The City By Night: Building Your Setting

Vampires are, by definition, urban creatures, and the Camarilla takes this tendency to extremes. Away from the sheltering streets and skyscrapers, the Kindred find themselves out of their element. There are no sewers for the Nosferatu along the interstates, no Elysiums in small towns or highway rest stops. To make matters worse, there are matters of survival to consider - the scarcity of prey and proliferation of Lupines away from the cities offer double incentive for Kindred to keep to their home territory.

As a result, the vast majority of Vampire chronicles, especially those involving the Camarilla (the Sabbat pack mentality lends itself to a bit more experimentation outside the city limits), are bounded by the borders of the metropolitan area. With that in mind, it behooves the Storyteller of a Camarilla-based chronicle to have as detailed a city setting as possible, one that allows for a wide variety of stories without descending into caricature or chaos. This chapter is a guide to building a city for a Camarilla chronicle literally from the ground up - or to co-opting one that already exists and bringing it into the World of Darkness.

The Basics

If you are going to create a city to hold your game, there are a great many questions you're going to have to be prepared to answer about it. Remember, your characters will go places in the city you don't expect them to. They will ask where the dumpsters are and if there are alleys they can duck down, which directions the streets run and how much local phone calls cost. Unfortunately, you can't map out absolutely everything - if you did you'd have precious little time for anything silly like eating or sleeping - but there are steps you can take to prepare for moments when the story wanders into terra incognita.

The better and more fully realized your city is, the easier it is for you to extrapolate on the fly the details you haven't mapped out yet. The work and care you put into preparing your setting for play invariably pays off during your chronicle, when knowledge of your creation allows you to let the character wander its streets freely. Nothing wrecks the mood of a chronicle more completely than a Storyteller saying, "You can't go there," as a way of covering up for incomplete preparation. Vampires are lords of the night - the streets are their domain and they can go wherever they wish. The loss of a neighborhood (or even a building) to nothing in particular diminishes both the vampires' unholy swagger and the reality of the chronicle.

To avoid moments like that, you need to know your city. You need to know its mood, its feel, its architecture, its industries and more. It's a lot of work, yes, but the process is a rewarding one.

Laying the Groundwork

Before you create the first vampire with whom to populate your metropolis of the night, you need to ponder the most central character in your chronicle: the city herself. Her history, mood, theme and very existence are what make up the bedrock of your chronicle. If you can't answer the following questions, your city isn't ready for your players yet, and any scenario you try to create will eventually collapse under its own weight.

The first decision you have to make is whether or not your city is a real one. There are benefits and drawbacks to either choice. If you decide to set your chronicle in the World of Darkness equivalent of a real world city, a lot of the hard work has already been done for you. The city's geography and the basics of its history are already in place, and all you have to do is apply vampiric shadings. On the other hand, centuries of established history makes for a lot of research and limits your options to an extent; if your players are familiar with local history, they're going to take umbrage at your rewriting it too cavalierly.

On the other hand, building your city literally from the ground up gives you a blank canvas on which to work. History, location, street maps - all of them await your whim. The fictional city is completely your creation, from top to bottom. Unfortunately, that means that you have to create everything in it - and that's a great deal of work. There's more to a city's history than edited highlights and more to a city's map than a few main highways and a financial district. Once you make the commitment to create a city, there's no doing things halfway.

If you choose to use an existing city as a base, you also need to decide whether to use your home town. While it can be tempting to do so, looking at your neighborhood with rose-colored mirrorshades can limit your options. With roughly 100,000 mortals required to support a single vampire, setting your campaign in a small city - even if you know it intimately - can severely limit your Storyteller character options. If your city can only support three Kindred and you have five players, certain problems of population present themselves. If your home town can support a reasonable game, however, it does give you a tremendous hand with Storytelling.

One of the main advantages of using your home city as the basis for your chronicle is the fact that you have in-depth knowledge of the place. Knowing where the clubs, the burned-out crack houses and the skyscrapers are reflexively allows you to move your chronicle to those places smoothly and rapidly. Being familiar with hangouts, restaurants and local slang lets you drop pertinent and real details into your story, and give it the sort of verite that adds to your players' immersion and enjoyment.

If you choose a city that's not your own, it's always a good idea to research it thoroughly first - and to make sure that it will spawn enough story ideas to sustain your chronicle. There's little sense in investing the time to learn a place satisfactorily, only to discover that the city doesn't hold interest for your players.

Travel books make excellent resources for this sort of research, as do the brochures and pamphlets that a city's tourist bureau is more than happy to send out. Many cities also have web sites these days, allowing for instant access to history, tourist attractions and street maps. Having an idea of the city's high points allows you to concentrate the action in regions you know while buying time for you to do further research.

Eminent Domain

So you want to run achronicle set in your home city, but there's already published material on it. Even worse, the material that's in print doesn't jibe with what you want to do with your home town - how can your characters aspire to the princedom if a book states very clearly that there's an angry sixth-generation Ventrue who's laid claim to the throne and who brooks no dissent?

Fear not - you have plenty of options. You don't have to accept the published continuity if you don't want to - if your St. Louis doesn't jibe with our St. Louis, well, it's your game and you won't hurt our feelings by changing it. Your chronicle is implicitly yours, to do with as you wish, and that's all there is to it.

On the other hand, there's a lot of work that's already been done for you when you decide to run a game in a pre-created setting. If the setting as it stands doesn't work for you, but you don't want to rebuild the city from the ground up, there are compromises that you can make. The easiest is to run through the published setting, see what you like about it, and simply replace the rest. Another is to see where the city is, decide what you want it to be, and have the plot of your game be the progression from actual to ideal. Instead of simply removing a Storyteller character, you can have him assassinated in play and the characters put to the task of investigating. In that fashion, your exercise in world-building becomes the players' plot twist. You get what you want out of your setting while the players get to game without waiting for you to recreate the entire city.

Just don't stress about what you "can" and "can't" do. It's your game and your city. Do with both what you will.

Above and beyond the propaganda that tourist center brochures proclaim, each city tends to have a mood and a personality. Identifying your city's mood is a key step in identifying what sort of chronicles will run well there. A history of warfare and sprinkling of monuments give a city one flavor; urban renewal with lots of glass, chrome and steel provides another. If you look at your city's downtown region and see looming gothic architecture, narrow streets and weathered gargoyles, the locale probably lends itself better to chronicles of intrigue and conspiracy than it does to random gun battles in the streets.

The easy answer to this question is "Because the book says so," but that doesn't do a lot to help your chronicle along. Instead, you should look at the resources the city has to offer to see reasons the Camarilla wants to maintain control of this place. Perhaps there's a high-tech belt to the west of the city that the younger Ventrue have decided is the key to their future success, or the city's port is a strategic point for smuggling Kindred in and out of the country. Maybe the city holds fond memories for certain elders, and they're not willing to relinquish the place, or perhaps a slumbering Methuselah has commanded in dreams that this city be maintained for her.

The Pissing Match

The most common pitfall attached to using your home town as the site of your chronicle is the know-it-all player, who invariably attempts to use his superior knowledge of the setting to derail the story. Getting drawn into arguments as to what exactly the name of the restaurant at 4th and South is, or how long ago a particular club closed, is extremely detrimental to your chronicle. The other players get bored, or worse, get involved in the debate. And if everyone's debating the minor details of city geography, no one's roleplaying.

The best thing to do if stuck with this sort of player is to remind him, gently, that the city in the World of Darkness is not the real city, and that things have changed a little bit. After all, this is your version of your home town, not his, and you have every right to let him know who's in charge.

By cataloging what the city holds to keep the Camarilla in place, you're also cataloging what there is of interest to vampires in the city. Knowing what areas of control are possible allows you to start thinking about the Kindred who control them. Knowing what's out there that's attractive lays the groundwork for populating the city, and also thinking about the possible conflicts within the city itself. If a city loses its heavy manufacturing sector, the Brujah who controlled that industry and fed off its successes suddenly finds himself without a power base. At that point, he may seek to take away the domain of another Kindred, or his enemies may seek to annihilate him when he's at his weakest ebb.

Questions of Geography

The physical makeup and layout of your city dictates in large part what sort of stories you can run comfortably in your game. If your city has just undergone a major urban renewal, complete with revitalized downtown area and gentrified neighborhoods, it may not necessarily be suitable for a game based around a the struggle to revitalize a declining manufacturing base in the face of Ventrue opposition.

Before doing anything else, get a map of your city (or create it, if you have to) and look at the town's physical layout. Get familiar with major access routes and important landmarks (airports, city hall, hospitals, police headquarters, etc.), and estimate how long it roughly takes to reach them when one is in a Rotschreck-fueled hurry. Note neighborhood and district divisions - being able to tell the run-down parts of town from the trendy shopping districts is important when it comes to placing your fictional landmarks. Finally, think about which parts of town your players' characters are likely to be comfortable in and which ones will find them out of their element.

