Timeline Overview (1781 – 2020)
It is impossible to understand the history and challenges of the vampires of Los Angeles, without having a passing familiarity with the city itself. Because of this, the well known, civic timeline of Los Angeles has been overlaid onto the secret Kindred sequence of events.
| Date | Events |
|---|---|
| 1781 | A group of 11 families comprising 44 Mexicans settles by the river. Felipe de Neve, Governor of Spanish California, names the settlement El Pueblo Sobre el Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula. |
| 1793 | The First Sabbat Civil War begin in North America around the time of the American Revolution. The conflict is sparked by the competition of Lasombra and Tzimisce-led packs for the scant mortal resources of the New World. It has several important repercussions, the most vital of which for Los Angeles, is that it prevents the Camarilla of the East Coast from being driven into the sea and even allows them to launch a counter-offensive, going so far as to install a Camarilla Prince in Mexico City. It requires several decades for the Sabbat Regent, the Tzimisce Gorchist to re-establish Sabbat control of Mexico. This prevents the Sabbat from expanding into the American Southwest during the early 19th century, while the Camarilla’s presence was still non-existent. |
| 1805 | The first American trading ship arrives at San Pedro Bay, south of the Pueblo. |
| 1813 | Theodosia Burr Alston is mysteriously lost at sea during the War of 1812. Her father, former Vice President Aaron Burr, is stricken with grief from his self-imposed exile in Europe where he fled after being accused of treason in seeking to carve out his own ‘Western Empire’. |
| 1821 | Mexico achieves independence from Spain. This year also sees the arrival of the first known American vampire – a solitary, autarkis Gangrel known as Old Hickory – to make a permanent haven near Los Angeles. |
| 1842 | California’s first discovery of gold is made at Placerita Canyon, near Mission San Fernando, prompting LA’s first modest population boom. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the Qing Empire concludes the First Opium War with Britain by signing the Treaty of Nanking – the first of what the Chinese later refer to as the ‘unequal treaties’ – which among other things, opens up five treaty ports to British merchants and cedes Hong Kong Island to the British Empire. This marks the beginning both of modern Chinese history, and of the Chinese vampire Sect known as the Quincunx, which would have dramatic ramifications for Los Angeles in the future. |
| 1846 | Pio Pico is sworn in as governor of California, in Los Angeles. The same year witnesses the start of the Mexican-American War, which in Mexico is known as the U.S Intervention in Mexico. It provides the cover for a major campaign launched by the Camarilla of the East Coast to once more wrestle Mexico City from the Sabbat’s grasp. They are only briefly successful. |
| 1847 | Battle of Rio San Gabriel. The United States takes control of Los Angeles. Treaty of Cahuenga is signed in the pass between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. |
| 1848 | Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico formally cedes California to the United States, and all residents are made U.S. citizens. Although the war has lasting consequences for the kine of the American Southwest, it ends with the Sabbat of Mexico united as never before under the Regent Gorchist, whose complete authority is finally stablished. |
| 1849 | The California Gold Rush. Massive numbers of settlers and prospectors flood the state, creating great demand for beef from Los Angeles-area ranchos. The first known Sabbat pack in Los Angeles, including the young Ventrue antitribu known as Juarez Joe, is thought to arrive during this time. |
| 1850 | Los Angeles is incorporated as a municipality, and California becomes the 30th state in the union. In the same year, Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ launches the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Empire. It will eventually become one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history, leading to 20-30 million deaths over the next two decades and prompting mass emigration from China, a Second Opium War and deepening European involvement in Chinese affairs. The eastern vampire Sect known as the Quincunx establishes its dominance across much of East Asia during the bloody years between 1850 and 1870, during which it decisively defeats its competitors, including both the remnants of ancient, traditional power-structures (such as the Wan Xian), pro-European factions (such as the Zhu Wangzi or ‘Bamboo Princes’) and ethnic-based factions (Such as the Korean geulin koteu or Green Courts). |
| 1851 | Displaced by the bloody Taiping Rebellion and inspired by tales of the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants begin arriving in Los Angeles for the first time. |
| 1854 | Growing commerce between America and China, the increasing monopolization of potential coaling stations by European colonial powers, concepts of manifest destiny and the desire to impose the benefits of western civilization on supposedly ‘backward’ Asian nations, results in the United States forcibly ending Japan’s centuries-long isolation in one of the most infamous examples of gunboat diplomacy in world history, courtesy of the Perry Expedition. The subsequent collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate over the next decade and the Meiji Restoration inaugurates the era of modern Japanese history. This upends a millennia of tradition for Japanese vampires, during which in the course of a decade, the ancient, dynastic Uji (Great Houses) are overthrown by the far more aggressive and militarist Taiyō no shizoku (Clans of the Sun). This will eventually lead to a century of strife with the rest of East Asia. |
| 1857 | In a saga that is little known in modern nights, the Camarilla reaches the apogee of its strength during the Victorian Era. With the threat of the Sabbat so diminished as to be nearly forgotten, the Camarilla enjoys an era of unprecedented expansion. It moves into many new areas, including Greece, Mexico, South Africa and most triumphantly of all into the Indian subcontinent, where it will eventually achieve pre-eminence by playing the local powers off each other. |
| 1861 | The American Civil War begins. It will rage for four years and result in over 600,000 dead. In the same year, the Second French Empire of Napoleon III flouts the Monroe Doctrine to invade Mexico and install an Austrian princeling as a puppet ruler. The Camarilla of the East Coast are torn asunder by the same divisions, and in the ensuing conflagrations, many (especially across the South) will perish. The Inner Circle is forced to instigate the Second French Intervention in Mexico, launching a French invasion of Mexico to interrupt and forestall the expected Sabbat Crusade intended by Regent Gorchist to take advantage of the disarray. |
| 1862 | General Ignacio Zaragoza leads the Mexican forces to a surprise victory against the French Army at the Batalla de Puebla. Although rarely celebrated in Mexico, the date of the victory, May 5th, eventually becomes a major Mexican-American holiday in the United States (especially Los Angeles), where it is known as Cinco de Mayo. |
| 1863 | Union General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac defeats Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Gettysburg, halting Lee’s invasion of the North and turning the tide of the Civil War. In the same year, the Confederacy suffers a series of devastating setbacks west of the Mississippi after a failed invasion of the loyalist American Southwest. The Second Sabbat Civil War erupts when a suicidal Ravnos antitribu assassinates Regent Gorchist in Mexico City under highly mysterious circumstances. Shortly thereafter, French-led forces capture Mexico City, dispersing the Consistory and thus prolonging and embittering the internal Sabbat conflicts as different factions retreat in different directions. Mexico City once more has a Camarilla Prince. |
| 1865 | The American Civil War ends. African Americans begin heading to Los Angeles in significant numbers for the first time, although this is only a tiny trickle compared to the mass, internal migration from the American South that the early 20th century will witness. |
| 1867 | Maximillian I, the puppet Emperor of the French-backed Second Mexican Empire is executed by firing squad. With his death, the Second French Intervention in Mexico comes to an inglorious end. Melinda Galbraith drives the Camarilla out of Mexico City, and in doing so, cements a major powerbase of support in the Consistory. However, it will take an astonishing 66 years (tapering off between 1910 and 1933) before the Second Sabbat Civil War is officially concluded with the Sect-wide adoption of the Code of Milan, and the Sabbat is reunified under Galbraith as Regent. The six decade reprieve from concerted Sabbat attacks allows the Camarilla to easily establish itself in Southern California. |
| 1868 | The famous nighttime view of Los Angeles begins with the arrival of streetlights. Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean, Emperor Meiji announces “Knowledge shall be sought all over the world, and thereby the foundations of imperial rule shall be strengthened.” Simultaneously, the Qing Empire, still reeling from the aftershocks of the Taiping Rebellion embarks upon several decades of near permanent military, political and financial catastrophe, during which rival powers (such as the Eight-Nation Alliance including the United States, Russia, various European colonial powers, and even Japan) inflict repeated humiliations upon China, which will eventually result in its complete disintegration into rival warlord states by the early 20th century. The resulting rivalry between the Japanese Taiyō no shizoku and the Chinese Quincunx over the subsequent century will eventually have dramatic consequences for Los Angeles. |
| 1869 | Southern California’s first railroad is constructed, connecting Downtown Los Angeles with San Pedro Bay, 21 miles away. |
| 1870 | Sebastian Juan Dominguez declares himself Prince of Los Angeles. In the decades that follows he proves himself to be powerful and ruthless, yet also an arbitrary, cruel and dangerously decadent ruler. His constant rival over the next seven decades will be a mysterious Lasombra of the 9th Generation known only as The Caballero who declares himself Archbishop of California. |
| 1871 | First rail link established between Los Angeles and San Francisco, built in great part by Chinese labor. Late in the same year, the death of a white policeman while trying to separate two warring tongs results in a huge, vengeful mob descending on L.A.’s Chinatown. Nearly 20 Chinese are beaten and murdered in the largest mass-lynching in U.S history. |
| 1873 | Los Angeles begins to take on the physical attributes that it would become iconic for over the next half century, as both the first trolley line and the seedless navel orange is introduced during the same year. |
| 1877 | Thanks to new refrigerated boxcar technology, California oranges cause a sensation across the country. Agriculture begins to replace ranching as the mainstay of the local economy. Citrus, wine grapes and other fruits and vegetable harvesting booms as well. The area of present-day Beverly Hills is largely bean fields, whereas modern Hollywood is fig orchards. |
| 1880 | The first Chinatown is established, centered on Alameda and Macy Streets (now Cesar Chavez Avenue). Fifty years later, it will be bulldozed and relocated to make way for Union Station. |
| 1881 | The Southern Pacific Railroad links Los Angeles directly with the eastern United States for the first time. Perhaps coincidentally, Los Angeles experiences its first recorded snowfall. |
| 1882 | Anti-immigration sentiment on America’s West Coast leads to the first of the ‘Chinese Exclusion Acts’, primarily seeking to ban ‘unskilled labor’ from China while still allow diplomats, doctors, teachers, students and merchants – and as a result is widely evaded. The law will be renewed every ten years until 1902 when made permanent. A strange breed of ‘city lupine‘ is spotted in Los Angeles for the first time. Although often derided as fiction, these mysterious, urban predators would plague the Kindred of Los Angeles until well into the 1940s. Many believe that vampire-hunting city wolves were a fiction pushed by Prince Sebastian to conceal the destruction and depravities inflicted on his rivals over the decades. Meanwhile, the first Quincunx wu arrives in California, eventually choosing San Francisco’s burgeoning Chinatown as the home from which to begin the long-term curating of a new sacred site – a ritual cleansing process which will take a century to complete. This decision is made after an unfavorable scouting of Los Angeles for a similar purpose. |
| 1886 | Harvey Wilcox purchases 160 acres of land (presumably of fig orchards) west of the Cahuenga Pass for a planned residential community. He names it Hollywood. Fortunately for Wilcox, his plan coincides with the dramatic, ongoing collapse of train ticket prices across the nation, resulting in another population boom. |
| 1892 | Edward Doheny discovers oil at “Greasy Gulch,“ near Westlake Park. Soon, seemingly endless reservoirs of gushing black gold is discovered all over the Los Angeles area. This draws big companies like Premium Oil, while helping jumpstart both Los Angeles ‘industrial revolution’ and its burgeoning car culture. |
| 1895 | This year marks the peak of ‘Yellow Peril’ hysteria in both Europe and America, and especially prevalent in California. This is owing to the recent flood of Asian emigration sparked by the First Sino-Japanese War. Imperial Japan embarks upon a nearly half century string of uninterrupted military success, wherein it becomes the first Asian power to defeat a European (during the Russo-Japanese War) and will eventually seize immense tracts of Manchuria, Korea, China and Taiwan during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Boxer Rebellion and subsequent conflicts. The main effect from this period on Los Angeles is the eventual passing of anti-immigration laws aimed at Asian refugees which will eventually slow the tide of East Asian immigrants to a far more meager (yet consistent) trickle. Simultaneously, the Japanese vampires known as the Taiyō no shizoku (Clans of the Sun) begin to expand and dominate the rest of East Asia, forcibly submitting the Green Courts of Korea and causing the vampires of China to once more break into multiple competing factions – some resisting the hated ‘Gaki‘ (as the Japanese vampires came to be known) and others tacitly cooperating with them. The Chinese Quincunx is briefly discredited by some elements of its leadership initially siding with the Gaki invaders, yet after five long decades will eventually emerge triumphant in the 1950s. |
| 1897 | Los Angeles County becomes the third largest oil producing region in the nation as the first of many automobiles begins to rattle down its streets. Over the next two decades, L.A. County’s oil production will increase until it is producing a quarter of the world’s supply. |
| 1899 | Hollywood Cemetery is founded on 100 acres. Known today as Hollywood Forever, the cemetery is the final resting place for numerous Hollywood luminaries. |
| 1900 | Inspired by a near-ideal climate and a dramatic natural landscape, Southern California begins nurturing an aesthetic culture of informal, airy, and beautiful new architecture. Early Japanese immigrants arrive in Los Angeles as its population swells past 100,000 for the first time. |
| 1906 | The first fossils are excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits. |
| 1910 | D.W. Griffith becomes the first director to shoot film in Los Angeles. That same year, residents of the water-starved municipality of Hollywood reluctantly vote to join the city of Los Angeles. As the film industry grows, a common sign posted by residents reads ‘No dogs or actors allowed‘. Entranced by the possibility of filmmaking, Isaac Abrams sets what would become his century-long dream into motion of making Hollywood the wonder of the world. He begins with Dominating D.W. Griffith (and many of the Director’s acquaintances!) to move their operations to Hollywood. |
| 1912 | An 8,500-foot breakwater is completed at the port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. Subsequently, the harbor quickly leapfrogs San Francisco as the busiest on the West Coast. Still being expanded to this day, the Port of Los Angeles would eventually become the most active port in the world. |
| 1913 | After a saga of cinematic proportions, the Los Angeles Aqueduct is completed, carrying water from the resentful north to the thirsting southern entrepot. At the opening ceremony, lead engineer William Mulholland famously proclaims “There it is. Take it.” Irving Gill begins developing new architectural vocabulary and technology using modern concrete. |
| 1914 | The LA subdivision of Beverly Hills is incorporated as an independent city. The first and most successful all-white planned community (with blacks only permitted as servants and Jewish homeowners specifically forbidden), it instantly becomes famous as an enclave for the rich and famous. |
| 1915 | D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is a gigantic financial success. Its innovative production techniques singlehandedly creates the modern vocabulary of film and lays the foundation for Hollywood’s imminent Golden Age. Incidentally, the film’s plot chiefly concerns the Ku Klux Klan heroically fighting against the supposed evils of de-segregation. |
| 1916 | Large parts of the San Fernando Valley are annexed to the city of Los Angeles. Further annexations will continue through 1965. |
| 1917 | Direct steamship service begins between Los Angeles and Japan. Both America and Japan will eventually join World War I on the side of Britain and France against the Central Powers. The first Takeouji arrives in Los Angeles. They represent a loose, persecuted sect of Japanese vampires with philosophical similarities to the Chinese Zhu Wangzi (Bamboo Princes) of the last century. Driven from their native land by the Taiyō no shizoku (Clans of the Sun), these exiles will eventually establish themselves in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. |
| 1918 | Some of the most famous Hollywood film studios begin to take shape around this time, including Paramount and Warner Brothers (the latter formed by four immigrant brothers from Poland). An African-American soldier named Lewis Price is Embraced by Jonathan Lightbourne in Paris. |
| 1920 | After just a few short years, eighty percent of the world’s films are now being shot in Southern California. By 1920 Frank Lloyd Wright (resettling in Los Angeles because of its free thinking clients) was building his concrete block houses blending modern technology with his trademark appreciation of nature. His son Lloyd Wright actively explores complex, non-traditional spatial geometries for a new era. |
| 1921 | Amelia Earhart begins her aeronautic career with flying lessons in Los Angeles. |
| 1922 | Los Angeles’s first radio stations, KFI, KHJ and KNX, take to the air. The first concerts are held at the famous Hollywood Bowl amphitheater. |
| 1923 | Originally created as an advertisement for a local real estate development, the Hollywood Sign becomes a world-famous icon of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a young cartoonist named Walt Disney arrives with just $40 in his pocket. |
| 1925 | Los Angeles’ population surpasses an astonishing one million for the first time. A stretch of Wilshire Boulevard is re-christened the ‘Miracle Mile‘ owing to its stunning commercial success. Its innovative ‘linear downtown model’ will be emulated by cities across America for many decades to come. |
| 1927 | Grauman’s Chinese Theatre opens in Downtown Hollywood, inaugurating the era of the ‘Talkies’. Over the following years, hundreds of stars will leave their handprints and footprints in the freshly poured cement out front. |
