Inside a Failed Experiment
It takes years, even decades, for The Carthian Movement to perform an experiment on a domain. The preliminary work, agreeing what form the experiment should take, consumes much of this time, but simply making sure the other Kindred in the city follow their rules and don’t louse up the exercise with their very presence is also difficult. More experiments fail than succeed, but fortunately the Carthians always have more ideas. From the ashes of one failure rises a new agenda, a new mission, ready to add its strains to the Requiem.
But not always. Sometimes, a failure is devastating enough that no Kindred remain in the city. This devastation doesn’t have to involve fire and screams. Embarrassment, shame and Depression are enough to drive the undead away from their works. A failed city can sit empty, the nights safe from vampires, for months or years before another covenant claims the domain, especially if the Kindred in neighboring cities never hear the details of the failure (and who likes advertising their mistakes?).
This, then, is a tour of such a failure, the rise and fall of a Carthian experiment and a detailed look at the wreckage left behind. The city isn’t named, because this could happen anywhere.
One particular coterie was very interested in this process. The coterie had come together by chance, but had one important trait in common. They felt that modern society was in decline, that the United States in particular had created an environment in which what a person could get away with was more important than what he could do (see the sidebar for a rundown of the coterie and its members). The coterie, calling itself the Burning Horizon, took charge of the future of the city’s nights, with the old Prefect’s blessing and endorsement.
The Burning Horizon felt that the neonates of American Kindred society, born as they were to culture of entitlement and privilege, were ill equipped to deal with the harsh realities of unlife. They were used to always having a fallback — parents, friends, credit cards — and few of them had any idea what it was to be truly in danger. The coterie realized that they couldn’t do much to change these problems in mortal society (and indeed, the complacency of the modern mortal made feeding easy), but they were all sickened to consider what the future of The Carthian Movement might entail if all of the new recruits were spoiled weaklings.
Therefore, the coterie approached the Prefect and outlined their plan. They intended to “train” the vampires of the city, to teach them everything that they lacked from their mortal lives in addition to what they needed to know about the Requiem. To that end, the coterie spent several months with the Prefect (since he was the oldest Kindred in the city) soaking up everything he had learned over more than a century of unlife. When he finally sank into Torpor, the Burning Horizon was recognized as the authority in the city.
Why was there never a vote or a consensus on the matter? The very complacency and ignorance that the Burning Horizon sought to stamp out worked for them, in this case. The past 30 years had been difficult on the Kindred of the city for a variety of reasons, and many of them had left, perished or sank into Torpor. Only a bare handful of the vampires who originally supported a democratic method of choosing a leader remained, and the newer arrivals didn’t know enough to demand it. The Burning Horizon now ran the city’s nights.
The night after the Prefect dropped out of sight (for letting other Kindred know the location of one’s sleeping chamber is unwise), the coterie outlined their plan for the future. That plan had three steps: Accounting, Training and Assignment. First, they planned to make a full accounting of all of the vampires of the city. Kindred would be required to provide their names, clans and a method of reaching them (a phone number or email address sufficed). The coterie would also interview each Kindred and assess his or her ability to function in the city. Any deemed delinquent would receive training in such areas as self-control, feeding, stealth, combat, Discipline use, finance, mechanics and any of a dozen other fields that the coterie was equipped to provide. Finally, each vampire was given an assignment within the city, something to do to earn the privilege of residing there.
