Paris - A Perspective
So as a storyteller and a player, I want to offer a point of view on what Paris is and what is happening within the city. This is by no means what is actually happening, or what should happen, just a perspective on the many possibilities taking place at any time in Paris. -- "The Magister 04:47, 23 September 2016 (MDT)"
Paris has been called the City of Lights and by one perceptive player, the "City of Lies", I believe both of these points of view are essentially correct. The theme then of Paris is "deception," all forms of deception, including that of self deception. The French psyche, and more so that of the Parisian people is based upon a simple self-deception, that the French are culturally superior and that Paris is the center of the world. Most understand that this is a simple self-deception meant to make living in a nation that has out lived its glory days as a world power and has settled into a comfortable complacence as an aging European state bearable, even acceptable by degrees.
The twin moods of nocturnal Paris are the euphoria of distraction and the willing suspension of disbelief. Like the courtiers of Louis XIV who were compelled to present themselves and conduct their business at Versailles, the undead of Paris are being kept distracted by the pageantry of a illusionary court, a culturally popular fiction willing accepted to insulate the vampires of Paris from the truth hidden behind their preferred reality, that their unlives are sliding from decadence into outright corruption and decay. That their Belle Epoch is over and that the other clans, all the other clans are slowly moving to supplant the Toreador as the prime mover of the Parisian night society.