| 1927 | Charles Lindbergh flies The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic nonstop from New York City to Paris, as the first solo transatlantic flight, thus inaugurating a new era of flight which in decades to come will eventually make Los Angeles a truly global city. In the same year, Henry Ford unveils the ‘Ford Model A’ which will help shape Los Angeles’ booming car culture. Tremere Regent Alonzo de Portola contests Don Sebastian’s Princedom. His influence grows nightly, until de Portola and his coterie abruptly disappear. The mystery of their fate is never solved. Don Sebastian pleads innocence, yet the incident results in the remnants of Clan Tremere decamping from Los Angeles for what will be a nearly 70 year self-imposed exodus. |
| 1928 | The renowned and ambitious architect of L.A.’s water security, William Mulholland, stakes his reputation on the safety of the St. Francis Dam mere hours before it ruptures, resulting in an unprecedented catastrophe that takes over six hundred lives. William Mulholland dies in disgrace. |
| 1929 | The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) opens the first four buildings of its current campus in the Westwood district. Although its initial growth would be stunted by the onset of the Great Depression later in the same year and throughout the 1930s, UCLA would eventually go on to become one of the world’s premier research universities. |
| 1930 | The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) opens. Today, it is the fourth busiest airport in the world. In the same year, California’s oil fields would be clocked at producing over a quarter of the world’s supply. In the 1930s, Moderne (or Art Deco) buildings were creating strikingly futuristic skylines with crystalline pinnacles of green, gold, and black, both downtown and along the new linear downtown of Wilshire Blvd.’s Miracle Mile. On May 27th, two miles of Hollywood Boulevard was made into a one way street to facilitate the world premiere of Howard Hughes‘ Hells’ Angels (1930) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. It remains the most extravagant opening of all time, with neon biplanes lining the street, searchlights piercing the sky, and a jubilant throng of over 500,000 people. This same night witnessed the first serious assassination attempt on Don Sebastian’s unlife, an event which he bitterly blamed Isaac Abrams for. |
| 1932 | Los Angeles hosts the 10th Olympic Games. 10th Street is renamed Olympic Boulevard in celebration. |
| 1933 | The very first major earthquake of modern Los Angeles’ history devastates Long Beach, causing at least 120 deaths. Dozens of schoolhouses were found collapsed beneath rubble who had been filled with children mere hours before, yet were fortunately empty when the quake hit. |
| 1934 | Widespread draught, famine and desertification across the American Midwest known as the ‘Dust Bowl’, combined with the economic collapse of the Great Depression, will eventually drive hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken ‘Okies’ to migrate to ‘Californee’, most of whom settle in or around Los Angeles. |
| 1935 | The Griffith Observatory opens in Griffith Park. From its perch on a promontory, one can view both the skies above and the city below. |
| 1936 | The remote, segregated barrios of Los Angeles’ Mexican-American communities (primarily referred to until recently as ‘Chicano‘), forged in an era when each neighborhood felt the need to huddle against the unknown, hostile forces arrayed against them, eventually spawned a multi-generational tradition of clannish violence. Over the ensuing decades, Chicano gangs will spread across the entire Southlands and even take control of the prison system, governed by their own codes, rules and taboos. |
| 1937 | An extremely competent yet unlucky private investigator and former mobster known as Arnie Costa is Embraced by a Ventrue fledgling around this time. He eventually ends up working for Isaac Abrams, after his Sire is destroyed in the Second Anarch Revolt, nearly a decade later. |
| 1938 | The Southlands experiences an unprecedented five straight days of rainfall, whose torrents was described in biblical terms by survivors. There are over 115 deaths and many thousands of homes destroyed. The Great Flood of ’38 results in several decades of infrastructural work on the Los Angeles River drainage system to prevent another such catastrophe. |
| 1939 | Union Station opens in Downtown L.A., famous for its combination of Mission, Spanish Colonial and Streamline Moderne motifs. It displaces Chinatown, which is moved northwest to the former site of Little Italy. The Arroyo Seco Parkway nears completion between Downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, soon becoming the nation’s first freeway, heralding a new form of interurban transportation and a future that would knit the region together more closely. The car culture that defined modern life and Los Angeles as a modern city was now in full swing. Often considered the start of the ‘Golden Age’ of Los Angeles architecture. Besides the well-known custom-designed Modern homes for the wealthy or skyscrapers for large companies, Southern California also focuses on bringing good design to mass produced products and everyday architecture. Thus the designs for the city’s gas stations, department stores, movie theaters, apartment houses, amusement parks, and coffee shops are famously often as good as those for expensive custom homes. |
| 1940 | By 1940, the grip of the Great Depression was loosening. Rumors of the European and Asian wars engulfing the United States grew, fueling a build-up of aircraft plants and military bases. The coming war would propel Los Angeles into the future, but the City of Angels already had a head start in that direction. Few could imagine the profound changes to come. Conventional expectations for the future would be overturned as the world shifted into overdrive for the war. Industry, plodding through the Depression, would be jolted into inventing ways to build hundreds of ships, and thousands of planes, tanks, and jeeps quickly. The stalled housing industry has a similar wake up call to create mass produced housing, first for defense workers, then for returning veterans. Out in the still-rural San Fernando Valley, a startling new studio for Walt Disney announced California’s interest in new technology, new ways of working, and new means of communicating. |
| Late 1941 | The Japanese launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Nazi Germany declares war on the United States shortly thereafter. During WWII, shipbuilding becomes the primary business of the Port of Los Angeles, employing some 90,000 workers. One-third of U.S. warplanes are manufactured in Los Angeles, underscoring the region’s dominance in manufacturing and aerospace for decades to come. Many veterans return to L.A. after the war, resulting in another population boom. |
| 1942 | The event known as the ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ or ‘The Great Los Angeles Air Read’ occurs in early 1942 wherein Los Angeles is supposedly subjected to an aerial assault by unknown flying object. The truth of the night’s events is never fully determined and is soon subjected to a media blackout to maintain the morale of the homefront. The Brujah anarch known as Jeremy MacNeil was already accounted a powerful warrior in life. A Scottish Highlander in service to King Charles during the English Civil War, he was rejected by his Clan as a monstrosity after his 17th century Embrace. Famous long before he arrived in Los Angeles, MacNeil soon becomes one of Don Sebastian’s fiercest critics. The Sabbat Archbishop of California known as The Caballero Embraces a surprisingly competent (and beautiful) ghoul in his service known as Leila Monroe. |
| Mid 1943 | American servicemen and white Angelenos attack and strip ‘Chicano’ children, teenagers, and youths wearing zoot suits, ostensibly because they considered the outfits, which were made from large amounts of rationed fabric, to be unpatriotic during World War II. It is another link of in the chain of racial violence extended back to the Chinatown Massacre, and which will continue far into the future. Don Sebastian infamously has Jeremy MacNeil seized and beaten near to torpor, after the Brujah had come to his court as a petitioner seeking justice for recent depredations committed by the Prince’s supporters on fledgling anarchs. |
| Late 1943 | After several months of organizing and planning, the anarchs of Los Angeles begin their revolt. The Anarch ‘Revolution‘ rapidly takes on a life of its own. Looking to MacNeil for inspiration (if not always leadership), gangs of Anarchs (now with a capital A) overthrow Camarilla Princes across Southern California. One of the final assaults of the revolt is launched against Don Sebastian’s fortified compound, wherein the former Prince’s head is taken in single combat by MacNeil’s lieutenant, Salvador Garcia. |
| Early 1944 | Both Don Sebastian’s surviving supporters and a previously undiscovered Setite Temple in the Malibu Hills are utterly destroyed by the Lupines of Los Angeles for reasons that would take decades to parse out. Tara Kearney seizes San Diego in the name of the Revolt the very next week. |
| Early 1945 | The birth of the Anarch Free States. Prince Vannevar Thomas of San Francisco defends the only Camarilla praxis in Central or Southern California to avoid going under beneath the rising Anarch tide – an event that will culturally separate the Kindred of the Bay Area from the Southlands ever after. |
| Late 1945 | The War in the Pacific is brought to a shattering conclusion as Imperial Japan submits beneath the weight of two nuclear strikes and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Simultaneously, the power of the Japanese Taiyō no shizoku (Clans of the Sun) begins to collapse within the territories once envisioned as the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. Over the next ten years, the vampires and other supernatural factions of East Asia will shake off the ‘Gaki’ yoke, eventually leading to a revitalized Quincunx by the 1950s. The Revolutionary Council publishes the Status Perfectus. In it, they laid out the rules by which the Anarch Free States should govern themselves. |
| 1946 | The successful conclusion of the war returns prosperity to America, generating an expanding population immediately after the war, spurring demand for new architectural types. Few could have guessed how wartime industries like plastics and aluminum would move from the laboratories to real life so rapidly — or their possibilities for architecture. Other innovations followed in the wake of a growing regional infrastructure of boulevards and then freeways. |
| 1947 | Factories were built or expanded in the San Fernando Valley and the South Bay; farms could be turned into housing tracts for arriving employees. New forms of entertainment opened up entire new industries for employment, such as the growth of local television studios. The British Raj – and with it, one of the last outposts of both British and Ventrue imperialism – collapses in India. The Camarilla is harried from the South Asian subcontinent by an alliance of native supernaturals. Jonathan Lightbourne is among the last major representatives of the Camarilla to depart, although enclaves (including Sabbat outposts) linger on parts of the coast well into the 1960s. |
| 1949 | Car dealerships, coffee shops, markets, and service stations designed for the car-mobile public blossom everywhere. To house the growing population, Los Angeles city planners initiate large-scale planned developments such as Wyvernwood in Boyle Heights. Incorporating the latest ideas about multiple housing, integrating landscaping, recreation and community models, few of the architects behind the surge in high density living and mass housing projects could predict the slum battlefields they would eventually become by the late 70s. A rival school of design focuses on suburban development, combining war-time fabrication techniques and cheap, plentiful real estate to bring home ownership, backyard greenery, open plans, and neighborhood schools and shops within the reach of the average person’s pocket book. Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez is Embraced by an unknown Brujah in East Los Angeles. He is taken in and mentored by Salvador Garcia, though in the decades that follow, he’ll gravitate more and more to Jeremy MacNeil. |
| 1950 | Los Angeles continues to grow at a blistering rate, soon cresting 2 million. The region’s growth gains national attention; its burgeoning population led to enormous mass-produced housing tracts, new shopping centers, recreational facilities, and an eye-catching car culture of drive-ins, car washes, and car dealerships that spotlighted a new youth culture. Southern California’s most influential housing experiments were the mass-produced tracts that spread over former agricultural land. |
| 1951 | The Giovanni vampire, Luis Rossi, establishes San Pedro as the base of operations of the West Coast ‘Rossi Outfit’. |
| 1953 | Completion of the “four-level” interchange, the first of its kind, connecting the Hollywood, Pasadena and Harbor Freeways. The nation gasps in amazement at the factory-like production of Lakewood, an instant planned city of Ranch Houses, schools, libraries and shopping centers. “Ranch House” typically referred to a one-story single-family house with a gable roof and an unpretentious and welcoming appearance; a garage was usually attached. This would earn Los Angeles the sobriquet of ‘Suburban Metropolis‘. |
| 1955 | Disneyland Park becomes the “Happiest Place on Earth”. Assamite assassins are dispatched to kill Jeremy MacNeil. He fends them off with the help of Crispus Attucks. |
| 1956 | The expanding economy creates jobs in auto and aerospace industries, creating a demand for modern high rise offices in the traditional center city, but also for low rise suburban office and manufacturing campuses. Tying the entire city together is the new freeway system which becomes an instant attraction for tourists and locals. In an effort to bring some stability to the Southlands after a decade of increasing violence among rival gangs of anarchs, Jeremy MacNeil finally steps in and declares himself the Baron of Los Angeles. He organizes a conference where other ‘official’ baronies are carved out as well. |
| 1958 | The former Brooklyn Dodgers play for the first time as the Los Angeles Dodgers, becoming the first Major League Baseball team west of Missouri. The Minneapolis Lakers will follow them west in just two short years. Post-war Tokyo is increasingly divided between a pro-Camarilla faction of Japanese vampires who look to the West for inspiration, and between another faction who advocates for pan-Asian unity who refer to themselves as the Kuei-jin. Japanese vampires who depart Japan for other shores are still referred to as Takeouji, and are considered approximate to the western Kindred term ‘autarkis’. |
| 1959 | Los Angeles-based toy company Mattel (in consultation with Avalon Incorporated) debuts the soon-to-be world famous Barbie doll. |
| 1960 | Southern Californians sense that the astonishing future they had been eagerly anticipating since the 1920s had finally arrived in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the city continues its expansion out into previously agricultural areas in the San Fernando Valley, the South Bay, the San Gabriel Valley, and neighboring Orange and Ventura Counties. Los Angeles hosts the Democratic Party national convention wherein John F. Kennedy is nominated to run for president. The President would later have a rumored affair with a Hollywood starlet named Marilyn Monroe. |
| 1962 | By the 1960s, Modernism, which had once been avant garde, reigned as the favored style of establishment corporations and institutions. At this point of wide acceptance, ironically, doubts about the usefulness of Modern design principles in a changing world began to arise. The last of Los Angeles famous Red Car trolleys ceases operation. |
| 1964 | The Sunset Strip becomes a renowned location for clubs playing live music, hosting famous bands such as the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Who and many more over the next several decades. With the 1950s boom as its launching pad, by 1964 California becomes the largest state in the union; its aerospace, oil, electronics, tourist, and entertainment industries dominating the nation; its economy one of the largest in the world; its fashions, fads and culture spread throughout the country and nearly every other country on earth. This is the era of ‘Imperial California‘. And yet, there is evidence even at this stage, that the rot has already set in. Leila Monroe Embraces the vampire who would one night be known as Dusty. |
| 1965 | The Watts Riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising rocks South Los Angeles after a traffic stop goes awry. The LAPD Chief of Police likens the rioters to ‘Viet Cong’ and employs maximal force to quell the demonstrations, resulting in at least three dozen deaths, a thousand injuries and nearly four thousand arrests. The riots coincide with the First Sabbat Siege of Los Angeles. Fighting is savage on both sides, but the Anarchs are able to turn the Sabbat back. Mohammed al-Muthlim emerges as an Anarch hero. |
| 1966 | Restrictions are lifted on immigration from East Asia, setting the stage for the Los Angeles region decades later to have the largest Asian population in the United States, with the largest Korean, Thai and Filipino populations outside their respective countries. Marina del Rey and Long Beach each build large-scale, master-planned, recreational-commercial-residential developments along their shore and harbor. The nascent sect of eastern vampires advocating for pan-Asian unity known as the Kuei-jin become widely heard of for the first time. Although the Kuei-jin remain a minor movement in East Asia, they will have a disproportionate impact on how Western vampires, especially the Camarilla, view vampires from the East. |
| 1969 | The Manson Family goes on an infamous murder spree, and ‘Helter Skelter’ is daubed in blood on the walls of a slain, pregnant actress in the hopes of inciting an apocalyptic race war. The famous railcar known as ‘Angels Flight‘ connecting Downtown Historic Core and Bunker Hill is sadly closed down, when its site is cleared for more profitable redevelopment. This is thought to come at the expense of the many local workers who used it for transportation. In attempts to combat the decimation of their Main Street commercial centers by shopping malls, several Southlands cities experiment with revitalizing their downtown districts. The Followers of Set begin to greatly expand the number of their followers after secretly founding a new temple in the Hollywood Hills a couple years prior in the wake of the First Sabbat Siege of LA. |
| 1970 | Los Angeles, like most American cities, faces rapidly accelerating urban decay throughout the 1970s. Although many old neighborhoods decline, a rare few of them will manage to reinvent themselves in fascinating and iconic new ways, such as Downtown L.A.’s Art District. In the land of the automobile and glass walled homes, the OPEC Oil Crisis of the early 1970s introduced a new urgency to reducing energy usage and increasing sustainability through design. Frank Gehry, a local architect educated at USC and steeped in the commercial and urban character of Los Angeles, begins to attract national attention in the 1970s. He evolving body of work will deeply influence the coming Deconstructivist movement of the 1980s. |
| 1971 | The Sylmar Quake continues the long tradition of Los Angeles’ killer quakes, resulting in 64 deaths and a whole new generation of building code laws. The Newhall Pass freeway interchange collapsed, in what today would have resulted in 3 billion dollars worth of damage. The Chinese Quincunx begins a decade-long series of clashes with the pan-Asian Kuei-jin movement. |
| 1973 | Tom Bradley becomes mayor of Los Angeles, the only second African-American mayor of a major United States city. He will serve for the next two decades before finally retiring in 1993. |
| 1973 | An Anarch coterie is wiped out in Westlake after their haven is set alight by an unknown assailant during the day. The resulting inferno eventually spreads out of control, resulting in many mortal deaths and the worst fire disaster in city history up until then. |
| 1975 | Jaws, a film by a young director named Steven Spielberg, inaugurates the age of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. |
| 1977 | Patrick Kearney, the first psychopath to be known as ‘The Freeway Killer’ and one of the most prolific serial killers in history, is finally apprehended after a string of 43 murders – mostly young, male hitchhikers. |
