Alabaster Madonna

BATTLE OF THE ANTS

That is not which is.
The only Word is Silence.
The only Meaning of that Word is not.
Thoughts are false.
Fatherhood is unity disguised as duality.
Peace implies war.
Power implies war.
Harmony implies war.
Victory implies war.
Glory implies war.
Foundation implies war.
Alas! for the Kingdom wherein all these are at war.

—Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

Coven of the Alabaster Madonna

This unusual coven is based from Saint Mary the Virgin, an abandoned church located near Lemon Creek Park in southern Staten Island. While this hardly qualifies as a secret lair, for reasons known only to the Countess of Pavonia, Midori Satsujin cannot physically enter the region around Princes Bay. This Sabbat foothold drives Midori insane, but her repeated attempts to eject Astaroth’s coven from the southern tip of “her” island have consistently failed. The last concentrated effort came in 1981, when a surprise attack resulted in the “Battle of Resurrection Cemetery.” Foreseen by the oracle Vona Loath, the attack was met with a ferocious counter, and the Camarilla forces were soundly defeated. Midori lost her two best warriors that night, along with the entire neighborhood of Tottenville south of Chiacchiero Street.

Of all the Sabbat covens in New York, Alabaster Madonna is the most diverse, and contains numerous strange bloodlines, Camarilla antitribu, and even a lupine. Selected members of the coven include:

Dame Lucy Astaroth
Bishop of Staten Island—Cappadocian
An Irish elder who claims to be Luiseach Meallbhaigh, the original Cailleach Bhéara once cursed as the “Witch of Moher,” Dame Lucy is one of the few surviving Cainites of the near-extinct Cappadocian clan. Appearing as a pale, stately woman of Black Irish descent, Lucy also asserts that her mortal ancestors traveled to Ireland from Atlantis, that she was awarded a knighthood from Queen Mary Stuart, and that she fooled the Golden Dawn for years by posing as the demon “Astaroth.” While no one can verify her actual age, let alone her dubious claims, it is known that Dame Lucy survived the Giovanni purges of the Victorian era, and arrived in the New World in the entourage of Prince Gratiano during his 1899 visit to Santa de Luzarches.

Fastidiously elegant in appearance, Dame Lucy favors an Edwardian-era wardrobe accented by black lace and elaborate fascinators. Her apparel is specifically designed by Stake & Bledsoe of London, a family of ghouls who have been tailoring the undead community since 1844. Independently-minded but loyal to the Sabbat cause, Bishop Astaroth has been assigned to conquer Staten Island by any means necessary. This requires a great deal of foresight, persistence, and patience; but Dame Lucy understands she is playing the long game, and has selected her advisors carefully. She also benefits from the wise counsel of the dead, which she consults nightly in the catacombs beneath St. Mary.

Miranda Two Crows
Ductus of the Alabaster Madonna Coven/Vicar of Staten Island—Tremere
The daughter of a Choctaw medicine man, Miranda Two Crows was wasting her gifts in a Lawrence strip club when she encountered Ward Julian, a Tremere Anarch who recognized that her power to mesmerize men went beyond her considerable mojo as a dancer. Julian Embraced Miranda in 1969, unlocking her natural gifts and training Miranda to command the elements themselves. Two years later, Julian was murdered by the newly-crowned Prince of Kansas, who was “cleaning up” the Midwest by purging it of Anarchs and Caitiff. Miranda fell in with a group of Panders, officially declaring herself Sabbat in 1978 and traveling to New York with a gang of bikers looking to join the Crow Magnum MC.

With her power to command human hearts and her control over natural elements, Miranda has been a potent weapon in the Sabbat’s struggle to occupy Staten Island. Unfortunately, she is foul-tempered and bitter, her reckless personality driving her to increasingly more violent acts of retribution against the Camarilla. Miranda is convinced the Tremere will soon be consumed by civil war, and she looks forward to the day when her clan finally joins the Sabbat, “where they rightly belong.”

Diego Albacete de Medellín, “El Nazareno”
Nuncio—Lasombra
A Lasombra Elder from Seville, Diego Albacete was a conquistador who served under Francisco Vázquez de Coronado during his fruitless search for Quivira and the Seven Cities of Gold. Upon returning to Spain, he was Embraced by a Lasombra priest and inducted into La Sociedad del Minotauro, an ancient coven with ties to the Catholic Church. He served the society for a century, training young warriors during the endless conflicts of the Hapsburg period. The society was betrayed by the French during the Seven Years’ War, and Diego was burned at the stake by a Portuguese alchemist. Miraculously, Diego managed to survive, but his flesh carries the terrible scars to this day. Taking refuge in Seville, Diego was initiated into another secret society, a Sabbat cofradía revolving around the celebration of Semana Santa. Concealing his tortured flesh beneath the hooded robes of a penitente, Diego became known as “El Nazareno.” After the Peninsular War destroyed his coven, Diego once again traveled to the New World, making his way from Florida to New York and joining Cardinal Lilitu in 1922.

El Nazareno remains an enigmatic figure, a warrior-priest who remains enshrouded within the scarlet robes of a Spanish penitent. Because of the resemblance such robes bear to the American Klan, the former conquistador has taken to wearing more traditional monastic outfits in public, his hideous face concealed behind a veil. His commitment to Sabbat principles remains unshakable, mingled with religious overtones that give him an almost naïve credulity—Like Azra Ingeloquin, Diego truly believes Cardinal Lilitu is Adam’s first wife, Malahidael is a fallen angel, and all vampires are descended from the first murderer. Within the coven itself, feels the closest ties to his fellow warrior Zathael, and helps the Templar by creating Lasombra ghouls for the Sixth Hour.

