Setting

In October of 1973, during the New Orleans Jazz Festival, a vicious, but silent coup took place in the Kindred arena while mortal society reveled. The Sabbat formed an organized attack, a War Party, upon the existing independent court that had kept New Orleans so open and so welcoming to all of Kindred society. This attack, prolonged over the course of 17 nights, drove most of the non-Sabbat Kindred out of the city. The Prince and his court were slain. The elders were either devoured to enrich the blood of the Sabbat soldiers or fled into the country to hide in their plantation estates. Many neonates were converted to the ways of the Sabbat, driven to the edge of their Humanity and some, who survived the plummet, became dire monsters themselves, as they took the ideals of their new masters to heart.

The Sabbat had come into control of New Orleans.

Forty years later, the Archbishop of New Orleans was deposed and two pack priests vied for the position. Camarilla spies in the city reported to the armies of the Justicar William Marshall. The Sabbat leadership was in question. Before the new Archbishop could be ritually bathed and the city's packs brought under his rule, the armies rolled in and slew him. Chaos descended as the Camarilla retook the Vieux Carre, and while the mortal news media reported widespread rioting, especially in Mid-City and the Ninth Ward, the Sabbat fought for their last strongholds. Police and National Guard were sent in to quell the riots. The Mid-City stronghold fell as several of the famed Lineage of Antigone slew the Archbishop's Paladins. Only the Ninth Ward remained, but by morning, the city was quiet once again.

The Riots of 2013 are history. Some blame politics. Some blame the failing economy. Some draw a parallel between the riots in New Orleans and the Riots of the past few years in Greece. Some say they were an ill-conceived extension of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Only the Kindred know the truth. They were only the death agonies of the Sabbat as it relinquished its short-lived hold on the city.

What emerged from the flaming rubble was a tight-clutched coterie, less their fallen members. Soldiers and strategists, and three of the renowned members of the Antigone legacy, the Malkavian warrior women. A few of these began to realize that the Sabbat never really held the city incorruptible. A flourishing sub-culture had operated under the radar these last forty years. The Camarilla could not come into a power vacuum after all. The Independents were ever-present, still strong, still cunning.

Mnemosyne, a Malkavian of Antigone's line, took the New Orleans Praxis and immediately imposed a hardline, traditional rule over the handful of Camarilla who remained with her. Stalwart in spirit and cunning in mind, none could name her Madness and few felt its icy caress. She was not beautiful or of the refined of her clan, but she was what they needed. Her voice carried, even as whispers and her strategies held fast, held true to the precarious position of the Camarilla of New Orleans.

She sent the word out that the Sabbat was defeated for now. Reinforcements were required: those strong enough to fill the offices of her Court, bold enough to lead, and skilled to fight in the political arena, the fields of mortal influence, and in the cloisters of the Occult. She also called for the defenders, the brute-force fighters and the strategists to help quash the little uprisings that were inevitable from the remnant of the Sabbat.

Prince Mnemosyne determined to see this City come back from the long occupation of the enemy. She only needed those who were willing, and above all, loyal, to see it through.

Despite her best efforts, however, the Sabbat remained a persistent problem for Mnemosyne and after personal scandal came to roost in Mnemosyne's own home, she relinquished control of New Orleans to Whisper, a Nosferatu whose personal politics were shrouded in the silence of memory and whose intellectual power was matched only by his physical prowess. After fleeing the scene of Whisper's successful Praxis challenge, Mnemosyne disappeared from the city.