| 1978 | Jeremy MacNeil, Isaac Abrams, Arnie Costa, the Nosferatu and various allies join forces to destroy a second Setite Temple hidden in the East Hollywood Hills. Its priestess, the notorious Dawn Cavanaugh, mysteriously anticipates the assault and escapes Final Death yet again. |
| 1979 | A second ‘Freeway Killer’ named William Bonin is arrested after raping, torturing and murdering at least two dozen young, female hitchhikers. He is called ‘the most arch-evil person who ever existed.’ This label would prove premature, as over the next couple decades Los Angeles earns the chilling sobriquet of the ‘serial killer capital of the world’. Mohammed al-Muthlim founds the Crypts’ Sons, with a nucleus of Kindred at the heart of a massive mortal gang network. |
| 1980 | Los Angeles City’s population soars over three million, surpassing Chicago as the second in the nation. Throughout the 1980s, much of the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando Valley will finish being built out. With open agricultural land and undeveloped hillsides now at a premium, emphasis shifts to infill projects, additions, and redevelopment (often dividing once larger lot sizes) for denser use. This runs head-on into a preservationist movement as homeowner associations rush to pass laws in many neighborhoods, protecting them from redevelopment (often by being designed as a ‘historical district’ such as in Hancock Park). This leads to a dense, clashing mix of architectures in decaying neighborhoods, sprawling over an ever-unfinished, ever-changing landscape. It remains highly attractive to immigrants, including many Latinos who bring new commercial life to once moribund downtown streets. |
| 1981 | Los Angeles earns the notorious sobriquet of the ‘Bank Robbery Capital of the World” with some estimating that a bank is robbed somewhere across the Southlands roughly every 27 minutes for much of the decade. Skelter is Embraced by a South LA Brujah from a mortal gang nicknamed the ‘baby bandits’ for their flagrant robberies. His Sire meets Final Death at the hands of the Sons of the Crypt, yet Skelter himself eventually falls in with Crispus Attucks who becomes his mentor. A Wall Street finance tech prodigy named Bastian Fox is Embraced by Jonathan Lightbourne. |
| 1982 | Taking place in “Los Angeles – November 2019,” Blade Runner is a sci-fi classic set in a future, global super city. Frank Gehry‘s career rose to a new level of recognition in the 1980s, even as he continued to draw on the materials and colliding forms of Los Angeles’ vernacular landscape and art world. |
| 1984 | Los Angeles becomes the only U.S. city to host the Summer Olympic Games twice. Somewhat less heralded, it is also the first city in America to receive two telephone area codes in the very same year. The 1984 Olympics confirmed Los Angeles’ rise as a mature global city, as did the growth of immigrant and ethnic communities. |
| 1985 | Starting in East Los Angeles, Chicano gangs begin to abandon marijuana and heroin in favor of pushing rock cocaine. Simultaneously, ‘stoner’ gangs, who reject the cholo lifestyle and the Spanish language, become infamous for embracing heavy metal, Satanism and ultra violence to claim their turf from more traditional gangs. Isaac Abrams of Hollywood and Baron Louis Fortier of West Los Angeles engage in an increasingly bitter struggle for control over the Westside. Both vampires have accrued an immense amount of mortal influence, although Louis Fortier is thought to have the advantage, owing to his several childer enabling him to maintain a large ‘army’ of ghouls. Isaac Abrams is greatly assisted by his lieutenant, Arnie Costa. |
| 1986 | The bizarre tragedy of the Cerritos mid-air plane crash takes place, during which nearly a hundred people are killed. Muhammad Al-Muthlim begins a vicious, long-running struggle with Louis Fortier, the Baron of West LA, for control of Los Angeles’ Westside. |
| 1987 | Although Postmodernism’s influence can still be seen in everything from corner mini-malls to highrises, the Deconstructivist movement (an architectural import by way of New York) begins to gain steam. The unfinished, in-process, at times apocalyptic imagery of some of their buildings reflected a new vision of Los Angeles, far from the romantic imagery of Helen Hunt Jackson and the arcadian Spanish landscape, or of the Moderne’s optimistic futurism. Even so, the clashing, colliding, often jarring forms of the vernacular city, the rawness of vernacular materials such as plywood, asphalt shingles, and corrugated metal, eventually inspires avant garde interpretations of houses and small commercial structures in transitional neighborhoods like Venice, San Pedro, and Culver City. |
| 1988 | Gang violence continues to skyrocket in L.A. amid bloody competition from Central American immigrants – many of whom form rival gangs after being turned down or harassed by the native Chicano gangs. Gangland deaths soon reach an all time high, helping to give Los Angeles the reputation of a war torn wasteland during the coming decade. |
| 1989 | The Japanese stock market reaches an all time high. Real estate in Tokyo sells for as much as $139,000 a square foot. Such valuation made the land under the Imperial Palace in Tokyo notionally worth more than all the real estate in California. Japanese investment in Los Angeles peaks – although sadly many properties and holdings will be lost when the ‘Babaru economy’ crash craters Japan’s fortunes later this same year, leading to a decade of lost growth. In Asia, the idealism of the pan-Asian Kuei-jin movement begins to go out of style. It will linger for several more decades in an increasingly marginalized form. Demoralized and facing intense economic pressure, the vampire leaders of Tokyo formally accede to the Camarilla, rejecting an alliance with the Quincunx. |
| 1990 | The wide open spaces still present in the 1950s have long since disappeared; the freeways have woven the region together more tightly. Los Angeles, however, continues to be a generator of new ideas and lifestyles. Even with intermittent economic setbacks, the region’s prosperity (and not just in the entertainment industry) continues to fuel new growth and new building. New technologies and growing immigrant populations create ever-changing conditions which would at times prove difficult to navigate, such as the Rodney King Riots. The collapse of both their Japanese rivals and the USSR gives the Chinese Quincunx breathing space to begin preparing for its own Great Leap Outward. In this same year, a Chinese-American vampire named Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang comes to Jeremy MacNeil’s attention for the first time. |
| 1992 | The Rodney King Riots continue Los Angeles’ tradition of earthquakes along racial faultlines as well. LAPD brutality and the shooting of a black teenager by a Korean shop owner result in four days of violent ransacking. Fifty three people are killed and thousands of buildings are burned. Koreatown adopts a more insular and self-reliant attitude after feeling abandoned by the police. It will take parts of Los Angeles over twenty years to fully recover. Anarch gangs loyal to either Mohammad al-Muthlim or Jeremy MacNeil battle each other during the Los Angeles riots. Salvador Garcia’s disillusionment with the Free States grows as he watches gangs like the Crypts’ Sons seize more and more power. Isaac Abrams Embraces a young, famous movie star known as Ash Rivers, rather than let him die. |
| 1993 | Overcrowding becomes a serious issue in Los Angeles as rival Anarch gangs compete to Embrace more vampires to secure a territorial advantage. Jeremy MacNeil forbids additional Embraces among his allies, although Salvador Garcia’s El Hermandad ignores this decree while battling with the Sons of the Crypt. The War of Chicago occurs. It is the first time in modern vampire history, since the Malibu Massacre, that Lupines had staged a massive attack on a city’s vampire hierarchy. Most of the blame for the event resides with Prince Lodin (who conveniently perished). In the aftermath, Chicago’s Camarilla was vastly changed due to disappearances and destruction of key members of the governing body. |
| 1994 | The eyes of the world are focused on L.A. as football great O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murder of his wife following a spectacular slow-speed car chase. That same year, Los Angeles is rocked even worse by the Northridge Earthquake, resulting in half a hundred fatalities and collapsed freeways. Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon begins to set in motion a grand strategy to reconquer Los Angeles for the Camarilla within the next five years. Jochen Van Nuys arrives in San Francisco from the East Coast. At the time, the Ventrue was touted as something of a wunderkind. Instead of working to support Prince Vannevar Thomas against the various Bay Area threats, he works to undermine him. |
| 1995 | The Quincunx launches a ‘Shadow War’ aimed at nothing less than the reclamation of Hong Kong from the Camarilla. Isaac Abrams is reputed to Embrace Emily Cade around this time. Although some rumor that Emily’s true Sire was Ash Rivers, and that Isaac claimed her to protect Ash from accusations of breaking Jeremy MacNeil’s decree against further Embraces. |
| 1996 | Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang reaches a deal with Jeremy MacNeil, where he will support him against Mohammad al-Muthlim in return for being accepted as the Baron of Chinatown. Salvador Garcia is vocal in his distrust of Hao. Jochen Van Nuys finally achieves his ambition of becoming Prince of San Francisco, driving out and exiling Vannevar Thomas. Justicar Petrodon reluctantly backs the fait accompli. |
| 1997 | Camarilla diplomats negotiate an ‘honorable’ withdrawal from Hong Kong. This collapses into a rout when the outgoing Prince (or ‘Tai-pan’) Robert Pedder is unexpectedly assassinated by the Cathayans as he prepares to depart the city he ruled for nearly two centuries. The Regent of the Tremere Chantry, Oliver Thrace, shocks the Inner Circle by defecting to the Quincunx. A hardline faction within the Quincunx justifies the Camarilla weakness in defending Hong Kong as evidence that the time is ripe to seize the West Coast of the United States as well. Others argue that Tokyo should be the next objective. |
| Early 1998 | The Quincunx identifies Los Angeles as a weakly held ‘bandit kingdom’ riven with dissent. They determine that if they can establish a beachhead there with acceptable losses, they would preserve the option to strike at either San Francisco or San Diego in the following year. On New Year’s Day, 1998, the first Quincunx scout strolled quietly off a plane in Los Angeles just before dawn. The invasion of California had begun. In a surprisingly short amount of time, the Quincunx succeeds in seeding Los Angeles with a network of intelligence cells, safe houses and front companies. They are enormously helped in this by the efforts of Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang. Alarmed by reports of Cathayan scouting activity in the Baja California port of Ensenada, Bishop Cicatriz of Tijuana is alleged to have made secret contact with Mohammad al-Muthlim and agreed to smuggle arms to him from Mexico. |
| Mid 1998 | The unprepared Anarchs of Los Angeles are taken completely by surprise by an ‘avalanche’ of Quincunx soldiers and infiltrators lead by Ancestor Ch’ang. Many independent Cainites and smaller gangs are wiped out completely or driven from the city in what is described as a ‘well-directed walkover’. However, as the Summer wears on, Anarch resistance begins to solidify and takes an increased toll on the invaders. In an attempt to break the deadlock, the Quincunx launches a pre-emptive invasion of San Francisco and San Diego. Their efforts fail in San Diego, where Baron Tara Kearney uses the Cathayan attacks upon her Anarch rivals to declare herself Prince. With the Camarilla’s help, she is able to drive back the Quincunx invaders. Meanwhile, almost half of San Francisco’s vampires are sent to their Final Death. |
| Late 1998 | The Sons of the Crypt, lead by Mohammed al-Muthlim begin to advance on all fronts, their success against both the Quincunx and Jeremy MacNeil’s embattled Anarchs fueled by a strategy of blatant mass Embraces that would embarrass even the Sabbat. This greatly alarms Mohammed’s fiercest rivals, Louis Fortier and Salvador Garcia. Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon and his archon Cock Robin utilize the secret Nosferatu presence in the Warrens beneath Hollywood to initiate secret Camarilla negotiations with Jeremy MacNeil, facilitated by Isaac Abrams. Toreador Justicar Madame Guil and her chief archon, the Ventrue Sebastian LaCroix, begin a ‘grand tour’ of the West, intended to descend upon San Francisco with overwhelming force in the coming year. Louis Fortier is secretly approached by the Quincunx. |
| Early 1999 | Salvador Garcia learns of Jeremy MacNeil’s secret negotiations with the Camarilla. His last shred of faith in the Free States is shattered and he makes a secret pact with Louis Fortier to betray MacNeil. Jeremy MacNeil and his closest allies attempt to retake Long Beach. They are treacherously betrayed by Salvador Garcia. Assailed on all sides, Jeremy MacNeil, Marguerite Foccart and Crispus Attucks retreat to Signal Hill in the center of Long Beach where they are surrounded and destroyed in an event known as The Battle of Signal Hill. Surviving Anarch leaders scatter and lay low. The Baron of West Los Angeles, Louis Fortier, declares himself the Prince of Los Angeles as well. He promises an end to conflict and a union of purpose with the Quincunx invaders, forming a new coalition with them called the ‘New Promise Mandarinate‘. |
| Mid 1999 | Louis Fortier – Former Baron, Prince and now Western Minister of the New Promise Mandarinate – goes from strength to strength. He is supported by allies such as his loyal lieutenant, the Persian Cyrus ‘Khan’ Hatami and his childe Sheriff, Catherine du Bois. Alongside the Quincunx and Salvador Garcia’s El Hermandad, Fortier finally succeeds in killing Mohammad al-Muthlim and wiping out his Sons of the Crypt. Other Anarch leaders manage to regroup, some barely managing to escape capture or assassination, even as many of their followers gradually succumb to the allure of peace and stability that Fortier claims to offer. Having been delayed by the Sabbat‘s ongoing East Coast Crusade, Toreador Justicar Madame Guil finally descends on San Francisco with a massive entourage. She demotes Prince Jochen Van Nuys to Seneschal and replaces him with her fellow elder Sara Anne Winder, on account of his ancilla youth. Maximillian Strauss arrives in Los Angeles, seemingly pursuing (never truly substantiated) rumors of Oliver Thrace’s renegade Chinese childe Wan Zhu being seen in the city. |
| Late 1999 | There is rumored scandal and intrigue involving the former Prince Jochen Van Nuys and Madame Guil‘s own archon, Sebastian LaCroix. Not long after, the Toreador Justicar is forced to mysteriously depart San Francisco almost as quickly as she arrived under a dark cloud of whispers involving some revelation of past activities to the Inner Circle. The Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon is forced to journey to Seattle, where the ‘Seattle Committee‘, an Anarch Free State modeled off Los Angeles, is under intense pressure from the Quincunx and seeking help from the Camarilla. With Cock Robin already recalled to the East Coast, Madame Guil’s archon, Sebastian LaCroix, is left in charge. Through a complicated series of events, Sebastian LaCroix, Maximillian Strauss and Nines Rodriguez combine forces to clear Downtown Los Angeles of Fortier and the Mandarinate’s agents. Smiling Jack embarks on a legendary rampage to avenge the martyred Baron of the City of Angels, which eventually ends with the destruction of Louis Fortier, his dreams and most of his loyal lieutenants and the disgraced flight of Salvador Garcia. The New Promise Mandarinate collapses in Los Angeles except for a holdout in Chinatown under Ming Xiao. |
| Early 2000 | The Quincunx (represented by Ming Xiao) enter into negotiations with the Camarilla (represented by LaCroix and Strauss) and remaining Anarchs (now represented by Rodriguez and Abrams). An armistice is eventually declared. Sebastian LaCroix is gratified to be acclaimed as Prince of Los Angeles, enjoying widespread popularity for the last time in what would turn out to be an increasingly tyrannical rule. Former lieutenant of Louis Fortier, Therese Voerman seizes Santa Monica and declares herself Baron in collusion with LaCroix. Maximillian Strauss takes formal possession of the Los Angeles Chantry as Regent and Tremere Primogen. He soon clashes with Sebastian LaCroix on multiple matters. Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez initially respects Sebastian LaCroix and seeks to work with him towards the greater good of LA. He is soon disillusioned, yet (unlike LaCroix) keeps his word in the years to come. Isaac Abrams allows himself to be declared the Toreador Primogen, even as he fiercely guards Hollywood’s autonomy. Therese Voerman is recognized as Baron of Santa Monica. Countess Andrea Visconti, survivor of the Laurel Canyon Massacre eventually resurfaces in Culver City. The last surviving lieutenant of the Sons of the Crypt, Clarence Carver, claims the Barony of Inglewood. The Ghost Town Anarchs of Venice’s Oakwood neighborhood break away under Antwon ‘Antman’ Manners. David Geduld begins to rebuild his powerbase in Torrance and Palos Verdes. Baron Amethyst secures her control of Santa Ana and Anaheim after a brief, sad attempt by her lieutenant, Tom Weaver, to overthrow her. He eventually ends up working for David Geduld. The Giovanni known as Luis Rossi enters into a deal with Sebastian LaCroix to help ensure his San Pedro powerbase. Back in San Francisco, Jochen Van Nuys (now the Camarilla’s official Quincunx liaison) helps negotiate a lasting ceasefire and diplomatic détente with Jiejie Li of the New Promise Mandarinate. Prince Sara Anne Winder is forced to reluctantly accede to it, as the Inner Circle demands peace to focus on reclaiming New York from the Sabbat. Ancestor Ch’ang is recalled to China in disgrace. He is said to have ‘thrown himself into the Mouth of Yomi‘ rather than return to face formal censure. |
| Late 2000 | STAPLES Center achieves fame as the the new home for pro basketball and hockey teams and the beginning of an economic renaissance in Downtown Los Angeles. A section of East Hollywood is designated as America’s first and only Thai Town, housing many of the city’s 80,000 ethnic Thais. Cardinal Francisco Domingo de Polonia’s East Coast Crusade reaches its violent crescendo. The Sabbat secures cities such as Washington DC, Atlanta and Miami (where they soon begin an even more vicious war with the Followers of Set), yet are decisively defeated in New York, which brings the Crusade to a close. Prince Michaela of New York is slain by Polonia during the closing nights of the Crusade. New York is placed under the stewardship of the Nosferatu Calebros. |
| 2001 | America and the world is rocked by the tragedy of 9/11. Extensive work begins on constructing and renovating the Hollywood & Highland retail and entertainment complex – a cherished, pet project of Isaac Abrams that will ultimately take over a decade to reach fruition. Therese Voerman collaborates closely with Prince Sebastian LaCroix, becoming Ventrue Primogen despite the troublemaking of her twin sister, Jeanette Voerman. Gary Golden becomes reluctant Primogen of the Nosferatu in Los Angeles. In an attempt to buttress the legitimacy of his rule, Sebastian LaCroix tracks down and offers the Primogen of Clan Malkavian to the long-time recluse, Dr. Alistair Grout. Justicar Petrodon absorbs himself in the nearly singlehanded conquest and absorption of Seattle, having undermined and betrayed the Anarch collective known as the Seattle Committee. Bishop Andrei of Clan Tzimisce loses a power struggle in Mexico. He secretly arrives in Los Angeles where he encounters self-proclaimed ‘Priscus’ Leila Monroe who is still working to convert Anarchs. They cooperate with Bishop Cicatriz of Tijuana to ship in packs of Sabbat from Tijuana to build their forces to challenge the Free States, Camarilla and Wan Kuei. |
