WoD Europe:Vampire Liverpool

By: (theshoveller)

Introduction

Theme

The main theme is

Mood

The mood is that of

History

• • DISCLAIMER - I wrote this to flesh out an existing plot in the Camarilla/IoD Requiem setting. I was working to someone else's template (it was specified that Liverpool be a Carthian town under a fairly Stalinist type dictator). I personally don't like this, but would be interested to know what parts people consider worth salvaging.**

Prior to 1715, Liverpool was a Lancea Sanctum town. In Kindred eyes, the small port was a simple plot of territory within the Diocese of the Bishop of Chester. A series of battles had been fought over the town during the civil war, finally ending with its final capture by Parliament in 1644. Samuel Wallaston (the Bishop) was a moderate of the Westminster creed – the sort of figurehead that the vampires of Lancashire and Cheshire needed in divided times.

Although the first slave ship had sailed 16 years earlier, 1715 saw the foundation of Liverpool’s first commercial dock. With it came business, further investment and finally a steady trickle of Invictus following the money. Liverpool began to assert its own identity and, in time, was regarded as a domain distinct from its parent across the Mersey. Keen not to provoke the Sanctified, the local Invictus sponsored another Westminster moderate, William Burke as Bishop. The city expanded peacefully. In the shadows, the newly established Carthian movement began to gather in force all over Lancashire as the firebrands of the English Jacobins, proto-Chartists and trade unionists joined the Danse Macabre. In Liverpool’s coffee houses, the newly dead and disaffected members of the First Estate came to similar conclusions.

What finally shattered Liverpool’s cosy consensus was the Irish potato famine. As, from 1847, immigrants poured across the sea in their thousands; their vampire counterparts followed after. Ireland was (and is) a Catholic country – the majority of those Kindred were of the Monachal creed.

Burke had gone to the sleep of ages some decades previously, around the time of the abolition of the slave trade. In his place was his childe, the more zealous Gregory of Hale. It was clear that the local Westminster Sanctified felt threatened by the sudden influx of Kindred they considered heretics. The tension bubbled under the surface for months, the Invictus keeping to their old Westminster allies; the Carthians siding with the Monachal newcomers. Playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship Hale accused one of the Irish leaders, the Ventrue James Fitzgerald, of violating the first tradition. When Fitzgerald was seized and sent to his final death, the city erupted into violence. When the dust settled, Gregory of Hale was gone. Whether he was destroyed or simply fled is unknown to this day. A tentative peace treaty was hammered out between the moderates of both factions, but this was strictly a Sanctified affair. Liverpool became one city under God, but the Invictus and Carthian elements continued to snipe at one another for decades to come. Another English moderate, David Seaforth, took the mantle of Bishop. Close at his side stood an Irish Seneschal, Linus O’Connor. The settlement would later be known as the Treaty of Canning Place, what started as a marriage of convenience became a profitable working relationship and the two often seemed an oasis of calm in the city’s politics..

Tension between the Sanctified factions began to mount again in response to growing unrest across the water in Ireland during the early 20th Century, but it was the Carthian/Invictus rivalry that eventually came to a head. 1919 saw popular uprisings in a number of British cities: in response to a police strike, Liverpool was placed under a brief period of martial law. The Carthians took the opportunity to strike at the Invictus grandees of the city, first through challenging power at the Bishop’s court (wielding boons to weaken the authority Oliver Derange as the Bishop’s Herald until Seaforth was forced to replace him) and later through direct action (the Carthian support for mortal protests forced Invictus hands and weakened their hold on local institutions).

The Invictus position was greatly weakened during the Depression – as money trickled away from Liverpool, the Invictus powerbase shrank. The two Sanctified factions clung closer together as the Westminsters support from the First Estate dwindled. The war came and the Liverpool blitz ended the unlives of a great many kindred, disproportionately affecting the Invictus as the Carthians used the bombing as cover for arson attacks against them. By the middle of the war, few Invictus remained in the city at all. Finally, in 1945 the leader of the Movement in the city, the Mekhet George Carlyle, approached Seaforth and O’Connor with an ultimatum – either to step down peacefully and take part in the city’s Carthian Experiment, or be driven out like the Invictus. The Sanctified leadership handed the reins of power to Carlyle, although not without dissent from the lower orders of the covenant.

