) operations of city government and services, particularly the all-important sanitation department, are completely under Nosferatu control.

Certain Toreador have made jokes about how the Sewer Rats must control the city, as former mayor Ed Koch is obviously one of their own. The Nosferatu response is to smile politely, then to halt garbage pickup in the vicinity of the offending Poseur's haven for a month. Lunchtime fire hazard inspections are also a favorite ploy.

  • -- Gerard Rafin -- Good Old Uncle Smelly
  • -- Gemini
  • -- Krid
  • -- Bran Monahan -- A former police officer turned ugly undead, he owns Monahan's Bar and aids the sheriff when she needs help.
  • -- MKMC-D -- Yet another young Kindred come to New York to make it big.

Toreador

Tremere

The Tremere chantry, located on the grounds of Barnard College (Columbia University is too obvious a locale, City College doesn't have the space, New York University is coopted by the Toreador and Yeshiva University has a disproportionate number of students and professors with True Faith), is located perilously close to several Sabbat strong points, as well as the small but potent Setite presence just across Morningstar Park in Harlem. In New York the Tremere have taken a much more active stance in defending the city than is their normal wont; even Vienna recognizes the value of the Big Apple and sends reinforcements regularly. Tremere are a particularly favored target of Polonia's shock troops, and the city's Tzimisce are all too eager to "discourse" at tremendous length with their Warlock rivals. Accordingly, the turnover rate at the chantry is appalling. At the moment, the head of the chantry is one Aisling Sturbridge, who was field-promoted when the previous chantry head was ambushed, staked and fed pieceby- piece to the fish of Sheepshead Bay.

Ventrue

Bloodlines

The Midnighters -- Neonate Street Racing Freaks

The Anarchs of Staten Island

The Assamites of Queens

  • -- Sun Yang -- The Wise Frog of Clan Assamite.

The Necromancers of New York City

The Giovarmi have been a part of New York since the 19th century. Arriving with the first massive wave of Italian immigrants, the Necromancers have quietly and methodically built their influence over the entire East Coast from the quaint houses and ornate churches of Little Italy. With their direct control of both the Gambino crime family and the Teamsters' Union, the Giovanni have influence disproportionate to their numbers. There are never more than six members of the family in residence in New York at any one time, and the clan makes a concerted effort to keep its collective head down lest either the Camarilla or the Sabbat take time out from their bloody war to lower the proverbial boom. The situation as it stands is perfectly to the Giovarmi's liking: The Sabbat takes great care not to offend them, while the Camarilla pays handsomely to ship various Kindred in on Giovanni-controlled freighters (and many of these Kindred, when they awaken, find themselves ravenously hungry). The only fly in the ointment is the ever-growing Setite presence, as there have been numerous clashes with the Snakes over the city's burgeoning drug trade.

Serpents of the City that Never Sleeps

One cannot walk through Morningside Park without hearing the crunch of crack vials underfoot, without seeing discarded needles pointing every which way or without noticing thin streaks of powder that mar practically every square foot of pavement. Names of those long dead are carved into the trees; someone has taken to memorializing the victims of drug violence on a particularly large oak at the south end of the park. A new name is added to that tree so often that it is beginning to die itself, its trunk marred too often to allow it to heal. This is Setite territory, and they like it like that. Fronted by the Jamaican posses and establishing a ring around Harlem, the Snakes are busily engaged in strengthening their presence. The constant influx of Haitian refugees to the city provides the Setites with both cover and an ever-increasing power base, and both Sabbat and Camarilla consistently take time from their busy schedules to attempt to prune the Setite presence. Those efforts have grown less successful of late, and the Setites have started laying claim to certain portions of Brooklyn (noticeably Bedford-Stuyvesant) and the Bronx as well.

The Sword of Caine at Liberty

Sabbat Fun & Games New York Style

The Verrazano Narrows Bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world. Indeed, it stretches for such a distance that the curvature of the earth's surface had to be taken into account in the blueprints for its construction. It is a truly awe-inspiring accomplishment, and a spectacle to behold at night.

It's also the site of a Sabbat game unique to New York known as "Dumpster Diving." The game takes two forms: In the first one, a Sabbat Lick climbs onto the railing of the bridge and loudly threatens suicide. This causes traffic snarls and brings a horde of police a-running, thus lightening the law enforcement cordon on the rest of the city. Inevitably the Lick (having practiced the maneuver) throws himself off the bride, only to swim to shore after a little while has passed. Meanwhile, up on the bridge, the police are being relentlessly grilled by news crews, making them less-than-cheerful public servants, and traffic, is hopelessly snarled. All in all, it's not a bad night's work.

The second way to play the game requires a bit more of a team effort. A Camarilla vampire (or Setite, or Caitiff) is kidnapped and hauled onto the bridge. The victim is then thrown off the bridge, as is one Sabbat vampire. Whoever survives the fall and makes it to shore in one piece is the winner. The only caveat is that one of the two must be destroyed before the other is allowed out of the water, and the banks of the Narrows are lined with Licks to make sure that there are none of those annoying ties.

Other popular games include deMentos, where vampires hop into cars stopped at traffic lights, feed upon the drivers and then hop out (leaving a piece of candy behind as well as a bloodless corpse); and Viva La Turista, which involves hijacking taxicabs for the sole purpose of picking up tourists and depositing them in inhospitable neighborhoods, then watching the fun.

Archbishop At Large

Love's Easy Tears

Packs like Love's Easy Tears embody the modem Sabbat. With its young members and whole-hearted acceptance of Sabbat dogma, it might seem surprising that the Black Hand has lost so much ground recently, or that its successful crusades have fallen apart after the fact. Looking deeper into the issue, however, reveals the truth: Often, packs of the Sabbat are unready or untested. Their fervor is artificial -- they act in the Sabbat's interests because they are told to, or because they are threatened, or because they believe in the ideology and think it's the correct thing to do. Rarely do the packs of the Sabbat entirely want to carry on the crusade, but they always do for another reason.

This isn't to say the Sabbat isn't thrilled to have the chance to do what it's doing. Quite the opposite; the fact that they have any fervor at all puts them in some cases above and beyond the jaded elders of the Camar1lla who rise each night not to see what the new night has to offer but only because they always have. Propelled by inertia and ennui, the Kindred of the Camarilla conduct the affairs of their unlives out of greed, paranoia or spite. Not facing the new night would mean losing some asset or another to the selfish plots of one of the young coteries. With the Sabbat it's not so simple or mundane -- it's a religious issue, or one of utter philosophical hatred for the Ivory Tower.

Motivation cannot make up for inexperience, though, and Love's Easy Tears embodies this problem as well. As a prominent pack during the Sabbat's dominance of New York, Love's Easy Tears was on the tongue of every savvy Sabbat elder and aspiring ductus in the city. Even though the pack's own ductus had been a Cainite for only two decades and its members had relatively uninspired intro­ductions to the world of the Damned, they excelled at their tasks. Perhaps it was because they saw the opportu­nities that becoming Cainites provided. Perhaps it was because the Sabbat filled a place missing in their mortal lives. Perhaps becoming undead simply gave the members of the pack a new sense of purpose. Whatever their individual motivations, the Cainites of Love's Easy Tears threw themselves into the Sabbat cause with reckless abandon, and their enthusiasm yielded results.

Number-One Heart-Throb

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