| 2002 | Bishop Andrei of Clan Tzimisce begins to secretly build an army beneath Hollywood. Rumors of Sabbat activity increases throughout Los Angeles County. A blood cult calling itself the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle appears in Downtown Los Angeles for the first time, spreading plague and fear. Prince Sebastian LaCroix finds himself increasingly at odds with his Primogen Council. |
| 2003 | Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Los Angeles-based Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry and the home of the acclaimed Los Angeles Philharmonic, opens in Downtown LA and instantly becomes an iconic architectural emblem for the city and celebrated addition to the Los Angeles Music Center in Bunker Hill. Strain on the Masquerade in Los Angeles draws the attention of the Society of Leopold. Bruno Giovanni is sent from the East Coast to bring Luis Rossi and the Rossi Outfit ‘in line’. Sebastian LaCroix’s relations with the Anarchs and his Primogen Council continue to deteriorate. He is alleged to have entered into secret negotiations with Ming Xiao, who has remained in Chinatown these last years. The Nosferatu Primogen Gary Golden and Peter Crawley become increasingly aware that something is badly wrong in the City of Angels. However, their copious reports go unacted upon, as Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon is shockingly assassinated in Seattle by Anarch diehards of the Seattle Committee. The Camarilla’s position in the Pacific Northwest nearly collapses overnight, distracting attention from Los Angeles for the next several years. |
| Early 2004 | The most zealous Anarchs from the Los Angeles area make the dangerous journey north to Seattle to help in the struggle. Although many will eventually return after hearing about events back home, it results in a temporarily weakened LA Free State. Arnie Costa discovers a renegade Gargoyle sheltering in Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre. He convinces Isaac Abrams to secretly shelter it from the Tremere after it assists him in saving Ash Rivers from a Society of Leopold vampire hunter. |
| 2004 – Jul | A five month period of great crisis commences for the vampires of Los Angeles. An Akkadian sarcophagus rumored to contain an ancient, torpored vampire of the Fourth Generation arrives in the Port of Los Angeles and is immediately stolen. Prince LaCroix orders a search for it. Bishop Andrei of Clan Tzimisce is discovered by Isaac Abrams and Arnie Costa (via snuff films designed to undermine the Masquerade) and the Nosferatu, including his links to the insidious Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle. They work with Regent Strauss, Nines Rodriguez, Smiling Jack and many other allies to contain and defuse the threat, despite Prince LaCroix’s apparent refusal to take the matter seriously. |
| 2004 -Aug | The Society of Leopold, lead by Grünfeld Bach, descends upon Bishop Andrei’s secret Hollywood lair (having been deceived into believing it was the haven of Prince Sebastian LaCroix who Bach had been hunting for decades). Andrei’s ultimate fate remains unknown to this night. Grünfeld Bach and most of his vampire hunters perish. Sabbat activity decreases for several years after. The Malkavian Primogen, Alistair Grout, allegedly discovers evidence that Sebastian LaCroix is engaged in a conspiracy with Ming Xiao to secede from the Camarilla. His death is blamed either on Ming Xiao, with some claiming that she destroyed Alistair Grout as a favor to LaCroix, or on Nines Rodriguez as asserted by Prince LaCroix himself. Prince LaCroix declares a Blood Hunt on Nines Rodriguez, who then goes into hiding. |
| 2004 – Sep | Prince LaCroix and Luis Rossi conspire to destroy Bruno Giovanni, sending a message to the East Coast family that the Rossi Outfit runs the show in Pacific waters. The Anarchs of Downtown, East and South LA begin to make increasingly serious trouble for Prince LaCroix. This is exacerbated by the refusals of the Nosferatu Gary Golden and the Tremere Regent Strauss to help him. The Ventrue Baron of Santa Monica, Therese Voerman, begins to position herself as a possible replacement of LaCroix. Prince LaCroix threatens Isaac Abrams for not assisting with the Blood Hunt of Nines Rodriguez. Isaac Abrams infamously tells Prince LaCroix that if he sends his goons into Hollywood, he will give him a ‘battle worthy of Kurosawa’. |
| 2004 – Oct | After more than a month of unrest, Prince Sebastian LaCroix gives into the demands of his Primogen Council to arrange a clandestine peace summit with Nines Rodriguez. He lures Nines Rodriguez and several of his supporters to Griffith Park, which is then set ablaze. It is rumored that Prince LaCroix attempted to play his favorite trick of setting his enemies upon each other, owing to the rumored involvement of angry Lupines in the ambush. Nines Rodriguez is initially thought to have been killed. However, he will eventually burnish his already formidable legend by both miraculously surviving and reputedly killing one of his Lupine assailants (with the aid of a grenade and lots of luck). |
| 2004 – Nov | Prince LaCroix locates the stolen Akkadian sarcophagus. It is revealed not to contain a torpored methuselah, but a great deal of explosive. Immediately subsequent to this discovery, Sebastian LaCroix, his mysterious enforcer, and several of his closest allies meet their Final Death in an explosion that incinerates the entire top floor of Venture Tower in Downtown Los Angeles. The blame for this ‘vile crime’ is laid at the feet of the infamous Anarch known as Smiling Jack, who soon disappears from the city. There remain conspiracy theories to this night, that Isaac Abrams of Hollywood, Gary Golden of the Nosferatu, and Maximillian Strauss of the Tremere, along with Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez of the Anarchs, all conspired together to remove LaCroix. |
| 2004 – Dec | Therese Voerman of Santa Monica, Isaac Abrams of Hollywood, Gary Golden of the Nosferatu, Regent Maximillian Strauss of the Tremere, and Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez combine forces to destroy Ming Xiao, which leads to the collapse of the official Quincunx position in Los Angeles. The Wan Kuei elects to keep the peace between their New Promise Mandarinate, the Camarilla and the Anarchs by disavowing Ming Xiao as a renegade who engaged in unauthorized intrigue with the deceased Prince Sebastian LaCroix. The Gargoyle of the Chinese Theatre Embraces Robbie Bartok. |
| 2005 | The Ventrue Baron of Santa Monica, Therese Voerman, declares for the Praxis. A period of chaos follows, during which Gary Golden is allegedly murdered by Therese Voerman’s unpredictable sister, Jeanette Voerman for unknown reasons. Isaac Abrams, Peter Crawley of the Nosferatu, Tremere Regent Maximillian Strauss and Nines Rodriguez combine forces to drive Therese Voerman out of the city. She flees to Chicago, leaving behind a complicated legacy. There are vague and confusing rumors of an ongoing struggle in East Asia, where the Wan Kuei are occupied in hunting down and destroying a sinister cult of vampires known as the Gui Ren which supposedly originated in North Korea. Hellene Panhard, last surviving childe of Prince Michaela, eventually succeeds Calebros as Prince of New York. |
| 2006 | The scorching Heat Wave of 2006 is perhaps the worst in recorded, modern memory. Countless power outages and the overloading of Los Angeles’ electrical grid resulted in so many people dying from heat exhaustion, that the city coroners could not keep up with the volume (with a final toll of nearly 200 over just five days). The ‘Quorum‘ occurs, during which Isaac Abrams as Toreador Primogen, Peter Crawley as Nosferatu Primogen, Regent Strauss as Tremere Primogen and Grayson Mitchell as Ventrue Primogen, manage the city’s affairs together. Relations with Nines Rodriguez’s Anarchs are tense at times, yet essentially cordial. |
| Early 2007 | The total population of Los Angeles County exceeds 10 million for the first time, making it by far the nation’s largest county. The ‘Quorum‘ eventually invites Vannevar Thomas, who had been Prince of San Francisco up until 1996, to assume the Princedom of Los Angeles. The elder Ventrue had recently turned up in Los Angeles after a self-described ‘period of wandering and introspection’ throughout the American West. He selects Isaac Abrams as his Seneschal. A Childe of Cyrus ‘Khan’ Hatami, a Persian-American Brujah known as Farid Bekhti manages to make himself the new Baron of Santa Monica. He will clash with both Isaac Abrams of Hollywood and Antwon ‘Antman’ Manners of Venice’s Oakwood neighborhood over the years. |
| Late 2007 | A more mysterious and aggressive sect of eastern vampires – primarily Koreans that seem to call themselves ‘Gui Ren‘, begin to appear in Koreatown. Currently engaged on the losing side of a ‘civil war’ back home, the Gui Ren still manage to quickly overwhelm the local Angeleno Korean vampires aligned with the New Promise Mandarinate and take control. They are little noticed for the first five years however, except by the independent-minded coterie of vampires known as the Hancock Park Association whose territory borders Koreatown. |
| 2008 | The 2008 Financial Crisis is the most catastrophic economic event since the Great Depression. It has a severe effect on real estate and lending markets across the world. The Los Angeles and New York markets are relatively quick to bounce back, yet large stretches of the Midwest and Rust Belt never fully recover. The notorious Ventrue schemer, Horatio Ballard of Chicago, witnesses his wealth get almost completely wiped out by the end of 2008. |
| 2009 | The ongoing competition between the Baron of Santa Monica, Farid Bekhti, and his Persians (which include his ‘siblings’ Ali Aslan and Bita Sasani, and his childe Cheyenne Spare) with Isaac Abrams of Hollywood eventually creates a power vacuum in West Los Angeles. Thin Bloods, renegade fledglings, Caitiffs and other such undesirables began to proliferate there. They then begin Embracing the children of the rich and powerful. |
| 2010 | The charismatic Sabbat infiltrator known as ‘Dusty‘ arrives in Los Angeles. He soon makes himself one of Nines Rodriguez’s top lieutenants. He gains clout by taking a particularly hardline stance against so-called Camarilla tyranny. |
| Early 2011 | A period of increasing tensions which is almost entirely dominated by a growing series of confrontations between the Camarilla and the Anarchs. The nadir of relations come when Tremere Regent Strauss (assisted by Magister Alejandro Lopez) set out to destroy the renegade Tremere coterie known as the ‘Digital Draculas‘, who had sought and received refuge among the Anarchs of East and South LA. |
| Late 2011 | Right when it seems that war is going to break out between the Camarilla and the Anarchs, Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez abruptly disappears. Idolized in East and South LA, Nines was among the most popular leaders that the Free States had ever known – perhaps even more than Jeremy MacNeil. His supposed death results in the fracture of consensus in the Anarch coalition, as more ambitious Barons such as David Geduld of Torrance, and the ‘Caitiff Baron’ of Anaheim known as Amethyst compete to be seen as Nines’ successor and eventually carry the fight to his presumed killer, Prince Vannevar Thomas. Both the political wrangling and the talk of revenge would be badly interrupted when the Sabbat suddenly launch a major, unexpected invasion just after Christmas. |
| 2012 | Battleship IOWA celebrates its grand opening as a floating museum. The “Battleship of Presidents” is permanently docked at Berth 87 at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. The Second Sabbat Siege of Los Angeles begins. It is lead by the Archbishop of California known only as The Caballero. Although Nines was originally assumed to have been assassinated by the Camarilla, the horrifying truth soon becomes known as having likely been the work of the Black Hand. A calculated, surgical strike designed to disrupt the Anarchs‘ unity before the Crusade washed over them. There had long been rumors of Sabbat activity in Los Angeles. The occasional pack of shovelheads would often be encountered on the periphery of South LA, East LA or Anaheim. While there hadn’t been a serious war party sent against the Camarilla since 2004, scrapping with the Sabbat remained a fact of life for the Anarchs. Yet they were never seriously threatened until 2012. Not only did Sabbat packs flood into East LA in hitherto unimagined numbers, (the result of years of carefully infiltrating packs from Tijuana and the Midwest), in the despair following Nines’ death, many were lead astray into changing their allegiance by a charismatic Sabbat infiltrator known as ‘Dusty‘. |
| Early 2013 | Mara Salvatrucha, commonly abbreviated as “MS-13”, and primarily composed of Central American immigrants has become by far the most dominant and violent street gang in Los Angeles. They greatly overshadow the native Chicano and black gangs, aided by their cartel contacts. The Sabbat Crusade is sometimes called the ‘Second Siege of Los Angeles‘. However, unlike the 1965 attack, the ‘Second Siege’ of Los Angeles is a much more protracted and brutal affair, which takes the better part of a year to resolve. Even a decade later, there are few surviving vampires in LA who don’t carry scars from this conflict. Many Kindred are Embraced during this time, as during the most desperate period of the Crusade, when Downtown LA seems on the verge of being lost, Prince Vannevar is extremely generous in granting creation privileges. The Ventrue Primogen, Grayson Mitchell, decamps to Las Vegas after feuding with Prince Vannevar about strategy. Isaac Abrams suffers a trio of tragedies: His beloved childe, Ash Rivers, is destroyed by a Sabbat war party during an infamous raid on the Sunset Strip rack known as the Asp Hole. His favorite and adopted childe, Venus Dare, flees to Seattle. He is blamed for Ash Rivers’ death by his only remaining childe, Emily Cade, who abandons him in favor of San Francisco. Salvador Garcia’s childe, Gloria Martinez, is captured and killed by the Sabbat pack known as the Army of the Night. It is lead by Dusty and includes several infamous Cainites such as Juarez Joe, and the Anarch traitors Warchild and Shyla. With Gloria’s death, El Hermandad collapses, its last remaining lieutenants Loco and Mongol retreating to South LA. |
| Late 2013 | The ‘front line’ with the Sabbat is eventually stabilized along the general course of the Los Angeles River, with a few exceptions (such as Vernon). The greatest burden of fighting falls on the Anarchs of South LA, though their ranks are swollen by East LA refugees. The Sabbat drive a wedge between South LA and Anaheim, all the way down to Hawaiian Gardens, which results in Orange County developing a more separate identity, despite the fact that the ‘Caitiff Baron’ Amethyst, had once nurtured ambitions of ruling all Los Angeles. The Baron of Santa Monica, Farid Bekhti, is slain fighting to keep the Sabbat on the right side of the Los Angeles River. His childe, Cheyenne Spare, takes over as Baron with Ali Aslan’s help. The Tremere Chantry, once the largest on the West Coast, loses nearly 2/3rds of its Apprentices and all of its Magisters save Alejandro Lopez. The Nosferatu suffer unspeakable casualties in a silent ‘Sewer War’, even encountering a rogue vozhd that dated from Bishop Andrei’s time. The Hancock Park Association under its President, Ian Stanford, are forced to assume the burden for containing the aggressive encroachments of Koreatown. |
| 2013 – Dec | Flush with overconfidence following the rout of the Sabbat from Downtown LA, and after spending most of the last year in various top secret, secure safehouses, Prince Vannevar Thomas decides to conduct an inspiring ‘review’ of the city’s defenses. Tragically, his motorcade takes a wrong turn near the end of the night and collides with a retreating Sabbat War Party. He and his entire entourage are slain, without the Sabbat even realizing that the surprisingly tough Ventrue they butchered had been the Prince himself. If they had known that, the tide might have turned yet again. The belated ‘credit’ for his demise will eventually go to the then Bishop of San Bernardino, Arturo Cruz. Incredibly, Prince Sara Winder of San Francisco is assassinated by a rogue Cathayan just weeks later while allegedly contemplating an expansion into the vacant Praxis of Los Angeles. The uneasy détente between the Camarilla and the Quincunx is nearly shattered except for the efforts of Winder’s Seneschal, the former Prince Jochen Van Nuys in securing a renewed truce at the last moment. This time, the Inner Circle lets Jochen remain Prince, after he promises to rule San Francisco with competence and vigilance for the Cathayan threat. |
| Early 2014 | Maximillian Strauss, Regent and Primogen of the Tremere, declares for the Los Angeles Praxis. He is genuinely surprised – and infuriated – when Seneschal & Toreador Primogen Isaac Abrams of Hollywood contests this and declares his own right to the Praxis. The city remains a cockpit of fear and intrigue for the next eighteen months, as paranoia about a potential recurrent Sabbat assault and open conflict among the Primogen Council makes consolidation difficult. The Nosferatu Primogen, Peter Crawley, works unceasingly behind the scenes to keep the Praxis intact, and to ensure that the most important crises are dealt with. Yet the Quorum’s old ‘unity’ is long gone. The Anarchs of Los Angeles spend the year regrouping and vehemently arguing about the future. It is rumored that Emily Cade becomes a close associate of Prince Jochen Van Nuys of San Francisco around this time. In the wake of the failed Second Sabbat Siege of Los Angeles, the ultra-conservative Lasombra Bishop Arturo Cruz of San Bernardino challenges the Archbishop of California known as The Caballero, defeats and diablerizes him. In the years that follow, Archbishop Cruz will spend more time in purging the Sword of its less zealous elements and nomads than planning new conquests. |
| Late 2014 | Isaac Abrams doesn’t relent from trying to take over the Westside, following Farid Bekhti’s Final Death. Yet Isaac is either philosophically unwilling or lacks the resources to dominate the Westside with an army of ghouls and childer as Louis Fortier once did. Antwon Manner’s Ghost Town moves hard on Santa Monica as well. The new Baron of Santa Monica, Cheyenne Spare, and with the support of the Persians Ali Aslan and Bita Sasani, manage to fend off these threats. Meanwhile, the numerous deaths and displacements brought on by the Second Sabbat Siege results in unheard of numbers of Sireless fledglings, Thin Bloods and unclaimed Caitiffs flooding the Westside, which was furthest from the fighting. |
| Early 2015 | All of Los Angeles’ most vicious personal faultlines and territorial conflicts would be sowed during this time. David Geduld’s ‘South Bay coalition‘ breaks from the ‘Anarch coalition‘, which had been perceived as being dominated by Nines‘ loyalists, MacNeil diehards and El Hermandad refugees from East LA. The Baron of Inglewood, Clarence Carver, joins with David Geduld’s South Bay coalition. This is mostly to do with Inglewood’s decades-long rivalry with South-Central, going all the way back to the nights of the Sons of the Crypt. Steve Booth of Long Beach goes his own way, much to the disgust and fury of many. His position in the Southlands is secured by several uncommonly devoted and competent childer, who muster a half dozen childer of their own. Skelter, Trace and Nines’ childe, Fadrique ‘Spade’ Gutierrez, do their best to hold the various gangs, crews and sets of South LA together. Eventually, Damsel, another of Nines’ old lieutenants, decamps to Portland. Her childe, Keon Brown, takes over in Watts. Other former lieutenants of Nines would establish more autonomous territories across the Southlands yet remain loosely united under the South LA banner. This includes O.G compatriots like Amani Williams, Busta and Calvin Brooks of Willowbrook & Compton, the militant Khalil Abdul Asaad of Wilmington and younger up and coming leaders like Jose Angel of Rancho Dominguez. It’s likely that the threat of the Sabbat across the river, and of David Geduld’s ambitions on the other side of the 110 has much to do with the bulk of South LA staying nominally together. |
