NYBN Campaign

New York by Night: Campaign Notes

Archive Note
I first began playing Vampire: The Masquerade in 1993, and ended my campaign in 2002. I no longer run a Vampire campaign, and New York by Night is essentially an archive of old material.

Everything after this note is vintage mid-1990, so if you are crazy enough to keep reading, feel free to judge me as harshly as possible.

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A Brief Outline of My Campaign

I am currently hosting a campaign set in New York City. My players are all running characters that first entered the game as humans, and on the second game we played out their Embraces. Since then have been playing once or twice a month since early 1993. Since my Web site has been active, I have received quite a few requests from people asking for a brief outline of my own personal campaign, so I am providing this summary for anyone who is interested. Since I have outlined the political situation on my “New York Camarilla” page, I will reserve this to explain the actual player characters and their roles in my campaign.

My personal role-playing philosophy is simple: keep the players involved in your world, and focus on role playing over brute force. My campaigns tend towards the epic scale and are often apocalyptic in character, which comes from reading far too many fantasy novels, I suppose. For those of you that like your players to keep to the background, my campaign might seem a bit much, but I’m the kind of GM that can’t resist throwing a group of tiny unsuspecting hobbits the One Ring, so here it is.

The basic supernatural premise of my world is this rumor: God is dead, Metatron is insane, and the angels and devils are confused and beginning to act on their own. This information is not right out front and very obvious, however—as a matter of fact, no one is really sure exactly what to believe. Those in the power to know—mages, vampires, etc.—are receiving conflicting reports on what is really happening. Some say that God is truly dead, others contend that He/She/It is sleeping or even absent; others cling to a Gnostic philosophy and put forth that “God” is really “Satan,” and that He has been called into account by the true Creator of the Cosmos, and hence has gone AWOL. I try to keep the players as confused as possible, and in this way I create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. The overall theme, however, is one of entropy—the universe seems to be winding down. This fits in nicely with the Gehenna theme of the published Vampire milieu, which I have linked to various eschatological mythologies. My players by now are quite used to consulting various actual texts to make sense out of some of my more obscure clues and references.

I have provided a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, however—the existence of a grimoire called The Mandelbrot Tango, a collection of powerful rituals which are said to be able to open doors into alternate realities.
Here are some of the things the characters have learned over the course of the last few years:

Malahidael’s Tale
A fallen angel named Malahidael, seeking asylum in the hidden cathedrals of the Sabbat, contends that God is truly dead and that Metatron—the angel that acts as the voice of God—is insane, abusing his command over Heaven. He says that the Universe is coming to an end in the Christian sense, and no one knows where Christ is….

Malahidael’s tale is believed by many of the Sabbat, even though they think he’s a gloomy son of a bitch who has a very impressive axe to grind. A few Sabbat philosophers are pressing a Gnostic interpretation of events, and they are convinced that Gehenna will end this particular cycle of creation. They also know that The Mandelbrot Tango could be a very important key to unlocking this whole mystery, and even possibly illuminate a way to control events….

The Qliphothic Angels
A group of mages think that the world is nearing the Apocalypse as well, but many of them see it through a Qabalistic view. A common belief is that ten angels of the Qliphoth—the negative reflection of the Tree of Life—are manifesting on this plane, in a similar way that St. John predicted the Four Horsemen. They will bring doom and sorrow in their wake, spreading war, dissention, and false hope. They believe that one Qliphothic Angel will manifest each year until the last arrives in 2001, after which they will spend the remaining decade dismantling the universe until the end comes in 2012. Many point to ancient references as to the name and nature of these entities, while others try to muster up the power to stop them—if possible.
This angle leads to the existence of very many secret societies within secret societies, which further adds to the confusion and paranoia. One major task that my players have accomplished is securing “The Apocalypse Scrapbook,” a collection of references to the first four of these Qliphothic angels. The scrapbook was put together in Kansas by a conspiracy nut who ran afoul of some forces way out of his control, and it names the first two incarnations—Gamichicoth, or Gog Sheklah, Bringer of False Hope, the averse Qlipha to the Sephira Chesed; and Hareb Serap, Bringer of War, the averse Qlipha to the Sephira Netzach. Gamichicoth has been tentatively identified as Tezerah Rothchild, an Israeli millionaire researching a “cure” for AIDS, and Hareb Serap is thought to be a military commander in Iraq. Currently the characters have discovered that Rothchild—who is about to release a “vaccine” for AIDS—has alliances with the Prince. Whether or not St. James suspects that Tezra is a Qliphothic Angel is unknown—but his principle servant, a demon named Avi ben Levi, has recently been Embraced by a servant of the Prince. A vampire-demon? Uh-oh.