Not all sites are created equal. This is a truth so obvious it hardly seems worth repeating, but when it comes to mapping out your city it's important to remember that fact. Some chunks of real estate are more desirable to Kindred than others. Some afford financial or temporal power; others offer easy access to feeding or prime candidates for ghouling. Then there are transportation hubs, important parts of the city's physical plant and so on. A Nosferatu who has his talons in the city's water treatment station has a great deal more actual power than a Toreador who owns a dozen trendy clubs; the former can bring the metropolis to its knees, while the latter offers mortals a hip and happening good time.

It is important to figure out which buildings and institutions in the city matter to your vampires, and from there to determine which sites are relevant to which individual Kindred. City hall, police headquarters and the like are obvious places to start, but they're just starting points. If a mortal institution has power or influence, a vampire is going to want to get her hands on it. So establish which places might conceivably afford a vampire an advantage to inhabit or influence, and work from there. Some possible examples:

Visualization Tools

Often it's helpful to imagine the defining anima of a city as an individual. Think about the city's history, industry, population and architecture, and then collate all of that into the image of a single person. Try to avoid stereotypes - not everyone in Minneapolis talks like an extra from Fargo, for example. Then again, the defining moments of a city's heritage do need to be addressed. Atlanta may have been burned 13 decades ago, but the matter still subtly informs many residents' attitudes even today.

Once you achieve a working personification of a city's soul, it can get easier to work up other details of the city. It's often a lot simpler to figure out what goes well with a person than with a city as a whole. Remember, what you're going for is generalities and basics. If you try to work in all of the details this early in the process, you'll never finish.

...and so on. Note that this isn't be be-all end-all of what sorts of places are of interest to Kindred - there's always a chance that someone will decide to take an interest in the zoo or a local sports team - nor will every one of the places listed above have a vampire squatting malevolently behind it. Instead, just consider which of these and similar places might matter to your Kindred, and pick and choose from there.

When you're handing out places for Kindred to control, it also makes sense to establish which sites and institutions they don't have a handle on. Working out what these places are and why the Kindred don't at least influence them can produce interesting stories later on, when the characters try to establish control of these as-yet virgin territories. In the meantime, knowing why no one seems to have a handle on, say, the utilities (too many rivals maneuvering for it? princely edict? the local Monitor's haven? another supernatural protector?), you can sprinkle hints and ominous rumors into your chronicle.

There's a world of difference between places the Camarilla likes to have a pallid finger on and those where individual vampires like to spend their time. Just because a Brujah has consolidated his influence in a city's labor unions doesn't mean that he necessarily enjoys whiling away his evenings at organizational meetings or in factories. There are places where vampires gather and hunt (the so-called "Rack"), and that's ground zero for most vampire-on-vampire interaction in a given city.

Defining your city's Rack takes more than just setting up a hip neo-Goth club and letting things go at that. If your vampires do frequent clubs, what sort of clubs are they, and who owns them? There's a very good chance that the Gangrel aren't going to hang out where the Toreador do, for example. As a result, you'll have to set up more than one club or bar in order to avoid artificially forcing all of your vampires under one roof. Don't take the time to set up a club that's frequented by each clan, though - it's a waste of time and defeats the purpose of having a club as a central meeting/interaction point. If all of the Tremere can go hang out at Club Etrius in one part of the city, they're never going to go anywhere else. And if they don't go anywhere else, you lose a valuable tool for introducing new characters and kicking off plots.

When you establish a club that's a vampiric hangout or hunting ground, make sure to give it something of a unique identity. People attend particular clubs for particular reasons, after all - playlists, DJs, ambiance, decor - and you need to create reasons for vampires (the pickiest of the picky consumers, especially when you figure in Auspex) to attend. Private space, places for unobtrusive feeding, ghoul doormen who let Kindred in automatically, aesthetics that are pleasing to Auspex-enhanced senses and so on are all reasons for Kindred to flock to a particular nightspot. Without amenities like these, vampires will simply move on to another place that caters to their whims.

On the flip side, lay out how the club deals with the Masquerade and breaches thereof. Any place that attracts flocks of Kindred on any given night is a magnet for trouble. Frenzies, fights, accidental killings during feeding and other crises will arise, and they'll all need to be dealt with quickly, quietly and efficiently. If a club gets a reputation as a trouble spot, if patrons disappear or get shot on a regular basis, then the cops are going to move in and the lowly mortals who make up the place's real customer base are going to move on. It's not like the Kindred are paying for their drinks, after all. So ponder your mythical club's cleanup, cover-up and defenses. You don't want to be caught unprepared when the local mob of Brujah decides to tear the club's mysterious owner a new one.

Chopping Up the Town

It's fine to divvy up sections of your city to Kindred left and right, but restraint is as important as thoroughness in this instance. This is a Camarilla city, after all. The vampires who pull the strings of mortal institutions don't do so directly; they work through mortals to achieve their ends. Furthermore, vampiric control is always subtle and often imperfect; a Ventrue doesn't casually stroll into the local paper's city room and delete files at random. Instead, he calls the editor of the section, who may be a ghoul or may just be a mortal beholden to him, and requests that the offending story be killed. He may offer recompense in the form of additional ad revenue for that section that day, or he may "create" another newsworthy incident to fill the space. The desired effect is achieved without bloody constraint.

So remember that when you hand out sections and institutions, you're handing out influence, not total and direct control. Plan your plots accordingly.

Bad Neighborhoods

It's easy to dismiss the bad parts of town. It's simple to sketch them simply and use them as convenient feeding grounds, nothing more. But it's not necessarily right to do so.

If you're going to take your story into the less savory parts of town, show respect for your subject matter. Poverty and despair are powerful, dreadful things, and cavalierly using them as justifications for cheap feeds sends the wrong message. If a neighborhood goes to hell, there's a reason - plant closings, neglect or malice from city government, infestation by dealers - and there are real human beings affected by that decline. Even if your Kindred plumb the worst depths of your city, remember to ascribe some basic human dignity.

While the clubs are the heart of your city's Rack, they're not the entire thing. Is your city's prime hunting ground a club district, or does it tend more toward shopping and restaurants? Outlining the Rack also lays out what sort of prey vampires are likely to find there. A ritzier, shopping-based Rack is likely to have more middle- and upper-class patrons, and these people are more likely to be taken seriously when they talk about being attacked. A club-based Rack, however, has younger and possibly inebriated or otherwise chemically altered patrons, and such mortals don't necessarily carry great credibility. Pick your spots and expand upon them.

Clubs and the Rack aren't the only places that Kindred spend their time. Elysium is also important to establish.

At this point in the process, you've laid out where the Kindred go to "work" and where they go to eat and play. What's left is where they live. In other words, it's time to figure out whose havens are where.

Many Kindred, particularly experienced, wealthy and paranoid ones, have multiple havens. As a result, trying to pinpoint where each haven of every vampire in your city might be is a fine way to drive yourself mad. Instead, decide where the main havens of a) the important Kindred, and b) the vampires your characters are likely to bump into might be. You might also want to sketch out the details and defenses of havens that your players' coterie are likely to visit or invade. If the plots that you're cooking up make it look likely that the characters are going to have to go beard the Malkavian elder in his den, it only makes sense to know ahead of time what they're going to have to get past in order to get there.

Even if you don't pick street addresses and apartment numbers for the havens you're designing, you should at least know what general neighborhoods they're in, and why they're there. Having a haven next door can do strange things to a community - police patrols might drop as a result, leading to higher crime, or perhaps the Kindred sees fit to ghoul a few of his neighbors as a precaution...

An overlooked aspect of a city's geography involves access. How do mortals get in and out - is there a busy airport (and which airlines use it as a hub)? What about train lines, buses or major highways? If there's only one main road leading into or out of town, a single traffic accident at a strategic time can wreak havoc on Kindred travel plans. A massive snarl an hour before sunrise can trap a vampire far from his haven with nowhere to hide. As an extension of this, it makes sense to take a quick look at the city's traffic maps. Main streets, parkways, traffic bottlenecks and construction projects are all good to know about, particularly if you anticipate high-speed chases in your chronicle.

Just as important is figuring out how vampires get smuggled in and out of the city. Kindred travel arrangements can get peculiar, and more than one vampire has made a fortune by shipping his fellow bloodsuckers like cargo. Ports, air freight terminals, railroad freight yards and the like all deserve attention as potential points of entry for Kindred.

The flip side of picking out where the Kindred of your city do go is delineating the places where they don't go. That's more difficult than looking at a map, figuring out what the quote-unquote "bad neighborhoods" are, and X-ing them off your game map. What might be a bad neighborhood to you or me isn't so much of a hassle to an unliving killing machine who can shrug off bullets like they're mosquito bites, after all.

