Rumble Street

1991:

Prince Marcel was a young prince who had inherited a city that was on the verge of war from his predecessor, and that war had come to Marcel’s doorstep. He was murdered in the middle of court, his body falling to ash from an unknown power. The young Ventrue was known to be a bit xenophobic and stand offish when it came to the neighbors within the city. The blame for his death was placed firmly on the heads of the sabbat that had been pushing at the borders of New Orleans for the last four years. It was rumored that the shifters within New Orleans had been playing a large part in the defense of the city from the sabbat during that time. However new rumors began to spread of a conspiracy within the court of New Orleans that the Tremere elder, Elias Jeffries had played a hand in the execution of Prince Marcel and that he had made ties with the sabbat in order to secure the city not only for house and clan, but also that the territory would be divided and the sabbat allowed to take fourty percent of said city for itself. Unbeknownst to Elias, the sabbat had opted for a larger piece and began trafficking in rumors via their nosferatu antitribu and the information network. Without a prince the court of New Orleans fell into disarray and kindred of the tower began securing territories for themselves. This worked in the favor of Bishop Santiago who had been planning a full scale invasion of New Orleans for the past five years, with the fractured court of New Orleans and the Garou losing their war of attrition with the sabbat it was nearly time to strike.

1993:

In the background the Technocracy had been working and maneuvering financial markets within New Orleans to secure territory in the city. Under the direction of Prince Marcel their financial gains had encountered several setbacks, including loss of liquid assets, bankruptcy of several fledgling companies and the devaluing of several property subdivisions for housing within the 8th and 9th wards. However, with the loss of Prince Marcel their efforts had redoubled and they were once more making inroads into New Orleans with the help of financial subsidiary Standard Oil. The cult of Ecstasy mages along with the order of Hermes and a fractured group of the Celestial Chorus within New Orleans had managed to uncover what the Technocracy had in the works and found the long history of the Camarilla in New Orleans battling it out with the Technocracy in the financial arena. They took up the cause and managed to discover that Standard Oil was in fact a subsidiary of a larger international corporation called Endron International. Their intent was to drill the wetlands for oil as well as establish multiple offshore drilling sites. This information was taken and processed but was eventually lost in a subsequent battle with Technocrats in the New Orleans fairgrounds, causing an incredible fire that was responsible for the deaths of 11 people. A Virtual Adept by the name of Claus Venger, had managed to piece together the information that had been submitted for review by the Cultists and Claus managed to pass this information on to a garou elder by the name of Manu’s Law.

1995:

The Camarilla court of New Orleans had gone dark for the past two years, with no word escaping the city of the death of Prince Marcel or of the encroaching invasion of the Sabbat. It was not until February 14th during a heavy travel day that a young Caitiff who had been on the run from the sabbat for the past two years managed to get out of the city and passed on the word of the fall of the Camarilla court of New Orleans, unfortunately for this young caitiff whose name was never recorded he found the allies of the sabbat as they had been making their way into the city and became the first Camarilla victim of the Black Spiral Dancers that had allied themselves with the Sabbat in exchange for the territory which contained a garou caern, the Spiral Dancers had been attempting to gain control of a caern within New Orleans since the 1920’s in an attempt to expand outside of Cajun Country and Acadia. With the encroaching sabbat and Bishop Santiago finalizing their plans, they had begun a mass embrace of shovelheads to bolster their troops and to saturate the borders with shock troops against the Garou defenders. The mass embrace impacted the fae of New Orleans as many of their dreamers were abducted and used either as food or as mass embrace shock troops. With the massive level of abductions, increased crime and murders, New Orleans’ crime rate sky rocketed and as such the people of New Orleans began to lose hope, their dreams becoming nightmares and creativity began to be tilted in the direction of pragmatism and darkness. Because of this the Unseelie began to gain power and their main freehold which had been in the hands of the Seelie had come under attack by the Unseelie court led by one Duchess Ona Czrinick. Her attack coincided perfectly with the Sabbat/Spiral Dancer attack on the Gaian Garou, while the Unseelie fae were not aligned with the Sabbat and its allies, they utilized the chaos, darkness and nightmares provided by their attacks to empower them in their battle against the Seelie fae who had nowhere to run, bottled into their freeholds on all sides it was practically a slaughter and in less than one year almost every Seelie Fae on record in New Orleans had been slain or taken prisoner.