The first Kindred to make a public refusal was a Ventrue named Jennifer Caufield. Born to privilege in life, she had been Embraced by a powerful Invictus Kindred in another city and had moved and joined the Carthians out of spite. She hadn’t wished to work under The Invictus, and had no desire to work as a Carthian — she simply wanted to enjoy her Requiem as an eternally beautiful predator. Christian had Max pay Jennifer a visit, and Max gave Jennifer a crystal-clear choice: submit to the Burning Horizon’s methods or leave the city. Caufield refused to do either. She flew into a rage and ordered Max out of her sight, but the Gangrel was quite prepared for this response. Before Caufield knew what had happened, she was tackled, trussed, staked and subsequently beheaded. Thereafter, her skull decorated the wall of the Burning Horizon’s Townhouse, as a warning to other miscreants. She wasn’t the only one to refuse, and she wasn’t the only one to meet Final Death because of it, but other Kindred simply met the sunrise rather than lose their heads. The Burning Horizon wanted to make it quite clear that dissenters could expect to disappear entirely, leaving nothing but ash on the wind.
The Horizon’s tactics for enforcing their policies were swift and brutal. They knew, of course, what the weaknesses of being a vampire entailed, and likewise knew how to exploit the particular foibles of each of the clans. Over the years, the coterie had cultivated an astonishingly efficient system for feeding (see sidebar), and each member maintained several Ghouls. Using these servants, the coterie focused on overwhelming and incapacitating their enemies quickly. The coterie members used whatever weapons and methods suited their environment, usually eschewing guns since they had little effect on Kindred. Bladed weapons such as machetes and hatchets worked better, and could sever a vampire’s hands or feet to prevent retaliation or escape long enough to facilitate a well-placed stake. The Horizon’s methods were brutal, but The Message was unmistakable — other Kindred were welcome to direct their own Requiems, but not in the Horizon’s city.
Kindred found to be in the city but not on the roster were usually taken to the Townhouse and questioned. Depending on who was doing the questioning, the tone of this interview could be friendly, terse or downright hostile. Visitors from other cities were expected to contact one of the locals (and if someone on the roster vouched for a visitor, the Horizon usually stopped asking questions), but the Horizon understood that not all Kindred had the knowledge or Contacts necessary and was prepared to be merciful. All visitors, however, were added to the roster, and if they were unwilling to give up the information necessary, the Pack drove them to the city limits and told them not to return.
The Kindred in the city weren’t universally pleased with this system of government, but the Horizon and their supporters were quick to point out that remaining in the city was by no means mandatory. Neighboring cities, however, weren’t always willing to accept “refugees” from the Horizon’s brutal reign. For a start, the leaders of these cities were never sure that the Horizon wasn’t sending out spies and agitators — it seemed the sort of thing they were likely to do. Fv7 her, the Kindred authorities of the bordering cities had many reasons to hate the Horizon and their politics. After all, passing through the Horizon’s city was a hassle, because the Pack was so aggressive and effective. Visiting or hiding out was difficult because the Horizon’s policing “outed” any hidden vampires quickly (and such vampires often found that hiding their Status via the Obfuscate Discipline didn’t work well for some reason — see Carthian Law, p. 172). More annoying still, the Horizon’s practices seemed to work. The Kindred who chose to dwell in the city had purpose, training and a good supply of blood, since the Burning Horizon had worked so hard to alleviate problems with feeding. The leaders in nearby cities, most of whom were not Carthians, were afraid that the Kindred of their cities would want to emulate the Horizon’s examples and thus tried to both vilify them to their own charges and make unlife as difficult as possible for the Horizon and their followers.
These leaders needn’t have worried. The system was efficient, the rules were clear, but disorder wasn’t far away.
To the coterie’s surprise, Tanya was the first to break. Her lust for knowledge slowly became a more primitive hunger, and she spent her nights “managing” the Bank, drinking all she could stomach from the still-living victims. The destruction of the Bank is the night that surviving members of the Horizon use to mark the beginning of the end.
One night, Max (who usually brought the victims to the Bank), was unable to find much in the way of suitable vessels. Hunting had grown difficult as the mortals in the city had become afraid of walking at night, since people so often went missing. Tanya flew into a frenzy born of rage and hunger, and tore the place apart looking for any spilled drops of blood. Max ordered her Ghouls to subdue Tanya, but the Ghouls’ enhanced strength seemed to leave them when they tried to fight someone they had been ordered never to disobey. Tanya killed them and took their blood, and in the process the Bank caught fire. Max fled, but Tanya perished in the blaze. The city’s fire department put out the flames before the building was destroyed, and found the Ghouls’ corpses in the ashes.