Instead, it takes effort to figure out why a particular part of town is inhospitable to Kindred. A tightly knit Catholic neighborhood might have enough ambient True Faith to keep most vampires at bay. Parks or other less heavily developed spaces might have other supernatural inhabitants who aren't vampire-friendly. Or maybe there are just vampiric rivalries - one line of Brujah has its havens firmly settled in the neighborhoods in the southern part of the city, while their rivals are established to the west, and never the twain shall meet. Take the time to figure out which parts of your city aren't safe for any vampires (and why), which ones aren't safe for your important Storyteller characters and which ones aren't safe for the players' characters.

The 'Burbs

Your city is not just the city itself. There's the entire metropolitan area to consider. Which neighborhoods do the wealthy suburban squires retreat to at the end of the day, and can the Kindred get there without being ambushed by Lupines along the way? Gated communities can serve as private hunting preserves, or they can be deathtraps. It's all a matter of perspective.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the Kindred don't much like the suburbs. There's a little too much open space, there aren't enough places to hide, and the residents still sometimes call the cops when they hear screaming coming from neighbors' houses late at night. An active neighborhood watch association is surprisingly good at picking up breaches in the Masquerade.

A few Kindred do like to have suburban havens, far from the hustle, bustle and armed robbery of the city streets, but they're in a distinct minority. For even the ever-wary Kindred, there's safety in numbers.

While not strictly a question of geography, the matter of the physical appearance of your city, right down to its base architectural style, should be addressed at some point. A city's fa�ade affects the mood it establishes - a skyline of mirrored glass and steel creates a different mood than does one of stately turn-of-the-century skyscrapers encrusted with gargoyles, or one marked by medieval or even Roman ruins. A city wherein every building and terrace is marked by beetling, glowering statuary generates an oppressive, paranoiac feel, while the ultra-modern look of glass, chrome and steel makes for a depersonalized, alienated setting. Furthermore, no city's decor is uniform; the breakdowns run neighborhood by neighborhood, with dilapidated row homes cheek-by-jowl with freshly yuppified condos and trendy shops. Figure out which feel you want to emphasize in your game and play that look (and those neighborhoods) up. Remember, this is your city, and you don't have to stick that closely to "reality" in matters like this.

Building style is also a matter that is more important than it seems. Vampires are creatures of the side alley and the boardroom, and you need to figure out the proportions thereof. While it's all well and good for the characters to want to duck down an alley and hide behind a dumpster after killing a Ventrue's prized ghoul, skyscraper districts tend not to have too many alleys. Define what the regular features of your city's landscape are. Are there trees planted in front of every building, or is there trash in the streets? How about alleys - how many, how often, how deep and do they have sewer tunnel access for the Nosferatu? Does the city spring for bright, white street lamps, or are the roads lit in dingy yellow and orange (if they are lit at all)? This sort of thinking extends to the human aspects of the landscape as well. Do the cops walk their beat on foot, or do they stick to cars and in pairs?

Questions of Elysium

Part of what makes a city definitively Camarilla is its Elysiums. These places, cultural centers where violence is forbidden against all, rest at the heart of a city's intellectual unlife. Without knowing a city's Elysiums -where and what and how numerous they are - you can't know a city. Therefore, defining your city's Elysiums is a matter of paramount importance.

Elysiums are the rocks of a city's foundations, the safe and strong places that remain inviolate even when all around them is chaos. You should put thought and consideration into your selection of Elysiums, because by selecting Elysium so you affect everything that happens around Elysium as well. It may seem obvious just to go ahead and pick your city's largest art museum as Elysium and letting it go at that, but the obvious choice isn't always the best one. Choosing multiple, unexpected or just plain strange places to serve as Elysium helps give your city an identity rooted in specifics.

Just the sheer number of places marked Elysium has a profound impact on a city's feel. A city that has but a single museum declared Elysium is a very different place from one with a half-dozen sites - the latter is clearly a more prosperous and peaceful domain, its Kindred have more time for contemplation of the arts, there is more culture fostered in the city by mortal and immortal alike, and multiple Elysiums offers more opportunities for intriguing on safe ground. On the other hand, the city with but a single museum or theater demonstrates that the prince's priorities lie elsewhere, that the city doesn't have the resources to support multiple Elysiums, and that the Kindred of the metropolis have other, more pressing concerns than the cultivation of art.

There are other, more subtle effects on the city to be considered as well. For example, the more locales the prince recognizes as Elysium, the more bases of power the local harpies have. More Elysiums also means fewer prime pieces of downtown to be handed out as prize domains to the local Toreador, not to mention more places lawbreakers can duck into for sanctuary.

By plotting out how many sites in a city are designated Elysium, you can also establish the city's attitude toward culture and keeping up the appearance thereof.

The places chosen for a city's Elysiums say a great deal about both the city and those who dwell there. The effects of labeling a place Elysium are both obvious (here is where the vampires can be found) and subtle (a museum not chosen as Elysium is liable to enter a precipitous decline). Defining the Elysiums of your city, not to mention the effects of your choices, makes a tremendous difference in establishing your setting.

The stereotypical image of Elysium is that of the art museum open after hours, Kindred strolling to and fro while making snide comments and sipping vitae from wine glasses. While that image certainly can hold some truth, you should think about whether it holds enough truth for your game. Is the art museum your Kindred's Elysium of choice? If so, why - tradition, a specific collection of Impressionists or artifacts, fond memories relating to a particular piece ("I was in Paris when George painted that one. It was the year I finally left my sire's household and I was looking for someone I could sponsor to gain entrance into a certain salon�") or some reason esoteric beyond human understanding? There's certainly nothing wrong with choosing a city's art museum as your core Elysium. After all, it has a variety of exhibits to please the eye, plenty of space for intriguing with or avoiding others, and a central location - all vital elements to a proper Elysium. However, picking the art museum because you think it's expected, and not for the merits that the particular place holds, shortchanges your story and your city.

So if your central Elysium is to be located elsewhere, what sort of place should you pick? An opera house or academy of music is a superb choice. Most are decorated in a suitably rococo style to appease even the most perfectionistic Toreador; many have sweeping lobbies as well as secluded boxes and numerous back stairwells, all excellent places to conduct vampiric business or to hold court. Furthermore, there's always the prospect of intrigues conducted subtly, through hand gestures, passed notes and urgent whispers while the orchestra plays madly and the opera's action crashes to a climax onstage.

Beyond libraries and music halls, there are other potential choices to consider. Theaters, particularly ones with some sort of history to them, work well. Many cities have central libraries of renown that can also offer the amenities essential to an Elysium, ranging from exhibits to statuary to suitably ornate decoration. Art galleries offer many of the same amenities of museums, but in more intimate surroundings. European cities may have Roman amphitheaters or other landmarks still in functioning condition. Manors and castles turned into museums and left behind by their original residents often fit the bill - particularly if the city's Kindred visited those houses centuries earlier and seek comfortable surroundings.

The trick when selecting a site for a central Elysium is to make sure it offers enough - enough space, enough culture, enough to amuse visitors and enough respect to keep Kindred from ignoring the place's status. Just labeling something "Elysium" is no guarantee that the name will stick - good luck enforcing Elysium status for a comedy club or even for an experimental theater that's a little too experimental for the local harpies' taste.

That being said, you certainly don't have to restrict yourself to just one Elysium. If a city has several sites worthy of the title, or the prince simply wants to show off how cultured and sophisticated he might be, any number of locales can end up as an Elysium. What matters is that you know which Elysium is the main one - the one where the harpies gather and where the prince receives petitioners. You also might want to consider whether the prime Elysium rotates its location, or what is happening at the other sites on the nights when the central Elysium is dull and quiet.

It Can't Rain All the Damn Time

While it may seem very moody and gothic to have your chronicle constantly backlit by jagged forks of lightning, it's not always necessary. If nothing else, the constant rain would flood out the Nosferatu and produce all sorts of interesting rumblings in the city's power structure. Use symbology like lightning to your advantage, which is to say sparingly and only at appropriate moments.

Your city's weather and climate can help your stories along. Unnatural hot streaks can make mortal and immortal alike irritable and prone to violence. Blizzards and cold snaps can seal mortals in their homes, leaving slim pickings for Kindred on the streets. Droughts can lead to fires, and to slow or inadequate responses from city fire departments. Heavy rains and flooding might do unpleasant things to Kindred with subterranean havens. And a city with clear night skies might prove a hazard to stargazing Toreador, who stand, enraptured, staring in awe at the beauty of the heavens.

Finishing Touches

Once you have the where and the what (not to mention the why) of your Elysiums set up, there are a few other questions that need answering.