| Late 2015 | The Toreador elder known as Violeta Altamirana arrives in the city, and with the blessing of the Inner Circle (along with the help of Peter Crawley’s Nosferatu), manages to establish herself as the compromise candidate. Prince Violeta Altamirana has a reputation of being a rather fey and distant creature. Perhaps even a bit flakey in the best tradition of the entitled European transplant. However, she promises the city relative peace and prosperity. She works quietly behind the scenes to out-maneuver her rivals and to advance her designs, and those of her Old World patrons. She spurs billions of dollars worth of development in Downtown LA. An embittered Isaac Abrams, who had expected for years that he was the obvious choice after Prince Vannevar, turns his back on the Camarilla for the second (or third) time. Being at the peak of his power and influence, and hailing from her own Clan (from who Altamirana would have ordinarily expected the most stalwart support), the new Prince is compelled to make a treaty with Isaac, recognizing his Hollywood Barony. It isn’t known what arrangements were made to secure Regent Strauss’ acquiescence. |
| Early 2016 | The LAPD leads the nation in fatal police shootings by a rather considerable margin. The Followers of Set make a major play for domination of the Westside. Somewhat miraculously, Farid Bekhti’s childe, Cheyenne Spare, manages to wield together enough cliques, and through a regenerative power that borders on the Sabbat’s tactics of Mass Embrace, the Westsiders manage to hold on against all comers, including Isaac Abrams, the Setites and the South Bay coalition. There is little restraint as to who is allowed to Embrace, as much from ignorance as anything else. Eventually, South Bay realizes that although they have more veteran fighters, it still isn’t very easy to deal with a Thin-Blooded fledgling with wealthy and influential parents. Additionally, the Westsiders are far quicker to resort to certain levers of mortal influence, that the old school gangland culture of Ghost Town, Inglewood or South-Central would never permit. The average Westsider’s willingness to sic the LAPD on their enemies rather than fight in the streets earns them a great deal of contempt. But it is effective. There is a great spate of drug overdose and drag racing deaths reported among the children of the city’s elites during this time. Not to mention a record surge in police-related homicides. |
| Late 2016 | Prince Altamirana intervenes on the Westside in a way that seems calculated to undermine Isaac Abrams. She lures the Westside’s most formidable combatant, Bita Sasani, into assuming the position of Sheriff, making her the first Brujah to openly pledge herself to the Camarilla in decades. Prince Altamirana raises her protégé, Summer Hastings, to the Toreador Primogen seat vacated by Isaac Abrams. Assisted by Sasani and Hastings, Prince Altamirana eventually co-opts Cheyenne Spare as Brujah Primogen, as part of an agreement whereby the Westside would adhere to the same restraint in creation rights as the Camarilla observed. The discipline needed to achieve this costs Cheyenne some popularity, although it secures an ally against her rivals. |
| 2017 | Despite their treaty, Isaac Abrams remains Prince Altamirana’s chief rival and target. She undermines his influence at every turn, which includes cooperating with Cheyenne Spare’s Westsiders to upset his designs. Isaac Abram’s hold over the city is eventually reduced to a shadow of what it had been only a few years earlier. This is partly because, whether through hubris or bad advice, he underestimates the resentment that many feel towards him. Once close collaborators, Regent Strauss and Peter Crawley would experience a visceral and seemingly permanent falling out over the interference in the Tremere’s designs by Crawley’s own childe and agent. |
| 2018 | The Hancock Park Association grows increasingly estranged from the Camarilla, owing to the perceived lack of help against the encroachments from Koreatown. Most blame Prince Altamirana’s alleged flakiness on this. A few cynical souls believe she looks the other way, since the strange Gui Ren’s aggressions put pressure on Hollywood and Hancock Park, her greatest rivals to local pre-eminence in Central Los Angeles. If so, it is likely a mistake, as during these years, the Gui Ren would explode out of Koreatown and overrun virtually all of Mid-City except Hancock Park and Hollywood, stopping only at the 10 Freeway. Historic Filipinotown in north Westlake, parts of Echo Park, and half of Chinatown would also come under their way, where they are resisted by some old, semi-feral Wan Kuei holdouts (despite the lack of an official Quincunx representative in Los Angeles since Ming Xiao’s disgrace). |
| 2019 | The ‘Countess of Culver City‘, Andrea Visconti, unhappily instigates a blood feud with the Baron of Inglewood, Clarence Carver, when her childe, Tyler Ward, Embraces Clarence’s granddaughter, Zuri Carver, against his will. The Countess refuses to deliver her childe up to Clarence’s vengeance, whereupon a lasting vendetta ensues. It is a complicated and treacherous scandal. Isaac Abram’s chief lieutenant, Arnie Costa, dies in mysterious circumstances in 2019 on the border with Koreatown. The exact identity of his murderer is never discovered. In the aftermath, Isaac’s formidable Gargoyle bodyguard (and the other main reason for his and Strauss’ deteriorated relationship) is instrumental in keeping order in Downtown Hollywood. The famous rack and magnet for troublemakers, Bar Sinister, is closed by Isaac, yet eventually reopened next year owing to unpopular demand. The Sabbat threat is not taken quite as seriously by the Camarilla as it used to be. Although Sabbat territory stretches far to the east, all the way to San Bernardino, they are mostly bordered by remnants of the Anarch Free States. The Sabbat has spent years fighting to hold onto its gains, leaving at best two or three packs bordering Camarilla territory. It would have been an easy calculation for Prince Altamirana to make, that any move against the Sword would benefit the Rabble more than the Tower. There are persistent rumors of a creature known as the Bone Flower who has taken command of the remaining Quincunx in Chinatown, halting the Gui Ren’s advance in the district. |
| Early 2020 | Emily Cade returns to Los Angeles from San Francisco. She quickly establishes herself as a leading Harpy and possible con artist. Prince Altamirana is assassinated late in the Spring of 2020 by a car bomb. Her shocking death kicks off a series of dramatic events. Altamirana’s Sheriff, Bita Sasani, seizes the Praxis and reigns for one month as ‘Sultana’. She is soon deposed by the machinations of a hostile Primogen Council which turns on Cheyenne Spare as well. Isaac Abrams of Hollywood enjoys a modest resurgence in his fortunes, though is dismayed to see far less support for his bid as Prince than last time. Eventually, Altamirana’s surviving protégé, Summer Hastings, succeeds as Prince and immediately brings back some measure of stability to the Praxis. Most Toreador laud Hastings as a veritable wunderkind. Most everyone else believes she is being puppeted by the Nosferatu Peter Crawley in line with some nefarious agenda. The vast majority of Kindred in Los Angeles believe that the Sabbat provocateur known as Dusty was responsible for the car bomb that ended Altamirana’s unlife. The more jaded and cynical have pointed to good reasons for almost every major faction in L.A to have conspired at her end. |
Appendix #1: A New Carthage (1830-1941)
Robbing Native Americans of their land was not limited to the East and the Great Plains. In 1836, the European arrivals forced what was left of the original village of Yangna into a segregated area into what is now (the still segregated) Skid Row in modern downtown Los Angeles. In 1845, the police commission recommended that the remaining indigenous be relocated east of the Los Angeles River. In 1847, that settlement was razed and the natives (excepting those reduced to slavery) moved even farther away to the Puente and San Jose Hills.
The new European settlers became known as los diablos, and there was nothing about the subsequent gold rushes of ’42 and ’49 which did anything to alleviate this judgement, attracting as it did some of the worst human garbage in North America. This ‘new Carthage’ attracted disappointed prospectors, thieves, murderers and degenerates of every kind. Homicides among the mortal population averaged one per day for decades, while the numbers of murdered Indians weren’t tracked at all. Los Angeles probably had more gambling dens, saloons and brothels per capita than anywhere else in the country. What very little law there was came in the form of lynch gangs, who tended to string up the most convenient (and often racially undesirable) suspect. In short, Los Angeles made San Francisco seem like a paradise of law and order.
Kindred scholars have long noted that communities often take on the complexion of the Kindred who dwell there, and that is certainly the case for Los Angeles. From 1845 until 1870, Los Angeles had the reputation of being one of the most debauched towns in America. Statistics indicate that by 1855, the local population from the remaining natives to shaggy-haired prospectors suffered from a surprisingly wide range of communicable diseases, most notably syphilis. Los Angeles became a popular stand-in for ministers and missionaries across the country (especially up north around the Bay Area), to be used as an holy example for the wages of sin and excess.
Los Angeles didn’t begin to realize its true potential until 1870, when Don Sebastian claimed the mantle of Prince. Not long after (driven as much by his own ego, ambition and competition with the Princes of San Francisco and San Diego as anything else), Don Sebastian began the process of transforming a town with a mediocre future into the foundation of the Los Angeles we know tonight. He encouraged the first generation of visionary city leaders who successfully lobbied for federal funds, beating out San Diego, to build a deep-water harbor in San Pedro Bay. By using a combination of bribery, threats and Domination, Don Sebastian and his coterie convinced Southern Pacific Railroad to put a line through to Los Angeles in 1876, and in 1885 the Santa Fe Railway was also connected to Los Angeles (both of which undermined San Francisco’s previous monopoly on rail travel.)
Eventually, increasingly fierce competition among the ‘Big Four’ railroad tycoons resulted in one of the country’s first ‘rate wars’. Ticket prices dropped so low that soon people couldn’t afford not to come: In 1869 the fare from Chicago to California had been $130, in 1887 it dropped to $1. A huge advertising campaign convinced people that California was the Promised Land – and for the first time, entire families (bringing with them their higher expectations of civil stability and social morality) began to arrive en masse rather than opportunists and desperados.
In 1880, Los Angeles had a population of a mere 11,000 people. By 1900, the population was 100,000, and by 1912, it would balloon to 300,000. When the city itself filled up, speculators and developers (including among them some of the city’s most famously family legacies) laid out huge new communities to the west towards Santa Monica Bay.
This was a huge population for a city built in a semi-arid wasteland, and it wasn’t long before drought and water shortages threatened to clip Los Angeles’ newfound wings. Simultaneously, as law and order increased in the city, it was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain such a large Kindred population. If the city was going to keep growing – and its resident Kindred were going to avoid a savage territorial struggle – it would need a new source of water, which would bring with it new blood as well.
Accordingly, Don Sebastian sent his agents into the Owens Valley, north of L.A., to covertly option and then purchase a checkerboard of properties. He then created a false water shortage, actually dumping huge amounts of fresh water into the sewers (thus earning the lasting enmity of the startled Nosferatu), yet which succeeded in frightening the citizens of L.A. into voting for a Water Bond act. With the vast sums of capital thus raised, the Owens Valley Aqueduct was built which siphoned the (allegedly stolen) water into the San Fernando Valley, which experienced a real estate boom as many made their fortunes from land which had been sold cheaply, and then quadrupled in value as it soon filled with people and profitable agriculture.
The resulting desiccation of Owens Valley did not concern Don Sebastian, however. With Los Angeles now having a virtual monopoly on water supplies, it was able to force one formerly independent city after another to make a choice of whether to become part of Los Angeles and enjoy the water supply or remain independent and wither away. With one or two notable exceptions, who had had the foresight to secure their own water contracts, such as Santa Monica, most joined up or faded into obscurity.
The Decadent Dominion (1870-1930)
By the end of the ‘Water Wars’, a steady stream of anarchs, autarkis and other outcast Kindred had swelled the population of Southern California to a dangerous, Masquerade-threatening level. The largest metropolis of the Southwest, Los Angeles, was a Camarilla domain that had now been ruled by Don Sebastian Juan Dominguez for over half a century.
Originally, many of these vampires were refugees from the much older and better-established Kindred community in San Francisco, as the Ventrue there continued to pressure the Brujah and other anarchs. In Don Sebastian, they initially thought they had found a stern yet (superficially) fair Prince, one who did not care what anyone had done elsewhere, as long as all obeyed his rules while they were in his Domain. In fact, the Prince of San Francisco would accuse Don Sebastian of running a dangerously laissez-faire city, which allowed both its Kine and Kindred alike the freedom to run amok. Disillusioned anarchs would soon realize that Don Sebastian’s permissive reputation had more to do with bored indifference than benevolence – he could prove shockingly callous and imperious the moment his own interests were even accidentally infringed upon.
Don Sebastian’s origins were somewhat mysterious, but he was unquestionably a powerful Kindred — a Toreador of good breeding and relatively potent generation and quick-witted enough to best any immediate challengers to his claim of praxis over Los Angeles. That said, even during his glory years, Don Sebastian was an often petulant and vicious creature, who collected and disposed of favorites and rivals alike with equal arbitrariness. His well known penchant for intrigue has resulted in any number of alleged misdeeds being laid at his feed, whether real or imagined. It is entirely likely that more than a few Kindred benefited from the Prince’s notoriety to cover for their own crimes.
In modern nights, even the most shameless Camarilla propagandist would concede that Don Sebastian, for all his brutal effectiveness at enforcing his authority on sullen anarchs, darkly good looks, impeccable ‘breeding’ and powerful blood, was an otherwise unspectacular choice for Prince of a city as large, complicated and influential as Los Angeles had become by the late 1920s. You could not rule a major, modern American city as a noble’s hacienda. He was often slow to react, and as his frustrations and insecurities mounted, began to compensate by overreacting in the most terrifying fashion. In time, Don Sebastian’s court became quite efficient at managing a Masquerade breach or other crisis after it had already occurred, yet the Prince seemed incapable of the imagination or foresight to head them off before they became an issue.
Don Sebastian’s greatest sin however, was his breathtaking hypocrisy. For example, he often created Masquerade breaches through his own decadent conduct. He habitually fed in public restaurants, and his legendary Hollywood parties sometimes resulted in terrified starlets being chased down Hollywood Boulevard by a pack of nude vampires baying for their blood (much to Isaac Abram’s immense disgust). No few Harpies speculated that these unpleasantries happened because some insidious Setite had introduced Sebastian to the pleasures of vitae taken from vessels on a cocaine binge. More likely, he discovered that vice entirely on his own.
From Shoemaker to Showtime (1907-1943)
Izaak Abramovitch arrived on the shores of the New World at some point in the early to mid 1800s as a penniless, Jewish shoemaker from Danzig, Poland, fleeing the troubles of his homeland. There is very little known about the circumstances of his Embrace, except that it happened when he was already past the threshold of middle age.
It is theorized (by those who go in for such things), that Izaak, having proved a disappointment to his rather impulsive Sire (who had a passion for elegant shoes!), banished the fledgling from his East Sire, forever embittering him towards the Camarilla. It is no doubt that Izaak, during the long years of his wanderings, had to swallow his pride more than once to survive…all the while being keenly aware of his lack of talent in the areas of traditional artistry. He tried his hand at one time or another with water color, sculpture, poetry, wood covering and even the violin – yet found no success.
By the time Izaak Abramovitch, now going by Isaac Abrams found himself on the West Coast, he had managed to reinvent himself as a reasonably successful patron rather than performer of the arts (mostly involving a string of bootleg Gilbert & Sullivan productions across the Midwest). However, he was still left unfulfilled. That is until he finally found his muse: In 1907, Isaac Abrams saw his first motion picture, and it entranced him. This would be his gift to the world. Through this new medium, the full brilliance of Isaac Abram’s artistic genius would become clear to the entire Camarilla.
Isaac Abrams began by Dominating the directors who came to the West Coast to do location shooting. In this way, Isaac ‘convinced’ a number of them to stay and set up studios in Hollywood, such as D.W Griffith in 1910. By funneling money to their fledgling operations, he set up a studio system that broke away from the bosses in New York then running the movie business (making several immortal enemies in the process among his own Clan). Through Domination, Presence and old fashioned blackmail, Isaac ‘attracted’ acting talent to Los Angeles, and kept it there.
Always afraid of losing control to other rapacious, encroaching Toreador, Isaac Abrams set up the studio system to hamstring the competition: The talent stayed strictly under the thumb of the studio bosses, who were in turn Isaac’s puppets. For the first 30 years of the industry (right up until the Anarch Revolt of 1943), Isaac Abrams managed every facet of motion picture production, from choosing the actors to approving the scripts and final edits. Although Isaac Abrams would cunningly weather and survive the tribulations in the decades ahead, his influence in the movie industry would eventually be reduced to a mere sliver of what it once was. He has however, never lost the blunt, no-nonsense demeanor of a Golden Age of Hollywood studio mogul.
There were many during the 1930s who tried to encourage Isaac Abrams to challenge Don Sebastian for the praxis of Los Angeles. He refused to, and instead carefully assuaged Don Sebastian’s growing paranoia by presenting himself as an aloof, quixotic obsessive, caring only for his ‘toys of light and music’. Not to mention, he ensured Don Sebastian and his coterie enjoyed a steady diet of ingenue starlets that didn’t quite meet Isaac’s standards. The reason for the Hollywood mogul’s caution had everything to do with the terrible example made of the one Primogen who did challenge Don Sebastian directly, the Tremere Alonzo de Portola.
The Warlock Who Would Be Prince (1927)
Even worse for the domain than Don Sebastian’s lax self-governance and increasingly despotic nature was his unashamedly old fashioned racist, classist and sadistic beliefs. He was openly contemptuous of practically anyone who wasn’t a pure-blooded Spaniard of noble descent – which, by the 1930s, meant almost everyone around him. He had an especially savage disregard for the indigenous, both living and undead alike, including any Hispanic with the slightest hint of native ancestry (virtually the entire Chicano population of Los Angeles). He also fancied himself an ‘artiste of punishment’ and seemed to believe that his creative justice levied against those who displeased him represented some sort of artistic endeavor worthy of respect.
