Green-Wood Coven

THE STAG-BEETLE

Death implies change and individuality; if thou be
THAT which hath no person, which is beyond the
changing, even beyond changelessness, what hast
thou to do with death?
The birth of individuality is ecstasy; so also is its
death.
In love the individuality is slain; who loves not love?
Love death therefore, and long eagerly for it.
Die Daily.

—Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

Gotham Sabbat: Green-Wood Coven

In the late 1950s, the Sabbat launched a campaign to penetrate the Camarilla stronghold of Brooklyn. Bush Terminal was their foothold into the borough, and under Bishop Pynchon’s capable leadership, the sect crept steadily eastward, occupying much of Sunset Park and finally wresting Green-Wood Cemetery away from the Prince in 1976. Unfortunately, the Sabbat found their progress halted by several escalating threats—the rise of the Anarchs in central Brooklyn, the reinforcing of Park Slope by the Camarilla, and the massive influx of Fuzhou immigrants to Sunset Park. Responding to these changes, Pynchon placed Captain Creede Coulter in command of the coven, which was charged with maintaining the territory around Green-Wood Cemetery and keeping close tabs on the Prince’s northern domain.

Today, the Green-Wood Coven is a small but closely-knit pack, united by a shared sense of paranoia and eager to push their way deeper into the surrounding neighborhoods. The coven itself occupies an abandoned box factory in Industry City, but their holdings include a small pier at the end of 41st Street, a Sunset Park gay bar, a strip club along Third Avenue, a black nightclub on Fifth Avenue, a Kensington funeral home, a South Slope car service, and several private residences from Sunset Park to Windsor Terrace. The coven also has access to a network of tunnels that run beneath Green-Wood Cemetery all the way to the Gowanus waterfront.

Selected members of the coven include:

William Pynchon III
Bishop of Brooklyn—Tremere
A puritan witch-finder originally from Kingsport, Massachusetts, Bishop Pynchon is a Tremere antitribu sired during the infamous “Congregation” witch trials of 1722. Tall and aristocratic, Pynchon dresses in black plainclothes suits tailored by Stake & Bledsoe, and is not above donning his seventeenth-century ministerial garb for special occasions—stockings, white ruff, cockel hat and all! Embraced at the age of 66, Pynchon has a the bearing of a wealthy patrician, and still maintains the gravitas of his Calvinist heritage. This severity is tempered by a dry sense of humor and a fondness for irony. Reputed to be the actual author of Monstres and their Kynde, Pynchon is currently writing a book on the detection, hunting, and destruction of vampires. Residing in a beautiful mansion in Park Slope, lately the Bishop has been spending much of his time in Boston, working with the Latrocinium on “the Montreal Question.”

Captain Creede Coulter
Vicar of Brooklyn—Lasombra
A brooding Lasombra with handsome, Custer-like features, Creede Coulter was an artillery officer during the Civil War who broke with his secessionist family to join the Union ranks. Ordered to fire on his family plantation by a vindictive general, Coulter inadvertently killed his own wife and child. Driven mad by the experience, Coulter deserted, eventually falling in with a Virginian Lasombra who adopted the broken officer as her pet project. Coulter was Embraced at the end of the war, became wealthy during the Reconstruction, and settled in New York at the turn of the century. Today, Coulter serves the Sabbat as loyally as he once served the Union, and his position on the Green-Wood Board of Directors ensures the cemetery’s resources remain free from Camarilla or Anarch influence.

Captain Coulter led the Green-Wood Coven from 1954-1991, until the increasing importance of Brooklyn demanded the appointment of a Sabbat vicar. Lately, he’s been spending his time in East New York, coordinating with the Smugglers Pack to undermine the Camarilla stranglehold on JFK Airport. This shift of scenery saddens the genteel Captain, who misses “Minerva’s Rest,” his charming home near the summit of Green-Wood’s Battle Hill. Facing the cemetery’s Civil War monument, Coulter’s residence allows him to indulge his melancholy disposition, and he usually begins each evening gazing mournfully at the Civil War memorial and recalling the faces of the dead. Now, Coulter awakens to a world of rust, mendacity, and jet fumes.

Wendy Blake-Lashley
Ductus—Lasombra
A former journalist for the Amsterdam News, in 1976 Wendy Blake-Lashley was assigned to cover the success of Big Red, a Brooklyn newssheet devoted to predicting the numbers game. While conducting interviews in Brooklyn, she heard rumors about a rash of strange disappearances in Sunset Park. Curious, ambitious, and attracted to danger, Wendy launched her own private investigation, and uncovered evidence that some form of underground gang war was taking place. Straying far from the reservation, she followed the clues to Green-Wood, and secured an interview with Creede Coulter, an eccentric, old-fashioned white man who promised her answers. Suspicious of his request for an evening stroll through cemetery grounds, Wendy was nevertheless shocked when the man tried to hypnotize her! When this developed into a more aggressive attempt to subdue her, Wendy pulled a revolver from her purse and placed three rounds into his chest at point-blank range. The man barely blinked.