Questions Of Historical Import

It is no understatement to say that many Kindred dwell exclusively in the past, to the point where they refuse to acknowledge the very existence of the present. History, then, is of paramount importance to these creatures, and that means that history should matter to your newly hatched city as well. By establishing your city's history - and the role the local Kindred played in creating it - you lay the groundwork for the vampiric rivalries and vendettas of the present. Without knowing where your Kindred have been, you can't get a handle on where they're going.

The first step in establishing a city's history in the World of Darkness is to learn the city's real history. (Of course, if you're creating a city from whole cloth, it's up to you to make up the mortal history as well.) Once you have that under your belt, you can start looking for highlights, incidents of importance in the city's story that look as if they might have been "adjusted" by outside influences. Riots, battles, mysterious murder sprees and other violent moments are a great place to start, but there are other options as well. What about notable elections, massive donations of land to the city, building projects and the like? Just because the Kindred revel in blood doesn't mean that all their works are immediately soaked in it.

Gaining familiarity with a city's history isn't the same thing as becoming a world-renowned expert on it. Don't feel you have to know everything about a city, from the political affiliation of its 14th mayor to the names of its turn-of-the-century semipro athletic teams, to have a handle on a city's past. Don't worry about not knowing everything. Just make sure you've learned enough that you can ground the current events you're creating in some sort of historical context. If your city has a history of gangland violence, you can take that trend and use it to inform what you're doing now. Perhaps two of the feuding gangsters were Embraced, and carry on their deadly rivalry from beyond the grave. Or maybe the course of the fighting took out one Kindred's entire ghoul support network, leading to her downfall. Now, decades later, she's looking to extract payback from the vampires who supported the killers. Then again, the entire thing may have been sparked by the maneuvering of some Kindred using mortal pawns to undercut the other, and the conflict is simply awaiting the appropriate time to renew itself. In all three cases, what has been, once given a vampiric twist, now fulfills two functions. It fits nicely into the city's supernatural history, and it sets up future plots that are well-grounded in the "historical" past.

The vampiric influence on human history in the World of Darkness has consistently been overstated, both by the vampires themselves and by outside observers (i.e. folks reading and playing the game). History happens, driven by the great mass of humanity. Vampires, with very few exceptions, cannot alter that flow of events; they can merely hope to divert it, to forestall or trigger events or to ride the crest of the wave to a profitable result. There are simply too many humans with too much historical momentum for the Kindred to muck about with things willy-nilly.

That being said, in order to see what role vampires have historically played in your city, you have to figure out how much of that city's history they were behind - and why. It does no good to say that vampires were behind a particularly bloody strike in the 1920s unless you can figure out why - who benefited from the strike and the subsequent brutal strikebreaking? Why would they instigate such events? What did they stand to gain? Vampires, like anyone else, have motivations for doing things. It doesn't matter if those things are as insignificant as choosing a dress or as momentous as instigating an assassination - there has to be a reason for something being done. Ascribing actions to the Kindred without ascribing motives makes those actions nonsensical. Bear in mind that the vampire behind the scenes may not have had good or intelligent reasons for what he did, but as long as there was a reason that made sense to him, the whole sequence of events becomes much more believable.

Behind Closed Doors

You should think beyond the public spaces when creating your Elysium. There's more to a museum than galleries - there are restoration facilities, storage and warehouse spaces, offices and more far from the public eye. Similarly, an academy of music offers rehearsal spaces, costume chambers, dressing rooms, ticket offices and the like. Libraries have document chambers, microfiche storage rooms, preservation facilities, closed stacks, rare book collection rooms and other places that aren't necessarily obvious, but which can provide a wealth of plot hooks. Once you designate a site Elysium, you might as well get as much out of your Elysium as you can. That means using every available inch of the place, and not ignoring any of it.

Though vampires exist at a slower pace than mortals do, they're not always idle or in torpor. Over the centuries or even millennia your city has existed, there has been a shadow history of vampiric doings running parallel to the record of mortal events. Knowing what the human beings were doing for all those years is only half the story; you have to know what the Kindred were doing as well.

Note that your vampiric history should not simply be a matter of "here's when the vampires fought, and here's how they covered it up." Instead, keep track of who arrived when, and where they came from. Establish Embrace dates for your major characters, not to mention the stories behind their Embraces. Which vampires died along the way, how did they die, and what happened as a result? Often it makes sense to establish the vampiric power dynamics of today and then work backward to see how they got that way.

Just remember that your shadow history has to be masked by the real one. A hundred years of vampiric warfare might make for excellent backstory, but if it coincides with a century of peace and prosperity in the real world, the incongruity will strain players' credulity.

One of the most devastating things that can hit a city is the tide of war. As bloody and brutal as warfare has been in the real world, the influence of supernatural monsters in the World of Darkness might even make it worse. What is certain, however, is that warfare touches the unliving population of a city as well as the living one, and that ignoring the effect of warfare on your city's vampires can be a serious mistake.

Most of the cities on the planet have been involved in some sort of warfare, and the effects of that sort of action on the local Kindred population need to be examined carefully. It's a mistake to worry about which vampires were behind which side. Rather, think about how war affected your city directly. Was it burned to the ground, like Dresden or Moscow? If it was, how much of the vampiric population was caught in the firestorm? Did enemy troops occupy it, making it harder for Kindred to feed, or did total chaos reign? How about the reconstruction of the urban area afterward - which vampires had a hand in rebuilding the city to their liking? Mortal wars provide a storytelling opportunity to change the course of your city's shadow history; take advantage of it if you can.

Nights of Old

While cities in the Western Hemisphere are younger than the Camarilla, much of the rest of the world boasts metropoli that predate the sect by centuries or millennia. For places like Athens, Cairo, Jerusalem and so on, the reasons the city went down the Camarilla path need to be laid out clearly. The vampires who inhabit these places, many of whom predate the sect as well, also need to establish why they chose the Camarilla. If there was a sectarian struggle in your city's past, map it out and decide why things went the way they did.

It might even be worth wondering if someone out there wants a rematch.

Vampires wage war as well, thought not on the direct scale that mortals do. Even if two of the most powerful vampires in a given city decide to go at it, you're not going to see tens of thousands of Kindred lined up in ranks, waiting for the order to charge. Instead, war between vampires is a more subtle thing, played out by mortal pawns and vampiric catspaws. Gang wars, political upheavals, riots, overthrows of governments and the like all provide excellent cover for deadly struggles between Kindred. The overlaying violence serves to mask the more vicious tactics that each feuding vampire puts into play.

If you decide that two or more Kindred went to war in your city's past, it makes sense to look for upheaval in the mortal world that could have provided camouflage for the deadly struggle. If you can find an instance in which the unruly mortals more or less matched the philosophies of the Kindred you scripted as going at it, so much the better. Otherwise, think about when it makes sense for there to be immortal combat in your setting, and pick a moment in history to fit.

Note: You may want to wait on this particular aspect of building your city until after you've filled in the vampiric population (see below).

While it's not necessary to know absolutely everything about your city's past to run a good chronicle in it, knowing the odd bit of historical trivia can certainly serve its purpose. Putting factoids from 10 or 12 centuries past into the mouths of your older Kindred serves nicely to establish the realism of their age. Having a vampire stroll onto the scene and announce that he's three centuries old stretches credulity - the moment seems staged, and as a result the character doesn't acquire the respect his age should garner him. But having him walk into Elysium, garbed impeccably in the wardrobe of yesteryear and dropping conversational tidbits about the measures he and a friend had helped institute to control the outbreak of yellow fever among the kine back in the 1790s, he acquires a bit more of the aroma of historicity.

In addition, every city's history is full of bits of just plain old-fashioned weirdness - rains of frogs, the odd political suicide or socialite disappearance, rich eccentrics building strange houses and the like - that can fit nicely into a campaign as evidence of vampiric maneuverings gone awry. The rain of frogs can be laid at the feet of an incompetent local Tremere, the disappearances and suicides might be the evidence of anything from abuses of Dominate to cover-ups for Embraces and so on.

Also, remember this: Just because a vampire might have influenced an event doesn't mean that things turned out the way the Kindred wanted. Vampires screw up, too, and sometimes to absolutely spectacular effect.

Questions of Population

No city is suitable for a vampire game without a population of vampires. As detailed as your history might be, as fascinating as your setting is, without a suitable flock of living dead in place to provide allies, enemies, informants and other bodies for your players to interact with, your city isn't complete. You need to know who lives in your city, who visits it, where the residents are likely to be found and where they stand on a whole host of issues. Otherwise, your detailed cityscape is simply so much gorgeous scenery.

The first thing you need to do in creating your city's population is to establish how many vampires the city actually supports. A good rule of thumb is one Kindred per 100,000 mortals, and population statistics are generally pretty easy to find. Note that this number can be adjusted up or down, depending on the feel you want to establish in your setting. If you decide that your city should have a wide-open, sparse feel to it, drop the number of Kindred. On the other hand, if you're going for a feverish, overcrowded ambiance, increase the vampiric population. Just be careful not to increase it too much, or else be prepared for an in-play culling.