1996:

The Justicars of the Ivory Tower had finally managed to find someone that would go into New Orleans and work to secure the city, without needing to immediately pull out for need of other duties. Ujio Tanaka of Clan Toreador was tasked to secure New Orleans for the tower, to remain therein and hold the domain against all aggressors utilizing whatever means necessary within the bounds of the traditions.

During this time the Independent Setites of New Orleans numbering a total of twelve, had been working under the radar for the past century. They had found an entirely new market to exploit because of the Sabbat incursions and their influence over the drug markets, human trafficking and prostitution, sky rocketed, and because of this they were able to gain a major foothold on city politics and also sold their controlling interests within the transportation sectors to the Sabbat. This helped to solidify a monopoly on transportation coming in and out of the city and assisted in funding the Sabbat war effort as they began to cut off more and more resources necessary for any incoming reinforcements.

The Unseelie fae had remained out of the Vampire/Garou conflict as best they could and would work deals where necessary to maintain their foothold on newly acquired territory.

The tradition mages had been working relatively low key to undermine the foothold that the technocracy was gaining within New Orleans and thus had remained neutral as well in the Vampire/Garou war.

It was in November of 96 that the Serpents of the light made an entrance into New Orleans at the insistence of Bishop Santiago and given permission to hunt down and annihilate the heretics known as Setites and secure their holdings and resources for the Sabbat to ensure a stronger power structure. On November 20th, a group of seventeen Serpents of the Light and four Panders chased down three Setites into the French Quarter. They had begun an all-out gun battle on the streets, police were called in and to this day no one is exactly sure what happened. The battle was run into an old apartment building and the local swat invaded it, only to find it empty and the battle over with no further civilian casualty or loss of life. Bishop Santiago received a missive along with an ornate wooden box at the communal haven. In it were the ashes of each of the vampires that had participated in the battle of the French Quarter and the note attached simply read. “The French Quarter is mine, stay out.” From that point, the Sabbat did not enter into the French quarter outside of scouting and intelligence gathering to understand what had destroyed their people.

1997:

Two more years of the Sabbat taking over New Orleans and establishing communal havens through the city with no response from the Camarilla, however, Ujio and his small group had been making headway in securing allies and resources from within the city. There was very little in the way of external assistance that could be provided or offered without owing too many boons to make it practical. Thus, Ujio found a party in distress and lent them his aid in exchange for theirs when the time had come. The long game said that with such limited resources it would be best to let the Sabbat grow comfortable and regain old habits rather than remain on a war footing.

The local garou had been steadily losing their war with the sabbat and the Spirals grew in strength after acquiring several local garou that had been lost to harano. Together, Manu’s Law and Ujio Tanaka formulated a plan to cut off and route the spiral dancers. This would be the first step in the plan to re-take New Orleans and it would help cement relations between the tower and the local garou, at least as much as was feasible when one side hated what the other was, and the other side simply required resources, human or otherwise to ensure success. Under cover of night, the remaining Uktena had begun a rite to bind the Hive Spirit that had cropped up after the destruction of the Gaian caern. This drew out the spiral dancers to deal with said threat, however, with the help of several other garou as well as two Giovanni who were quite well recompensed for their assistance and a local Nosferatu by the name of Bruno Cheeves, the uktena were hidden rather well and the war packs sent out to deal with them were led on quite the wild goose chase. Manu’s Law and the hodge podge pack of warriors she had thrown together, along with Ujio and a small contingent of ghouls entered into the hive and began a systematic extermination of the entities that were found within. Manu’s Law and her pack did the heavy hitting in the umbra taking out the bane population and executing any and all spirits that had been corrupted or taken. Ujio and his squad dealt with the physical threat, removing several packs of Fomori, the remaining home defense pack, numbering a total of six. By the end of the sweep and clear, Manu’s Law had lost three of her seven garou and Ujio had lost three ghouls. They each were at roughly half strength and while the binding of the hive spirit continued the roving packs had received word of their hive being under attack. Part two of the two prong attack plan had commenced. The Giovanni sent in their wraith retainers to harry and harass the incoming war packs and Bruno remained with the Uktena to keep them cloaked under obfuscation while they worked to not only seal the hive spirit but also to bind it to something mobile, while Manu’s Law sought out the caern stone for the hive as well as its path stone which worked to give them transportation to and from Acadia. Ujio took his men and met with the incoming spirals near the halfway point into the hive, their goal was to delay them long enough for Manu’s law to secure the pathstone and cut off any reinforcements, the wraiths worked wonders on the spirals, turning their own darkness against them, and Ujio managed to organize his men in order to cut down several of the Spirals. Once he’d received word that the elder garou had completed her job, he sounded a retreat and led them further into the hive, he could not lead them out because this enemy was no fool, even as consumed by their own darkness and rage as they were they were smart enough to understand tactics. Two more fatalities in the ghouls had them harrying Ujio now as they moved deeper into the hive and ended up at the caern stone. Ujio and his one remaining ghoul held out as best as they could and it seemed a desperate fight to survive as he became surrounded by the enemy, for a brief time, Ujio had thought the elder garou had betrayed him in this battle, but then Manu’s Law arrived from the Umbra with the Uktena that had taken down their hive spirit. What Manu’s Law and those remaining Uktena did to the hive spirals was not something Ujio speaks of even to this day. The spirals were wiped out to the last within New Orleans and their hive was destroyed utterly.