The Mandelbrot Tango
In the years 1960–1980, a drug-addled Russian mage named Vassily Bazarov penned an epic grimoire later dubbed The Mandelbrot Tango. Legend states that during his opium-induced dreams, Bazarov visited a “vast library” located somewhere deep within the earth. Over the course of two decades, the Russian brought back “stolen” information from this library, concealing his discoveries with a complex mathematical code. These codes were inscribed into a 42-page grimoire—The Mandelbrot Tango, supposedly the most powerful spellbook ever written. It is claimed to contain the secrets of time travel, eternal life, and even rituals designed to forestall the Apocalypse.

Bazarov eventually spiraled down a widening vortex of drugs, sex, and human sacrifice. His last act was to destroy the physical grimoire—through a very powerful spell, he caused each page to be genetically coded into 42 random children across the world. These children bore their pages within their flesh, ultimately to pass it along to their children as well. To “read” a page, its corresponding carrier must be magically sacrificed and flayed. Bazarov then vanished into modern legend.

As of 2001, my players have come across three of these “Children of the Book.” One was a Hasidic Jew who was butchered by the Sabbat in a ritual pulled from the Book of Leviticus (While Diamanda Galas played in the background—!); and the other was Matthew Crow, a Revivalist Faith Healer in Kansas, a doomed but pure soul who accepted the grim necessity of his fate with Christlike dignity. It was a very painful campaign arc for my players, who still had most of their humanity intact. The third child is a teenage girl named Eve, who managed to survive the storm of manipulations and violence surrounding her. Now under the protection of a cabal of spiritualists—including several Lupines—she studies Qabalism and magic in an attempt to understand her fate. Eve is a rather spooky and unearthly girl, a teenager with the poise of the Dalai Lama. She can speak in tongues, and occasionally grant visions to pilgrims.

Of course, finding the other 39 pages would be an insanely difficult proposition, so it’s important to remember that my players are not the only folks looking for the Book. The necessity to form alliances has forced them to accept many unique bedfellows: the Sabbat, certain circles of mages, and even a Glass Walker….

The Quinomancer’s Bloodline
Vassily Bazarov had a brother, Vladimir Bazarov, who was also a mage. Both brothers were tutored in magic by a mad Welshman called the Quinomancer, a man who claimed to be a vampire, the direct progeny of someone named Malkav. The Quinomancer was immensely powerful but quite demented, and claimed that during World War I, by deciphering the dying words of malaria victims, he learned of the existence of a vast, supernatural library beyond the confines of time and space. Denied the ability to visit the Library because of his vampiric blood, the Quinomancer chose the Brothers Bazarov as his messengers.

At the end of their relationship, the Quinomancer, sensing his imminent death, selected one brother to Embrace, and the other to become the vessel for all of his arcane Talent. Vladimir was the one chosen for immortality, becoming a Malkavian; and Vassily received the whole of the Quinomancer’s sorcerous talent in a terrifying ritual that left Bazarov’s mind shattered as a price for magical genius. Vassily Bazarov spent the rest of his life roaming that Library, stoning himself into oblivion from Mexico City to the mountains of Romania, recording his precious revelations with his spidery handwriting to the music of Shostakovich and the sound of spilling blood.

The Head of John the Baptist
If Metatron is truly insane, having a conversation with him might be useful—at least, one can get his unique side of things. According to one of the pages of The Mandelbrot Tango, the Head of John the Baptist is reported to have oracular powers, and by performing a certain ritual, it can open a connection to Heaven, forcing the Head to serve as a conduit to the Voice of Metatron.
This Holy Artifact recently served as the lynchpin of the player’s current quest. The last year of game play has unfolded around them tracking the Head through history, ultimately locating it in a Barrow in Western England. Unfortunately, this Barrow was located outside the normal Time/Space continuum, and the only entrance is in the year 1894.