Once you know how many vampires are in your city, think about the clan breakdown. As your city is Camarilla, the six main clans should easily predominate, with a few straggling Gangrel as well. Minor clans, bloodlines, Sabbat invaders and so on should make up a tiny fraction of the Kindred population.

In large part, your city's clan breakdown is determined by what clan the prince is. As the prince alone has the right of unlimited creation, it only makes sense for her to reinforce her position by Embracing enough progeny to protect herself properly. Furthermore, the right of creation makes an excellent favor to bestow on those to whom the prince owes boons; odds are that many Kindred thus gifted are from the prince's clan.

After you get a rough breakdown of numbers in place, it's time to think about lineages. This step is more important than one might think. While the Toreador might have five members in your fictional city, how exactly those five are related can make a tremendous difference in the clan's power. A clan comprised of one elder with four progeny certainly presents a different face to the city than does a "family" of five Toreador of successive generation. Mapping out how the vampires of a single clan are related, if indeed they are, also helps you establish the relative power of the various clans.

Note: At this point in the process, you should probably be giving at least preliminary names to your Kindred. This serves as a tremendous aid in keeping the tangled web of vampiric relationships straight.

As important as knowing who spawned whom is knowing how the parties relate afterward. Poor sire-childe relations can weaken a clan's hold on a city; strong ones can unify the clan into a nigh-unstoppable force. Also take into consideration blood bonds, voluntary and otherwise, and their effects on childer's affection. (Some of those bonds might be fragile or broken, which is always good to know.) Finally, it's worth thinking about siblings in the blood - multiple childer of the same sire - and any rivalries that might exist there.

Bear in mind that not every childe is acknowledged. Caitiff aren't part of anyone's equation, but they do need to be taken into account when you're populating your city. How many Caitiff there are, who created them, and how likely it is that the act will be traced back are all questions to ponder. A Caitiff's quest for her parentage can make for an interesting plot thread, especially if the trail leads back to the corridors of Elysium. Remember, the creation of a Caitiff is a violation of the Traditions and is theoretically punishable by death. Building that sort of ticking time bomb into your city's foundations gives you something earthshaking to spring on your players later on.

Vampires aren't the only ones intimately wound in the city's Camarilla web. There are ghouls to consider as well. While a ghoul isn't necessarily as important a part of the city as one of the Kindred (particularly if he's part of a particular vampire's large stable), it make sense to know where the ghoul numbers stack up in your city as well. The more ghouls a clan has, the longer its reach in the daylight hours, the more eyes it has in place in the city and the more soldiers it can call upon in times of crisis.

If there are particularly prominent ghouls (police officers, reporters, politicians, etc.) in your city, it often makes sense to figure out whom they're beholden to. Mapping the web of favors and allegiances down to the mortal - or mostly mortal - level goes a long way toward figuring out who's inclined to help your players' characters and who isn't.

After the basic framework of the city's Camarilla population is established, then you can start thinking about who doesn't fit in. That designation includes anarchs, members of the unaffiliated clans like the Giovanni, and Sabbat packs and infiltrators. Needless to say, you don't want to stock up too heavily on any of these, otherwise your Camarilla city abruptly ceases to be Camarilla.

If your city has an anarch population, make a note of how many of the anarchs are homegrown (and who their sires are) and how many are imported rabble-rousers; a blood hunt following an anarch from his home city onto your prince's turf can make for an interesting story. The independents' connections and targets in the city need to be delineated; knowing which Kindred the lone Setite is dealing with and which ones he's got in his pocket is an important difference. As for the Sabbat, knowing where it's holed up, what it's after and whom it's targeted or subverted already sets up Sabbat-related plotlines down the road.

If your game is set in a small city, your players' coterie might well be 50% of the vampiric population. This can make for short-lived chronicles, with the coterie ganging up on the rest of the city's Kindred and taking them out one by one.

A possible solution lies in bringing in transients. Think about which vampires are frequent, infrequent or even vaguely regular visitors. A pack of roving Gangrel, an archon who has a centuries-old romantic entanglement with a member of the primogen council or a rabble-rousing anarch who thinks the city's an easy mark can all beef up your vampiric numbers temporarily without overstuffing the city.

Since your city is held by the Camarilla, it should have a prince, sheriff, primogen, harpies and so on. Establishing which clans and which characters fill those roles is imperative. The entire vampiric population of the city takes its cues, positive or negative, from the prince. Start defining the power structure at the top, and the rest flows downhill from there.

Before you fill out the rest of the Camarilla hierarchy, you need to define and establish your prince. Who is she? How old is she? What is her clan, and is this her first time holding a city? If not, why did she leave her last post - and who pushed her out of it? If so, how did she climb to power, and who's plotting vengeance as a result?

The Weird Ones

It can be tempting to treat your city like a salad bar, taking one vampire from each clan or bloodline. One of each can't hurt, right?

Wrong. You only have so much space for vampires in this city, and by the time you finish including all of the minor and extremely rare lineages, you won't have room for the Brujah, Ventrue, Toreador and others who should be making up the meat of your story. In addition, one of the defining characteristics of the Gargoyles, Lasombra antitribu, etc. is that they are extremely rare. Having one in a city is enough to excite comment and cause speculation; having several in place for anything short of a conclave is beyond the bounds of coincidence.

It's wiser and easier to stick to the basics, seasoning lightly with one or perhaps two of the rarities. Otherwise, you run the risk of having the sideshow become the main event, and having your plot crowded right off the stage.

Answering the above questions gives you a good idea of who the prince is, but what remains to be defined is her relationship with her city. Is she strict in enforcing her laws, and has she added any legislation to the basic Traditions? How harsh is she on lawbreakers, and how likely is she to call a blood hunt? Which clans beside her own does she favor, and which does she frown upon? What are her solutions to the so-called anarch problem? Caitiff? The Sabbat? Lupines? Does she trust her seneschal, the primogen or any of the other officers of the city? Map out the answers to these questions, and you draw yourself a political map of your city.

Few princes have absolute power in the strictest sense of the term. Most rule in conjunction with, if not on the sufferance of, the city's primogen. Theoretically the primogen council is the city's council of elders, a gathering of the oldest and wisest representatives of the clans. To no one's surprise, it rarely works out that way. Politics and jealousy make for compromise candidates, and a strong prince can ramrod his candidates through if there isn't anyone else in the city strong enough to stop him.

Ideally, your primogen should comprise the elders of the various clans. If you want to deviate from this basic setup, think about how and why you want to change things. If your primogen is going to consist of five Brujah and a Malkavian, you need to have a good reason for setting things up that way. Your city has to function night to night, after all.

Primogen and Prince

An important thing to watch is the relationship between your prince and his city's primogen. In some cities, it is the primogen who select the prince; in others matters run precisely opposite. Establish how the balance of power tilts. A city with a primogen council full of yes-vampires who belong to the prince's clan runs a little differently than does one wherein the prince is beholden to his "advisors" for everything he has.

The next order of business is to define how much power the primogen council has, and what it's actually doing as opposed to what it's supposed to be doing. Detailing the primogens' subversions (or lack thereof) matters just as much as detailing what the council is supposed to be doing. More than one prince has been surprised by a revolt fomented by his "advisory" committee.

There are titles beyond prince and primogen in a city. While it's important to know at least theoretically who the seneschal is, etc., the priority lies with establishing those Kindred who are most likely to interact with your player's coterie. In most cases, that means the sheriff, the keeper of Elysium, the harpies and possibly the scourge, assuming your city has one. As the characters are likely going to interact with any and all of these Kindred, those characters need to be drawn up in detail. They're going to be on stage a great deal in your campaign, which means that they'd better be ready for the spotlight. The politics of these lesser figures don't matter as much as their personalities do. They don't make policy so much as they enforce it, and as a result figuring out who they are and how they're likely to react to the characters is of paramount importance.

Economy

If you establish your web of character relationships and find that there are two or more that essentially have the same allies, enemies and functions, it's worth your while to combine the two. You only have so many Kindred to play with, and redundancy wastes one of your most valuable resources.

The ruck and run of the Kindred population of your city is left without titles, which is as it should be. However, that doesn't mean that those left out in the cold aren't thinking about climbing the ladder of power. You should think about which of your Kindred are actively ambitious (and whose positions they're targeting) and which ones are content where they are. Clan ties may play into this as well; the Tremere elder may frown on a younger clan member's desire to be sheriff, for example, but may encourage his prot�g� to take the role of scourge.

Politics: Who Hates Whom?

Once you have a rough idea of who the vampires in your city are, the last step is to figure out how they all fit together. Establishing friendships, alliances, patronages and favors owed primes future plots based on those vampires' interactions.