1998:

The Seelie fae were fighting a losing war as the city fell more and more into despair and ruin. The Economy was losing footing, people were losing hope, jobs were diminishing and the arts were suffering in favor of people trying to make a living doing anything they possibly could. Their sources of Glamour were all but drying up and their freeholds had begun to suffer as well. The Unseelie on the other hand continued to grow in power as they reaped the glamour available to them from the nightmares of the populace. The Seelie regrouped outside of the city and began to utilize their small amount of resources on a freehold they’d established within a plantation house on property owned by a rather mysterious old man. This old man was about as cantankerous as anyone and he took his maintenance of the land seriously, some might to this day say, maybe a bit too seriously. However, when the sabbat had come to take this portion of the bayous and secure the borders of New Orleans, they came into contact with a force so overwhelming that they could do nothing but retreat from it. Twenty eight vampires not including fourteen shovelheads were lost that day and the Seelie fae were left with a debt owed to this angry old man that was repaid in ways that often made satyrs giggle with glee and most Sidhe blush and excuse themselves. David truly was a fucked up guy, even if he did demand that the Sidhe nobility make him cakes.

Ujio had bartered with the setites and paid to have them distribute drugs and alcohol that had been altered with a trace amount of radiation, while this radiation was not enough to permanently harm the kine of the city, it would allow for the infected blood to get into the bodies of the sabbat, this continued for several months, allowing the radiation to build up in his quarry. Ujio then took a squad of men and flew over the city via helicopter tracking sabbat and scouting their communal havens, the locations where rituals were performed and perhaps more importantly for the Seelie, the location of the ‘cattle ranches’ where the humans were herded after being abducted and kept for food and or mass embrace, fodder. Ujio did not immediately attack, instead biding his time and allowing the Sabbat to get more entrenched and comfortable. The next phase of the plan would require precise timing and a great deal of work.

1999:

The New Orleans Voodoo music fest was coming to New Orleans and Ujio poured financial assistance into it to ensure it could draw as large a crowd as possible. He’d paid the local police to increase patrols over the music festival. Sponsored tour busses to bring in people from outside of the city and decrease the cost of incoming flights to view the festival and of course increase media attention to attract larger promoters and bands. Ujio reached out to the Seelie fae of the city and offered them a cordoned off area in the festival grounds, while he didn’t fully understand how the fae operated he knew that the Unseelie were a threat he likely would not be able to deal with unless he understood them better and even then with minimal efficacy as he did not truly understand the Unseelie agenda. The Seelie, however, wanted nothing to do with protection and instead wanted to mingle with the people of the festival, so Ujio made it happen and attained several VIP passes. What Ujio did not know is that the Seelie were looking for dreamers and those who could help to elevate them once again to a point that they might put up a resistance to the Unseelie.

The Mages had been fighting a successful cold war against the efforts of the technocracy in New Orleans. The destabilization of the economy and the buyouts of various marketable properties left much to be desired among the Technocrats. The traditions were moving towards success in the area and as a point of celebration the Cult of ecstasy played a large part in encouraging the lineup of the Voodoo music festival. This brought Ujio into the world of the mages finding out that they were fractious at best but capable and he would need to explore future possibilities with them further.

As the date came closer for the music festival, Ujio continued to invest in local politics, as of March, a large inquest was held on the current mayor of New Orleans and it was found that he’d received bribes from an unknown number of corporations and private organizations during his tenure. Ujio supported the chief of police to the position and paid for several campaigns as a private donor, supported by other private industries as personal donations such as from a Ms. Whitefeather.