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Symphony In Crimson

It was a very interesting campaign arc! I called it “Symphony in Crimson,” and I took a lot of inspiration from various sources, including the movies Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Murder by Decree and Salome’s Last Dance; the works of Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the novels The Difference Engine and Foucault’s Pendulum; Grant Morrison’s Invisibles comic, and lots and lots of good old fashioned Yellow Period Victorian Decadence. Essentially they traveled back through time to Victorian England, and secretly penetrated various occult circles in search for the Head. Of course, they arrived almost five years after their target date, so all their contacts had thought them a lost cause, and in the “meantime,” the Head had been discovered by a Tzimisce, one Ion Vladislavescu, who was permanently camped out near the Barrow, struggling to penetrate the same occult circles to find the way to get in! Among the worthies they interacted with were Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, G.B. Shaw, and a few Yellow Book poets and artists; but it was Salomé that really threw them for a loop. An evil dancer and actress, Salomé was apparently in quest of the Head to deliver it to her vampiric mother, Herodias, last of the Cappadocians, who was aligned with Vladislavescu. (Salomé was not, in fact, a vampire—like Casca Longinus, she was cursed to walk the world until the Second Coming.)

Getting the information that would allow them to penetrate the heavily-warded barrow and magically “activate” the Relic proved to be most difficult, indeed, especially as their contacts had been scattered five years ago—some were in hiding, some were hunted down and killed by Vladislavescu, and one key player, a Lithuanian Toreador named Alex Draven, had been turned and was now a traitor in the employ of the Tzimisce. Indeed, much of the arcane information they needed—notes in the form of an infernal calculus invented by a tribe of Moldavian monks which had once studied the Head in the Fifteenth Century—was guarded by Templars with connections to the Royal Society, whose Difference Engines were busy at work trying to use science to crack the mystical codes. (These Difference Engine mages are the prototypes of Virtual Adepts, and I borrowed heavily from Gibson and Sterling’s novel, The Difference Engine, for effect. Indeed, the characters interacted with the Lady Ada Byron-Babbage, the head of the Chantry.) Of course, they were missing part of the code, a few pages of manuscript that only the characters were in possession of—quite a bargaining chip to get entrance into the Society!

But of course, the Templars follow wheels within wheels, and a secret cabal of Rosicrucians decided to take matters into their own hands, and worked decidedly against the characters—who were quite busy trying to fit into 1894 London, trying to uncover the exact location of the Barrow, and even trying to aid a few local Toreador in their quest to produce a new opera about—Salomé!

Funny how those Toreador were connected to an occult lodge that was also a splinter group from the Templars. Could the opera have another purpose? Oh, yes, and guess who else was in London? A certain Romanian Prince, engaged in conversations with one Bram Stoker about the writing of a particular book. And why was he so interested in this opera? And who was that mysterious Black Nun that never left his side?

Eventually the characters played one group against the other, penetrated the Barrow, and found the Head. (And believe me, that makes it all sound rather simple. I am leaving out the crossing and double-crossing of many occult members, the creation and staging of a “modern” opera, a nasty run-in with a paradox spirit, a few encounters with Kindred they know in the future, the destruction of the last Magyar Time Mage, and an internecine war between the Tzimisce that took them from London to darkest Romania. Oh, yes, and Alex Draven, a wax sculptor for Madame Toussaud’s who was morbidly fascinated by Jack the Ripper and believed that vampires were actually fallen angels. He also betrayed the whole party to the enemy.) Using the code they won from the Victorian Engine Adepts, they discovered that the exact dance of Salomé was needed to unlock the powers of the severed Head—the code was actually a three-dimensional pattern that had to revolve around the Head: in other words, Salomé’s Last Dance. And only by fighting their way into a Romanian Castle did they uncover the actual location of the Barrow Entrance—it turns out one of those Moldavian Monks was still alive, turned into a ghoul and kept on the edge of starvation for centuries….

But in the end, their “Salomé” turned out to be a sham—an insane Malkavian of the Dacian Bloodline, she believed she was Salomé because she had once drunk the blood of the real Salomé, an elixir so potent it permanently wiped out her own persona. (And our player character Sophie discovered that this Dacian was her ancestor!)

