Gangs of New York: The Covenants

For everything venue-related, but is OOC.
Post Reply
User avatar
TheDagda
Posts: 947
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:53 pm

Gangs of New York: The Covenants

Post by TheDagda »

The Carthian Movement
The Carthian Movement of New York finds itself in a strange position. For over two centuries they ruled the City That Never Sleeps without serious opposition, and their Praxis would come to be a shining example for the Carthian cause worldwide. The first recorded manifestation of Carthian Law came from New York, and many of the precepts and practices of the Movement owe their existence to the efforts of the city’s Firebrands - indeed, there are many who say that while the Carthian cause was born in France, the Carthian Movement was born in New York. The Old Alliance’s Praxis brought prosperity and peace to the Kindred to a degree nearly unknown since the fall of the Camarilla.

Ironically enough, it would be murdered by the same hands that ended that august body.

Forces within the Lancea et Sanctum grew disgusted with the excesses of New York and its Kindred, and when mortal forces began to turn on the empires of sex and drugs that so enriched the Old Alliance’s coffers, the Sanctified struck, just as they had in ancient Rome. For the better part of a decade, the city was a shadowy battleground, with the tragedies of September 11th and the increased government scrutiny they brought to the city only serving to turn the war into a cold one. Pushed onto their back foot, the Movement’s leadership were already reeling when the Shadow Heresy struck. By the time the Black Chantry fell, the eldest remaining leaders of the Movement were barely more than neonates themselves: the rebellious childe of an Undercity Invictus turned Carthian enforcer Keith Bullard, and the favored plaything of the former Prefect, Maria Roja. Neither was prepared for leadership of a covenant, but with frightened Movement members needing guidance, the pair - neither of them strangers to adversity in life or undeath - squared their shoulders and set themselves to the task. Roja would become the Seneschal to the new Prince, acting as liaison to the Carthian government as it worked to rebuild the city, and Bullard would stand as Prefect of that government. Both have proven popular leaders and devoted examples of the Carthian cause, but there are some who whisper, quietly, that while the Old Alliance’s body has been resurrected, it’s soul is gone - that Roja and Bullard are little better than collaborators at the head of a ‘Vichy Movement.’

While the majority of the city’s Carthians are content to savor peaceful nights after the brutal decade that nearly laid the covenant low, it may only be a matter of time before the most hot-headed of their number feel it time for another Revolution...

The Circle of the Crone
The vampires of the Mother’s Army have been a presence in the City That Never Sleeps nearly as long as the Covenant itself has existed in the modern nights. First brought to NYC in 1850 by the Gangrel neonate who would come to be called ‘Mother Maggie,’ the nascent Circle slowly spread itself among the dispossessed and outcasts of the city, hiding their allegiances and biding their time. When the Police Riots began in 1857, the Circle struck, destroying prominent members of the First and Second Estates in the cover of the chaos, and doing so again during the Dead Rabbits riots later that year. Six years later they would strike again during the madness of the Draft Riots of 1863, and when Central Park was completed in 1876, the Circle finally emerged from the shadows. Mother Maggie, now declared Hierophant of the city’s Circle, declared the park was her domain, and that any who dared dispute her claim or bring violence to her flock would meet their end on the Mother’s altars. Outraged, the forces of the Old Alliance sought to extinguish this upstart and her rebellion, but they soon realized they were far, far too late. Any Kindred in service of the Old Alliance who entered Central Park vanished, and mortal pawns were often assaulted and killed in acts of ‘random’ gang violence; persecution of known Circle members found outside the Park by the city’s leaders was met with violent reprisals as havens were burned, mortal puppets were brutally murdered, and favored childer were brutally tortured into ruined madness. Eventually, the Prefect and the Archbishop alike were forced to concede that trying to dislodge the Circle was not worth the cost of the effort, and a wary peace was declared.

For the next century, the Circle would keep to its claim and remain an apolitical boogeyman on the fringes of Kindred society. Slowly building their influence among the various castoffs and immigrants of the city, they finally re-entered the stage of Kindred politics with the arrival of Max Adrestos and his ‘Cult of Midas’ in 1988. Adrestos turned his wealth and charisma to the task of ‘bringing the Circle into the 20th century.’ but it would not be until the ascent of Rudolph Giuliani as mayor and the beginnings of the Church Coup that followed his election that the ‘Golden Boy’ would become a prominent player in the All Night Society. When the Shadow Heresy emerged and began persecuting the Circle openly in 2004, the Elder Faiths’ adherents retreated to the depths of Central Park, but Adrestos held the Heretics at bay with his mortal ties and own blood magicks; breaking with Mother Maggie’s decision to remain neutral, Adrestos, his brood, and their followers threw in with the Movement against the Sanctified. When the Triumvirate arrived from Philadelphia in 2005, the ever-opportunistic Adrestos threw his support with them in turn, lending his considerable skill with blood sorcery to the final assault on the Black Chantry. Hailed as a hero by the city and high in the graces of the new Prince and her court, Adrestos and his branch of the Circle have continued to prosper in the fifteen years since the Heresy’s end.