Christian and the other members of the Horizon suddenly found themselves with several daunting tasks. First, they had to find a way to replace Tanya, since her knowledge of law and political theory had formed the cornerstone of the Horizon’s doctrines. Second, they had to find a way to help the Kindred of the city feed, since the Horizon had promised to do so. Finally, the Horizon knew that there would be repercussions from the mortal world, and theyhad to help the Kindred cope with them. That last task cost the Horizon another member.
Ted Samson, the Mekhet member of the Horizon, had been responsible for many of the disappearances in the city. (Max was the other member commonly tasked with obtaining vessels.) Although Ted had taken great pains to leave his sloth behind, he still wasn’t as thorough as he should have been. Or perhaps the guilt of leading so many people to their deaths caused him to sabotage his own efforts? No one knows, but the fact remains that the mortal police tracked Ted Samson down one night. He jumped into a car and tried to outrun them, but as the sun crested the horizon he was still driving. Rather than risk exposing the Kindred, he steered his car into a truck full of gasoline. Christian still speaks highly of Ted’s sacrifice, but it was not enough to save the experiment.
By now, the city’s Kindred were learning the truth about the Bank, and many of them were outraged. Some of the Kindred had been given tasks such as “making sure mortals frequent the nightclubs” and “maintaining the Masquerade,” and they felt betrayed by the Horizon’s actions. Even more incensed, though, were the Kindred who had been teaching other vampires how to maintain their Humanity in the face of hunting and killing. The Horizon, it seemed, expected others to do as they said, not as they did, and that didn’t go over well with the Kindred of the city at all. The rumblings of dissent began, and it didn’t take long for them reach the ears of the neighboring cities.
Christian tried fleeing to a number of the nearby cities, but they were not prepared to give him asylum. He discovered that many of his former supporters were ready to put his head on a pike as soon as he admitted failure, but there was nothing else he could do. In Disguise, he left the city one summer night, and his current whereabouts are unknown.
Although these thoughts Haven’t crossed anyone’s mind yet, somewhere the roster of Kindred might still exist. Though some of the Kindred in that book are dead (and are noted as such if they died before the Horizon’s fall), many of them are still extent, and this roster notes their names, clans and special skills, as the Horizon used the roster as a way to keep track of what these Kindred had taught to whom. The roster might have been destroyed by now, or perhaps Christian still carries it. Then again, it might simply be in a safe at the Townhouse, waiting to be discovered.
Somewhere beneath the city, though, the former Prefect still sleeps. Are his dreams troubled by the failure of the Burning Horizon? Does he hear the screams from the victims of the Bank, or know the truth about the waters of the quarry? Indeed, was the experiment that took place in the city truly a failure, or is it still in progress?
But not always. Sometimes, a failure is devastating enough that no Kindred remain in the city. This devastation doesn’t have to involve fire and screams. Embarrassment, shame and Depression are enough to drive the undead away from their works. A failed city can sit empty, the nights safe from vampires, for months or years before another covenant claims the domain, especially if the Kindred in neighboring cities never hear the details of the failure (and who likes advertising their mistakes?).
This, then, is a tour of such a failure, the rise and fall of a Carthian experiment and a detailed look at the wreckage left behind. The city isn’t named, because this could happen anywhere.
