Skittish Amongst The Stars

You have followed a rumor, promising something you value. Some secret of great power, some way to bring someone back, some way to make sure something will never happen to you again. It has taken you far from home, deep into a forest no one has ever returned from. A forest alien and strange, one which makes your feet feel as if they do not belong on this soil.

As the path had grown harsher, and darker, and you had found wolves with pelts of steel and things wearing the faces of friends long dead, you had begun to question if the prize was worth it. And yet you pushed on.

Further, further, through darkest night and chilling day and misery and blood until, at last, you found the crumbled walls of a long forgotten city. As you had climbed through a ruined gate house, and walked through the darkened streets, the sky had opened up for the first time in longer than you could remember. You did not know the stars, nor the planets, nor the moon. Yet they felt like home.

And you pushed on, through the inner walls, into the keep, forcing open doors and slaying a withered husk wearing a panoply of gold. It had been too late to turn back, too much had been given. Finally, you found it, the tower you had been told of. And so you had climbed. It did not take long, a few minutes.

A tome had laid open on a lecturn; in an otherwise empty observatory chamber. You had walked, with trembling hands and quickened breath, to read the page it was open to. And the next. And the next. And you began to feel that chill, as you realized that the world is not what you knew.

That death is not the end.

That while you may make that crossing, across that terrible river, it will not be one way.

Keep hope, my friends, even in the darkest night, and live if you have any say in the matter.

Well, you are a kindred of no real renown, but some pedigree, with a distinguished sire and a few decades under your belt. So, I will not insult you by explaining the basics of the night. This I will assume you know. (For those less familiar with the lore of Vampire the Masquerade, the system and setting in which the game I am summarizing is set, I recommend TheBurgerKrieg’s excellent Vampire The Masquerade lore videos on youtube.) However, you are not a kindred particularly knowledgeable nor interested in the history and particular culture of your kind, so where things may be more niche or less intuitive, I shall explain. 

Space and Time

It is early 2026. You are living with the old curse of interesting times. The Trump administration is getting ever greedier for power and authority, all while being too incompetent to use it effectively. The corporate interests aiding and abetting this are, themselves, growing uncomfortably close to the kindred authorities and ties in Seattle, where the connection between big tech and the supernatural runs deep. 

You are in Seattle, the Emerald City. The nights are long, and full of terrors. The Camarilla control much of the city, but the Capital Hill neighborhood, in the heart of the city,  is heavily contested. Anarchs own much of the outer town and cities in the Greater Seattle Area. The mountains and forests teem with angry lupines, hungry for wyrm tainted flesh. The Sabbat are nowhere to be seen, save a single stronghold 35 miles east of the city.

Months pass. It is now summer. The nights are frantically short, a rush of kindred trying to squeeze an ever increasing list of problems that need solving into 8 hours. The second inquisition draw close. The Tremere splinter faction of the city plot alongside darker forces still. The night is dark and ever more full of terrors, and the camarilla is not yet prepared to face them down.

Our Core Cast Of Characters

Jonah Alvarez [He/Him] (Played By E) - A young student of computer engineering at University of Washington, trying to help who he can how he can. Embraced within the last year. Tremere. 

Marceline Bernard [She/Her] (Celine, Marci) (Played by A) - An Ancille of considerable knowledge and renown. A power player and close (albeit secret) associate of the Prince. Embraced many decades ago. Tremere.

Maia Beste [She/Her] (Played by Z) A trans den mother, taking care of younger girls who need out of bad situations or a place to crash on. Embraced within the last year. Brujah. 

Olwen Evans [They/Them] (Played by R) An investigative reporter, looking into the deep dark secrets of the Trump administration, and now into the Night. Embraced within the last year. Toreador. 

Seylah Martell [She/Her] (Played by J) A punk rocker trying to make it in a world that does not have her back, even when it seems to. Embraced within the last year. A Daughter of Cacophony.

Recent Events

You come to us, kindred, at an awkward moment. We are between things on all fronts. 

Seylah has just torn apart one of her touchstones in a fit of blind rage after not talking to her, meaningfully, for months. So now she has a loved one to mourn and a body to hide, and a witness to deal with in the form of a blood doll. All inside of Marceline’s Seattle apartment. After getting into a loud fight with said touch stone.

 Marceline has just dug into a plot between the Tremere, a data center company, and a group called the Syndicate. She was going to head towards the Tremere chantry inside of UW campus, with the Brujah primogen (an old friend of hers), before that Brujah primogen (Helen), revealed that she had some limited knowledge about the Syndicate. So, they are now going to meet with the prince as soon as they can, desperate to share what little (and frightening) knowledge they have.

Maia and Olwen have gone in search of Maia’s sire, Hannibal, who embraced her after a hunger frenzy then abandoned her. The same Hannibal who we met in the introduction. And they have gone to the small town of North Bend, and have found a place called The House of Hope. Inside, they met an as of yet unnamed Tzimisce. He gave them Hannibal’s location at the cost of Maia’s hand, and let slip that Luna, one of Olwen’s touchstones, is at the house. They go see her, and find that she has been transformed into a horrible disarticulated creature, barely recognizable. She immediately reset to her old form, and was excited and bubbly as her usual self.

Jonah has mostly been focusing on personal life, but has been trying to pry into the history and secrets of the Tremere via his sire. Besides that, he also moved out of his Aunt’s house, into a small town house in the Coterie’s domain. 

There are a few more plots up in the air. There are werewolves getting more active in the domain. The plot has deeply hidden plans, beginning to expose themselves, trying to bring her ancient sire into the city. Hunters are getting ever bolder, looking to exploit the wedges in kindred politics and shatter the sects in this city. More and more cities around the country are being swept clean, only small cities so far, but the threat looms. 

But that is all beyond the scope of this coterie, for now. Their current concerns are much more night to night, immediate survival. Maybe someday, perhaps even someday soon, they will be able to turn their concerns outward. But not yet. 

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