The real Salomé, however, was actually close at hand—surprisingly, she was the mysterious figure always by Vlad’s side, a woman robed in black and veiled as a Byzantine nun. No longer was she an evil and spiteful girl—the centuries had brought wisdom and contrition to her, and all she craved was forgiveness from God and permission to die. She danced one last time—and then prayed for redemption, and was taken to Heaven in front of the player’s very eyes.

Of course there was still another surprise. The characters discovered that they had botched their only way home, and were stranded in the year 1895!

This actually worked to our advantage—we had a very fun game where the characters role-played various plans and activities they were to do over the next century! Mostly, of course, they went into hiding and gained strength. As the Storyteller, I was quite happy with the outcome—I think there is a basic flaw in the White Wolf system. If you give the characters the experience points they deserve, and if you play over the course of a few years, you find that the characters become staggeringly powerful for such youthful vampires. It doesn’t make sense. But now, well, they’re all over a century old—which will come as a nasty surprise to the Prince…

And what about the Head of John the Baptist?
Well, it does indeed act as a conduit to Metatron—now all the characters have to do is figure out just what the insane angel is actually saying.

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The Player Characters

My players are intricately linked to the whole plotline in ways which they are just beginning to discover. Over the years I have had a core group of players, a few of which had to withdraw from the game for various sad reasons. I will leave them up here, nevertheless; but please excuse the weird mix of verb tenses and the frequent temporal discontinuities. One day I may rewrite all these entries, but for now I’ll let them stand as is—strata in a growing formation of game history….

Edmund Pintar
Ed is no longer an active character in my game, as the player moved to California to work for Netscape, then to Rhode Island to start up Context Media. Though he hasn’t actively played for years, we still hear from good ol’Ed, and his long playing arc was a fulfilling and satisfying gaming experience. The first part of this summary is history; the “Update” includes what ultimately became of this Malkavian.

Ed is a Malkavian photojournalist with a love of disaster and a taste for black humor. He was Embraced by a mysterious sire who first left him for dead, then began to plague him with cryptic messages about his purpose as a vampire.

Ed was actually Embraced by Vladimir Bazarov, and for a distinct reason—Ed’s mortal bloodline links him to a long string of Welsh necromancers and witches, a fact of which he remained in complete ignorance for most of his life. You see, The Mandelbrot Tango is at its most powerful when the spells are activated by one with the Quinomancer’s bloodline; and since Vassily died childless and Vladimir is a vampire, he searched until he found someone he thought would make a good vessel for the Quinomancer’s Malkavian Blood. Ed, with his long family history of magic, his passion for photographing death and war, and his obsession with the depths of the human soul, seemed a perfect choice.

For a long time, Vladimir represented a big question mark in my game—what are his real motives and goals? He always seems to be aware of events, but he has yet to show himself. Is he just insane, or does he truly have a master plan? Now, another nifty twist is this—the Sabbat is quite aware that Ed has these latent powers over The Mandelbrot Tango, and that makes him very desirable to them. So for much of my campaign, they have been quite generous to him, leading him along the path of knowledge, teaching him about his unique situation. And when they first uncovered one of the Pages? Well, heck, the Sabbat were so nice they invited Ed to the flaying, and even gave him the Page afterwards. . . . Free of charge. (The fact that they could not activate its powerful magic without him was never mentioned.) They then watched his every move, studying him, learning from him, planning and plotting away.

And the Tremere? They also see in Ed a necessary tool, and they too are courting this elusive Malkavian. But they plan to have Ed come to them, and through their agent Nigel, they hope that Ed will build up a dependency on the wisdom of the Tremere.

And Ed himself? He would rather not have this burden hanging over him, and his character has been forced to make more and more uncomfortable decisions about his future. To further complicate matters, the Page he has in his possession is a ritual to summon forth demons—something he feels that he has enough of in his skull, let alone at his side. Add to this the fact that the demons claim to be just misunderstood angels… A good thing for Ed that he’s a Malkavian.