Tindalos
Sexton—Gangrel
A brilliant computer programmer and network specialist, Rudolf Voigt Gass was a Berlin Glass Walker who had little desire to join the ranks of the undead. After losing a battle with a pack of Gangrel in Siberia, they mockingly Embraced him—and Gass incredibly survived the experience, transforming from a lupine into a Cainite! Viewed as an abomination by Lupines and rejected from the Camarilla, Gass found a home in the Sabbat, where he goes by his hacker nom de guerre, Tindalos. Although he rarely reveals himself in the flesh, his skills have become legendary, whether he’s crashing government agencies or conjuring new identities from scratch. Indeed, Archbishop Malachi recently asked Gass to join the Sarnath Coven in Manhattan. Much to Dame Lucy’s relief, he refused, claiming that Staten Island “had better dog runs.”

Zathael
Templar—Old World Tzimisce
A Paladin of the Black Hand, this dour Old World Tzimisce served under Vlad III Țepeș during the Domnul’s wars against the Turks. Like his former master, Zathael takes a draconian view of security, and is not afraid to go to extremes to protect his coven. He employs a dozen-odd devoted humans, ghouls, and neonates collectively known as the Sixth Hour. Not even Dame Lucy knows the operational parameters of this private security force, who are armed with cutting-edge weapons and gadgetry. No quarter is given to Midori’s creatures, which are generally tortured, beheaded, and burnt to ashes. As a final touch, these remains are mailed to the Prince’s Brooklyn address in carefully numbered vials.

Lately, Zathael has been lobbying to expand the Sixth Hour into a paramilitary force designed to protect the entire Sabbat. Much to his disgust, his ideas have gained little traction—Azra Ingeloquin considers him as an inferior, Konstantin Stravescu refuses offers to meet, Florestan prefers to work alone, and the Crow Magnums laughed in his face. Only the Green-Wood Coven seems interested, and have recently accepted a small unit of armed ghouls who train at the MTA 38th Street Railyard adjacent the cemetery. 

Vivian Song
Enforcer—Black Spiral Dancer
A rogue Black Spiral Dancer, Vivian’s cairn in the New Jersey Pine Barrens was ruthlessly exterminated by Midori during one of her periodic pogroms. Seeking asylum with Midori’s enemies, she joined the Sabbat, and serves as a loyal “dog soldier” in the relentless war for Staten Island. Every inch the urban primitive, Song is covered with tattoos and piercings, sports a tangle of “white girl dreads,” and gives off a certain mammalian body odor that Cainites find more offensive than her Lupine blood. Despite her ferocious appearance, Song is quite pleasant and warm, and gets along with everyone in the coven—with the notable exception of Miranda Two Crows, who claims to have bad history with a group of Sioux Black Spiral Dancers known as the Shikshichela.

A powerhouse in combat, Vivian serves the coven in less physical ways as well. Unaffected by sunlight, she is free to roam outside of Staten Island, and she occasionally “hops the rails” to get a better sense of the political scene across the northeast. Vivian’s connections among the modern-day hobo community are a goldmine of information, and she’s made useful allies among Ravnos and Gangrel as well. If her hatred of Midori didn’t anchor Vivian to Staten Island, she would have joined the Smugglers Pack long ago.

Vona Loath
Oracle—Tzimisce
Obsessed with flesh-crafting herself into monstrous beings, Vona Loath is a mysterious Tzimisce who’s spent the last decade transforming into a spider-like creature that rarely leaves the basement of the church. Vona has tremendous magical talents in the domain of Auspex, and she uses her clairvoyant powers to shield the coven from the scrying eyes of Midori and her Tremere sorcerers. She is served by a pair of human ghouls named Pick and Pock, whom she occasionally flesh-crafts into bizarre forms for her amusement.

Because Vona Loath rarely hunts, Pick and Pock are responsible for bringing her food—a diet than changes at her tyrannical whim, from nightly baskets of stray cats to painfully specific targets: “Tonight? A one-eyed Korean girl with a unicorn tattoo and fluent in French.” When they fail to meet her demands, Vona punishes them by covering their eyes, ears, and mouths with deformities, or carving them into grotesque and painful figures such as the Elephant Man or Siamese Twins. When Vona is particularly irate, she transforms them into ordinary humans. It is these incarnations that cause them the most distress; most of the coven assumes these forms represent Pick and Pock’s original selves. Because of Vona’s impressive age and her indispensable powers, Dame Lucy allows the Tzimisce her extravagances, referring to her basement lair as the “Freak Show” and affording her a wide berth. The Bishop has countermanded Vona’s dictates only twice. Once, when Vona requested to devour “a thousand and one human babies.” The second was when the monster—then taking the form of something she called the “Patagonian Invunche”—asked to be fed the “forcible love child” of Joan Baez and Gene Simmons!

It is widely believed that Vona Loath is the progeny of Paramándala Voin, but exactly how that happened, few are willing to speculate.

Sources & Notes

The core of the Gotham Sabbat was first uploaded on 31 October 2000, but the Coven of the Alabaster Madonna was extensively revised during the July 2018 update. The banner image incorporates a photograph of Blue Christ Church in Belgium, taken by Rebecca Lilith Bathory. Her work is simply amazing, and you should visit her at RebeccaBathory.com! Of course, “Tindalos” is taken from the Mythos fiction of Frank Belknap Long.

Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 31 October 2000
Last Modified: 9 July 2018
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]