In a sense, what this part of city creation boils down to is writing the personal histories and ambitions of your horde of characters. The trick is to make sure that if you've got 30 Kindred in your city, you don't have 30 free-floating individuals. Make a goal of having each and every Kindred link to at least three others. If there's a good reason for a character to have only one connection (say, an illegitimate childe whose existence is known only to his sire), that's fine, but a character who only seems to work well with one or two other Kindred doesn't lend himself to enough stories for you to keep him around. Not all of the relationships you establish between characters should be amicable (conflict is every Storyteller's friend), but they should be real, passionate and vital. Vampires are creatures out of time. Their hatreds and rivalries are nurtured over the centuries with each insult and dig, every setback and petty triumph. That intensity of relationship has to come through when you map out how your Kindred feel about one another. Mild dislikes and vague affection have no place in the web of vampiric relationships; such delicate emotions are reserved for mortals.

These simple questions, and the questions that their answers raise, should help you establish a solid framework for your city's Camarilla politics.

By this point, you should know where your city is, what it's like, what it looks like, what's important in it, what happened in there, what really happened there, who lives there, what they control, whom they like and dislike and what they're trying to do about it. While creating every detail of a fiction (or even fictionalized) city is the work of many lifetimes, by this point you've done enough to have at least a workable setting for your chronicle. You've done your preparation. Now it's time to use the conflicts you've set up and the history you've established to start telling stories.

Templates

Below are statistics and very basic writeups for archetypal characters who are likely to be found in a Camarilla city. The statistics, descriptions and other traits are only a starting point, and you should feel free to modify them as you wish when populating your chronicle setting. Bear in mind, however, that so-called "stat creep" is one of the most insidious enemies a chronicle can have, and that the characters presented here are designed with their stats as is for a reason.

Charts

A tremendous help in clarifying your vampires' tangled relationships is the so-called coterie chart. First, space out your major characters' names on a sheet of paper. Then draw arrows between those vampires who interact. Finally, write descriptives along those arrows, establishing how each half of the equation feels about the other. You'd be amazed at how easy this sort of quick reference makes things.

Background: Seduced and abandoned, a street-level Caitiff is a vampire by default. He's spent his brief time as a vampire ducking from the sheriff, the scourge and anyone else he imagines is after him. Desperate for an ally but afraid to trust anyone, he sleeps where he can, feeds when he can and waits for the inevitable end.

Image: Street chic is the best a Caitiff can hope for - shirts, jeans, jacket and boots scrounged from a thrift store - or worse. A haggard face and haunted eyes are the hallmarks of a lone Caitiff on the streets, and odds are he's got a visible air of nervousness about him.

Roleplaying Hints: Trust no one, and keep an eye on the exits at all times. The whole world is out to get you, and your only hope of survival is to keep running. You desperately want to find someplace to belong, but no one will have you. So instead you run.

Clan: Caitiff
Nature: Rebel
Demeanor: Survivor
Generation: 13th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 3, Brawl 2, Dodge 2, Intimidation 1, Streetwise 3, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Drive 2, Firearms 2, Melee 1, Security 2, Stealth 3, Survival 2
Knowledges: Academics 1, Computer 2, Law 1, Medicine 1
Disciplines: Fortitude 1, Potence 1, Presence 1
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 1, Contacts 5, Resources 1
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 4, Courage 4
Humanity: 7
Willpower: 7

Background: Embraced without warning and thrust into the Camarilla against her will, the anarch bided her time until she could escape. Now she's out on the mean streets looking for revenge and blood, working to gather a gang with whom she can take down her hated sire and all he stands for.

Image: Radiating tough from head to toe, an anarch's every glance is a challenge. She wears whatever looks good and protects her well - biker jackets are a particular favorite, as are motorcycle or combat boots. An anarch always goes armed - a nice shiny pair of .45s, worn visibly, can prevent a lot of arguments.

Roleplaying Hints: Anywhere you go is your property. Defend your turf with everything you've got, and make sure to spit in authority's eye while you do so. You don't have a cause, you've got an agenda, and the difference is important. You won't die for what you believe in; you're more interested in finding a way to survive so you can win.

Clan: Brujah
Nature: Rebel
Demeanor: Bravo
Generation: 13th
Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 2, Brawl 3, Dodge 2, Expression 2, Intimidation 3, Streetwise 3, Subterfuge 3
Skills: Animal Ken 1, Drive 3, Firearms 2, Melee 2, Security 2, Stealth 2, Survival 2
Knowledges: Computer 1, Investigation 1, Law 1, Medicine 1, Politics 1
Disciplines: Celerity 2, Potence 2, Presence 1
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 2, Contacts 3, Resources 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 4
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 8

Background: Just brought into the world of the Camarilla, the neonate is still working from a jumble of half-truths, myths and misconceptions. He's not quite sure what he's supposed to be doing yet, only that the consequences of failure are terrible indeed. Just beginning to understand his new status, the neonate is taking the first few steps toward coming into his true power.

Image: The neonate dresses much as he did in life; conservative suit, power tie, black shoes and a neat mustache (though he's finally abandoned his glasses). He's just starting to realize that he has other options, and is beginning to experiment - though the stereotypical cape and cravat are miles beyond what he'd conceive of trying.

Roleplaying Hints: Lord it over the humans, but cower before your sire and his peers. You don't know much, but you know your place on the food chain - and it's near the bottom. Search for allies among vampires of your age and generation, but look over your shoulder for your sire's approval all the while. Flinch from garlic, running water, crosses and the rest - but once you discover that the legends are only stories, you run the risk of getting cocky.

Clan: Ventrue
Nature: Traditionalist
Demeanor: Conformist
Generation: 12th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 3
Mental: Perception 2, Intelligence 2, Wits 2
Talents: Alertness 2, Empathy 1, Intimidation 3, Leadership 2, Streetwise 1
Skills: Drive 1, Etiquette 2, Firearms 2
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 2, Computer 2, Finance 3, Investigation 2, Law 2, Politics 3
Disciplines: Fortitude 1, Presence 3
Thaumaturgical Paths:
Backgrounds: Generation 1, Herd 1, Influence 1, Resources 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 4
Willpower: 5
Humanity: 6
Willpower: 7

Background: Having dwelt behind the Masquerade for a century, the ancilla is comfortable with his existence and his potential. He looks to advance himself within his home city's power structure, struggling to carve out a niche and a domain. Whip, sheriff, even prince - these are the goals to which the ancilla aspires, and he is laying careful plans in order to attain them.

Image: Dressed in the style of decades long gone. the ancilla looks as if he has stepped straight from a Frank Capra film. In appearance he looks to be a sad little man, with a sad little smile and soft hands that don't look like they've ever seen a day's hard work. Only the ancilla's eyes - cold and hard and predatory - reveal his true nature.

Roleplaying Hints: Agree with those of higher station while exercising your authority over those beneath you. Watch for rising stars to befriend, and be careful to disassociate yourself from those who are out of favor. Keep your eye on your ultimate goal; every move and alliance you make is merely a step on the road to power. In the end, everyone and everything is expendable to your ambition.

Clan: Tremere
Nature: Conniver
Demeanor: Architect
Generation: 10th
Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 4
Talents: Alertness 3, Brawl 2, Empathy 2, Leadership 2, Subterfuge 3
Skills: Drive 1, Etiquette 3, Firearms 2, Stealth 2
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 2, Finance 3, Camarilla Lore 4, Law 2, Politics 3
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Dominate 3, Thaumaturgy 2
Thaumaturgical Paths: Blood 2, Weather Control 1
Backgrounds: Contacts 4, Generation 3, Herd 2, Influence 2, Resources 3, Retainers 3, Camarilla Status 3
Virtues: Conscience 2, Self-Control 5, Courage 3
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 5

Background: The hidden source sees everything that goes on in the city - or at least she talks to people who do. When it's information that's needed, she's the one everyone turns to, or at least everyone who can meet her price. Those whom she trusts know how to get in touch with her; everyone else just has to hope that, if they need her, they're lucky enough to find her.

Image: Average for a Nosferatu, she wears voluminous clothes and a floppy hat to cover up her appearance as much as possible. Marked and stained by the sewers, her garb is practically unidentifiable. A pity the same can't be said for her face - wrinkled and covered with warts, her bald visage is something out of a nightmare. Fortunately, most of the time the Nosferatu wears visages other than her own - Obfuscate has its cosmetic uses as well as its tactical ones.

Roleplaying Hints: Don't come out of the shadows unless you have a deal pending. Trade information for favors or more info, but always keep the balance of trade decidedly in your favor. Use your appearance as a weapon, to shock and confuse vampires who can't see past a person's looks. Keep a very small soft spot for the underdog - you know what it's like to be hated and kicked down.

