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by The Word Count Seeking Land of A Running Man. . 1 reads.

Vampires in New York

Nobody talks much about New York. The city is usually mentioned with distain among the kindred of Chicago. It is generally dismissed as either Anarchs or Sabbat, not worthy of discussion or historical context. Many of the powerful kindred of New York like it that way. Most of the weaker kindred have no knowledge of the lack of awareness of their city from the kindred of the other cities in the “New” World.

The city of New York was originally just the lower portions of the island of Manhattan when the first vampire arrived there in the early 19th century and he was a Malkavian. Later a Nosferatu arrived and after a decade moved across the river to what would later become Brooklyn. These became the first princes of New York. Later at the start of the 20th century the Sabbat arrived in The Bronx.

A critical point in the history of the history of New York was when the prince’s child, who was known to have been strongly dominated through the blood bond by his sire, committed diablerie. The case was appealed to the Prince of Brooklyn and the Arch Bishop of The Bronx and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity / passion of either the prince, the child, or both. Having determined that the child understood the severity of his crime and confident he would not do that again, he was promoted to “prince” of Manhattan.

“Boss Tweed” as he was known proved to be a weak but barely effective leader. Anarchs ruled in downtown. A loner Gangrel had his domain in the far north. The island became a collection of smaller domains each perfectly capable of supporting the kindred population within them. Treaties existed with the Sabbat to the north and the Camarilla to the east.

And then Boss Tweed vanished. It was simply assumed that he was destroyed when the Elysium in the Twin Towers crashed in 2001, but in fact he had developed a unique power to astrally project himself into the future and realizing that his Elysium would become empty space in the air, he retreated to his alternate haven in Brooklyn, ironically his crypt where he was supposed to have been buried.

Searching out information about the details of the collapse of the towers he found an extremely wounded first responder who was dying from all the cancerous materials that he absorbed through his lungs. He took pity on the young man and embraced him; using dominate to erase the horrors of the event from his mind. This had the secondary effect of erasing most of his memory. The embrace did not eliminate the significant damage that was done to his lungs and he would have to cure the aggravated damage every evening to return to full health.

After giving him some modicum of training to his child, he presented him to the Nosferatu Claudius, as he didn’t want himself to become publicly known at the time. Meanwhile Boss Tweed secretly traveled Manhattan and was disappointed when the Sabbat used the subway system to invade the weaker middle of the middle of the island. When he determined that it would be possible to use the cover of a major storm to shut down the subway systems to keep the Sabbat to send reinforcements, he presented himself in visions to his child to provide a “quest” to reorganize the isolated domains of Manhattan to provide a new “prince” of Manhattan and a unified “king” to combine the domains of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Then when the storm occurred, he took it upon himself, along with a Brujah “prince” from Queens to take out the Caitiff forces that were loosely occupying Midtown Manhattan before the forces of his child arrived. The forces of uptown Manhattan managed to prevent the Sabbat from reinforcing the Caitiff over the bridges, as well with Lupine forces of Queens. The prince of Brooklyn was named the “master” (his own idea) of New York and the prince of Manhattan became his child, “John” who was dubbed “Arctangent” by Claudius.

Once this was done, John turned his attention to the “thin blood” problem. The Sabbat had not had a strong grip on the forces they left behind. As a result, 13th generation Caitiff embraced several 14th generation thin bloods and left them alone to embrace even thinner 15th generation thin bloods.

“Thin blood” generations are considered an abomination to most kindred. They sometimes line on the kindred border between kine and kindred. They often retain many of the passions and desires they had before their embrace. John found them caught between the vampire desire of the blood and the moral desire of things such as sex. He took pity on them and could not destroy them. Instead he established a coterie based on a rigid hierarchy of blood bonding.

He had found one of the surviving “shovel heads” (whose head was literally formed in the shape of a shovel by a flesh and bone shaping Tzimisce of the Sabbat) who was of 10th generation and put him in command of the coterie. He then enlisted the aid of a Daughter of Cacophony to provide music and an emotional balance to the leadership.

He established the coterie as a loosely religious (of sorts) group dedicated to his own memories of his sire (in his haven, too horrible to name) and the writings of Ayn Rand (which apparently, he used to read a lot when he was a New York City fireman but most of that memory was still mostly blocked by the old blood bond from his sire). And while he would visit them weekly, the day to day operations of the coterie, who drew themselves to charitable works among the kine they fed on, was handled by the former Shovel Head Caitiff named Luke.

The battle of Midtown Manhattan, however, was not forgotten by the Sabbat and the powerful Gangrel of upper Manhattan betrayed Prince John for 30 kilo sized silver coins from Australia. The Sabbat, under the paladin Lucifer of the Clan Tzimisce had him crucified until he submitted to the Sabbat. Meanwhile the Gangrel James became prince of Manhattan and was generally considered a tyrant.

After several years of John literally “hanging around,” Boss Tweed journeyed to Washington D.C. where the original prince of Brooklyn who had negotiated the terms of the original treaty among Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx, to get them to see the still reigning Arch Bishop of The Bronx to free his child and deliver punishment to the Gangrel James. Upon meeting the Arch Bishop Raphael, it was agreed that John should be freed, the recently demoted paladin Lucifer should be allowed to commit diablerie on James and then be promoted to Arch Bishop allowing both Boss Tweed and Raphael to travel to Washington D.C. to combat more pressing problems facing vampires.

John Arctangent was reunited with his coterie of thin bloods. However, he did not want to publicly reveal himself to the kindred of Manhattan in general because there were too many questions he did not want to answer about the sudden disappearance of James. So, he remained with the coterie for a brief time until he left to be at the “right hand of his sire” in Washington D.C. promising to return in a few years to judge kindred and kine and resume his rightful place as the prince of Manhattan.

And thus the Coterie of the Thin Bloods joyfully awaited the “Second Coming.”

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