Update
Since the above was written, a lot has changed for Edmund. Ed eventually mastered his use of his powers, and through a long, painful process he opened a door latent in his Blood—a door to the past, where he witnessed his Sire’s brother writing the The Mandelbrot Tango. Making a command decision, Edmund stepped through—and found that he was trapped in the past. His Sire found him, and captured him—and then spent the next few decades torturing him brutally, even to the point of forcing him to watch his own Embrace. Although many mysteries were thus cleared up about the history of Ed and his Sire, it was a rather cruel, sadistic process that drove Ed even more insane. At the end, he learned of the true nature of Malkavians: they are vessels used to maintain the Logos, the original spoken command by which God created the Cosmos. The original Malkavian was the first vessel—called the Malkhut, which in the Qabalah is the tenth sephira that symbolizes the final decent of Godhood, the material world. Once a nice vampire, “Malkav” was chosen by the angels as a hiding place for the Logos sometime in the tenth century. Who commanded it—and exactly why—is unknown, but many bets lie on Metatron, who may have foreseen the coming Apocalypse and wanted to take out some insurance….

The Malkuth was driven insane by this knowledge, and he was commanded to reproduce progeny, for each Malkavian would then have a fragment of the Word, and from one fragment the whole Logos could be reproduced. This is why Malkavians are quite insane, and yet seem to have a grasp on reality that transcends all other creatures. But the end was not in sight for poor old Ed, for he also learned something terrible beyond belief, something that clarified his fate completely and explained why the Spirt Realms had always been open to him: he was Malkav himself. And sometime in the future, he would be forced to go back in history and fulfill his destiny…

Adrienne Tabor
Adrienne is no longer with the game; but she was one of the greatest players I’ve known. The first part of this summary is history; the “Update” includes what ultimately became of her.

Adrienne was a cello player with the Metropolitan Opera who was embraced by the Toreador Amadeus St. Sebastian. Light-hearted and in love with her music, she is the most “human” of all the characters, and therefore has had the most difficulty adjusting to her new situation. Adrienne is a key player in the events in a way she is just finally learning—she, a distant relation to Edmund, has also been chosen as a divine vessel.

You see, the Tabor family has had an interesting supernatural history. Since their origin in medieval Wales, they’ve had a “family spirit.” This spirit has been passed down through the generations from pre-medieval times until the present—Adrienne’s younger sister Marley has been locked up in a mental institution most of her life, the spirit in her skull driving her progressively more insane as she got older. But when Adrienne was Embraced, suddenly the spirit left her sister Marley and entered her! At first she thought that the spirit was playing with her, but soon it got more persistent and even protective. After a long search for knowledge, she was able to glean several bits of information regarding the spirit, tapping sources ranging from Arcanum scholars to the brooding warlocks of the Sabbat.

The most interesting thing she learned about her family spirit is that it’s traveling backwards through time! (Thank you Anne Rice…) While the Tabor family moves forward through time from one generation to the next, the spirit has been moving through them from the opposite direction—from the future to the distant past! To the perspective of the Tabor family, it appears to “leave” a host at death and enter a younger Tabor; but to the spirit, moving retrograde through the time line, it actually enters a host at death, and when the host’s mind, growing ever younger, becomes too childlike to support it, it enters the next suitable relative upon her deathbed. This is the reason that when Adrienne was Embraced, it seemed to have “left” her demented sister and entered Adrienne: Adrienne had technically “died.” But to the spirit’s perspective, coming in the direction of the future, it has been with Adrienne, and when she was Embraced it abandoned her and entered Marley, her closest relative.

OK, there’s a spirit using the Tabor genetic line to travel back into time, so what? Well, Adrienne also learned—from a Sabbat oracle—that the spirit is being ridden by a second entity—something that is taking advantage of the retrograde direction. And since Adrienne is “dead,” and she has the spirit, and it is moving backwards through time, and she will never have children . . . that all means that Adrienne is the original Tabor to first carry the spirit! So Adrienne knows that at some time in her future the spirit will “enter “ her—but when, why, where, and how? In a few years? Or will she be a thousand year old Methuselah on Mars making contact with another species? Or—as the Sabbat thinks—does she only have a few years to the Apocalypse? And all Adrienne wants to do is play her cello….