Clan: Nosferatu
Nature: Loner
Demeanor: Curmudgeon
Generation: 11th
Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 0
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 2, Wits 4
Talents: Acting 3, Alertness 3, Brawl 1, Dodge 2, Empathy 2, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 1
Skills: Etiquette 2, Firearms 1, Security 1, Stealth 1
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 2, Camarilla Lore 3, Computer 2, Finance 2, Investigation 3, Linguistics 2, Politics 1, Sabbat Lore 2
Disciplines: Fortitude 1, Obfuscate 3, Potence 2
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Generation 2, Contacts 3, Influences 1
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 3, Courage 2
Humanity: 6
Willpower: 5

Background: His Majesty the prince's choice to rid the streets of annoying anarchs and other rabble, the scourge has the power of life and death over unauthorized Kindred. Always traveling with backup, he has the prince's mandate to enforce at least a few of the Traditions in fatal fashion. Hated and feared by those with something to hide (such as themselves), the scourge is one of the most despised Kindred in the city. It's a good thing for him, then, that he loves his work.

Image: The scourge affects a tougher-than-thou image - dark sunglasses, black hat, leather duster and shotgun - for purposes of intimidating idiot neonates and anarchs. When he goes to work, he dresses less stylishly, but with much more of an eye toward ease of movement. At any given time, the scourge has at least one ghoul or subordinate backing him up, not to mention a small arsenal secreted somewhere on his person.

Roleplaying Hints: Judge each target and treat him accordingly. Have no compunctions about lying, cheating, stealing or terrorizing to get what you want - and you honestly do enjoy putting those pain-in-the-ass anarchs out of their misery.

Clan: Gangrel
Nature: Director
Demeanor: Bravo
Generation: 10th
Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 1
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 4, Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Dodge 2, Intimidation 3, Streetwise 2
Skills: Drive 2, Firearms 4, Melee 2, Security 1, Survival 2
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 3, Investigation 2, Sabbat Lore 3
Disciplines: Animalism 2, Celerity 1, Fortitude 3, Protean 2
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Camarilla Status 2, Generation 3
Virtues: Conscience 1, Self-Control 4, Courage 5
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 7

Background: Service, loyal service, is all that the ghoul knows now. By day he still holds his day job, but the charade of office and bureaucracy wears thinner every day. Night, when it's time to serve the master's wishes with his meager skills - that's when the ghoul feels alive. He'll do anything to make his regnant happy. Anything.

Image: A slightly disheveled businessman, the loyal ghoul is vaguely attractive, in a fleshy, middle-aged sort of way. His suit is a few years out of fashion, his glasses a bit thick and his hairline receding, but he radiates an air of competence. He carries a pistol, which he of course has no idea of how to use.

Roleplaying Hints: You know your chosen field very, very well, and have no trouble slapping down anyone who questions your expertise. Well, anyone except your regnant, the one whose blood is so very, very sweet. For him you'll kill without hesitation, steal without a second thought and lie in a heartbeat. Someday, if you're very, very good, he might make you a vampire as well, but in the meantime you're content to do what you can to make him happy and protect him.

Clan: N/A
Nature: Masochist
Demeanor: Conformer
Generation: N/A
Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Talents: Alertness 2, Intimidation 3, Leadership 3, Subterfuge 1
Skills: Drive 2, Etiquette 3, Security 1
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 3, Finance 3, Investigation 2, Law 3, Linguistics 2, Politics 3
Disciplines: Auspex 1, Celerity 1
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 2, Contacts 3, Influence 1, Resources 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 4, Courage 3
Humanity: 7
Willpower: 5

Background: Every anarch's nightmare and every primogen's whipping boy, the sheriff is responsible for enforcing the laws of the city. He does this with an iron hand inside a velvet glove that's showing a lot of wear - anarchs and troublemakers understand only one thing these nights, and that's force.

Image: The sheriff is a looming, hulking presence - six-and-a-half feet of muscle and mean. While he can dress up for Elysium or audiences with the prince, the sheriff's scarred and ugly mug is more at home in a Kevlar-and-denim ensemble. A shotgun is his weapon of choice; it's got more stopping power than any mere machine gun, and it's great for Kindred crowd control.

Roleplaying Hints: Play stupid and let the anarchs get overconfident. There's no sense in showing them that you've outsmarted them until it's time for the game to end. Insults roll right off you; you do your job and you do it well, and the whining from those vampiric brats is proof. Uphold the city's law to the letter, and add a few codicils that you think are worthwhile.

Clan: Brujah
Nature: Judge
Demeanor: Monster
Generation: 9th
Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 5
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 5, Appearance 1
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 5
Talents: Alertness 3, Brawl 3, Dodge 2, Intimidation 4, Leadership 3
Skills: Animal Ken 1, Drive 3, Firearms 4, Melee 2, Security 3, Stealth 1, Survival 2
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 4, Politics 2, Sabbat Lore 3
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Celerity 4, Fortitude 3, Potence 4, Presence 4
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 2, Camarilla Status 3, Generation 4, Herd 3, Resources 2
Virtues: Conscience 2, Self-Control 5, Courage 4
Humanity: 6
Willpower: 8

Background: The Tremere interrogator serves both her clan and her city, though the former takes precedence at all times. Through a combination of thaumaturgical expertise and a detailed understanding of pain and its applications, she makes sure that those whom fate delivers to her unveil all of their secrets. Not everyone has access to her talents, but those who do find her invaluable.

Image: Thoroughly modern in her appearance, the interrogator prefers severe business suits, and lab coats for when she gets down to work. Her face is all angles and edges, giving her a raptorlike visage. Her fingers, on the other hand, are slender and graceful, and she always wears black leather gloves to protect them.

Roleplaying Hints: You have many interests and talents, but your work supersedes them all. In conversation, you're the one who asks the questions - long-winded stories bore you, and you prefer to get straight to the point. You're hard to like, but easy to work with, at least from the outside. Your patients probably find you less charming.

Clan: Tremere
Nature: Autocrat
Demeanor: Perfectionist
Generation: 11th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 4, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Talents: Acting 2, Alertness 3, Empathy 3, Intimidation 3, Leadership 2
Skills: Etiquette 2, Firearms 1, Music 1, Repair 1
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 3, Camarilla Lore 4, Computer 2, Finance 2, Investigation 4, Law 3, Politics 3, Sabbat Lore 3
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Dominate 3, Fortitude 2, Presence 2, Thaumaturgy 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: The Lure of Flames 3, Hands of Destruction 2, Blood 1
Backgrounds: Camarilla Status 3, Contacts 4, Generation 2, Herd 2, Influence 1, Resources 2, Retainers 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 5, Courage 3
Humanity: 4
Willpower: 6

Background: The harpy is the arbiter of style and status in the city. With a flock of her peers, she peers out from Elysium to bestow good fortune or venomous malice with but a word. Everyone courts her favor - especially those who despise her.

Image: A vision of supernatural and predatory loveliness, the harpy always makes a statement with her appearance. Gowns from centuries past, exquisitely tailored to play up her beauty, are standard apparel for her when she wants to be seen - and she is never seen when she does not want to be.

Roleplaying Hints: No one is your equal. You are judge, jury and social executioner, and anyone who dares contradict or insult you has committed an unpardonable crime. Respond well to flattery - if it's done well - but never, ever let yourself grow predictable. You hold the reputation of everyone in the city in your hands, and you know it.

Clan: Toreador
Nature: Gallant
Demeanor: Celebrant
Generation: 9th
Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 4, Manipulation 4, Appearance 4
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 3
Talents: Acting 3, Alertness 3, Empathy 3, Intimidation 4, Leadership 3, Subterfuge 3
Skills: Etiquette 3, Firearms 1, Music 3
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 3, Linguistics 3, Occult 2, Politics 3
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Celerity 3, Presence 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 2, Camarilla Status 3, Contacts 3, Fame 2, Generations 4, Influence 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 5, Courage 4
Humanity: 4
Willpower: 8

Background: The unliving can appreciate grace, beauty and art far better than can the living, who have but a few brief decades to contemplate it. The keeper of Elysium preserves that for the Kindred, enforcing the laws of Elysium and carefully gathering the artifacts of culture and inspiration for the vampires of the city's pleasure.

Image: The keeper of Elysium dresses soberly, but in expensive clothing than can come from any era of human history, depending on her whim. Her demeanor is sober and reserved, but she sees everything that goes on in her domain, and deals harshly with those who would violate Elysium's sanctity.

Roleplaying Hints: Elysium is your garden. Share your treasures with those who show a genuine interest and feed the frauds to the harpies. The peace and tradition of Elysium are paramount to you, and you deal harshly with any violators. You can call on the might of the entire city to do so, and have resorted to that tactic on multiple occasions.