The Garou had been notified of the locations, the deal with the setites made to draw out the serpents of the light begun, and the Seelie placed securely in the grounds of the music festival the intricate levels of the plan began to take place. With the majority of the population diverted, including free tickets to the event for those who couldn’t afford it, the city had mostly been emptied. A coordinated strike was set in motion and while the serpents were distracted with the setites, the garou including Manu’s Law, Vampires including Ujio Tanaka, Magnhildr Thjornsdottir, Artemis Veronikus, Veruca Jones and several of the Seelie warriors, moved in for a multi part attack coordinated by each team’s lead. Maggie with a group of cultists of some voodoo cult took down the sabbat inhabiting the western Bayou lands, Artemis went in on her own to handle a group of inner city sabbat that had grown lazy it was not pretty, Manu’s Law took her dwindling force of garou and cut off any exit routes from the city by taking down the sabbat that were patrolling the highways, The Seelie hit the ‘cattle farms’ to free the people held there and Ujio took the last of his ghouls with him and one setite who’d made an honor pact to destroy the communal dwelling of the Sabbat Bishop, Santiago. This was all done under the cover of the music festival, traffic was tied up and flights were regular though there was congestion delaying any outgoing flights, trains were not running and because it was evening on October 31st, and more importantly because it was a Sunday, several of the shipping yards had closed down. Transportation had been effectively cut off for the town. Unbeknownst to Ujio some of the Cultist mages had lent a hand and caused issues with the traffic control system as well to jam up traffic on the interstates and toll roads. The battle was intense and there were losses on both sides, but the Sabbat could not withstand such a coordinated attack and ultimately were defeated. When all was said and done and the sabbat were taken care of, the groups converged on the location the Serpents of the Light had gone to deal with the Setites in the shipping yards. It was a massacre as the last of the sabbat were exterminated from Nola.

This left the remaining eleven setites in the shipping yard and with the combined might of Nola’s warriors Ujio approached those setites though the twelfth as of yet unnamed setite remained hidden. He thanked each of the eleven setites for their service to the Ivory Tower and commended them on their cunning. When all was said and done he also apologized to them as they had not composed themselves with honor, merely working for the highest bidder and attempting to continue to pollute and corrupt the kine of New Orleans as well as supporting the Sabbat incursion. With this he made a declaration that the blood of the Setites was forfeit and they were sentenced to death. As he made this declaration the combined might of the city fell upon the setites and left them nothing more than a blood red smear of ash on the docks.

The battle was over and the remaining warriors of New Orleans had begun to disperse and return to their duties. It would be a road to recovery from here and it was clear that New Orleans would be returned to the Ivory Tower, long may it stand. But there were other enemies in the darkness and in time they too would be drawn out.

2000:

The 21st century was upon us and it would be a year of rebuilding and determining new alliances, dissolving old ones and defining loyalties. Ujio had begun the tiresome task of acquiring resources and influence among the city’s elite, recovering them from the hands of the sabbat, though others had as well begun to do the same, seeing opportunity there. Those remaining in the city had experienced severe losses and every species of supernatural kind had to lick their wounds and find a way to rebuild. The Seelie had returned to their freehold in the bayou lands, the Garou had gone elsewhere to deal with other problems, the loss of their caern weighing heavily on the soul, Independents who had survived the battle went about their own way with no politics or outside responsibilities to burden them, the mages as usual remained unto themselves and as for the city and its populace, it was a time of rebuilding as well. Unfortunately for everyone involved, there were those who had their own agendas, and dark tides were brewing in the distance. For now, it was a time of peace, but devastation was on the horizon.

 

2001 - 2003:

Rebuilding was a long process as was the restoration of influence and business. The political arena had been firing up and local politics and businesses were gradually building towards a season of prosperity. The past few years had been difficult for the supernatural community as well as the mortal but things were beginning to turn around and no one could know what was about to happen. As people worked on trying to cement themselves into the politics of the local landscape, alliances were being forged and treaties agreed to while territory was being split up between the various factions and for once in perhaps the entire history of the supernatural, there was what seemed to be an accord between the races that would allow for a peace to exist.

2004:

The Shadowlands had been in turmoil for the past year or so, being hounded by the presence of something dire, no one could quite put their finger on it, but there was dread in the air. The local haunts were being found empty and the decay of oblivion was everywhere. Families of the dead that had lived in some of the houses of New Orleans for almost a century had suddenly vanished. The newly dead had vanished as well, trapped in their Caul’s and never being seen from again. Many assumed they’d been harvested and others talked of rogue reapers or even slavers getting to them, but all the dead knew was that there were no new wraiths entering into the shadowlands of New Orleans for the past year and local wraiths of long established houses and families were disappearing.