Tonight, the Circle stands divided between the old and the new, the spiritual and the material, the outcast and the exalted. The Cult of Midas spends their Requiems in wealth and ease amid the privileged of the CIty That Never Sleeps, while the Elder Faiths under Mother Maggie’s protection continue to exist on the fringes as they have for nearly two centuries. The divides appear amicable and the Circle itself will still close ranks against any threat, but wagging tongues amid the All Night Society wonder just how long Adrestos will be content to hide his light beneath Maggie’s shadow...

The Invictus
The Invictus are a house divided in the City That Never Sleeps. The first Kindred of Society arrived with Nicholls’ ships in 1644, and by 1650 the city was firmly in the First Estate’s grasp. A depraved former aristocrat, Nigel Wycombe of the Nosferatu ruled the Kindred of the city and its environs until 1790, when the nascent Carthian Movement succeeded in overthrowing his praxis. Wycombe and many of his brood and courtiers perished, with the survivors driven into hiding in the hinterlands. The covenant’s fortunes in the city seemed doomed until the arrival of Allistair ‘Allie’ Whitechapel in 1810. The charismatic Shadow neonate, stifled beneath the Old World Invictus of his native London, put forward the idea that America had proven no place for monarchs and nobles, and that power would be best found in the hands of the people. Most of the surviving First Estate condemned him as little better than a Carthian himself, but while Whitechapel’s plans were distasteful to his elders, even they could not deny that his methods worked. Embedding himself in the nascent machine politics of Tammany Hall, Whitechapel’s ‘Octopus’ faction became the publicly-acceptable face of the First Estate by the time of the War of 1812, playing the Carthians’ own game and oftentimes beating them at it. Even as they sneered at him, however, the survivors of the old Invictus Court watched Whitechapel’s success with envious eyes, and when the Police Riots began in 1857, they and their agents and spies in the city moved to claim the territory that their ‘dutiful junior’ had won.

They were quite shocked when Whitechapel laughed in their face, and their dismay would only grow when their attempt to ‘reclaim their birthright’ by force was met with brutal resistance.Many of the elders who had survived the fall of Wycombe’s praxis were slain not only by agents of Whitechapel, but also by the hands of the emergent Circle of the Crone. Bloodied, beaten, and humiliated, the survivors of the failed coup found the Circle’s own Native allies waiting in the wilds outside the city; with no other escape left them, they were forced to flee into the newly-developing network of sewers beneath the city. There they would remain, becoming the first residents of the newborn Undercity.

So it has remained to this night, with the Octopus quietly spreading its tentacles into the growing immigrant communities and tech-sector,and the Undercity slowly spreading into the sunless reaches of abandoned sewer tunnels, forsaken subway stations, and forgotten basements and bomb-shelters.

Two houses, alike in dignity...

The Lancea et Sanctum
Truly, the Lancea et Sanctum is a broken covenant in the CIty That Never Sleeps, an abject lesson in the perils of letting ambition exceed good sense. Though the Sanctified still maintain a strong, though quiet, degree of influence among the populous Catholic and Jewish communities of New York, they hold no hard political power among the Kindred, their pride having gone before a precipitous fall.

Previously a prosperous if unequal partner in the Old Alliance that had held Praxis since the late 18th century, hardliners within the Eternal Church seized at the opportunity presented by the end of the city’s golden age of sleaze, using their former Carthian allies’ weakness to attempt to take the Praxis for themselves. The Church Coup was bloody and violent, but in the end, facing the might of both the Movement and their new allies within the Cult of Midas, its architects were left desperate. When the Calamity came and brought with it an untenable level of mortal scrutiny, the leaders of the Sanctified made a devil’s bargain with the Ordo Dracul members of what would become known as the Shadow Heresy. Most of the covenant’s Anointed were led astray, and they paid the price for it. As the Shadow Heresy’s mad plans unfurled, the Sanctified moved to strike against the Circle and the Movement. Marching on Central Park in a shadow crusade against the Circle Hierophant, the remaining Paladins met their ends at the claws of their quarry, and soon the Priests were found dead in their sanctums or vanished into the black vans of mortal authorities acting with highly-suspicious precision. The Archbishop of New York was seized by agents of the Adrestoi and met his messy end upon the altar of the Cult of Midas. By the time the Triumvirate and their forces ended the Shadow Heresy’s madness and Prince Kavinsky ascended to the City’s Praxis, the chastened Sanctified were forced into unconditional surrender - and.nearly fifteen years later, the Sanctified still find their opportunities for political advancement sharply curtailed, holding no titles in the city, nor having any of their number seated among the Primogen nor Prisci.