It can well be imagined then how furious Don Sebastian was, when the first serious challenge to his rule came in the form of an experienced, charismatic and respected Tremere Primogen named Alonzo de Portola of the eighth-generation. Born in Mexico City of the last century (during its brief period of Camarilla rule) and entirely unashamed of his mother’s mestizo heritage. In 1927, he managed to drum up a surprising amount of support for a run at the Prince’s throne. For a while, it even looked like he might be successful, since a number of the younger Kindred (and the Nosferatu in general) were getting tired of Don Sebastian.
One night, however, Alonzo and his entire, mixed-Clan coterie simply disappeared, and no one has heard from them since. This effectively ended any question as to who was Prince of Los Angeles. Since the remaining Primogen had no idea how Don Sebastian had managed to snuff all resistance with such seeming effortlessness, they felt they had no choice yet to support him with even more (feigned) enthusiasm than before.
There aren’t many who remember Alonzo de Portola’s fate among the modern nights. Those who do remember him (even among the Nosferatu) take it for granted that his end was brought about by Don Sebastian’s perfidy. All that is known for sure is that the Pyramid avoided Los Angeles for nearly six decades after Alonzo’s mysterious disappearance. The Tremere would not have an official presence in L.A. again until Alonzo’s own Sire, the powerful Warlock known as Maximillian Strauss would eventually arrive in Los Angeles during the 1990s. If the Tremere Regent has an opinion as to the true fate of his long lost Childe, he has never been known to reveal it.
Appendix #2: The Anarch Revolt (1940s)
In 1942 a vampire appeared whom Don Sebastian could not ignore. Ventrue pressure had forced Jeremy MacNeil, a 300-year old Scottish Brujah, out of his New England home, and the immortal rebel gradually made his way across the country to Los Angeles. He already had quite a reputation as a champion of the underdog, and thus no Prince would allow him to remain in his or her city for very long. He was not necessarily opposed to the Camarilla, but he did believe that an unspoken Tradition was that the Prince was obligated to maintain some fundamental system of justice for younger Licks who may have been bullied and abused by those who were more powerful. This alone was enough to ensure his unpopularity in most praxes.
Even before MacNeil’s arrival, Los Angeles had become a haven for dispossessed Kindred from all over the United States. The expansion of Ventrue influence on the East Coast and the increasing presence of the Sabbat across the South and Northeast (even up into Canada) forced more and more Kindred, particularly anarchs, to move west. As they left in search of freer, safer havens and discovered that anarchs were not welcome in any of the larger midwestern cities, they kept moving until they reached the Pacific. Not all new arrivals were hopeful anarchs: Los Angeles had acquired a reputation under Don Sebastian as a darkly decadent playground, with a Prince quick to elevate his most slavish flatterers. As a result, the city also exerted a magnetic pull on the debauched and the opportunistic who would jostle among themselves as Don Sebastian’s courtiers.
The Toreador especially flocked to L.A., particularly those who had been rejected by their more refined brethren east of the Mississippi. In Los Angeles, they found others with an equal lack of talent and passion for perversion, who never put pressure on them to actually produce anything, but valued them merely for their ability to look aesthetic. With no focus and few conventional artistic endeavors to interest them (being completely blocked from from encroaching on the film business by Isaac Abrams), they soon became enamored with the pleasures of the flesh, and spent their time trying to find new ways to enliven the hunt. Sometimes, much to MacNeil’s disgust, this included coteries of favored courtiers preying on hapless, lone anarchs.
All of this amused Don Sebastian, who was further flattered by the extravagant and empty compliments the newcomers heaped upon him. However, the increasing gap between the decadence of the Toreador and the streetwise anarchs began to grate more and more on those who felt that they were being unfairly oppressed.
Confronting the Despot (Mid 1943)
In May of 1943, Jeremy MacNeil petitioned Don Sebastian for an Elysium audience and asked for justice on behalf of a black anarch who had been assaulted by a coterie of violent Toreador for no reason save racial animosity. What happened next would change the course of Anarch history.
The truth of those nights is lost – and even Jeremy MacNeil, for all his principles, had an unashamed flair for the dramatic in his retellings. However, most versions agree Don Sebastian began the audience by mocking MacNeil for his Clan, his ancestry, his sect status and his inferior blood before ordering a cadre of his ghouls to beat MacNeil senseless. Others claim that MacNeil was far too physically powerful for even a half dozen ghouls to overcome, and instead Don Sebastian used his crushingly powerful Dominate and Majesty to force MacNeil to abase himself before the Prince and his sniggering courtiers. That MacNeil’s valiant refusal to submit, even at the last, eventually provoked Don Sebastian into inflicting the most vile and violent abuse upon his helpless form, before the Anarch leader was dragged away – naked, beaten and humiliated – and flung onto the street outside the Elysium, a mere minute before sunrise.
Somehow, MacNeil survived. On the verge of torpor, he was either found, or managed to crawl into a nearby alley and hide himself inside a filthy dumpster, mere seconds ahead of the sun’s glare which would have brought him Final Death. It is notable that MacNeil himself never described in full what he suffered that night, nor precisely how he survived. There are one or two wild theories to the effect that it was a lowly Nosferatu assigned to spy on MacNeil, that is actually secretly responsible for saving him at the last second.
The next night, MacNeil made his way to the haven of his ally, Salvador Garcia, another Brujah and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, to whom he related only that the Prince had denied him the protection of Elysium and then ordered him beaten for challenging the Prince’s authority. Salvador Garcia’s first move was to call together the most capable Kindred who he knew were openly or secretly opposed to the tyrannical Prince, including the Toreador Primogen and Hollywood mogul, Isaac Abrams, the Ventrue Primogen Louis Fortier and his lover, the Ventrue idealist Jacqueline Fairmonte. While Garcia and other anarchs who soon heard this story were outraged and demanded immediate retribution, MacNeil ultimately restrained his Brujah fury and sided with Isaac and Louis who counseled patience.
The Glorious Revolution of 1943 (Late 1943)
Initially, Jeremy MacNeil didn’t believe the anarchs were ready to take a stand against the Camarilla, and he hoped to bring the L.A. Primogen into their camp, betting that they surely must realize now that Don Sebastian’s continuing rule was untenable.
Sadly for what might have been the future, a slim majority of the Primogen either failed to understand the gravity of the situation or were still cowed by the example made of the late, Alonzo de Portola. Reluctantly, its members chose to endorse Don Sebastian’s insult as an admirably intended lesson to remind the anarchs of their place. All they would consent to MacNeil’s diplomacy, in a vain effort to keep tensions to a minimum, was their allowance that the alleged violation of Elysium was a troubling accusation, and would have to be investigated ‘once order was restored’. The sole voice of official dissent was the Primogen of the Nosferatu, who resigned his seat – and then wisely disappeared into the sewers. The Toreador and Ventrue Primogens, Isaac Abrams and Louis Fortier respectively, were initially too cautious to immediately and publicly break with Don Sebastian, given he was a creature of such frightening power. Both knew that Don Sebastian was dangerously close to turning on them next.
The anarchs were predictably furious. Many of them wanted to go to war immediately, but Salvador, Isaac, Jeremy and a number of other anarch leaders (who would eventually become known as the Revolutionary Council) restrained them, with the exception of a crazed Malkavian who tried to attack one of Don Sebastian’s childer before being brutally subdued. Instead, they made plans, formed hit squads and sharpened their stakes. This planning, combined with the carelessness of the Camarilla loyalists, explains more than anything else why L.A’s anarchs succeeded where no others had in centuries.
The anarchs then spent several months identifying the havens of the loyalist Camarilla officers and of other prominent Kindred (mainly Toreador) known to still support the Prince. When the time was right, the anarchs deliberately provoked several riots among the mortal population, in some cases by firing up mortal allies in the nascent civil rights movement and in others by staging incidents intended to cause police crackdowns on those very same protesters. The goal was to overwhelm Don Sebastian’s influence network, using the riots (and the crackdowns) as cover for carrying out a spectacularly wide range of targeted assaults against the Prince and all of his allies in the city.
On December 21, 1943, Jeremy let slips the dogs of revolution.
A few hours before dawn, small groups of heavily armed Kindred made their way towards designated targets to ambush and destroy the leading Camarilla officers returning to their havens. Not all met with success: The occasional ‘elder’ defeated their attackers, while several others are claimed to have disappeared, never to be seen again (or, perhaps more likely, secretly diablerized). What is undoubted is that a majority of Don Sebastian’s closest supporters died the Final Death in the first night of the uprising, and those who did not, fled Los Angeles. Many of them later turned up in other Camarilla-held cities, ensuring that the dramatic events played out on Los Angeles’ streets would soon be known across the continent.
Of course, killing or chasing away the Primogen, or such Officers as the Sheriff or Keeper did not ensure the Camarilla’s defeat. A significant percentage of the city’s rank and file supported the Camarilla, even if they didn’t care for Don Sebastian personally, and took to the streets to defend it. They only managed to prolong the fighting another couple of nights: Although individual Camarilla supporters tended to be older and more powerful than their opponents, they were badly outnumbered as well as disheartened by the Final Deaths of so many of their leaders. The anarchs on the other hand, fought with a fury pent up for years – in Jeremy’s case, centuries. They felt they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And they were right.
The legends of the 1943 Revolt include many accounts of cunning and valor on both sides, including the exploits of such famous anarchs as Smiling Jack and the future Baron of San Diego, Tara Kearney. The best-known tale by far is of the battle between Don Sebastian and Salvador Garcia in the Don’s secluded rancho. There, the brave Salvador, hard-pressed by an ancient vampire significantly more powerful than himself, managed to defeat his tyrant enemy in a vicious combat mano a mano, take his blood, and then set his detested foe’s haven on fire.
There are some cynics who allege that the actual events of that night differ considerably from the popular version. And inevitably, there are those who claim the revisionist cynics (themselves mostly old school MacNeil loyalists) are merely seeking to blacken Salvador Garcia’s past reputation, in light of his later infamous betrayal. But such questions wouldn’t matter to anyone for half a century.
What mattered in 1943 is that – in less than a week – the Anarchs, almost miraculously, had claimed praxis over a major city of their own for the first time in centuries.
Midnight Massacre In Malibu (Early 1944)
By the end of the second night of the Revolt, it was clear that the anarchs ruled Los Angeles. All of the Camarilla elders had been killed, driven away or forced into hiding. Just before dawn on December 22, 1943, Jeremy MacNeil declared the founding of the Anarch Free States. Gangs of anarch warriors lurched through the darkened streets of L.A., screaming their triumph to the night sky. They celebrated for weeks afterwards as they continued to hunt down the remaining supporters of the Camarilla.
In the two weeks of exhilaration, triumph and chaos that followed the destruction of Don Sebastian, there was only one cloud to darken the moon of freedom rising over Los Angeles’ night-shrouded skyline. That was the increasingly hysteric rumors that a significant number of the former Prince’s entourage had fled to and regrouped in Malibu, where they had incredibly linked up and joined forces with a hitherto unsuspected Setite Temple. It was said they intended to hole up in Malibu until enough reinforcements had arrived to retake L.A.
It was only belatedly discovered that Dawn Cavanaugh, a ravishingly beautiful and depraved Follower of Set had founded her own Temple of Set in the Malibu Hills as far back as 1923. The temple was spectacularly successful, drawing mortals and Kindred alike from all over Southern California. In time, Dawn became extremely popular, and gathered many worshippers for her dark master. The reputation that Hollywood gained in the ’20s and ’30s as the “Sin Capital of the World” got a substantial boost from Dawn’s efforts. It is highly unlikely that Don Sebastian ever cared one whit for the Snake’s religion – but it is clear by now that she enjoyed the Prince’s perverse patronage.
There must have been quite a few of the former Prince’s inner circle that were even more seduced and corrupted by Dawn than he was, since so many of them retreated to Malibu rather than seek refuge farther afield when Don Sebastian was destroyed by Salvador Garcia.
The Revolutionary Council did not relish the idea of battling both the late Don Sebastian’s most desperate holdouts and the cunning Snakes on their home turf. There were few anarchs who had any familiarity or experience with Malibu, after all. Just the same – they could not leave the pocket of resistance to fester. MacNeil issued the orders, and on January 2nd (just one night after the most raucous New Year’s Eve that Los Angeles had ever experienced), a caravan of armed Kindred and ghouls headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway intent on tracking down Dawn Cavanaugh and destroying her along with the Prince’s holdouts.
Just before they got there, a tough-looking, shaggy-haired man flagged down the anarch caravan, approached the first car and warned them in a graveled voice, “Turn back. We have done your work for you. Gaia has had her vengeance, and there are no vampires in the hills tonight – nor will there ever be again. Go, and do not return.”
The vampires were about to object when the shaggy-haired man dropped to all fours, turned into a wolf and trotted off into the underbrush. Hearing growls from all around them, the Kindred decided to reconnoiter Malibu later, and got out of there as quickly as they could.
Subsequent (and very cautious) investigation proved that the Lupine had told the truth. The werewolves had attacked Malibu that night, and not a single vampire had survived. They had also rooted out the Temple of Set, so recently discovered by the anarchs, destroying it and its adherents.
It took decades longer for a more complete account to emerge, and even then it was never verified. It seems that one of Don Sebastian’s supporters, who had been seduced by Dawn Cavanaugh and fled there to Malibu, had himself corrupted and enslaved (some say Embraced) a beautiful young woman who was (allegedly) the sister or possibly even the daughter of one of the ferocious Lupines. Coincidentally, the Lupines had been preparing to strike when the Revolt broke out – and so followed their fleeing leech quarry to Malibu, who unbeknown to his Setite allies, brought their imminent destruction with him.
Fortunately for Dawn Cavanaugh, she was not there to be slaughtered alongside her unfortunate followers. She claims that she was visiting the temple in San Francisco, but others believe that she was somehow tipped off and for her own reasons decided to leave her cult to its savage fate.
Birth of the Anarch Free States (1944)
The Revolt did not stop in L.A., or even in Malibu. The same forces that had swollen the ranks of the anarchs in Los Angeles also existed in San Diego, Fresno and San Jose. While the discontent in those cities did not equal L.A’s, the mutterings of revolution were everywhere.
All princes prop up one another and can be more or less be counted on to come to the aid of a fellow prince in case of an insurrection. With the destruction of Don Sebastian, along with his coterie and most of his supporters – the strongest bastion of the Camarilla on the West Coast – anarchs throughout Southern California took heart. They began to have hope that what had been accomplished in L.A. could happen elsewhere.
Tara Kearney, a well-known anarch from Texas, had shown up with a dozen swaggering Brujah from Texas shortly before the Revolt kicked off. Their support was a major factor in the defeat of Don Sebastian’s forces. It surprised no one that when the anarchs needed a strike team to go to San Diego (the most likely source of a Camarilla counterattack after San Francisco), Tara immediately volunteered. She proved to be brutally effective: A mere two weeks later Prince Maria of San Diego was found staked and beheaded in her bedroom. That same night anarchs swept through the city, declaring loyalty to Tara, the cause of freedom, and their membership in the Free States (roughly in that order). This scenario was rapidly repeated in Fresno and then in San Jose as other Anarch leaders seized cities for themselves throughout the following Summer and Fall of 1944.
In early 1945, an anarch force under Salvador Garcia tried to repeat the success in San Francisco, but here they met the determined, intelligent resistance of Prince Vannevar Thomas. The Ventrue prince and his troops completely closed down the city and allowed no movement at all. The anarchs reported to Salvador that Prince Vannevar was not only ready for them, he appeared to enjoy the support of the majority of local Kindred. Jeremy MacNeil recalled Salvador, figuring that the Free States could not afford to enter into a sustained conflict at this point and assuming that San Francisco would fall in its own good time. Salvador Garcia vehemently disagreed, arguing that if San Francisco wasn’t taken now, then the Anarch Free States would never be safe. Jeremy MacNeil eventually had his way, yet the two anarch leaders were never quite so close as they had once been. A similar failure to take Las Vegas around the same time resulted in unexpectedly heavy casualties, with Smiling Jack returning to Los Angeles as one of the few survivors.
Thus, by the end of February 1945, the Anarch Free States stretched from the Mexican border to San Jose, and from the Pacific Ocean to within 50 miles of the Nevada state line. But the leaders of the Revolt had little time for regroup. Los Angeles, suddenly deprived of both the inhuman despotism of Don Sebastian and then the momentum of an expanding revolution, suddenly collapsed into chaos. Isaac Abrams, who had vigorously argued against both the San Francisco and Las Vegas attacks withdrew from the ranks of the greater anarch leadership to focus on stabilizing Hollywood – and Jeremy let him go. He tried to summon Tara Kearney up from San Diego to come help him, but she would not come. It turns out that deep down, vampires care more for their own territory than any higher ideals. The Revolutionary Council was coming apart at the seams.
The Perfect State (1945)
Jeremy MacNeil and his remaining allies used what little time they imagined they had to retrench themselves in anticipation of the Inner Circle launching an overwhelming retaliation, undoubtedly spearheaded by its ruthless Justicars and Archons. The assault never came.
It was baffling at the time, yet the reason for the Camarilla’s lack of response became obvious with hindsight.
It is too easily forgotten that even into the modern nights, well into the 21st century, that the majority of the Camarilla’s strength remains centered on Europe, including at any given time, six of it seven Justicars, with only the occasional foray to the ‘New World’ as circumstances required. This was even more thoroughly the case prior to the Marshall Plan, Bretton-Woods and the rise of American global dominance.
And just what exactly was happening in Europe, in 1945-46? At the time, Europe was in a miserable shambles. Some of the mightiest scions of the Old World Camarilla (any one of which Don Sebastian could not have held a candle to), such as the Ventrue Princes of London, Berlin, and Marseilles were dead or missing. European Kine and Kindred alike found themselves creeping through war-torn, fire-bombed cities with both the specter of starvation and communist uprisings looming. There were horrific Masquerade breaches being committed on a nightly basis by half-maddened vampires desperate to survive, straining the resources of the most influential elders.