As Captain Coulter began draining the reporter dry, something in her fading eyes triggered a distant memory from the War. He found himself unable to complete his task, and carried Wendy to safety. Finding her at the edge of death, he transformed her into a ghoul. Prepared to address the rashness of his actions through some applied Domination—after all, vanishing a reporter was never a sound idea—Coulter was dumbstruck when his newborn ghoul agreed to handle the arrangements herself! A devotée of horror movies and all things supernatural, Wendy was delighted to discover that vampires were real, and more than ready to join their ranks. (“I’ll be able to control shadows? Fucking-A, Coulter, bite me again!”) Within months, she had wrapped up her mortal affairs and said goodbye to her family, who wished her well on her “assignment” to research a book on the history of the Parisian jazz scene. Eager to get things rolling, Wendy arrived to her own Embrace dressed in flares and carrying an eight-track player—if she was going to hammer her way out of a coffin, she was going to do it to Ike & Tina Turner.

Today, Wendy Blake-Lashley leads the Green-Wood Coven with a potent combination of energy and natural authority. Placed in charge of the pack after Coulter was elevated to vicar, the spirited neonate is more headstrong than Pynchon, more cunning than Coulter, and certainly more reliable than Cordus, Ezequiel, or the Brakeman. She is also refreshingly stylish, favoring throwback “mod” outfits custom-tailored by Betsey Johnson, Tilliboyo, and Stephen Burrows. Wendy is universally liked among the Latrocinium, who find her reluctance to completely shed her humanity to be her only real flaw. Although undesirables are quick to earn an icepick to the forehead, Wendy is loath to kill “innocents,” and her feeding habits revolve around human sexual partners she protects from deeper involvement. Recently, Don Carriego Casares discovered that Wendy’s been secretly funneling money to her family in Harlem, an indulgence Lilith sees as an exploitable weakness. However, as long as Wendy continues to keep the coven strong, the young ductus is allowed her petty misdemeanors.

Wendy maintains an unusual relationship with her Sire. Affectionate but oddly formal, the pair have never discussed the reason Coulter stayed her execution. Among friends, Wendy tries to play it cool—“I must have reminded white boy of a slave that used to wipe his ass.” Privately, she worries that Coulter is barely holding on to his humanity, and wonders if she sees her own future reflected in his mournful eyes.

Ezequiel Pataquiva Santos de Itagüí, “El Nigromante Eléctrico”
Nuncio—Tremere
A flamboyant Tremere from Colombia, this antitribu was a famous medium and astrologer in 1920s Bogotá. After predicting his own death in 1933, Ezequiel was Embraced by a Tremere from Cartagena de Indias. He betrayed his clan to the Sabbat during La Violencia, and spent the next decade in Barcelona undergoing “reeducation.” Ezequiel’s powers as a necromancer are equal to any Giovanni, and his ability foretell personal fortunes is second only to La Reina Bruja. On nights when Ezequiel needs to “talk to his darlings,” he may be found wandering Green-Wood with a Moroccan lantern and a golf bag stuffed with iron harpoons. Each hand-crafted and personally engraved, these “antenas de muerte” are hammered into the ground and wired to a portable telephone. The fact that nobody else can hear voices in the resulting static doesn’t change the fact that Ezequiel’s information is accurate more often than not.

Ezequiel resides in a crumbling Kensington mansion with five cats and his aging lover, “Felipe el diablillo.” He oversees several storefront fortune-telling operations, incongruously owns a laundromat in Sunset Park, and maintains a studio at the box factory. An eclectic but talented artist, Ezequiel is working on a Tarot deck based on his life experiences, and his studio is full of paintings rich with personal symbolism and featuring barely-concealed members of the Sabbat. (Of course, Ezequiel himself is card #1—El Mago.) He hopes to have this roman à clef deck published one day, to which Lilith has responded, “Only on the day he predicts his True Death.”

Cordus Frasier
Sexton—Nosferatu
One of the original slaves who revolted during Dead Caesar’s 1741 insurrection, Cordus was Embraced along with his commander, and is the oldest “original” Nosferatu remaining in New York City. Having preferred the night sky over Green-Wood to the clan’s warren below the Five Points, he is also the sole Nosferatu to have survived the Vanishing. His clan annihilated, Cordus joined the Sabbat, who were the only Cainites prepared to believe in the existence of the Nictuku. Today, Cordus lives beneath the Van Ness-Parsons pyramid in a warren of his own construction, where he “speaks to the dead” to glean their many secrets. Prince Radu has twice offered him repatriation, but Cordus seems content to play the role of crazy uncle in the Sabbat basement. Still, he makes a capable sexton, amiable and surprisingly knowledgeable, even if his readings of history are colored by Zelig-like self-insertions!