As ‘Director’, Carlyle was the city’s executive officer ruling with the guidance of a Primogen council (on which Seaforth and O’Connor sat with three Carthian representatives). For the most part, he ruled fairly although no vampire without allegiance to either the Movement or the Church was ever granted significant territory. During the 60s and 70s however, the port declined further. Unemployment was endemic and the city acquired a reputation for being an investment ‘money pit’. How much this had to do with outside Invictus with scores to settle is unclear.

The open Invictus attacks on the city came in the early 80s. Under the cover of the mortal council’s war with the Thatcher government, a faction close to central government (led by the Daeva, St. John Snow) waged a shadow war on Carlyle and his supporters. Facing infiltrators on all fronts the Director stepped up security, placing his childe ‘Red’ John as a roving investigator with powers to drag any kindred before the Primogen. Carlyle’s siege mentality alienated a great many Carthians and Sanctified, leaving the doors wide open for an Invictus takeover in the autumn of 1984. Carthians outside the ruling clique attempted to gather support from the Movement beyond the city, but were rebuffed by kindred preoccupied with their own shadow war – the one surrounding the Miner’s Strike. Snow’s agents tried to seize praxis by force, attacking the havens of key Carthians on Christmas Eve. Carlyle was thought destroyed in the assault but the vampires of Liverpool (Carthian and Sanctified alike) were rallied by one of Carlyle’s lieutenants – the Mekhet, Niamh. With her reputation as a voice of reason within the former Director’s government, Niamh was able to weld together a coalition to expel the invaders and restore Carthian/Sanctified rule to the city.

Niamh was appointed as the city’s new Director. Instead of claiming executive privilege, she took the position of Primogen chair. The city was ruled by the old three Carthian/Two Sanctified council, with the Director merely holding the casting vote. Things began to settle down once more. The city began its upswing – its reinvention as a city of tourism and culture – through the 90s and the early 21st Century.

For the whole of the last five years of Niamh’s term as Director (2000-2005), her former colleague Red John waged a dirty tricks campaign against her. Her reputation was smeared, her motives questioned. It was insinuated that she had allies in both the Invictus and the Ordo Dracul. John built allies among the Carthian hardliners who remained from Carlyle’s leadership and encouraged the migration of like-minded outsiders. In late 2006, Bishop Seaforth was forced to go into torpor after over two centuries of service to the city: Red John seized the opportunity. His supporters carried out a pogrom against any who disagreed with his politics, burning havens and smashing kindred-controlled businesses and institutions. Niamh and her closest supporters were driven into hiding as John declared himself Director. Seaforth’s place on the council was taken by a Carthian – one close to the Director – and O’Connor was barred from Primogen meetings. As his sire had, John increased security in response to the terrorist threat from the Anti-Obstructionist Army, whose anti-establishment rhetoric was perceived as a threat to the members of every covenant. It was whispered behind closed doors that the AOA were John’s puppets, existing only to provide an excuse to restrict kindred freedoms. When the organisation expanded to attacks on members of other covenants, this suspicion only deepened. Members of other covenants were officially discouraged from settling in Liverpool, ‘for their own safety’.

In 2009 the city edges closer and closer to a police state. The only new settlers in the city that are tolerated are Carthians and even these are expected to adhere to John’s politics in public. He advocates tight control over most aspects of the Requiem – where to feed, what to say. Only Christian religious expression is tolerated, even then only grudgingly. The external threats of the AOA and the Invictus (in some reports, an Invictus/Ordo Dracul alliance) have swayed many, so internal dissent is muted (and when it occurs, stamped on harshly). Niamh has remained on the run since the coup, a ‘Queen-in-exile’ legend growing up around her. Her capture and final death (as a ‘traitor to the Movement’) remains one of Red John’s top priorities.

Personalities

Personality 2

Roleplaying Hints

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