History: Mistakes Were Made
The city had been Carthian domain for over three decades, but the Prefect of the city was nearing the end of his elected Tenure. When the Movement took over the city, it was decided that the Prefect would be elected and would serve for a period of not more than 40 years, or until he felt the need to sink into Torpor. That time was approaching, and the Carthians of the city realized that they needed to make arrangements for leadership and government after the Prefect was gone.One particular coterie was very interested in this process. The coterie had come together by chance, but had one important trait in common. They felt that modern society was in decline, that the United States in particular had created an environment in which what a person could get away with was more important than what he could do (see the sidebar for a rundown of the coterie and its members). The coterie, calling itself the Burning Horizon, took charge of the future of the city’s nights, with the old Prefect’s blessing and endorsement.
The Burning Horizon felt that the neonates of American Kindred society, born as they were to culture of entitlement and privilege, were ill equipped to deal with the harsh realities of unlife. They were used to always having a fallback — parents, friends, credit cards — and few of them had any idea what it was to be truly in danger. The coterie realized that they couldn’t do much to change these problems in mortal society (and indeed, the complacency of the modern mortal made feeding easy), but they were all sickened to consider what the future of The Carthian Movement might entail if all of the new recruits were spoiled weaklings.
Therefore, the coterie approached the Prefect and outlined their plan. They intended to “train” the vampires of the city, to teach them everything that they lacked from their mortal lives in addition to what they needed to know about the Requiem. To that end, the coterie spent several months with the Prefect (since he was the oldest Kindred in the city) soaking up everything he had learned over more than a century of unlife. When he finally sank into Torpor, the Burning Horizon was recognized as the authority in the city.
Why was there never a vote or a consensus on the matter? The very complacency and ignorance that the Burning Horizon sought to stamp out worked for them, in this case. The past 30 years had been difficult on the Kindred of the city for a variety of reasons, and many of them had left, perished or sank into Torpor. Only a bare handful of the vampires who originally supported a democratic method of choosing a leader remained, and the newer arrivals didn’t know enough to demand it. The Burning Horizon now ran the city’s nights.
The night after the Prefect dropped out of sight (for letting other Kindred know the location of one’s sleeping chamber is unwise), the coterie outlined their plan for the future. That plan had three steps: Accounting, Training and Assignment. First, they planned to make a full accounting of all of the vampires of the city. Kindred would be required to provide their names, clans and a method of reaching them (a phone number or email address sufficed). The coterie would also interview each Kindred and assess his or her ability to function in the city. Any deemed delinquent would receive training in such areas as self-control, feeding, stealth, combat, Discipline use, finance, mechanics and any of a dozen other fields that the coterie was equipped to provide. Finally, each vampire was given an assignment within the city, something to do to earn the privilege of residing there.
Enforcement
Some of the Kindred in the city balked. The Burning Horizon’s plan required them to give away too much information, donate too much time and submit to schooling by another vampire. Many of the city’s neonates, especially those Embraced from the current generation, had a hard time submitting to any teacher or master. But these vampires learned quickly that the Burning Horizon wasn’t interested in argument.The first Kindred to make a public refusal was a Ventrue named Jennifer Caufield. Born to privilege in life, she had been Embraced by a powerful Invictus Kindred in another city and had moved and joined the Carthians out of spite. She hadn’t wished to work under The Invictus, and had no desire to work as a Carthian — she simply wanted to enjoy her Requiem as an eternally beautiful predator. Christian had Max pay Jennifer a visit, and Max gave Jennifer a crystal-clear choice: submit to the Burning Horizon’s methods or leave the city. Caufield refused to do either. She flew into a rage and ordered Max out of her sight, but the Gangrel was quite prepared for this response. Before Caufield knew what had happened, she was tackled, trussed, staked and subsequently beheaded. Thereafter, her skull decorated the wall of the Burning Horizon’s Townhouse, as a warning to other miscreants. She wasn’t the only one to refuse, and she wasn’t the only one to meet Final Death because of it, but other Kindred simply met the sunrise rather than lose their heads. The Burning Horizon wanted to make it quite clear that dissenters could expect to disappear entirely, leaving nothing but ash on the wind.