When the Inner Circle did briefly convene in the ruins of Venice to address the Anarch Revolt, the loss of a few cities on the American West Coast was brushed off as a minor embarrassment to be addressed later. It was nothing at all compared to the loss and/or ruination of cities that had been pillars of Kindred society for millennia, like Berlin (now hosting the Soviet Red Army), Prague, Dresden or Athens. Only the Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon (who enjoyed rather more recent and comprehensive intelligence on how events had spiraled) considered the ‘California Revolts’ to be an equally pressing concern.
Unfortunately, Petrodon was outvoted by his peers. Instead, to MacNeil’s amazement, it would be nearly two decades before the Camarilla would make a serious attempt to ‘realign’ the Free States. For now, Los Angeles got a much-needed breathing space. They would need it, as even without the threat of immediate Camarilla retribution, much of Southern California was still in chaos. Many of the anarchs did not fully understand what that it was they had fought for, and looked to Jeremy or Salvador to take over the role of prince – the farthest thing from their minds.
Therefore, the Revolutionary Council met one last time as a true quorum (with the exception of Isaac Abrams and Tara Kearney) and produced the document called the Status Perfectus, or “Perfect State.” Actually written by Salvador Garcia and Jaqueline Fairmonte (rather than MacNeil as many assume), it laid out the rules by which the Free States should govern themselves instead of being ruled from above.
It’s often forgotten that the Status Perfectus was only written after the attending anarch leaders had nearly unanimously (excepting Salvador Garcia) proposed for Jeremy MacNeil to declare himself the new Prince of Los Angeles – and been emphatically rejected by the Scottish Brujah. Soon enough, Jeremy MacNeil would have reason to regret his high-mindedness.
Appendix #3: Rise of the Gangs (1950s-1990s)
The Status Perfectus manifesto quickly circulated among anarch communities, and even down to the modern nights, it has continued to serve as an idealistic goal for anarch struggles everywhere. Its allure lies in being an innovative blueprint for a way of life hitherto unknown to the Kindred. Perhaps too innovative.
Aware that there would still be a tendency to look to the Revolutionary Council for answers to all of L.A.’s problems, and perhaps leery of being offered the Princedom again, Jeremy MacNeil convinced the body to dissolve itself upon publication of the Status, leaving the Los Angeles with no nominal leadership at all. Although MacNeil and Salvador Garcia had expected an unavoidable period of confusion and adjustment, they would be deeply disillusioned by the chaos that followed.
It would soon become apparent that Kindred society, even more than Nature, abhors a vacuum. One of the first things that the newly liberated anarchs of the Free States discovered about not having a Prince, was that there was no longer anyone to lay out hunting grounds, or to protect one Kindred’s domain from another. Both duties which Don Sebastian had carried out, however arbitrarily. This resulted in a wild free-for-all, in which individual vampires staked out huge territories for themselves and forbade other Kindred to hunt in them.
One particularly audacious (yet sadly all too representative) example was an ambitious Gangrel who claimed the entire San Fernando Valley as his private demesne! Needless to say, it wasn’t long until the ‘Prince of the Valley’ ended his reign in small pieces along the dry bed of the Los Angeles River.
It soon became clear that the only way to safely claim a hunting ground was to form a coterie of trusted Kindred and claim the area for the group. The area had to be large enough to support the entire coterie yet remain small enough to be defended. These ‘gangs,’ as they became known in Los Angeles, soon became the dominant political model in the Free States – a far cry from MacNeil and Garcia’s original ideals.
In time, the most successful gangs grew to a surprising size, such as to lay claim to whole swathes of the Southlands. One of the characteristics which set them apart was the almost complete breakdown of the ‘Clan system’ that so dominates the Camarilla. It was not uncommon for the average gang to include members from several different Clans, including Caitiff, although the Brujah were always the most numerous. When you add the fact that most of the Kindred of Los Angeles are those who have either rejected their Clan’s traditional leadership or been rejected by it, the gang came to serve the functions traditionally fulfilled by Clan membership.
While coteries also exist in Camarilla-controlled areas, they have the stigma of being temporary alliances of fledglings, riven by conflicting loyalties to Prince and Primogen (often far older creatures of greater power). In Los Angeles, there were no such social controls – and it proved to be a lasting reason why Camarilla agents (often vainly seeking to appeal to Clan loyalties) would have so much difficult infiltrating the Anarch gangs in the decades that followed.
Caitiffs & Barons (1956)
As soon as the Anarch Free States came into existence, even more Kindred of all kinds poured into Southern California. While most were anarchs from various Clans, many were Caitiff looking for a place to belong and something in which to believe. The widely shared Status Perfectus, as published by the founding mothers and fathers of the Free States had given these freedom-seekers hope of discovering a society of vampires living harmoniously together, with each caring equally for himself and his brethren.
Instead they found an increasingly overpopulated urban sprawl, mainly controlled by dangerously territorial gangs that didn’t care for newcomers invading their ‘turf’. Many of these new arrivals perished at the hands of their supposed ‘brethren’, yet most soon banded together to form their own coteries for protection, which often evolved into fully fledged gangs bent on seizing territory of their own.
As competition for the available kine heated up, clashes between the larger gangs increased in frequency and brutality to rival the nights of the Revolt itself, threatening the continued survival of the Anarch Free States. Finally, in 1956, Jeremy MacNeil was forced to concede that his dream of a ‘Perfect State’ was not to be. Having kept aloof from the struggles and politics of the last decade, he grimly resolved to step in and call a meeting of the gangs. Under his guarantee of safety, the gang lords came together and drew up a map of L.A. to designate the boundaries of each gang’s hunting grounds, which became known as ‘baronies‘.
Jeremy reserved the San Fernando Valley and much of Central L.A. for his own formidable coterie (including his lover, Marguerite Foccart and her childe, Crispus Attucks), declaring his barony a gang-free territory where any vampire could make her haven without permission from anyone. The gangs carved up the rest of the Southlands like a medieval kingdom. This agreement did not entirely eliminate the gang wars, and many baronies have violently changed hands multiple times since, but it created a certain amount of stability at the center. Some baronies, such as those of South Los Angeles, Torrance and Long Beach would prove remarkably resilient, persisting even beyond the collapse of the Anarch Free States in the late 90s.
Salvador Garcia would personally carve out one of the most famous and lasting territories, later known as ‘El Hermandad’ or ‘The Brotherhood’, which eventually grew to dominate East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, numbering more than two dozen zealous anarchs. He disdained the title of ‘Baron’, though the devotion of his followers was never in doubt.
Isaac Abrams retained Hollywood as he ever had. Meanwhile, Louis Fortier made himself the Baron of West Los Angeles. Unlike Salvador Garcia, Fortier’s adherents never numbered more than three or four at any given time (mostly his own Childer). For several decades, the Westside remained the private hunting ground of Louis and his Childer, from which he nursed a personal rivalry with Isaac Abrams.
It didn’t surprise anyone when Tara Kearney declared herself the Baron of San Diego. She had already been ruling there with Prince-like authority for the better part of a decade. Although, this was partly explained by the fact that the anarchs of San Diego had to be especially organized and vigilant to guard against the depredations of the Sabbat lead by Bishop Cicatriz of Tijuana. The cities of San Jose, Fresno and Bakersfield soon gained their own Barons as well.
The First Siege of L.A. (1965)
Initially, the Sabbat of Mexico had been thrilled by tales of Don Sebastian’s overthrow, delighting in the reports of anarch fledglings hunting down their elders and bringing down one of the strongest cities in the Camarilla! It was initially assumed that it would be child’s play to bring in the War Parties and lead the City of the Angels to the glory of the Sabbat creed.
It could very easily have played out that way, given how rapidly the Kindred of the newly formed Anarch Free States descended into territorial skirmishes as a prelude to outright gang warfare. That this didn’t happen has everything to do with Tara Kearney’s effective leadership of San Diego, and the nearly two dozen, combat-hardened anarchs (several of them ancilla Brujah from Texas like herself) that she commanded. It wasn’t long before Bishop Cicatriz of Tijuana realized the Sword of Caine had little hope of quickly overrunning San Diego’s experienced street fighters. Bishop Cicatriz and Baron Tara would remain locked in conflict, each working to undermine the other for the next half century.
Meanwhile, the Sabbat would instead play the long game of slowly infiltrating the Southlands and steadily building up their strength north of San Diego. It would take them nearly fifteen years to lay the groundwork for the surprise attack on Los Angeles, after which it was assumed that a surrounded San Diego would fall to them by default. Finally, in 1965, the Sabbat decided that waiting any longer served no purpose. Its spies reported that the city had no internal structure in place to defend itself, and that the gangs hated each other too much to combine forces to resist a takeover. The scouts and shakari went in to prepare the way for the assembling War Parties.
They discovered a city that was deeply divided among racial and socio-economic lines. As in many American cities a vast majority of the African-American population had been forced into a relatively small area by institutional racism, housing restrictions and economic deprivation. In areas like South Central and Watts, the LAPD had made a habit of subjecting the residents to often brutal treatment. When the tension finally exploded, it took very little imagination for Sabbat strategists to seize advantage of the Watts Uprising.
Chaos reigned in the streets of South L.A. as rioters set businesses ablaze, and sniper shots drove back the firemen who came to douse the flames. Looting was rampant, and the police reduced to traveling in convoys. No one would notice a few more charred bodies among the wreckage. The War Parties of the Sword of Caine roared into town. Most had designated targets, but many came just to watch the city burn.
The suddenness and viciousness of the attack initially stunned L.A.’s anarchs into diving for cover. Hiding in darkness, they listened and watched as the Sabbat forces roared through the streets and the fires consumed the heart of Los Angeles. The War Parties even slew the popular co-writer of the Status Perfectus, Jaqueline Fairmonte outside her haven near Venice Beach.
Gradually, however, the survivors began to organize. Brujah runners spread the word among the scattered anarchs, and the gangs began to rally – realizing in the process that far fewer of them had been destroyed than feared. Nosferatu scouts started to return with priceless information on the exact position and strength of the Sabbat enemy. Quietly, like shadows at dusk, the anarchs began to gather.
As the third night fell, a tremor of uncertainty shook the Sabbat forces in Los Angeles. Suddenly it seemed like the portals of Hell had opened: huge gangs of snarling Kindred poured out of the Hollywood Hills, storming out of sewers, tunnels and abandoned warehouses. Lead by Salvador, Marguerite and especially Jeremy (who wielded a two-handed greatsword), the anarchs launched a ferocious counterattack upon the Sword of Caine. The fighting was even more intense than that of the Revolt.
The battle raged for four nights as Los Angeles burned around the combatants. From the surrounding countryside, more anarchs began to arrive in seemingly endless numbers, and some from even across state lines after three or four nights of ceaseless travel by caravan. The Sabbat leadership were forced to concede that they had little hope of holding Los Angeles, and so ordered the retreat. To the ragged cheers of the defenders, the remnants of the Sabbat War Parties snarled and slunk out of L.A., promising to return someday and utterly destroy the city.
Jeremy hoped that the horror of the attack would bring the vampires of L.A. together, but it was not to be. Almost as soon as the Sabbat pulled up stakes and left, the bickering started again and things in L.A. went back to normal.
The Return of Set (1966-1978)
No one, mortal or immortal, has succeeded in explaining why Los Angeles has always been a haven for the morally suspected. Ever since its founding, those condemned as deviant or depraved by the rest of the country have flocked to the City of the Angels. This is as true for Kindred as it is for mortals.
Some condescending Kindred from the East Coast assert that it has to do with the climate, which is said to breed indolence and sloth. Others blame Los Angeles’ location, since it is the most westerly stop for those forced from their havens by one intolerant Prince after another. Whatever the reason, Los Angeles had acquired a sordid reputation for debauchery by the standards of middle America.
This reputation made Los Angeles irresistible to the Followers of Set. Though werewolves had razed the original Temple of Set in 1944, in 1966, Dawn Cavanaugh returned and founded a new temple in the Hollywood Hills, not far from Griffith Park. Located in a bomb shelter under an abandoned mansion deep in the Hills. She was greatly aided in this by the chaos in the wake of the First Sabbat Siege of Los Angeles.
The new temple soon began to weave its tendrils deep into Los Angeles society, especially Hollywood. It proved particularly successful with the budding porn industry, whose ‘members’ flocked to the wildly licentious parties for which the beautiful Dawn soon became famous. In less than decade, it became the most influential Temple in all of North America, espousing a new philosophy of Ecstasy and claiming that Set would return not in the the Egypt of the Old World, but in the sunset lands of the New.
Eventually, Dawn’s success became her undoing. In 1979, Isaac Abrams began to notice the familiar signs of rot as had once corrupted Don Sebastian’s courtiers. He directed the notorious Ventrue fixer and enforcer known as Arnie Costa to contract with a coterie of Nosferatu agents to scour Hollywood of the insidious snakes. The Nosferatu eventually caught one of Dawn’s acolytes, and using information wrung from him, they managed to track down both Dawn and the temple. Isaac naturally informed Jeremy MacNeil, who immediately summoned his allies and attacked.
Somehow, Dawn got wind of the attack and managed to escape (yet again), but Jeremy’s forces destroyed most of her acolytes and cultists. Jeremy was never able to discover how Dawn found out about the attack, but he suspects the Serpent had corrupted at least one vampire near him.
Unfortunately, the second temple’s destruction did not mean the end of Setite influence in the area. The Followers of Set would return again (if they ever truly left), and would soon have not one but two established temples in L.A. by the early 90s, more numerous and dangerous than ever. If it were not for the Cathayan Invasion, the Setites might even have eventually succeeded in their long-term plan of taking Los Angeles for themselves.
The Sons of the Crypt (1979-1991)
One of the heroes of the 1965 Sabbat siege of L.A. was a previously unknown African-American vampire named Mohammed al-Muthlim (Mohammed of the Darkness). His valiant efforts on behalf of the city quickly earned him a reputation among the younger Kindred, and a gang developed around this charismatic figure.
Mohammed, for reasons known only to himself, slept in a crypt in an Inglewood cemetery. His followers therefore began to call themselves ‘The Sons of the Crypt’, or the ‘Crypt’s Sons.’ This name would become shortened even further after a version of it was was adopted by mortal gangbangers who looked to Mohammed’s fearsome crew for inspiration. There was nothing inherently strange about this, as Kindred have been setting (or adopting so quickly as to blur the difference) fashionable trends for centuries.
At first the Crypt’s Sons was a Kindred gang just like any other in Los Angeles, mostly concerned with protecting its turf against other vampiric poachers and coteries. Mohammed, however, had much bigger plans. Without violating the Masquerade, he began to attract mortals into his followers. These new members were typically young black males, dispossessed by the system: They wanted something bigger to give their loyalty to, and Mohammed gave them an example they could emulate to get exactly what they were looking for. Aided by their greater numbers, the Crypt’s Sons rapidly took over the area surrounding their Inglewood base and continued to expand until they controlled huge swathes of the Southlands.
By the 1980s, Mohammed had succeeded at building one of the largest, most efficient and dangerous gangs in the world. The gang was divided many times over into different neighborhoods, with some groups even occasionally going to war with each other, but all of whom ultimately answered (whether they knew it or not) to Mohammed and his chosen Kindred and Ghoul lieutenants. The Crypt’s Sons would make many enemies as they grew more ambitious, clashing with both the feds and the Mexican Mafia as they moved heavily into gunrunning and the drug trade. There would eventually be a Crypts chapter in most major cities in the United States.
The most important consequence of Mohammed’s success was the army of imitators, both rivals (who the Crypts initially referred to derisively as ‘Bloods‘), and disciples, that it spawned. The decentralized leadership of the Crypts themselves meant that by 1990 barely a fraction of its descendent gangs had even the most tenuous connection to Mohammed’s original followers. Meanwhile, the Ventrue, Giovanni, as well as werewolves and other Brujah have long since followed Mohammed’s example over the last few decades. It is not uncommon in Los Angeles for different gangs in various parts of the city to be secretly influenced by a number of subtle, supernatural actors.
The only one of Jeremy MacNeil’s allies to initially recognize the threat posed by the Crypt’s Sons was Salvador Garcia. He was already considered the de facto ‘Baron’ of East Los Angeles, an area long considered one of the poorest sections of the County, overrun with vicious gangs. Mostly populated by immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, it remains as true today as back then, that billboards are more likely to be written in Spanish, and any given citizen on the street is likely to speak English poorly if at all. Although Salvador Garcia would have preferred to uplift the Eastside, he saw the potential in using it to counter Mohammed’s Crypts in Inglewood and South Central. To this end, Salvador formed El Hermandad, or “the Brotherhood”, eventually recruiting a dozen Vampires (including several Embraced gang leaders) to take the fight to the Sons of the Crypt. Salvador was greatly assisted by his top lieutenant and protégé Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez, a rising star among the Anarchs and a favorite son of East L.A.
The Rodney King Riots (1992)
By the early 1990s, Mohammed al-Muthlim and the Sons of the Crypt felt they were powerful enough to wrest total control of Los Angeles away from Jeremy MacNeil, Salvador Garcia and their allies. Mohammed had already Dominated the Chief of Police into leaving his gang’s operations alone, but he couldn’t control all the rank and file. This meant that it was impossible for Mohammed to put any kind of large force into the streets and take advantage of his greater numbers in forcing the issue. He knew that when the time came, as many as three dozen Kindred would put themselves and their mortal followers at his command.
Mohammed finally got his chance in the spring of 1992, with the trial of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King. King, an African-American, had (unlike many past incidents) been captured on videotape being viciously beaten by four white officers, shocking news audiences across the city and country. Subsequently, when the jury found all of the accused innocent, the community erupted. Once again, businesses burned, rioters looted stores and snipers shot at police.