Meanwhile, a small coterie of Giovanni had moved into New Orleans under cover of a new shipping line and maintained an extremely low profile, choosing not to show their hand quite yet until they were fully entrenched in the city. This led them to focus their efforts on attaining spirit servants and acquiring resources from local businesses and transports moving in and out of the docks. Exports were their center of business and this allowed them to remain relatively hidden as exporting records were kept on file locally and then sent with the ship to its destination. As the Giovanni continued to gain spirit servants and enslave the wraith population of New Orleans, emotions began to turn to a darker state. Depression and anxiety were on the rise with several admitting themselves for treatment. There was an increase in paranoid delusion cases as people began to have strange flashes of insight, many of them seeing their entire lives washed away by some unknown force and others simply seeing nothing but death and destruction.

At midnight on August 29th 2004 seventeen people succumbed to what would be described as grand mal seizures and then began to speak in what seemed like multiple voices at the same time, describing imminent death and a tide of destruction that would be unleashed on the world.

In the shadow lands, on this night specters ran rampant and there were several reported missing, dragged into the tempests for some unknown reason that no wraith to this day would really want to talk about let alone admit to what happens to the wraiths that are taken.

December 25th, the snows began in New Orleans and while it was short lived and many of the citizens of New Orleans were captivated by the white Christmas they’d received this year, civil services and most businesses were closed, thanks to Christmas but the roads too were closed due to the lack of equipment in New Orleans which allowed for them to handle the snow on the roads, this essentially meant that the city is shut down for the day and many thought this was a good thing, that is, the one’s having a good day. Emergency services were hampered and many people died in their homes that night, fires were not a large problem but people with medical ailments found that due to the difficulty in reaching homes, they would not last through the night, several individuals that needed to rush people to the hospitals found that without salt trucks, the roads were slick and traffic collisions were on the rise with several fatalities and still others injured, some who might have survived did not because emergency services were so hampered. Although overall, it was a beautiful white Christmas for the people of New Orleans.

However, many of the denizens of the Shadowlands were experiencing something much, much different. The specters had made another show of themselves and this time, some of them were recognized, others that people had thought were missing were now twisted and corrupted forms of their previous selves. Christmas was an especially emotional day and it charged so very many in the Shadowlands allowing some to see those they had left behind, to reach out and touch the ones who pined for lost love and it was this very thing that became a trap for the less experienced as the specters rampaged and took yet more victims. There were whispers of the return of the great maelstrom “Dja-ahk” and that the specter storms triggered memories held by the Mnemoi Guild that told of the return of Grandmother.

2005:

Things had begun to calm down after the rather exciting Christmas, people were back to work, the New Year was upon everyone and spirits were high. Business was going well, as it usually did at the start of a new fiscal quarter and while not everyone was happy it was a generally good time of year to be in New Orleans.

The Giovanni had continued into the New Year with their rituals to enslave the local wraith population and gain a major bargaining chip in the city of New Orleans. Their presence had until very recently remained a complete mystery until shipping anomalies in the cargo manifests began to crop up, where cargo should have been there was nothing and while most stock companies chalked it up to bad records and had their money returned or replacements set in motion to be shipped back out and still some who might have reported these issues to their supervisors tended to keep it in check thanks to some rather hefty cash bonuses. But, there were some who worked the docks and were paid a very healthy salary and given attractive benefits in order to report these kinds of anomalies to their supervisors. Investigations had begun into the incidents on the docks and the Giovanni were beginning to get nervous. This pushed up their time table for their ritual of enslavement and while technically they had broken no part of the promise pact, they were still unknown kindred in a Camarilla city.

Among the shifters an elder of the Shadow Lord tribe and his pack had travelled to New Orleans by way of ship from Mexico and found it to be a den of evil and a home of the wyrm. He had until recently been investigating the city for the past several years, attempting to ascertain whether the blight of Louisiana was worthwhile in a wholly pragmatic sense, or if it simply needed to be wiped off the map. As of August 27th 2005, the elder known as Sees Through the Storms Eye determined that New Orleans could not be saved and began the preparations for the Rite of the Hurricane.