Update
Adrienne witnessed the Beast rising in her more and more every night, and began feeling the weight of her position as pawn in a Cosmic chess game. She felt her precious humanity slipping away—and so she vanished. Adrienne Tabor now lives far away from the madness of New York, moving from culture to culture in an attempt to study various form of music and art. She knows more about the nature of her spirit, but figures if God or the Angels have a need for her, they can bloody well come and ask her.

So, who—or what—is the rider? Heh heh…the rider is Atropatos, that is to say, another name for Metatron. Not the whole Metatron, however—just one “fragment” of the great angel that has split off from an insane mind. And its task, the reason it’s hitching a ride on a spirit moving backwards in time? It wants to travel back to the primary fires of Creation. It wants to wake the Shekinah, the female side of God. According to many Qabalistic and Gnostic texts, the female side of God—the Sophia, the Wisdom, the Binah –> Malkut aspect—exists in somewhere in exile. It is the ultimate purpose of Atropatos to reunite the Shekinah with God and heal the universe, to bring about the perfection and balance that Man could not do—the tikkun of the Qabalists.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the Shekhinah can be awoken, and even if it is, if God is truly absent, well….

Nigel Wynnscroft
Nigel is a Tremere who was a ghoul for the last fifty years. He was Embraced by Clarisse Gabrielle, the twisted Tremere Elder and member of the Manhattan Cabal. He has only one assignment: Get to know Ed and Adrienne; become their friends, and learn everything he can about them. The Tremere know how important Ed is, but they also realize that he is unlikely to just surrender his services to the Tremere, so in comes Nigel, a sly English vampire with a playful sense of the romantic. And so far, his mission has been quite successful—Ed has begun to trust him more and more, and has even started to rely on Nigel’s assistance in understanding his role in The Mandelbrot Tango.

But not all is as well for the Tremere as it seems. Nigel hates his Sire—trapped in a ten year old’s body, the evil and twisted Clarisse gains endless enjoyment playing cat-and-mouse games with her progeny’s affections—and he is beginning to genuinely like Ed and Adrienne. In addition, he has been growing more attracted to the Sabbat and the Anarch movement, and is slowly coming to the realization that he is a pawn; but equipped with the trust of Ed and Adrienne, a very dangerous pawn indeed. And lately he has been making contact with more than a few rogue Tremere, wondering what will happen when the Prince is overthrown—who will be the Tremere to coordinate a new Chantry in New York City?

Update
Nigel has been torn by the loss of his two dearest friends—Adrienne vanished to pursue her own goals, and Edmund has been in San Francisco, trying to make sense of his weird destiny. Additionally, he has fallen in love with a woman, an Irish Medium he was forced to Embrace in Victorian England—a lover who hated him for it, then grew in power as he hid for a century and now has forgiven him, but is equally as powerful. His Sire Clarisse has come very close to directly acting against him, and as he slowly networks with the Tremere on his right hand, he has been flirting with the Sabbat on his left. It seems everyone wants a piece of Dear Old Nigel—but what does Nigel want back? He has been slowly building up an empire of connections and obligations, testing the weaknesses of the Primogen’s decadent Tremere and playing one Kindred against the other—more than any other character, Nigel has patience. He knows that to kill his evil Sire, to eliminate Midori and Niccolò Montfaulcon, to topple the Prince and then to install himself as the head of a reconstituted NYC Chantry House—none of this can be done foolishly. And so like a spider spinning a cautious Web, Nigel furthers his studies in Necromancy and Demonology, and prays that no one will notice when this pawn suddenly reaches the other end of the chessboard and becomes a powerful queen. When Nigel strikes, it will be sudden and with a cold precision—and no one better get in his way.

Richard J. Williamson
RJ is a Ventrue millionaire, embraced by Aleistar MacTaggart and immediately brought into the Manhattan Cabal. Of all the players, he represents the most “together” personality, and his rise in Clan Ventrue is guaranteed. He has impressed his Sire on more than one occasion, has showed refreshing originality when dealing with problems, and is firmly on the “good side” of Marius.
RJ is less the leader of the players than their anchor. He keeps them in tune with the politics of New York City, protects them with his many contacts, and shelters them in times of need. This is not without its drawbacks, however, as the others occasional resent his condescending nature and his incredible arrogance. Many feel that RJ is always scheming, always considering how he can use them to get ahead—and they are, of course, correct. While RJ is less focused on the gloomy Apocalyptic side of the campaign, he provides a constant tie-in to the more mundane politics that the others must successfully navigate. When the focus of the game turns political, RJ is right there, and depending on how the Cabal fares, he may find out that he’s in prime position for the Princedom of New York City.

