Victoria Ash

Victoria Ash

apartments that have not been lightproofed. I suggest you sell them. You will also gain access to my accounts, offshore holding companies, and financial advisors. The advisors need a steady supply of vitae.

You will have most of the things I will not be taking with me, but not everything. All Kindred need a secret or two...

I have arranged an invitation to the Elysium for you. Consider the impression you want to make. These people are the ones you will share your eternity with. In time, you will love and hate each and every one of them. You will be bored of them, and happy to have someone who understands you. Keep it in mind when you feel like making enemies.

Drink Deep You must love the Camarilla and all it can do for you, more than you have ever loved anything in your life.

You must bask in its casual corruption and insincere compliments, its constant backstabbing and eternal ennui. It senses weakness, Anarch sympathies, aversion to power, and seeks to expel such failures.

Like the Embrace, real immortality comes in two parts. Many only understand the first, physical manifestation of it. Yet it also has another side: Immortality means not dying, to put it banally.

Most unbound are extinguished younger than they would have died as humans. They die of an inquisitor's stake or the fangs of a Sheriff. They die in the sun and in the sewers. They die because our life is dangerous and they do not have the right protection.

In a way, immortality is a lie. When I was human, society was organized into the aristocracy, the trades, the peasants, the clergy. Everyone was supposed to be happy in their place, but many aspired to better things. This sowed the seeds of revolution, because revolution was the only way they could improve their lives. In modern nights, the mortals have become smarter. They say that everyone has a chance to become one of the elite, so people forget that most never do. The opportunity blinds them to the reality. The immortality of the blood works the same way. Young Anarchs think they will live forever, when in fact they will not even make it a few months.

You are a true Camarilla immortal. You will go on. Protected by the full might of the Ivory Tower and our ancient laws, you can reach your full potential.

Through the centuries, you will gain amazing wealth and power. You will lose it all and find yourself on your knees, only to rise again. You will serve and rule, win and lose, for this is the real secret of the Camarilla: In the long run, the only thing that matters is whether you can still play the game.

Immortality means that survival is victory.

Once I have settled into my new life, perhaps I will come back to you. You can expect me in a year, a decade, a century. I want to see my domain expanded, my business holdings grown. Most of all, I expect to find a childe who has used my legacy to make something of themselves.

The Blood is a gift. Even if you choose to hate me, put it to a good use.

Your loving sire, Victoria Ash I N T R O D U C T I O N the view from the top There is a difference between hiding in fear and biding our time.

We wait for the perfect time to strike, like any skilled predator.

– ELEANOR ZHENG, ARCHON OF CLAN NOSFERATU T he Camarilla is a secret society. This is obvious.

But what is the final initiation? When do you know all the secrets?

This experience is not unfamiliar to the mortal world. Power offers many initiations to those who would possess it. Politicians, journalists, industrialists: all get invited to social situations that turn out to conceal something more. Sometimes these secrets become formal societies: the Grand Orient, Skull and Bones, names you haven’t even heard of.

When you enter such a select group, you become part of a new world. You understand how the world works from a higher level.

The second Embrace is such an initiation, but many T H E V I E W F R O M T H E T O P C A M A R I L L A Every nightmare dreamed up by paranoids, every righteous fear of the persecuted, every conspiracy postulated by law and hinted at in lore: the Camarilla reaches farther and does worse. It controls lives, money, and history. They told your ancestors what to believe, they tell the media what to report. If the Camarilla want a secret kept from the kine, they bury the story … and the storyteller.

Master conspirators and manipulators do not pull together in the same harness like tame oxen.

The Kindred within the Camarilla use tools of manipulation and deceit on each other just as they do on the kine and on other sects. But they agree on one truth: We are stronger inside the Camarilla than anyone outside of it. stricter ones await you in the Camarilla. You can join the Primogen, become a Prince, rise ever higher in the hierarchy…. At last to discover that even the Inner Circle doesn't know everything.

Always more secrets await.

Be careful if you are offered a title. Sometimes Princes like to test young Kindred by giving them power. Power is opportunity, and danger. You may wish to refuse.

I indulge myself in a little humor. Of course you will never refuse. Your ambition bites too hard for that.

Many in the Camarilla love the titles. They want to be a Prince, a Justicar, an Inner Circle member. You would do well to remember that while power rests in official positions, it also extends outside their limits.

Consider myself. Sometimes I have held an official Camarilla position. Often I haven't. Yet my power and influence has never been dependent on that.n Title remains a matter of convenience, nothing more.

My wedding offers me a new initiation, a new phase in my existence, but no official position exists for what I shall become in the Camarilla or the Ashirra.

Do you think I will be powerless?

As spoken by Fiorenza Savona, ascending kingpin of Clan Ventrue: Understand, my little neonate, that Fortune smiles upon you.

Those less blessed say our sect drinks vanity as well as blood, that it cares only for its own shadowy reflection in the mirror. Your low Anarch companions may even have told you that we are “an elitist vampire country club.” Jealous lessers often mistake vanity for pride, it is true. And indeed, we protect our own and withdraw our protection from those too foolish to accept it. To descend to their argot, we are truly elitist — because we are the true elite. Our country club, meanwhile, plays for actual countries.