It was also at this time that the Giovanni were reaching a culmination in the gathering of their spirit slaves, the sacrifice of the slaves and the people shipped to them would serve as the catalyst for a ritual to open the gauntlet and allow for them to amass an army of wraiths bound to them and able to be pulled over, bound into fetters of their choosing that they might secure territory for themselves and their clan and maintain it with the might of their ghostly army.

The wraiths of New Orleans, chiefly one of their grand soldiers had uncovered the plot set in motion by the Giovanni, but was tasked to deal with a different matter altogether. He had passed on the information pertaining to the Giovanni and left it in more capable hands and saw to his assignment to investigate a disturbance in the area bordering on the tempest. What he saw that day was likely not to be forgotten in his lifetime. A group of seven humans, the quick had come to their lands and stood on the cusp of the tempest and with them was a large case that held a clock, which was counting down. He was unsure who these people were but in his time he certainly knew what a timer was and generally what happened when they reached zero and that something was almost never good. He brought his squad of troops around with him and began a maneuver to flank as best he could, with the Tempest on one side and them on the other, there was little cover to make use of and so he took point and they charged. What ensued was a battle the likes of which Atsanyol was not prepared for as the group of Void Engineers engaged with him and his squad.

The Void Engineers had encountered quite enough disturbances in the city of New Orleans and had been roving through the Shadow Lands undetected for over a year, studying and cataloguing the presence of the wraith population, they encountered the specter storms and endured the tempest. New Orleans, it was determined, was currently too hazardous for the human population and the gauntlet needed to be sealed, but in the process they needed to scour the area of any harmful presence so that it might remain safe for future generations and human existence could continue on without interference from reality deviants. It was their goal, no, it was their duty to ensure that humanity was protected and they would not be stopped, they had already lost too many in their mission and they would not fail. The tradition mages, lead by a long time resident of New Orleans, one Claus Venger of the Virtual Adepts had detected the presence of the Void Engineers in the city but could not nail down precisely where they were and off he went with the tradition mages to discover what they were up to.

The shifters knew that something was coming, they just didn’t know what. Randi Davison had been out of town on business for several months, several of the shifters that had remained within the city couldn’t quite put their finger on what they were sensing, but it was definitely something bad. There was an ill wind on the horizon and the only thing they knew is that the Ratkin that had called New Orleans home had not been seen in over a week, not a single one. That is, until a Corax by the name of Wingover showed up and informed the shifters that the city was headed for chaos and that it was time to secure the storm doors and find a solid place to weather the oncoming storm. What they didn’t know, was that Wingover was being absolutely literal, but who the hell listens to the Corvid?!

Atsanyol made his move and brought his men down on the Void Engineers with such fury that the mages lost three of their number immediately, but the remaining four regrouped and put their hyper tech to use, calling on the protection of their hyper mark drones several of Atsa’s men were cut down before they even knew what had hit them as the battle raged on, Claus had finally gotten a blip on his universal gps and was able to zero in on the location of the engineers thanks to their activated tech, in they went to deal a telling blow against the technocratic influence trying to gain a foothold on New Orleans, this would be a free city and Claus would not see it fall to the like of them.

The Giovanni had literally managed to rend a hole in the veil between the skinlands and the shadowlands and had begun to siphon out the souls of the wraith population, placing them into their new fetters and vessels, their screams and wails had roused the curiosity of the specters that were slumbering in the tempest including a malphean called The Deceiver, it was the disturbance that caused him to rouse, but it was his aching hunger that urged him to rise and the smell of fresh meat in the shadowlands gave him a new purpose, a new suit to wear and in the distance, a door hung wide open, this would be an excellent awakening!

The battle raged on in the shadowlands with the tradition mages joining the fray, though the wraiths had no idea who any of these people were only that they trespassed and the lords of the local houses would not suffer a fool unto the shadowlands. The winds picked up, people had already secured themselves for the coming storm and Sees Through the Storms eye had nearly completed the rite of the Hurricane, he could feel the winds and reveled in the storm and knew that it would only be a matter of time before the real storm was upon them. Though in the shadows the twitchers could sense the lowering of the gauntlet, the munchmausen directed the skulkers and the plague lords exulted in this fantastic opportunity to test their new airborne dispersal device! But it was garou blood that the twitchers wanted and they could smell it, an unfamiliar pack doing unfamiliar things in –their- territory! Fuck those guys, it was time to break out the chainsaws and the drills because it was killin time and no one was gonna die easy tonight! The battle was joined and the Ratkin descended upon the rogue pack, and while the pack fought valiantly they were outnumbered, they took several of the rats with them but in the end, it was the rats who won as the skulkers dragged off the near to death elder with the remaining twitchers cackling gleefully and pulling the triggers on their battery operated drills, the munchmausen could sense the coming storm and while it had risen to a category 5 storm while the rite was going, it lost power as it neared when the rite was stopped suddenly, the rats descended into their nest with their new prey and set to making this wolf suffer for all the injustice done unto the rats!