The Horizon’s tactics for enforcing their policies were swift and brutal. They knew, of course, what the weaknesses of being a vampire entailed, and likewise knew how to exploit the particular foibles of each of the clans. Over the years, the coterie had cultivated an astonishingly efficient system for feeding (see sidebar), and each member maintained several Ghouls. Using these servants, the coterie focused on overwhelming and incapacitating their enemies quickly. The coterie members used whatever weapons and methods suited their environment, usually eschewing guns since they had little effect on Kindred. Bladed weapons such as machetes and hatchets worked better, and could sever a vampire’s hands or feet to prevent retaliation or escape long enough to facilitate a well-placed stake. The Horizon’s methods were brutal, but The Message was unmistakable — other Kindred were welcome to direct their own Requiems, but not in the Horizon’s city.
Success
It took the better part of five years, but the Horizon managed to achieve their goals. Every Kindred in the city now had a particular function, and the coterie had a complete list of the vampires dwelling therein. The Horizon established a strict set of rules for how the Kindred of the city could comport themselves during their “off time.” (Though, since many of the jobs they assigned these Kindred took the better part of a night, time off became something of a luxury anyway.) Although Max and Christian were the most aggressive in policing the Kindred of the city, they also assembled a small coterie of vampires known in the city as “the Pack” (after the commonly used title of “Hound”), whose given task was to find and apprehend anyone not on the Horizon’s roster. Kindred outside the Pack were encouraged to report vampires they didn’t know, but were not given any particular reward for capturing them. (After all, it wasn’t their job, and if they were doing someone else’s job, then they weren’t doing their own.)Kindred found to be in the city but not on the roster were usually taken to the Townhouse and questioned. Depending on who was doing the questioning, the tone of this interview could be friendly, terse or downright hostile. Visitors from other cities were expected to contact one of the locals (and if someone on the roster vouched for a visitor, the Horizon usually stopped asking questions), but the Horizon understood that not all Kindred had the knowledge or Contacts necessary and was prepared to be merciful. All visitors, however, were added to the roster, and if they were unwilling to give up the information necessary, the Pack drove them to the city limits and told them not to return.
The Kindred in the city weren’t universally pleased with this system of government, but the Horizon and their supporters were quick to point out that remaining in the city was by no means mandatory. Neighboring cities, however, weren’t always willing to accept “refugees” from the Horizon’s brutal reign. For a start, the leaders of these cities were never sure that the Horizon wasn’t sending out spies and agitators — it seemed the sort of thing they were likely to do. Fv7 her, the Kindred authorities of the bordering cities had many reasons to hate the Horizon and their politics. After all, passing through the Horizon’s city was a hassle, because the Pack was so aggressive and effective. Visiting or hiding out was difficult because the Horizon’s policing “outed” any hidden vampires quickly (and such vampires often found that hiding their Status via the Obfuscate Discipline didn’t work well for some reason — see Carthian Law, p. 172). More annoying still, the Horizon’s practices seemed to work. The Kindred who chose to dwell in the city had purpose, training and a good supply of blood, since the Burning Horizon had worked so hard to alleviate problems with feeding. The leaders in nearby cities, most of whom were not Carthians, were afraid that the Kindred of their cities would want to emulate the Horizon’s examples and thus tried to both vilify them to their own charges and make unlife as difficult as possible for the Horizon and their followers.
These leaders needn’t have worried. The system was efficient, the rules were clear, but disorder wasn’t far away.
Breakdown
The Horizon’s system failed because the Kindred in charge refused to recognize that their tactics were making them inhuman. Many vampires died making the city what it was, and the souls of the Burning Horizon shouldered the weight of those murders. Many more mortals perished under the fangs of the city’s Kindred, and the Horizon likewise took the responsibility for most of them because of their tactics in feeding the city (see the sidebar).To the coterie’s surprise, Tanya was the first to break. Her lust for knowledge slowly became a more primitive hunger, and she spent her nights “managing” the Bank, drinking all she could stomach from the still-living victims. The destruction of the Bank is the night that surviving members of the Horizon use to mark the beginning of the end.