Clan: Toreador
Nature: Celebrant
Demeanor: Pedagogue
Generation: 9th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 4, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
Talents: Alertness 3, Empathy 2
Skills: Etiquette 3, Firearms 1, Melee 1, Music 3, Security 2
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 2, Computer 1, Finance 3, Law 3, Linguistics 4, Politics 2, Science 1
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Celerity 1, Presence 4
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Camarilla Status 1, Generation 4, Herd 1, Influence 2, Resources 3
Virtues: Conscience 5, Self-Control 4, Courage 2
Humanity: 6
Willpower: 5

Background: It has taken centuries, but the primogen has finally clawed her way to the top of the local branch of her clan. Now she speaks for all the Malkavians in her city, and her word carries a great deal of weight on the primogen council. She doesn't agree with the current prince on, well, on much of anything, but isn't ready to move against him - yet. In the meantime, she moves in council to thwart his aims, never crossing the irrevocable boundary of open rebellion.

Image: The Malkavian primogen dresses as a prim and proper woman of the mid-1800s, modestly garbed and with downcast countenance. She has always appeared this way, so far as anyone in the city remembers. Perhaps she always will.

Roleplaying Hints: You did not achieve your age or position by wandering around in bunny slippers and pajamas. Your madness is a cold and terrifying thing, twining perfectly around your ambition to help you achieve the bloody heights of the primogenship. You are not ready to move openly against the prince, but in the meanwhile you enjoy nothing more than thwarting his will.

Clan: Malkavian
Nature: Fanatic
Demeanor: Penitent
Generation: 8th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 4
Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
Talents: Alertness 4, Dodge 3, Empathy 3, Intimidation 3, Leadership 4, Streetwise 2
Skills: Animal Ken 2, Etiquette 4, Firearms 2, Music 3, Stealth 3
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 4, Camarilla Lore 4, Investigation 3, Law 3, Linguistics 1, Medicine 2, Politics 3
Disciplines: Auspex 4, Celerity 3, Dominate 5, Obfuscate 4, Protean 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Camarilla Status 4, Contacts 5, Herd 3, Generation 5
Virtues: Conscience 4, Self-Control 3, Courage 5
Humanity: 3
Willpower: 8

Background: The prince may rule the city, but the seneschal is the one who keeps it running from night to night. He who would see the prince must first convince the seneschal of the urgency of his business; the seneschal is the keeper of the keys to the prince's presence. Publicly subservient but never craven, he controls far more of the city than even his master suspects.

Image: Tall, gray-haired and impeccably groomed, the seneschal is the very picture of gentility. His suit is black and immaculate, his cane silver-handled and his manner precisely polite.

Roleplaying Hints: You know where everyone stands in the city, and where all of the bodies are buried as well. Always be polite, but leave no doubt as to who really runs the city. You have the prince's trust and his permission to use his authority; use both wisely and make sure not to abuse either.

Clan: Ventrue
Nature: Director
Demeanor: Conformist
Generation: 10th
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 5, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 5, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
Talents: Acting 1, Alertness 4, Brawl 2, Dodge 4, Empathy 3, Intimidation 4, Leadership 4, Subterfuge 4
Skills: Drive 1, Etiquette 4, Firearms 4, Music 2, Security 4, Stealth 4
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 4, Camarilla Lore 4, Finance 4, Investigation 4, Law 4, Linguistics 1, Occult 2, Politics 3, Sabbat Lore 3
Disciplines: Auspex 4, Celerity 4, Dominate 4, Fortitude 3, Obfuscate 2, Presence 4, Protean 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 3, Camarilla Status 4, Contacts 3, Generation 2, Herd 3, Influence 3, Mentor 4, Resources 3, Retainers 3
Virtues: Conscience 4, Self-Control 5, Courage 4
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 9

Background: The prince has been a part of the city for centuries, even though he has only been prince for a bare handful of decades. He has spent his entire unlife here climbing from the ranks of the swarming neonates, and now he holds the entire city in his grip. Within his domain, his is the power of life and death, of creation and destruction, and he uses that power as he pleases.

Image: The prince cuts a terrifying figure. He prefers hand-tailored suits of the latest fashion, cut to accentuate his looming figure. His hair is cut short in imitation, perhaps, of the style of his living days, and he rarely smiles. His eyes are a steely but deceptively mild blue, and few can meet his gaze for long.

Roleplaying Hints: You are the prince. Your word is law. Brook as little opposition as possible. While the primogen and others must be respected, you make the final decisions and you make them stick. If anyone argues, you have the option of calling the blood hunt - and you never let your enemies forget it.

Clan: Ventrue
Nature: Autocrat
Demeanor: Visionary
Generation: 8th
Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 5, Manipulation 4, Appearance 4
Mental: Perception 5, Intelligence 5, Wits 5
Talents: Alertness 4, Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Dodge 3, Empathy 4, Intimidation 4, Leadership 5, Subterfuge 3
Skills: Drive 1, Etiquette 3, Firearms 2, Melee 3, Stealth 2
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 4, Finance 3, Law 5, Linguistics 2, Politics 4, Sabbat Lore 3
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Celerity 4, Dominate 5, Fortitude 3, Presence 4, Protean 4
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 3, Camarilla Status 5, Contacts 5, Generation 5, Herd 4, Influence 4, Resources 4
Virtues: Conscience 4, Self-Control 5, Courage 5
Humanity: 4
Willpower: 9

Background: It's been a half-century or more since the roving archon had a home city. Since then, she's been in the employ of a justicar, traveling from city to city to investigate whatever her superior tells her to. Her presence is always accompanied by fear, for an archon is both a power in her own right and a potential harbinger of a justicar's fatal attentions.

Image: Dressed for travel, the archon certainly looks unimpressive. Her sandy-colored hair is cut raggedly short, and her clothing is drab khakis that have seen too many miles. She carries a single gun, loaded with silver bullets, for safety between the cities, but she never uses it on Kindred. After all, she doesn't need to.

Roleplaying Hints: Everyone has something to hide. Your mission is to discover whether what they're hiding actually matters. You have a low bullshit tolerance and a short fuse - you've seen every scam and every ruse before, and they're not going to start working now. If you see a problem, you are more than capable of dealing with it yourself. Call for backup only if things are about to go completely to hell; otherwise you're utterly self-reliant.

Clan: Toreador
Nature: Judge
Demeanor: Martyr
Generation: 9th
Physical: Strength 5, Dexterity 5, Stamina 5
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2
Mental: Perception 5, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
Talents: Alertness 4, Athletics 4, Brawl 5, Dodge 4, Empathy 2, Intimidation 4, Streetwise 4, Subterfuge 4
Skills: Drive 2, Firearms 4, Melee 2, Repair 3, Security 3, Stealth 4, Survival 3
Knowledges: Camarilla Lore 4, Investigation 5, Law 3, Medicine 3, Politics 3, Sabbat Lore 4
Disciplines: Auspex 3, Celerity 4, Fortitude 3, Obfuscate 3, Presence 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Camarilla Status 3, Contacts 3, Generation 4, Resources 2
Virtues: Conscience 3, Self-Control 4, Courage 5
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 10

Background: Elected by the Camarilla's Inner Council, the justicar has the power to bring even a rogue prince to heel. Invested with the authority to strip a prince of his authority or destroy an entire generation of Kindred, the justicar is the Camarilla's court of last resort. When the justicar arrives in town, it's already too late - all hell has broken loose and it's time for the cleanup to commence.

Image: The justicar is well over six feet tall and carries the weight of centuries with him. He dresses with the times, but is most comfortable in the tunic and palla of his breathing days centuries ago. When in public, however, the justicar dresses for effect, dominating any room he is in with his presence.

Roleplaying Hints: You are all business - the Camarilla's business - and woe betide anyone who tries to stop you. You have no compunctions about using any and all of your powers (legal, supernatural or physical) to do what needs be done. You only deal with problems of an earthshattering nature, so whatever has drawn you to the city is serious indeed.

Clan: Malkavian
Nature: Competitor
Demeanor: Pedagogue
Generation: 6th
Physical: Strength 5, Dexterity 5, Stamina 5
Social: Charisma 6, Manipulation 7, Appearance 3
Mental: Perception 6, Intelligence 4, Wits 6
Talents: Alertness 5, Athletics 4, Brawl 3, Dodge 5, Empathy 2, Intimidation 5, Leadership 3, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Animal Ken 1, Etiquette 4, Firearms 4, Melee 4
Knowledges: Bureaucracy 4, Camarilla Lore 5, Investigation 4, Law 5, Politics 4, Sabbat Lore 4
Disciplines: Auspex 4, Celerity 4, Dominate 5, Fortitude 3, Obfuscate 5, Potence 5, Protean 3
Thaumaturgical Paths: None
Backgrounds: Allies 2, Camarilla Status 4, Contacts 5, Generation 7, Herd 2, Resources 4
Virtues: Conscience 4, Self-Control 4, Courage 4
Humanity: 5
Willpower: 9