Specters broke through the lowered curtain of the veil and descended upon the Giovanni rending them limb from limb, their forms given shape as they entered into the skinlands, the Giovanni were too deep within their ritual to stop the onslaught and in the shadowlands Atsa pulled his men back, he could see the timer was reaching zero and evidently so could the man on his strange computer in the background that was sweating bullets and working to perform some kind of miracle, the void engineers were taken down to just two now and while they were potent it was their tools and tech which allowed them to hold their ground, that is until Claus had finally managed to hack into their drones and into the large case that was counting down, just as the storm hit and raged through the city of New Orleans, the class 3 Hurricane devoured swaths of land and people and it was at that moment that the Deceiver rose from the nearby tempest and with a shriek that made the ears bleed it descended upon the warring wraiths and mages and while the drones cut down the engineers The Deceiver saw it’s chance and possessed Claus, while the Adept did his best to resist the urgings of the Malphean it was all for naught as Claus began to undo the hacking he’d set in place on the Spirit Nuke at the edge of the tempest, his eyes bled and his fingers moved at the urging of The Deceiver. The prompt came up on the screen to re-implement the count down from its stopping point, the nuke would enact the maelstrom and the Specters would gain ascendance to take the shadowlands and begin the harvest once more! The last Engineer bleeding out on the ground of the shadowlands reached into her inner reserves and sent out an S.O.S. to the reinforcements waiting on the edge of New Orleans, marines that were standing by for the order to storm into the city and wipe out the tradition mages, this opened a hole in the astral in order to send the message through and the engineer bid her avatar take that message while she still breathed. Claus fought against The Deceiver with all he had until finally the entity overcame him and with a shrill cry of victory the Adept’s finger came down to confirm the command and the Spirit Nuke’s timer began the countdown once again.

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The detonation was felt across realms, the Malphean used the body of Claus to absorb the explosion and shield it from the full effects. The Giovanni were vaporized as the power of the spirit nuke destroyed their haven from the rip in the veil and the power of the nuke shot through the tempest, and then through the astral where it began another avatar storm, it annihilated the avatars of many of the tradition mages and the incoming marines, it powered the storm and instead of destroying the tempest rift, the destruction and entropy from such devastation brought on the seventh maelstrom and The Deceiver could only let out a cry of triumph as he escaped from the shadowlands in the broken body of Claus Venger. Atsanyol saw this happening and grabbed a young soldier, he was the only one he could reach and hurled both himself and the youngling over the edge of the tempest rift in a last ditch effort to save the two of them, through sheer coincidence or possibly just blind luck, the two of them ended up in a crevice in the side of the rift as the maelstrom swept past them and annihilated the shadowlands wiping out the great houses that had grown in New Orleans and leaving behind only a scattered remnant of what once was. The specters would control this area, at least until they could no longer feed and then they would sleep once again. And the world was once again, filled with darkness, the fae both seelie and unseelie suffered greatly from what had happened, even those who would reave nightmares found their sustenance tasted of ash and loss and some of the fae simply succumbed not only to banality but the crippling despair that washed over New Orleans in the wake of the great storm. The Majority of the ratkin had been wiped out as their nest was filled with the flood waters so suddenly only a few managing to escape with the rite of the bolthole, while the local shifters that weren’t the rats had paid heed to Wingover and found shelter, Randi playing a large part in making sure her people were safe. The vampires suffered the least and it was because of this that they were able to recover the quickest and see to the rebuilding of the city, claiming territories lost and enhancing their grasp making the kindred once again, ascendant as this new chapter was begun. The series of events that had happened was brought about through disunity and a lack of cooperation and while each group wished to blame someone else for this tragedy, the simple fact of the matter was that it fell on each group’s shoulders to some degree.