Previously forced to be content with just their influence over the mortal Herd, midnight whispers from Radio Free Necropolis have begun to tell of a new sect of the Sanctified in the City. Led by a young, charismatic leader, it is believed to be only a matter of time before the Eternal Church begins petitioning for an end to their punishment and a return to the City’s good graces...

The Ordo Dracul
For centuries, the Ordo Dracul had no presence in the City That Never Sleeps - at least not officially. Following the Old World traditions of the Covenant, the Dragons of New York hid their existence from their fellow Kindred. Never a populous Covenant, the Order frequently hid themselves among the ranks of the Sanctified and the fallen nobles of the Undercity, operating as a loosely-allied collection of scholars until the arrival of Christoph von Thaler in the fall of 1945. The charismatic Ventrue swiftly gathered the Dragons under his banner, and soon he became the first true Kogaion of New York.

For the nearly six decades that followed, von Thaler and the Order quietly continued their Great Work, waiting for a Dread Sign that the Kogaion prophesied would come to pass and herald the ascension of the Dragons and the destruction of God and His petty Curse’s limitations. In secret, the Order was reshaped into the image of von Thaler’s own twisted vision of the Palatine Rite, persecuting a shadow war with the Circle of the Crone even as they stole lore and secrets from their supposed allies among the Sanctified. When the Cataclysm came, von Thaler decreed it to be the Dread Sign; for the next three years the Ordo Dracul closed ranks, disappearing from the Covenants they had hidden themselves in with the secrets of those unwitting hosts. On the Winter Solstice of 2004, they gathered in the Order’s secretive Chantry House and cast a terrible ritual, unleashing the Shadow Heresy upon the city. The Heretics allied with the Hardlienrs of the Lancea et Sanctum, and for the next year a shadow war for survival consumed the Kindred of New York. Many of the city’s Elders fell to the clutches of Heretic diablerists, and the city seemed doomed to shadowy enslavement or worse until a rogue Sworn of the Dying Light and her Axe-Sworn Moroi bodyguard fled the city, seeking aid elsewhere and carrying news of the Heresy’s blasphemies. They would finally find an audience in Philadelphia.

Alerted to the disaster in New York and the gross trespasses against the Order’s laws perpetuated by von Thaler and his followers, a coterie of Axe-Sworn veterans led by Dragon Knight Nikola Kavinsky made their way to the benighted city. Alongside the surviving members of the Carthian Praxis and the Cult of Midas, the Triumvirate forces stormed the Heresy’s ‘Black Chantry.’ Though the costs were dire, Kavinsky’s forces destroyed von Thaler and his followers and ended the Shadow Heresy’s reign; faced with the aftermath of the disaster, however, her superiors ordered that the survivors remain in New York to ensure such a calamity could never occur again. With no force left in the city with a will to challenge the Axe-Sworn for Praxis still possessing the might to do so, the Ordo Dracul quietly assumed the Praxis and named Kavinsky Voivode of New York.

To her dismay, it’s a title she has held to this night...

The Unbound
In a city of millions, there will always be those who fall through the cracks. The first Kindred of New York were Unbound, and though their ‘reign’ was short by any standard, the Unbound have always held a more-hospitable position in the City That Never Sleeps than they might find in many other cities. This is perhaps owed in largest part to the enigmatic ‘Radio Free Necropolis,’ the ‘unseen but all-seeing’ Herald and Harpy of the city; her barbed words and timely warnings have been a fixture in the city for almost a century, and the latter have served to preserve countless Requiems. With the Lancea et Sanctum’s precipitous fall from grace, the Unbound were uplifted: perhaps no other city tonight has an ‘Unbound Primogen,’ even if that Primogen is only an unseen voice on the radio. The ‘Midnight DJ’ ostensibly speaks for the Sanctified as well, of course, but if it is difficult for the Unbound themselves to petition her, the Sanctified find it nearly impossible...
Post Reply