Jesús María Laguna Zegarra, “Christo el Asesino”
Templar—Lasombra
A second-generation Mexican-American from Sunset Park, Jesús María was recently Embraced by El Nazareno, the nuncio of the Staten Island Coven. A former Marine Corps Scout Sniper, Zegarra is now a lieutenant in the Sixth Hour, the private security force founded by Zathael, and has recently assumed command of a squadron of ghouls assigned to protect the Green-Wood Coven. Quartered at the box factory, the group trains at the 38th Street Railyard. Nicknamed “The Honeymooners” after the nearby Jackie Gleason Bus Depot, their slogan is, naturally, “To the Moon!” A good-natured neonate with an irreverent sense of humor, “Christo el Asesino” is eager to prove his worth, hoping one day he’ll be invited to join the Black Hand.

Sally Fear
Assassin—Malkavian?
A 13-year old girl Embraced in Hong Kong during the First Opium War, “Sally Fear” is a Chinese assassin who serves the Sabbat for reasons she declines to articulate. She is unique among the Sabbat, and perhaps among the entire Kindred, as Sally is a failed Wissengeist progeny who has retained the discipline of Menschlichkeit. Although she is not a Daywalker, she can blend in with humans to a frightening degree, her heart beating and her words carried by natural breath. A skilled actress fluent in twenty-three languages, Sally can instantly transform into any number of “personalities”—lost schoolchild, dutiful daughter, street waif, Japanese Lolita-girl, American teenager; anything to get her closer to her target. Dwelling in the sprawl of Sunset Park’s Chinatown, Sally lives with a comatose Malkavian Elder that some believe to be her Sire, a Wissengeist lost to the Wahnsinnflucht and slowly transforming into a human being.

Declan Hodge, “The Brakeman”
Enforcer—Malkavian
Like most Sabbat covens, Green-Wood has numerous connections to the world of human vice, here in the form of drug dens, strip clubs, and adult video stores located along the border of Sunset Park and Industry City. Considered a distasteful aspect of coven business by the leadership, these necessary interfaces between the lawful and the illicit are managed by the Brakeman. A brawny Malkavian ancilla of Irish descent, the Brakeman supervises a crew of thralls, neonates, and ghouls that operate from a seedy Third Avenue strip club named Third Base.

A master of truculent cynicism, Declan likes to remind the “Gentry” of his existence by delivering spontaneous progress reports, such as the time he crashed one of Coulter’s Green-Wood fundraisers and tossed the severed head of a Giovanni into the punchbowl. Declan enjoys bestowing derisive nicknames on his “superiors”—Reverend Lovejoy, Captain Kangaroo, Blacula, etc.—but seems to have a real fondness for Sally Fear, who is the only member of the coven to treat him like an equal. Among his own crew, the Brakeman inspires genuine loyalty and affection, and they never tire of his colorful exploits—“Remember the time the boss dangled ol’ Howie Goldman from the steeple of St. Michaels? Until he agreed to bring back the Dodgers? Yeah, good times!”

Ostensibly a railroad brakeman in his mortal life, Declan plays up to his nickname, sporting a greasy engineer’s cap and peppering his gruff language with antiquated railroad slang. When not at the club, he keeps hours at the “Corner Office,” a graffiti-covered caboose stranded in the industrial wilderness of Bush Terminal. The things that take place in the Corner Office are best left unmentioned, and mere mention of the “old caboose” sends local humans scurrying in fear.

The Thing In the Old School
Oracle—Unknown?
One of the most mysterious vampires of the Sabbat, “The Thing” dwells in an abandoned Catholic school in Windsor Terrace. No one has ever seen this creature, who is believed to be a Tzimisce, an insane Tremere, or perhaps even a Malkavian. No matter its clan, the Thing In the Old School has the power to move objects, project illusions, and manifest voices. Allied with the Sabbat since the school closed in the 1960s, the Thing may only be consulted on specific Catholic holidays; but it has the ability to unfailingly predict the actions of the Camarilla. Needless to say, there are many theories about the Thing and the source of its power, but every time a reckless fledgling decides to explore the school, they vanish without a trace. To enhance the mystery, the school is marked by a derelict radio tower, a 200-foot tall spire attracting conspiracy theories from humans and Kindred alike.

Sources & Notes

The core of the Gotham Sabbat was first uploaded on 31 October 2000, but the Green-Wood Coven was extensively revised during the July 2018 update. Because I live in this neighborhood, I like to think the Green-Wood Coven offers more “local color” than the other packs. In fact, nearly every location described above is real, from the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot to the abandoned caboose in Industry City. However, some names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the “old school” was closed down only a few years ago—though some locals believe (or at least pretend to believe) that it’s haunted!

The banner image incorporates a photograph from Lost to Sight, a fascinating blog about Green-Wood Cemetery. The black and white photograph of the Van Ness-Parsons Mausoleum was adapted from Alexandra Mosca’s Gardens of Stone, another great blog about cemeteries. (I was too lazy to snap a picture out my window, I guess.) Captain Coulter was inspired by the Ambrose Bierce short story, “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch.”

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