2006:

The year that may as well have been called “Anno pointy fingery”, a year in which every faction blamed the other for the tragedy of the previous year and ironically enough, through it all only one person even knows that the Giovanni played a part in it, but he isn’t talking. Restructuring and rebuilding were what occupied the brunt of the year and a whole lot of no talking to one another as each faction decided the silent treatment would be best as the year went on and the city tried to rebuild. If nothing else, 2006 was anything but pretty.

2007 – 2010:

Over the course of the next three years small alliances began to form, wherein the shifters, regardless of what they were began to work with one another, finding safety in numbers. The garou as it turned out lost numbers not because of deaths but because of attrition. They were called off to see to other locations and with no solid leadership in the area and no actual caern it was easy to see why the shifters were falling apart. There was little for garou to actually secure and protect and while there was plenty to fight, almost all of those fights were suicidal. The fae had engaged in all-out war, with the unseelie on the warpath to genocide, trying to wipe out the seelie in their entirety, the Wraiths kept to themselves and the Kindred did what all kindred tend to do in adversity, they found a way to profit from it. However, there were movements on high and among the leadership pushing for a reform, to join in some kind of an accord so that what happened in 2005 wouldn’t happen all over again and oddly enough it was a retired, blind mage who made the most sense. He wanted nothing to do with politics and claimed to be out of the game as a whole but his ideas had merit and he offered an alternative to separation. Coupled with the support of Randi and then Ujio the factions began to move towards this accord and as of the New Year, the accord was ratified.

2011:

With a newly ratified accord, there was peace and this allowed for a time of prosperity across the board as the city continued to be rebuilt and rumors began to turn into solid truth that the neutral ground would remain so in an effort to support the accord formed by the factions of the city. The court of fallen whispers became a hushed name spoken on the tongues of the leadership and even then only rarely. While no council was formalized as of yet there was talk of it, but such things would take time and in that time there would be rebuilding. The city was moving along nicely and as time progressed and people began to become more entrenched into the city with investments worth holding on to life, such as it is, became just a bit more bearable.

2012-2013

The next two years were relatively peaceful with the shifters remaining solid in their numbers, never a great many of them but just enough to ensure their presence was always felt. The Wraiths still remained outside of the politics and maneuverings of the quick, the Mages were dwindling in number and the Kindred, ironically enough, remained ever on the forefront of progress. There were rumors of a shadow war being waged behind the scenes in which the unseelie were still pursuing their interests of driving the seelie out of the city. Over the course of 2013, Lily White and her entourage would make an appearance and take the reins of the seelie of New Orleans, fostering relations with the other factions and while mostly unsuccessful in their negotiations, it was the most unlikely of allies that was found within the Kindred. A relationship had begun to blossom between Lily White and Ujio Tanaka of the Kindred that would take root and form one of the most unlikely political alliances, perhaps in history between supernatural groups.

2014:

The seelie, under the protection of the kindred had begun to make a comeback, finding that they could manage territory in the eastern bayous under the watchful eyes of a rather neutral figure whom many had not even met. An old bargain struck between the seelie and this unknown figure allowed them the freedom to live a life in which they could prosper. Alliances not fully formalized at this time, property was required in order to safe guard the seelie as a house out in the middle of nowhere simply would not do for the Kindred prince. Events had begun to happen which lead to the mages of the city falling out of favor, slowly but surely with the other factions, though one mage had managed to remain neutral and aloof from the rest, one known as Meraine, she tended to each, no matter the faction engendering good will and a sense of neutrality.

2015:

This was the year of events. A mass exodus of kindred left the population with fewer kindred than there had been in almost a century within the city and Ujio struggled to maintain the status quo, while he worked to cement alliances with the seelie, this lead to tension with the unknown figure in the bayou and after a time it came to a head with a battle between the kindred prince and the figure, which turned out to be Daniel Johnson of the Mokole. It is not often spoken of, but in that battle it is rumored that the often emotionless and feared kindred prince was defeated and yet not slain by the mokole. Left to continue the alliance with the fae, he did so and the year simply did not stop in its excitement. From the battles with Theo Thimble a rogue tremere, to the attack upon the Kindred and Fae population by a rogue mage known as Thane, to the hunter epidemic, and more recently an issue with a supernatural plague and an investigation by the FBI, 2015 has turned into the most active year yet for the city of splendors. It is only now that a formalized leadership council has been convened and while alliances are shaky at best, there is progress and it will be to the leadership of the city to see if their people will toe the line, or if what little confidence there is in these sketchy alliances falls to nothing and all-out war is declared among the factions. Whose side will you be on when you finally step on to the asphalt of, Rumble Street?