Update
RJ has emerged as a major player in the last two years of the campaign. He has gained the complete respect of the Ventrue, and has established a network of contacts as impressive as Nigel’s. RJ knows what every man is worth, and knows when to use his assets or when to hide them. Indeed, he has gained support us such diverse quarters as the Glass Walkers, the Boston Tremere, the City’s Brujah and Nosferatu, the Princes of Baltimore, Boston, and London, and even the Italian Giovanni. As his star ascends, though, the Prince has taken notice, and has lately been taking drastic steps to curtail RJ’s power. Fortunately RJ is patient, and grimly takes his Prince’s admonishments and punishments, all the while quietly and slowly constructing a machine that will trap the Prince and his Council in a vise of steel. They are two combatants locked in a lethal game, both pretending to have a normal relationship, yet both aware the other is pretending as well. Like Nigel, RJ has been playing a game of chess, but where Nigel plays for himself, RJ wants to rule the whole City—a fact that even the Ventrue themselves are just coming to terms with. Each passing night throws the writing on the wall into sharper relief: RJ Williamson will be the next Prince of the City, and when he moves in, it will be with the support of a surprising—and even contradictory—array of allies.

Jésus Chavez
Jésus is a Gangrel, and a very straightforward and loyal member of the party at that. (And quite the lady’s man!) Schooled in the ways of the Undead by RJ, he serves as something between a bodyguard and a scout. A dangerous man of honor, Chavez was, in life, involved in some very secret operations in the US military. And from the hints he can glean from an absent and violent Sire, the military may not be done with him yet….

Update
Things have been getting increasingly more disturbing for Chavez. Dreams of Mexico fill his head, and his Sire’s voice seems to laugh mockingly in his ears. Dreams—strange Aztec dreams of a jaguar, and of a great smoking mirror. And strange things have been happening as well…why did the Setites stop attacking him as soon as they tasted his Blood? In fact, they looked at him with…worship. Who was his Sire? And why does he keep dreaming of a past life, deep in the heart of the rainforest? And what’s with the military still snooping around him…?

Sophie Grey
Sophie is a Malkavian with a decidedly twisted sense of morality. She simply does not care about the campaign in general: The end of the world is nigh? So what. The Prince is decadent? Nice parties, though. I should keep quiet? So what, all I can do is die, big deal. Been there, done that!

Sophie adds a random, wildcard element to the game, and can always be counted on to do the unpredictable. Her Sire is Alexander Sark, and through his Blood she has discovered that she has a very unusual talent…when she kills a victim, his ka—his spirit, his intelligence, his ghost—remains in her head. Although some are harder to control than others, Sophie is building quite a library of personalities in her skull, and when they attempt to possess her, a good time is had by all….

Update
Sophie has come a long, long way. In Victorian England she learned that she was of the same Malkavian bloodline as the faux-Salomé, a bloodline called the Dacians, tied to the Tzimisce since the times of the ancient Greeks. Sophie has grown a lot less frivolous, and a century of self-study has shown her how to control the ka essences of those she kills. Indeed, she has set off on a course of Necromancy, and found that the doors to the Dead have opened up for her as easily as if she were a Giovanni. And more than that, she has lately discovered that she’s had several incarnations—that the “real” Sophie Grey is an amalgam of several women, incarnated throughout history, and all of them have been the lover of a Tzimisce named Vlad Tepes….

But Sophie took things too far. In an attempt to wreck revenge on a vampire who tortured her—the above-mentioned Aleksandr Dravenicki, or Alex Draven—she tried to call up the spirit of Jack the Ripper’s final victim. Instead she botched things terribly, and discovered that she had an inner power, some sort of horrible essence that used the spirit of the Ripper’s victims as an imprint for the Furies. Shocked to have called up the Furies—or even an “echo” of them—she was speechless, and they turned on her by setting on a path to destroy the man she loved—Vlad.

