Time to start prepping to murder my tabletop players! We're working up to a boss battle of epic proportions in our Vampire game tonight.
Having interrupted a blood ritual meant to free the corrupt Order of the Thorned Wreath of New York City from the demands of their vampiric bloodline, the coterie has manufactured the perfect opportunity for not only themselves, but the enemies of the NYC Invictus, a covenant of rigid traditionalists.
The Knights are bound by their very blood to rescue and protect all kindred of the Invictus- especially the young, neonates. Unfortunately that sacred duty clashes with the demands of the leadership in NYC, and the Knights chose to turn their backs on their bloodline instead of their covenant. They abandoned their duty.
When the ritual was interrupted, the consequences of their hubris backfired on every Knight who had joined the ritual, sending all of them into a frenzy and forcing the Invictus leadership to contain and control them no matter the cost, less they break the vampiric veil of secrecy-- the Masquerade.
The coterie has allied with a rebel Invictus faction, led by Lady Hannah Russo (who they don't like). Their allegiance, however, goes not to her but to the Marquess Tabitha 'Tabby' Sangiovanni, a necromancer with a garden of dead wives and a grudge against Lady Hannah's sire, the Barone Russo, an old enemy of one of the coterie's closest friends/lovers, Connor. (well he's also in the coterie but he's adopted).
Also among their allies looking to get a piece of unstable New York City are the anarchists of the Carthian Movement, who have a werewolf named Bob Ham (and his sister Janet Ham), a love for arson, and over a century of defeats at the hand of the well-entrenched elites of the Invictus.
The Carthians are led by Grier, of their own coterie, and some old friends, slasher fanatic (and probably actual serial killer) Nathan LeMarc, his off-again boyfriend/vampire youth pastor Erroll Everhardt Young, and depressed cinephile Owen Jones, who just sort of comes with the package.
Their third ally comes in the form of a splinter sect of the Lancea et Sanctum, the vampire church. The group is basically a cult, led by coterie member Lenore's sadistic, manipulative, eternally bored boyfriend, Lachlan Doyle (aka The Butcher of Boston, aka The Mad Dog of New York, aka the Guy They Probably Wish They Hadn't Befriended).
Having 'risen from his tomb' in Boston (he wasn't there the whole time he was doing other stuff), he has convinced the Church that he has returned to lead them in a holy crusade against the evils of New York.
Lachlan once failed to take New York for the Carthians, the defeat that eventually led him into the arms of the Church, where people question him less. He's got a grudge. And also just really likes killing people.
With these three groups: the rebelling Invictus who want to throw off the old ways of Europe at last, the Carthians who can't feel cool living in Connecticut, and yet another newborn cult of Saint Lachlan Patrick Typasius Doyle, the coterie is in place to confront the leaders of the Invictus as they meet to plan their damage control.
The elders of the New York Invictus are secretive and rarely seen, but with a disaster this monumental, they'll all be gathering. Among them? Coterie enemy number one and their true target, Lysander Priest-- a member of VII, a shadowy faction of vampires with destruction of all Kindred as their aim.
He's obsessed with Lachlan, and his attempts to manipulate him and others to destroy the stability of vampiric society have all failed (mostly), thanks to the coterie.
Now, after all these years, they finally have him cornered.
Hopefully he won't escape...again.