One night, Max (who usually brought the victims to the Bank), was unable to find much in the way of suitable vessels. Hunting had grown difficult as the mortals in the city had become afraid of walking at night, since people so often went missing. Tanya flew into a frenzy born of rage and hunger, and tore the place apart looking for any spilled drops of blood. Max ordered her Ghouls to subdue Tanya, but the Ghouls’ enhanced strength seemed to leave them when they tried to fight someone they had been ordered never to disobey. Tanya killed them and took their blood, and in the process the Bank caught fire. Max fled, but Tanya perished in the blaze. The city’s fire department put out the flames before the building was destroyed, and found the Ghouls’ corpses in the ashes.
Christian and the other members of the Horizon suddenly found themselves with several daunting tasks. First, they had to find a way to replace Tanya, since her knowledge of law and political theory had formed the cornerstone of the Horizon’s doctrines. Second, they had to find a way to help the Kindred of the city feed, since the Horizon had promised to do so. Finally, the Horizon knew that there would be repercussions from the mortal world, and theyhad to help the Kindred cope with them. That last task cost the Horizon another member.
Ted Samson, the Mekhet member of the Horizon, had been responsible for many of the disappearances in the city. (Max was the other member commonly tasked with obtaining vessels.) Although Ted had taken great pains to leave his sloth behind, he still wasn’t as thorough as he should have been. Or perhaps the guilt of leading so many people to their deaths caused him to sabotage his own efforts? No one knows, but the fact remains that the mortal police tracked Ted Samson down one night. He jumped into a car and tried to outrun them, but as the sun crested the horizon he was still driving. Rather than risk exposing the Kindred, he steered his car into a truck full of gasoline. Christian still speaks highly of Ted’s sacrifice, but it was not enough to save the experiment.
By now, the city’s Kindred were learning the truth about the Bank, and many of them were outraged. Some of the Kindred had been given tasks such as “making sure mortals frequent the nightclubs” and “maintaining the Masquerade,” and they felt betrayed by the Horizon’s actions. Even more incensed, though, were the Kindred who had been teaching other vampires how to maintain their Humanity in the face of hunting and killing. The Horizon, it seemed, expected others to do as they said, not as they did, and that didn’t go over well with the Kindred of the city at all. The rumblings of dissent began, and it didn’t take long for them reach the ears of the neighboring cities.
Failure
The Horizon’s greatest strength was their efficiency and their resolve. Without Tanya, the Horizon lacked the knowledge to act decisively. Without Ted, the Horizon had lost a major source of zeal and commitment. Max died in a brawl with Kindred from a nearby city who refused to accompany her to the Townhouse, and John left the city as quietly as he’d arrived. He left behind a simple note to Christian. It read, “Good run, huh?”Christian tried fleeing to a number of the nearby cities, but they were not prepared to give him asylum. He discovered that many of his former supporters were ready to put his head on a pike as soon as he admitted failure, but there was nothing else he could do. In Disguise, he left the city one summer night, and his current whereabouts are unknown.
The City Tonight
A few Kindred still dwell in the city, but they don’t try to form any kind of government. This city has had enough leadership for a while. Hunting is difficult, anyway, since the mortal authorities are still trying to make sense of the long years of people turning up missing, and the citizenry is still afraid of night. The leaders of the cities bordering the Horizon’s look at the city as bad luck, and, as yet, no covenant has tried to establish a power base there (though that will undoubtedly change as memories fade).Although these thoughts Haven’t crossed anyone’s mind yet, somewhere the roster of Kindred might still exist. Though some of the Kindred in that book are dead (and are noted as such if they died before the Horizon’s fall), many of them are still extent, and this roster notes their names, clans and special skills, as the Horizon used the roster as a way to keep track of what these Kindred had taught to whom. The roster might have been destroyed by now, or perhaps Christian still carries it. Then again, it might simply be in a safe at the Townhouse, waiting to be discovered.
