The coterie is particularly young and inexperienced in this campaign, which is great for the new viewer who might not know what’s going on.  The oldest of them was turned about 4 years ago, and the youngest having been turned barely 6 months ago.  This means that a lot of concepts and world-building need to be explained to these baby vamps either by the limited knowledge of their oldest member, or by NPCs. This acts as a nice introduction for the characters and an audience who might not be familiar with the World of Darkness or Vampire the Masquerade.

Our newly-formed coterie find themselves in The Bronx, which is currently controlled by the Anarchs, one of three major political organizations of vampires in this world (there are other minor political factions, but they haven’t come up in the story yet).  The Anarchs are, as their name implies, vampires that believe in self-governance and a lack of large-scale hierarchy and structure.  They tend to me more accepting than the other vampire political organizations, but their weakness is their lack of organization, which makes them easy to pick off.  In New York, they are very much the political minority.  

Across the river in Manhattan are the Camarilla, the dominant political faction, defined by meticulous rules and hierarchies meant to keep their members safe and secret. Their strength  is their organization and their unity.  Their weakness is their rigidity and their inability to adapt to changing times.  

Finally, in the shadows, having been kicked out of New York about 50 years prior to this story, are the Sabbat.  They are an organization that believes vampires to be so beyond humanity that they don’t need organization or rules or secrecy.  They are the most in touch with and accepting of their inner monsters, and range from uncontrolled and disorganized murder machines to a highly organized medieval death cult, depending on which group of Sabbat are in play. In most games of VTM, they are the antagonists.

In a world filled with older, far more dangerous creatures of the night, with huge political machinations they barely understand at play all around them, our coterie of baby vampires are particularly vulnerable.  Hence, these 4 very unlikely allies are now working together.

In no particular order (because I could never choose who is my favorite amongst the four, as they’re all amazing), the coterie consists of:

Margot ‘Fuego’ Walker – the youngest of the coterie.  Fuego is the most closely tied member of the coterie to The Bronx, having been born and raised in the area, from a sprawling family tied in with the borough and their politics.  She served on the borough council before a vampire from the Camarilla turned her and planted her back in her own community as an attempt to undermine Anarch control in The Bronx.  Her sire’s name is Rafferty, and he, and by extension she, are Ventrue, a clan that play into the vampires-as-greedy-controlling-capitalists trope.  Fuego finds herself torn between her love for her home and her community and her desire for power and control brought on by becoming a vampire.  She seems to be trying to square this circle by vying for power in The Bronx, trying to control it in order to protect it. She is intelligent, seductive, a master manipulator, and tries to appear less dangerous than she really is.  She is played by Aabria Iyengar.

Serif – Serif is a little older than Fuego, but acts younger.  She has a plucky, spunky attitude and a love for graffiti art. She is a well-known local tagger to the Bronx, where she as been living for at least a while.  She is not originally from the Bronx, and her background is shadowed in some mystery.  Her sire is someone named Argus, and they are Ravnos, an uncommon clan of nomads and artists. They play into the vampires-as-illusionists trope, and she can cast minor illusions and vanish into shadows. We recently found out that her mother is a ghoul, a human who is addicted to the blood of a particular vampire and acts as a servant to that vampire.  It seems likely that Serif’s sire is also the vampire that controls her mother.  Beneath her good humor, smiles, and easy-going demeanor, there is a lot of anger and resentment in Serif that I’m really excited to see play out.  She clearly wants a group to belong with, and she was the first to really embrace their coterie.  She is played by Mayanna Berrin.

Reyes ‘Rey’ Malcolm – Rey is about the same age as Serif as far as turning goes, but is physically the oldest of the group, being a ‘jogging in the morning’ 50.  He was originally from the Bronx, but moved to Manhattan to make his fortune.  It’s unclear what business he was in, but he was successful enough to have a penthouse. He also, at some point, got into money laundering, and was apparently well-versed in it.  Within the past year, Rey was ‘mugged’ in an alleyway, and crawled back to his penthouse to find himself changing.  He and his unknown sire are Gangrel, usually the ‘outlander’ vampires who are most in touch with nature and their animalistic nature.  It seems like his embrace was a touch of irony on behalf of his sire, and Rey has gone from a successful businessman to ending up back in the Bronx with his self-control shredded, massive anger issues, and a tendency to fly off the handle and try to confront every problem with fist and claw.  He’s a deeply conflicted character, wanting to be a gentleman (he regularly holds doors for ladies, stands when they enter the room, etc) and a smooth operator, but ruled by a beast that wants him to give into his basest nature.  He regularly makes poor choices, and is fairly easily manipulated.  Of all of the coterie, he is the least happy with what he has become, and has the hardest struggle with his monstrous nature. He is played by Joey Rassool.

Isaac Brooke – Isaac is the oldest of the coterie, and somewhat their de facto leader.  He was a member of a gang called the Midnighters, who are mostly street racers, though he was apparently more involved in a protection racket.  He got involved with people and things he didn’t understand, and instead of being killed, he was embraced about 4 years ago.  Since then he has made a meticulous study of his new existence, and has become the group’s best source of information about the world of vampires, about clans, and about the politics around them, even though his perspective and knowledge is fairly limited.  Interestingly, Isaac and his sire (a being called Vacla who is male or female or neither depending on their mood) are Tzimisce.  Like Serif and the Ravnos, Tzimisce are rare, but unlike Ravnos, who generally give off a neutral impression to other vampires, the Tzimisce tend to garner reactions that range from distrust to revulsion.  This has to do both with their close traditional ties to the Sabbat, for whom they acted as spiritual leaders, and also for their particular aptitude for the discipline of Vicissitude, or flesh-crafting.  They are vampires that lean hardest into body horror, and twist both themselves and those around them into whatever form suits them.  They are traditionally associated with torture and sadism.  Isaac, however, is both very young and seems to have been made outside the Sabbat, and with little understanding of his clan’s traditional place in that Sabbat or even of Vicissitude (or at least that’s what he claims).  He projects an eerie calm, a possessiveness that is common amongst Tzimisce, and a weird friendliness that seems at least part a push-back against the overwhelmingly negative reactions he gets when other vampires find out what he is.  Despite his clan and the very real danger it puts his coterie in, Isaac seems to care about them to some extent, and has gone out of his way to provide them with shelter and advice and as close to friendly help as he’s able to give. He’s played by Alexander Ward.

These four are still early in their story, having established domain (a very small area that they have been given to control by older and more powerful vampires in their area) of the neighborhood of Port Morris.  They face a run-down new home, an eye-sore of a high-rise building project meant to gentrify the area that Fuego especially wants to detonate, and a ‘monster’ that seems to bode very ill for the coterie and for all the vampires in New York.