Membership in our club — our exclusive club — comes with fees, of course. We invite you when we deem you capable of mastering the Masquerade, and worthy of service to royalty. And you must pay your fees in the currency of the kingdom. In Athens, it may be enough to claim the acceptance of a majority of the city’s Kindred, while in Cape Town only the Prince’s word admits you to the Ivory Tower after tests of the strength of your Blood. Prove you know the rules, and you may be invited to help enforce them — or write them.

Not every aspirant enters the Tower. Some even fall back at the first shut gate, betrayed by their own doubts. Banish those doubts.

If you believe yourself unfit for the Camarilla, be assured the Camarilla agrees with you. But cloak your death, sever ties with mere kine, and take your place as a player at the table — and then we shall deal you in, and perhaps even stake your play. Remember that while you play with us, Fortune smiles upon you — and her fangs only rarely come out.

“The rules are simple enough,” Rider spoke softly amid the din of mortal voices, walking alongside her childe as the two cut through a subway station pouring with commuters. “You exercise restraint in all things. No errant feeding, no blatant displays of power, no creation of new childer without permission from the Prince, and certainly no telling the living about what we do.”

Syl nodded, trying to keep up 1 0 We are a monolithic and ruthless cabal, expanding and maintaining our sphere of influence with hidden hands. We infiltrate rather than invade, subvert before we debate, intimidate without asking our lessers their opinions. Our power flies on incubus wings by night instead of marching with armies by day. Nothing can stand in our way, as none can stand athwart a shadow.

R E P O R T # 6 8 S O C I A L S TAT U S Recent research implies that a blankbody forming part of the secret society called “the Tower” or “the Camarilla” is more well-regarded than one not of this clique. Within their society, higher-ranking blankbodies adopt regal titles: “Prince,” “King,” or, in the case of Subject #7, “Emperor.” Other blankbodies defer to members of the Tower, bringing to mind an elite caste.

To date, we have discovered no physical distinction between blankbodies within the Tower and those without. However, analysis indicates (see attached Report #27AL) that the network provides ongoing support for concealing blankbody identities and activities, and likely provides its own intelligence and analysis to favored members. Those outside are therefore more likely to be exposed, or expose themselves, creating targets of opportunity for our action.

Assuming blankbodies operate along human psychological parameters, membership within the Tower likely provides a sense of worth and belonging, as with normal organizations. Although data remain fragmentary, the Tokyo and Belem studies indicate that blankbodies outside the Tower tend to self-exterminate (or act out so aggressively as to invite termination) at much higher rates than those within it.

Analysts remain unclear on the cause of this phenomenon: the Tower seems unlikely to offer psychological care to its members, but if internal surveillance characterizes its discipline perhaps divergence is tantamount to betrayal. One possibility: blankbodies within this group adopt a mindset akin to workers in a highpressure sales force (see Endron Files), where competitors (other blankbodies) prey on any member showing weakness or a lapse of diligence. Self-destructive personalities seem unlikely to last long in such an environment, or even be accepted for membership. 1 1 T H E V I E W F R O M T H E T O P R243 #68 C A M A R I L L A Rusty ACTIVE NOW i hear bout a big prince party @inferno QT kay You know it? yea Gonna be new mixers coming in tonight. nu drinks???

New everything. Drinks. Dancers. DJ.

Chastity even got some kind of gallery goin on downstairs.

Wanna come? seems like a deal Cool Wait wait. Did the big hog tell you you were in yet? in the big C? naw but soon Shit. You can’t come if you ain’t with the c.

Privileges of the gang.

Fuck. Sorry. Looks like you’ll be havin takeaway, flix and chill. can’t u vouch 4 me?

Absolutely fucking not.

I had to work my ass off to get in I shouldn’t have told you this much.

You’d better not show.

You hear? yea i guess u r such an elitist big c cunt nowanights u c cunts keep all the best shit and leave us wit nothin Fuck you, you bottom feeder piece of trash. I can’t believe I answered you. I feel dirty.

Fuck. Delete this fucking record once we’re done. Speak to me again when or if you’re ever in. You got me?

Yeah?

Fuck off then with her sire as she somehow flowed through the kine like a fish effortlessly gliding against the tide. “You said I could ask you anything, right?” She bumped into an elderly woman and apologized despite herself.

“That’s correct. I would rather you ask than make a mistake that comes back to haunt me,” Rider called back, her pitch barely discernible above the chatter of travelers on phones and speaking among each other as they walked from A to B.

“Well-” Syl quickened her pace, catching up with the vampire who had created her, “what’s the point in living forever if we can’t let it all out occasionally? I mean, we must have these powers for a reason, right?”

Rider stopped abruptly, the kine continuing to seamlessly move around her despite her almost blocking an escalator with her presence. Syl had to step back to avoid getting carried away with the wave of human traffic. “Yes, we have these powers for a reason. This thing of ours, which we will not name in such a public place, prizes, rewards, and bestows title upon those who master their gifts. Ours is a group dedicated to control, both of our world and ourselves. Control is not letting claws spring from your hands whenever you feel angry, or telling someone to jump in front of a bus whenever you feel upset. Control is having this power, letting others know you have this power, and choosing not to use it.”

Syl’s confusion turned into a smile as she finished her sire’s thought. “So that when we do have to use it…”

“Exactly.” Rider flowed onto the escalator, Syl in her wake. 1 2