Somewhere beneath the city, though, the former Prefect still sleeps. Are his dreams troubled by the failure of the Burning Horizon? Does he hear the screams from the victims of the Bank, or know the truth about the waters of the quarry? Indeed, was the experiment that took place in the city truly a failure, or is it still in progress?
Burning Horizon: A Profile
The Kindred known collectively as the Burning Horizon took the name because they felt that looking ahead was more important than falling back on “traditional values.” Of course, looking to a bright horizon is painful to vampires, but that, they felt, was the point — growth is painful, and it was a fatal conceit of the modern world to think otherwise. The coterie’s focus was first and foremost on developing working solutions to current problems, rather than worrying about what had or had not worked in the past. The past, after all, was a different animal, and with technology and culture changing so quickly it was more important to remain current than to keep detailed records of the past.The coterie consisted of five Kindred:
- Christian Ingersoll, the former cop. Chris never worked the “mean streets” as a police officer. His beat was the richer neighborhoods, and, as a result, he saw white collar crime, drug use, domestic violence and other ugly crimes up close. He discovered, though, that he wasn’t really able to arrest many of the criminals, and when he did, their friends on the bench usually “took care of things.” By the time he was Embraced into clan Gangrel, he was bitter about the justice system and everything involved with it.
- Tanya Righter, the sociologist. Tanya was disillusioned with society by the time she graduated from college with her first degree. She saw what the corporate and academic worlds did to those who braved them, women in particular, and wanted no part of it. Blessed with a talent for manipulating bureaucracies and a knack for finding loose grant money, she remained in college, learning more about the trends of the worlds of business and political theory, until her Embrace as a Daeva.
- John Nowak, the laborer. John might look like a grease monkey (and, by his own admission, he is), but he’s never without a dog-eared paperback in his pocket, and he knows a lot more about the history of the last century than his nigh-toothless grimace and slow conversation would indicate. John believes that the greatest tragedy of the modern era is the move away from skilled labor, and laments that young men grow up never learning to change their cars’ tires, much less oil. John is a Nosferatu, Embraced one dark night in his garage.
- Max Nesler, the thug. Max (do not call her “Maxine”) was a petty thief and drug dealer. The coterie found her one night after she’d run afoul of a rival dealer who had beaten her bloody and left her in a parking lot. Christian debated killing her — despite her bad luck, she was an opportunist and a parasite, but Tanya pointed out that the young lady was simply playing the cards she’d been dealt, and clearly had some valuable skills. Christian decided to Embrace Max (he would have left this to Tanya, but Chris doesn’t really trust Succubi, and John wasn’t interested in siring childer).
- Ted Samson, the deserter. Ted joined the Army out of high school, hoping for a quick and easy way to pay for college. He soon discovered that military service was nothing resembling “quick” or “easy,” and fled the post before the end of basic training. He had barely had a chance to collect his wits when he was set upon by a vampire incensed by Ted’s sloth and cowardice. The vampire Embraced him, but Ted wasn’t clear as to why until he realized that he now he could never go back to either the Army or his family. Ted regrets his laziness, and brings an almost desperate zeal to everything he does. He is a Mekhet.
On Location: The Townhouse
The Burning Horizon rented out a townhouse in the city that the coterie members used as a base of operations (though never a haven). They didn’t bother with expensive security measures, but did keep the house well stocked with weapons and Ammunition. They never declared the place Elysium — Tanya was the only member of the coterie who felt that the tradition of Elysium had any merit — deciding instead to simply make sure that they had the upper hand while in the Townhouse.The house was tastefully decorated, but designed with an eye toward large, open spaces, enabling Kindred to be quickly surrounded and incapacitated if need be. The Townhouse was never open unless at least three of the Burning Horizon and three Ghouls were present (as discussed below, the coterie was notorious for its use of blood-bound servants), and no more than two visiting Kindred were allowed inside at once. The main room was sparsely furnished, including only a few chairs, a single plastic table and the skull of Jennifer Caufield nailed to a bare white wall.