This was what the Crypt’s Sons had been waiting for. They moved into the streets of L.A., attacking both Jeremy MacNeil’s followers, El Hermandad and other rival gangs wherever they could. This battle differed from the previous Kindred conflicts that had rocked L.A. For one thing, it went on around the clock. By day, the mortal gangbangers (often lead by Ghoul lieutenants) would hunt for the closely guarded havens of the rival Kindred leaders and their inner circles. By night, these same fearsome Vampires who survived the daytime raids would emerge from their urban lairs to wreck terrible vengeance on mortal and immortal foes alike.
Another difference between this battle and others was the reaction of the civil authorities. In the Watts Uprising the police response, although inadequate, had been immediate. In the ’92 riots the police stayed away from the fighting for the few couple nights under orders from their heavily Dominated superiors, which initially allowed the Crypt’s Sons to do as they pleased. By the third night, Jeremy had managed to clear away some of the bureaucratic haze caused by Mohammed’s (and others) Dominations, and along with his allies, had helped restore the balance of power. Regardless, the battle continued for most of the next week and even spread into other cities.
The fight did not go as either side hoped. While both groups suffered numerous casualties, neither could destroy the other’s core powerbase. With the exception of South Central L.A, where the Crypts were actually pushed out by a coalition of rival gangs styling themselves ‘Blood’s, very little was lost or gained territorially. Meanwhile, entire decades of carefully curated mortal influence and resources was spent in a handful of nights. The Dominated, blood-bound and Ghoul lieutenants of the various gangs suffered especially heavy losses. In the end, an uneasy truce settled over the city while the former combatants retreated to rebuild their much-depleted war machines.
Neither Jeremy MacNeil nor Salvador Garcia had originally wanted to mix mortal and vampire politics, but they resolved to never allow another Kindred like Mohammed to manipulate the authorities like that against them again. What they didn’t realize was that the Kindred of the Anarch Free States had already fatally weakened themselves with infighting and would not recover before an unexpected threat from the East coupled with a resurgent Camarilla threatened to end the Status Perfecti forever.
Appendix #4: Quincunx Invasion of California (1997 – 2000)
| Date | Events |
|---|---|
| 1997 | The First Rain of the Storm. Camarilla diplomats negotiate an ‘honorable’ withdrawal from Hong Kong. This collapses into a rout when the outgoing Prince (or ‘Tai-pan’) Robert Pedder is unexpectedly assassinated by the Cathayans as he prepares to depart the city he ruled for nearly two centuries. The Regent of the Tremere Chantry, Oliver Thrace, shocks the Inner Circle by defecting to the Quincunx. A hardline faction within the Quincunx justifies the Camarilla weakness in defending Hong Kong as evidence that the time is ripe to seize the West Coast of the United States as well. Others argue that Tokyo should be the next objective. |
| 1998 – Jan | The Quincunx identifies Los Angeles as a weakly held ‘bandit kingdom’ riven with dissent. They determine that if they can establish a beachhead there with acceptable losses, they would preserve the option to strike at either San Francisco or San Diego in the following year. On New Year’s Day, 1998, the first Quincunx scout strolled quietly off a plane in Los Angeles just before dawn. The invasion of California had begun. |
| 1998 – Apr | In a surprisingly short amount of time, the Quincunx succeeds in seeding Los Angeles with a network of intelligence cells, safe houses and front companies. They are enormously helped in this by the efforts of Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang. The unprepared Anarchs of Los Angeles are taken completely by surprise by an ‘avalanche’ of Quincunx soldiers and infiltrators lead by Ancestor Ch’ang. Many independent Cainites and smaller gangs are wiped out completely or driven from the city in what is described as a ‘well-directed walkover’. Baron Steve Booth is driven out of Long Beach, and Baron David Geduld of Palos Verdes & Torrance is soon on the ropes. Louis Fortier is forced to retreat from Santa Monica to a large, fortified mansion in Bel Air, though not before his ‘army’ of ghouls inflict severe losses on the elite war-wu sent to destroy him, thus earning the Quincunx’ respect. Alarmed by reports of Cathayan scouting activity in the Baja California port of Ensenada, Bishop Cicatriz of Tijuana is alleged to have made secret contact with Mohammad al-Muthlim and agreed to smuggle arms to him from Mexico. |
| 1998 – Jul | As the Summer wears on, Anarch resistance solidifies around the efforts of Jeremy MacNeil, Salvador Garcia, Crispus Attucks, Marguerite Foccart, Louis Fortier and Isaac Abrams. Mohammed al-Muthlim refuses to cooperate, waging his own highly effective guerilla war against the Cathayan invaders. The campaign for Los Angeles begins to resemble what one Quincunx commander refers to as an ‘elephant trap’. In an attempt to break the deadlock, the Quincunx launches a pre-emptive invasion of San Francisco and San Diego. Their efforts fail in San Diego, where Tara Kearney uses the chaos (and the Cathayan attacks upon her Anarch rivals) to declare herself Prince. With the Camarilla’s help, she is able to drive back the Quincunx invaders. Meanwhile, almost half of San Francisco’s vampires are either driven off or sent to their Final Death. |
| 1998 – Nov | The Sons of the Crypt, lead by Mohammed al-Muthlim begin to advance on all fronts, their success against both the Quincunx and Jeremy MacNeil’s embattled Anarchs fueled by a strategy of blatant mass Embraces that would embarrass even the Sabbat. This greatly alarms Mohammed’s fiercest rivals, Louis Fortier and Salvador Garcia. Ming Xiao and Jiejie Li arrives in Los Angeles from China, with orders to prepare diplomatic and propagandistic initiatives to supplement the ‘military’ campaign lead by Ch’ang and Chiu Bao. Other Quincunx leaders include Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang’s Chinatown lieutenants, Fun Toy and Cao Bai. Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon and his archon Cock Robin utilize the secret Nosferatu presence in the Warrens beneath Hollywood to initiate secret Camarilla negotiations with Jeremy MacNeil, facilitated by Isaac Abrams. Simultaneously, Toreador Justicar Madame Guil and her chief archon, the Ventrue Sebastian LaCroix, begin a ‘grand tour’ of the West, intended to descend upon San Francisco with overwhelming force in the coming year. |
| 1998 – Dec | Ming Xiao and Jiejie Li are thought to have secretly approached Louis Fortier at this time. Louis Fortier had a known weakness for beautiful women, as well as several decades experience of investing in French Indochina before arriving in Los Angeles a century ago. He was also increasingly concerned at Jeremy MacNeil’s inability to contain Mohammad al-Muthlim’s ambitions. Louis Fortier is eventually convinced to side with the Quincunx. |
| 1999 – Jan | Salvador Garcia learns of Jeremy MacNeil’s secret negotiations with the Camarilla. His last shred of faith in the Free States is shattered. He rails at his former compatriots and storms off into the night. He is followed into the darkness by Louis Fortier, who promises to return him to reason. He appears to succeed in this endeavor, as after a few nights of sulking, Salvador Garcia returns to MacNeil’s war councils, though is never quite the same. He seems imbued with a terrible determination from this night forward, even sending away his chief East LA lieutenant, Nines Rodriguez. |
| 1999 – Feb | More than a year into the conflict, Jeremy MacNeil and his closest allies, along with the Nosferatu, plan and carry out a counterattack against Long Beach. They are treacherously betrayed by Salvador Garcia. Assailed on all sides, Jeremy MacNeil, Marguerite Foccart and Crispus Attucks retreat to Signal Hill in the center of Long Beach where they are surrounded and destroyed in an event known as The Battle of Signal Hill. Some Anarch leaders, including David Geduld, Amethyst and Marguerite’s childe, Steve Booth, barely escape with their unlives and go into hiding. Other Anarch leaders, such as Louis Fortier, Isaac Abrams and Nines Rodriguez had remained behind to keep the coalition’s core territories secure. |
| 1999 – Mar | The Baron of West Los Angeles, Louis Fortier, declares himself the Prince of Los Angeles as well. He promises an end to conflict and a union of purpose with the Quincunx invaders, forming a new coalition with them called the ‘New Promise Mandarinate‘. With Louis Fortier and Salvador Garcia‘s advice, the Quincunx begin to portray themselves as not conquerors but as mediators and law bringers. Their presence promises not an autocracy but a new social contract – the very realization of the Free States’ egalitarian dreams. To a city of vampires weary from decades of internecine strife and pushed to the edge by the Wan Kuei invasion, the idea of a real and genuine peace seems extraordinarily appealing. In this chaotic time, the remnants of the slain Jeremy MacNeil’s followers found themselves disorganized, and the New Promise Mandarinate carried forward on a wave of enthusiasm (not least owing to initially successful efforts to paint Isaac Abrams and the Camarilla as the architects of MacNeil’s demise). |
| 1999 – April | Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang, Fun Toy and Cao Bai strike into DTLA and East LA, seeking to capture or kill Nines Rodriguez. He eludes them and carries on a campaign of resistance. Louis Fortier – Baron, Prince and now Western Minister of the New Promise Mandarinate – goes from strength to strength. He is supported by allies such as his loyal lieutenant, the Persian Cyrus ‘Khan’ Hatami and his childe Sheriff, Catherine du Bois. Alongside the Quincunx and Salvador Garcia’s El Hermandad, Fortier vows to completely wipe out Mohammad al-Muthlim’s Sons of the Crypt by the Summer. |
| 1999 – Jul | Cyrus ‘Khan’ Hatami, Catherine du Bois, Chiu Bao, and Salvador Garcia’s childe, Gloria Martinez, among others, are credited with finally cornering and killing Mohammad al-Muthlim in a safehouse in Crenshaw. Louis Fortier’s brief ascendancy has been described as either a ‘golden age’ or as a ‘reign of terror’. He is known to have authorized one atrocity during this time – a massacre of a coterie of Brujah Idealists in Laurel Canyon with Countess Andrea Visconti as the only survivor. Salvador Garcia secures control over East Los Angeles all the way down to Anaheim during this time. Isaac Abrams, Arnie Costa and Nosferatu agents of Justicar Petrodon, along with the enclave of old, reclusive Camarilla loyalists in Hancock Park, manage to halt Louis Fortier’s advance on the borders of Hollywood. |
| 1999 – Aug | Having been somewhat delayed by the Sabbat’s ongoing East Coast Crusade (which results in the transfer of Cock Robin and numerous other Nosferatu assets back east), Toreador Justicar Madame Guil finally descends on San Francisco with at least 25 vampires and twice as many ghouls, recruited from across the Western United States with promises of both territorial and financial incentives. She demotes Prince Jochen Van Nuys to Seneschal, despite his miraculous defense of the city, and replaces him with the elder Sara Anne Winder, on account of his ancilla youth. An impetuous and dashing creature, seeming to act with the energy of a vampire a quarter her age. Many believe she was offered the Princedom of San Francisco to distract her from trying to claim New York instead. There is something of a scandal at this time, during which Jochen Van Nuys is alleged to have bribed Sebastian LaCroix with nearly $300 million in securities to agitate for an advance upon Los Angeles. Subsequent circumstances made it impossible to fully investigate. In any case, it’s clear that the two Ventrue found considerable common ground together. Prince Sara Anne Winder advocates for an offensive to remove the Quincunx from San Francisco’s Chinatown with Madame Guil’s support. |
| 1999 – Sep | The Toreador Justicar, Madame Guil, is forced to mysteriously depart San Francisco almost as quickly as she arrived. There are dark rumors for years afterwards of some intrigue or rupture with the Inner Circle that lead to her loyalty being questioned over events decades in the past, and her fleeing to Mexico rather than defending her honor while simultaneously fighting the Quincunx. The Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon is forced to journey to Seattle, where the ‘Seattle Committee‘, an Anarch Free State modeled off Los Angeles, is under intense pressure from the Quincunx and seeking help from the Camarilla. With Cock Robin already recalled to the East Coast, Madame Guil’s archon, Sebastian LaCroix, is left in charge. Maximillian Strauss arrives in Los Angeles, seemingly pursuing (never truly substantiated) rumors of Oliver Thrace’s renegade Chinese childe Wan Zhu being seen in the city. He destroys the Chinatown lieutenant known as Fun Toy, yet never finds Wan Zhu. Sebastian LaCroix, along with his gigantic and mysterious African enforcer, intrigues with Jochen Van Nuys to launch an attack against Downtown Los Angeles instead of following Madame Guil’s plan, leaving Prince Sara Anna Winder infuriated and lacking the strength to reclaim half her city. |
| 1999 – Oct | Through a complicated series of events, Sebastian LaCroix, Maximillian Strauss and Nines Rodriguez combine forces to clear Downtown Los Angeles of Fortier and the Mandarinate’s agents. The Tremere place a terrible curse on Cao Bai which supposedly reduces him to an animate, yet increasingly rotting corpse. His fate afterwards remains unknown. The ‘Baron of Chinatown‘, Hao ‘Monkey Trip’ Wei-Lang is killed by Sebastian LaCroix’s mysterious enforcer after being lured to a diplomatic meeting in DTLA. Sebastian declares it as ‘vengeance for Signal Hill’, earning a sudden, emotional wave of plaudits from the still reeling Anarchs of Los Angeles. An alliance with Isaac Abrams of Hollywood is soon brokered with help from the Nosferatu. Nines Rodriguez commences a celebrated campaign to rally the Anarchs of East LA and revive the Free States. He is aided by his companions who joined him on the run, including Skelter, Damsel, Smiling Jack and many others. Anarch leaders such as Amethyst of Anaheim, David Geduld of Torrance, Steve Booth of Long Beach and others emerge from hiding to inspire resistance. |
| 1999 – Nov | Despite having been disliked and distrusted by Jeremy MacNeil and excluded from his counsels in past years, Smiling Jack embarks on a legendary rampage to avenge the martyred Baron of the City of Angels. He lets everyone know that he intends to personally hunt down Salvador Garcia and Louis Fortier. Subsequently, several of Garcia and Fortier’s top lieutenants, including Cyrus ‘Khan’ Hatami, and two of Fortier’s beloved childer (Elena Gutierrez and Mariel St. John) are destroyed during Smiling Jack’s killing spree. He even manages to assassinate the Quincunx high official Chiu Bao in a particularly shocking fashion! Salvador Garcia loses an immense amount of credibility when he is presumed to flee the city to escape Smiling Jack’s wrath. Garcia leaves his childe Gloria Martinez in charge of El Hermandad with orders to hunt down Nines Rodriguez. Instead, she joins him. Jiejie Li and Ancestor Ch’ang abruptly depart Los Angeles, returning to San Francisco, leaving Ming Xiao in charge of a badly deteriorating situation. |
| 1999 – Dec | Two of Louis Fortier’s remaining lieutenants, Therese Voerman and his only remaining childe, Catherine du Bois, enter into secret negotiations with Sebastian LaCroix to betray their master. Louis Fortier is assassinated on Christmas Day, when Catherine du Bois secretly compromises the security of the renegade Prince’s fortified Bel Air estate. The exact details of Louis Fortier’s destruction are never fully revealed. The only known survivors of that night are Catherine du Bois and Fortier’s notorious dwarf ghoul, Hayk. There are many theories as to the culprits, ranging from Smiling Jack’s vengeance to Maximillian Strauss’s sorcery, to a Nosferatu wetwork team or Assamite assassin. Therese Voerman seizes Santa Monica and declares herself Baron the same night. Catherine du Bois goes into hiding (eventually surfacing alongside David Geduld in Torrance, with whom she had enjoyed some brief dalliance in the 80s). Hayk isn’t seen again for many years, by which time few remember or care about the details of Louis Fortier’s brief, incandescent reign. |
| Early 2000 | Sebastian LaCroix enters into negotiations with Ming Xiao. The Quincunx are allowed to keep Chinatown, yet Long Beach is returned – with much regret and after much wrangling – to Steve Booth. He is the slain Marguerite Foccart’s only surviving childe and the most unobjectionable candidate, as the Camarilla is initially barely strong enough to secure Central Los Angeles. Sebastian LaCroix is gratified to be acclaimed as Prince of Los Angeles, enjoying widespread popularity for the last time in what would turn out to be an increasingly tyrannical rule. Maximillian Strauss takes formal possession of the Los Angeles Chantry as Regent and Tremere Primogen. He soon clashes with Sebastian LaCroix on multiple matters. Armando ‘Nines’ Rodriguez initially respects Sebastian LaCroix and seeks to work with him towards the greater good of LA. He is soon disillusioned, yet (unlike LaCroix) keeps his word in the years to come. Isaac Abrams allows himself to be declared the Toreador Primogen, even as he fiercely guards Hollywood’s autonomy. Therese Voerman is recognized as Baron of Santa Monica. Countess Andrea Visconti, survivor of the Laurel Canyon Massacre eventually resurfaces in Culver City. The last surviving lieutenant of the Sons of the Crypt, Clarence Carver, claims the Barony of Inglewood. The Ghost Town Anarchs of Venice’s Oakwood neighborhood break away under Antwon ‘Antman’ Manners. David Geduld begins to rebuild his powerbase in Torrance and Palos Verdes. Baron Amethyst secures her control of Santa Ana and Anaheim after a brief, sad attempt by her lieutenant, Tom Weaver, to overthrow her. He eventually ends up working for David Geduld. The Giovanni known as Luis Rossi enters into a deal with Sebastian LaCroix to help ensure his San Pedro powerbase. Back in San Francisco, Jochen Van Nuys (now the Camarilla’s official Quincunx liaison) helps negotiate a lasting ceasefire and diplomatic détente with Jiejie Li of the New Promise Mandarinate. Prince Sara Anne Winder is forced to reluctantly accede to it, as the Inner Circle demands peace to focus on reclaiming New York from the Sabbat. Ancestor Ch’ang is recalled to China in disgrace. He is said to have ‘thrown himself into the Mouth of Yomi‘ rather than return to face formal censure. |