Steven Clarke
- Followers of Set -NYC- Vampires of New York from 1999 to 2022 -NYC- Vampires of New York from 2022 Onward
Sobriquet: Clarke
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History: The Setite presence in New York City was never one that adhered to a strict hierarchy. A few small Setite coteries plied their trade in Morningside Park, Brooklyn, Harlem, and lower Manhattan while other fought for their own places amid the established Sabbat territories or skulked within the tenuous Camarilla domain.
Steven Clarke led one of these latter coteries, the East Flatbush Dominions. Their turf overlapped with one of the more powerful Sabbat packs, a Black Hand pack known as the Prophet's Word. While Clark used the Sabbat's own tactics against the pack, Embracing members into his own gang with more need than discretion, the Prophet's Word generally came out on top of the conflict. The Dominions scraped by, making money on numbers rackets and a small scale black-market drug network.
Things changed for the Dominions in late 1998. The territory had been a small part of the Giovanni domain in New York City before the Sabbat and Followers of Set made it their battleground, both before and during the conflict, the Italians took precious little interest in it. In this, Steven saw an opportunity to break the stalemate and reached out to Donatello Giovanni. A meeting was arranged, the deal struck and Donatello required that the Dominions work the territory for the Giovanni in return for the manpower to use against the Prophet's Word. The terms were steep -- the Italians wanted half -- but the way Steven Saw it, the Dominions were losing more than half to the Prophet's Word. Ultimately, he agreed and set things up with his coterie.
The very next day, mafia foot-soldiers broke into the haven of the Prophet's Word exposing all of the Sabbat to noontime sunlight and burning the building down afterwards. That night, Clarke and the Dominions shook down all the peripheral thugs who had sympathies with the Prophet's Word. The Dominions became the new bosses, and if anyone didn't like it, they would end up like the Prophet's pack: dead.
Things went well for a while until, just before the Camarilla swept into town, the Setite elder Elie Elie Sansaricq caught wind of the deal Steven had made with the Necromancers. He summoned Clarke to a meeting, where the two discussed what Sansaricq perceived as the folly of the Dominions actions. Sansaricq saw this inter-clan alliances with the Giovanni for domain as tantamount to sacrilege, a divisive element within New York City's Setite community, the elder serpent felt that Clarke should have come to him for help instead of the Italians. Clarke dissented, claiming that he had just been looking out for his own and that the Setites of NYC had never been so cloistered. Sansaricq informed him that was how it was going to be in the future; all Setite activity would be an extension of the the central temple Sansaricq planned to head -- owing the Necromancers of Queens wasn't part of the plan, nor was it profitable.
Disgusted, Steven stood to leave. Before he could go, however, Sansaricq plunged a mystically envenomed dagger into Clarke's back. While Steven was initially stunned, he wasn't a fool and quickly conjured an inky cloud of darkness over the meeting place and fled the scene with supernatural speed. Sansaricq caught off guard by Clarke's familiarity with Obtenebration searched the premises before dispatching his cronies to finish the job, with the hope that either his minions or the mystical venom circulating through Clarke's cold veins, or both would result in the neonate's Final Death. Near dawn, Sansaricq's lackeys found what appeared to be Clarke's decaying body at a construction site, rather than risk the sun themselves, they buried Steven's body and went to ground nearby. After they rose the following night, they discovered that Clarke's grave was now covered by the foundation of a new condominium complex. Figuring the matter to be at an end, they returned with embroidered tales of their hunt for Clarke and his Final Death.
Unfortunately for Sansaricq, the mystical venom he had distilled wasn't as potent as he had hoped, but it had managed to put Clarke into torpor and he didn't managed to rise again for four years, until a sewer line break exposed his mummified body to discovery. An injured construction worker served as his first meal and he fled the scene knowing that discovery would mean final death. Clarke's slow and agonizing recovery from the Sansaricq's venom has taken months while he has slowly recuperated in hiding on Hart Island.
Since that time, Clarke has begun to make alliances and plans for Sansaricq's downfall, but he cannot move forward with them until he fully recuperates. Thus he has fled the Big Apple for Chicago and meeting with distant clan members while working as a liaison for a new ally - the Brujah, Torsten Metz. While this seemed a good idea, Steven is beginning to have second thoughts, Chicago is far more Byzantine in its politics and while the city itself is smaller, powerful elders and possibly even ancients manipulate events from the shadows.
If Clarke can escape the Chinese finger-puzzle that has begun to close around him in the Windy City, he plans to return to New York and organize the younger Setites against Sansaricq. Now that he knows the depths of Sansaricq's lust for power, he plans to use this information to keep the other Setites of New York City out of Sansaricq's grasp. Its for his own sake as much as for anyone else's, of course -- Clarke knows too much to be an altruist. Still, if he can keep the temples decentralized, he can at least allow individual Setites to choose their debts rather than be Embraced into them. That is of course, if he can keep his head on his shoulders and Sansaricq at bay.
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