And so began another phase of self-discovery, as Sophie went on a long quest to revoke or negate the wrath of the Furies. She finally discovered that the Furies came from within her, and seeking out a powerful sage in the Halls of the Barcelonan Sabbat, she crucified herself for months, hanging bloodless on an upside-down cross until Wisdom was granted to her: she must simultaneously become each of her three principle incarnations, and forgive the men who tore her from life: a Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, a puritan minister father, and her Sire, Alexander Sark. (Forgiveness is not something that comes easy to Sophie, in any of her incarnations!) This she was able to do in the ritual, and as she forgave each man, her respective incarnation melted into a Fury and was absorbed into her. In the end, Sophie was returned to a “whole” state, and is now free to pursue her relationship as Vlad’s soul-mate, free of divisions and craziness. Of course, being a Malkavian makes her a holder of the Divine Spark, and being the mother of Furies makes life interesting—who was the First Dacian? What secrets are buried in her Greek past? Why is she the Dragon’s soul-mate? And if he achieves Golconda, what will become of her?

Father Bastiano
Bastiano is a recent addition to the Party, a Nosferatu who was once a member of the Spanish Inquisition. Bastiano was pulled from a century-long slumber in the care of Prince Radu and sent to the surface to monitor the party for one year. His report would be crucial to Radu’s decision whether or not to lend support to RJ Williamson’s bid for the Princedom.

Bastiano is beset by a host of personal demons, however. As an Inquisitor, he was plagued by a demonic spirit that mocked everything he held dear, and in centuries later, he has still not accepted his state of vampire-hood. To Bastiano, being a vampire is a curse from God, or perhaps a form of prolonged Demonic Possession. Freed from the Underground by Radu, Bastiano has had to make some radical shifts in his thinking to accommodate both the modern world and his place in it. Opening up a dialogue with a helpful priest, Bastiano learned that the Inquisition was still in operation—and he discovered much more. Again plagued by the mocking spirit, Father Bastiano now realizes that he’s a Lamed Wufnik—one of the 36 Pillars of Creation, righteous men who maintain God’s mercy in the world. However, according to tradition, if one of them discovers that he is a Lamed Wufnik, he immediately dies and a new soul takes over that burden…but what if a vampire is a Lamed Wufnik? And why does the Catholic Church seem to know all this? And why has Niccolò Montfaulcon and Midori been researching this myth as well? And finally, why did Radu choose him for this assignment in the first place?

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Conclusion

It would, of course, be impossible to provide a full overview of the campaign, nor would any non-player in his or her right mind want to sit through it! There are a lot of twists and turns in my campaign, and I have been blessed with some excellent players who keep me on my toes. This campaign—and my New York by Night—is as much their creation as my own.

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Credits

Inspirations
I do have a few influences that I would like to point out, however, both by way of gratitude and as suggestions for some good reading: Borges’ Ficciones, Grant Morrison’s excellent comic books Doom Patrol and The Invisibles, the collected writings of William S. Burroughs, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Umberto Eco’s sublime work Foucault’s Pendulum, Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour and her Vampire Chronicles, and of course the Illuminatus! trilogy. Those of you intimate with these works have surely detected familiar themes in my campaign as described above. I have also found that the role playing games Nephilim, Kult and On the Edge are inspired by many of the same sources that I am, and I recommend those games to anyone looking for occult-based flavor.

Credits
This document was first uploaded on 4 February 1996. The banner image used to be the main title graphic for the earliest version of NYBN. It incorporates an illustration by D. Alexander Gregory, found in White Wolf’s Children of the Inquisition. The World of Darkness and the Storyteller System, which includes Vampire: The Masquerade; Werewolf: the Apocalypse; Mage, the Ascension; Wraith: the Oblivion; and Changeling: the Dreaming; are all trademarks of White Wolf Games. All images taken from the game books will be marked as the property of White Wolf, which holds their copyrights. Some of my images incorporate the artwork of others; in every case I will credit the relevant artist, and I promise to remove the offending graphic if the artist makes this wish known to me. The mention of or reference to any companies or products on this website is not a challenge to the trademarks or copyrights concerned.

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Author: Great Quail
Original Date: 4 February 1996
Date Archived: 9 August 2017
Embarrassment Level: Moderate
Email: Quail (at) Shipwrecklibrary (dot) com