The windows on the first and second floors were fitted with bulletproof glass, and every room contained at least two fire extinguishers. The house boasted an expensive and effective fire retardant system (halide rather than water-based, since the gas doesn’t hurt the Kindred). Very little wood could be found in the house, apart from the sharpened stakes that the Burning Horizon and their Ghouls carried.
Tonight, the Townhouse sits empty. Officially, Christian still owns it, but he hasn’t been back since he left the city.
The Horizon's Methods of Feeding
Hunting for Vitae consumes a great deal of any vampire’s time, but the Burning Horizon managed to find ways to speed things up. Their methods wouldn’t work for all Kindred, of course, but the fact that the coterie was always well fed made their takeover of the city much smoother. Their methods hinged on three main principles.First, the Burning Horizon had no qualms about killing. This would eventually damn Tanya in particular, but, of the five members, only John ever bothered to leave vessels alive.
Second, they used Ghouls to best advantage, sending their blood-slaves out to kidnap and seduce vessels for them. Of course, this wound up either driving the Ghouls mad with guilt or making them into sadistic monsters, but the coterie stayed fed.
Finally, the Horizon wasn’t above feeding on Kindred, especially if the Horizon meant to kill those Kindred anyway. The Horizon studiously avoided Diablerie, but would always drain a vampiric offender dry before destroying him. The effects of a single drink weren’t usually enough to deter the Horizon, and even so, they made sure that the entire coterie never drank from the same source, just to make sure that The Vinculum wouldn’t take hold.
Of course, this violence had an effect on the sanity of the coterie, but to what extent wouldn’t become apparent for several years.
On Location: City Limits
Of course, “city limits” could refer to any area bordering the city, but the term came to mean a specific place during the time that the Horizon was in power. When the Pack referred to “city limits,” they were referring to a quarry just over the county line. The quarry wasn’t in use anymore, except as a swimming hole in the summer months, and made for a superb place to bring uncooperative Kindred. The Pack used the drive to the quarry as a gauge of how polite their charge was. If the Kindred being expelled was understanding, they let him go at the county line (and pointed him toward a nearby motel). If the vampire was unpleasant, violent or belligerent, however, they threw him into the quarry.In the years after the Horizon disbanded and the city stood empty, members of the Pack occasionally turned up paralyzed. They didn’t sport stakes from their chests, and the paralysis didn’t seem to be simple Torpor. It seemed, rather, that their veins were full of stagnant water instead of blood. What did the Pack awaken in the bottom of that quarry?
On Location: The Bank
The Bank, variously known as “the Blood Bank” and “the Bar” by the city’s Kindred, was a converted ice cream parlor that the Horizon purchased and made into a storage unit for human Vitae. Kindred could arrive at any time of night and receive a few points of Vitae, free of charge, provided they were on the roster and were in good standing. Their souls were clear, too, since the blood came in plastic bottles (though for some reason seemed just as potent as fresh blood). Supplies ran out every night, of course, but for a vampire who needed to take the edge off before hunting or who had suffered injury in service to the city, the Bank was a godsend.Of course, the Bank wasn’t as benign as it seemed. The Horizon kidnapped mortals from all over the city, never discriminating based on race, age or any other factor, and slowly bled them dry over the course of the night (which was why the blood was fresh). Most of the time, the Horizon sedated the victims first, but Max didn’t always bother and Tanya tended to drain them dry herself before sedation was necessary.
The Bank still exists, and is haunted by a number of the ghosts of the victims. Despite the fact that the Bank hasn’t had power in years, it is always freezing cold inside the building, recalling the nights when innocent people shivered through their last terrifying hours.