Steven Clarke

The Setite presence in New York City was never one that adhered to a strict hierarchy. A few small Setitecoteries plied their trade inMorningside Park, Brooklyn, Harlem and Lower Manhattan while others fought for their own places amid the established Sabbat territories or skulked within the tenuous Camarilla domain. StevenClarke led one of these latter coteries, the East Flatbush Dominions.

Their turf overlapped with one oj the more powerful Sabbat packs, a Black Hand pack known as the Prophet’s Word. While Clarke used thc Sabbat’s own tactics against the pack, Embracing mem.

bers into his own gang with more need than discretion, thc Prophet’s Word generally came out on top of the conflict The Dominions scraped by, making money on numben rackets and a small-scale black market and drug network BY NIGHT 104 Things changed for the Dominions in late 1998.

The territory had been part of an Italian gang’s turf before the Cainites made it their warzone, but the Italians had never taken much interest in it. Steven saw that he had little choice and made a deal with the Italians: He’d have the Dominions work their territory for them in exchange for manpower to use against the Prophet’s Word.

The terms were steep the Italians wanted half but the way Steven saw it, the Dominions were losing more than half to the Prophet’s Word. He agreed and set things up with his coterie. The next day, footsoldiers for the Italian gang broke into the Prophet’s Word’s haven and murdered them while they slept.

Clarke had orchestrated the move carefully the Italians simply thought the Prophet’s Word gang had been partying all night and was sleeping it off by day. That night, Clarke and the Dominions shook down all of the peripheral thugs who had sympathies with the Prophet’s Word. The Dominions became the new bosses, and if anyone didn’t like it, they’dend up like the Prophets’ pack: dead.

Things went well for a while until, just before the Camarilla swept into town, the Setite Elie Sansaricq caught wind of the deal Steven had made with the Italians. He summoned Clarke to a meeting, where the two discussed what Sansaricq perceived as the folly of the Dominions’ actions.

Sansaricq thought the issue of domain was a Kindred matter and that Clarke should have come to him for help instead of the Italians. Clarke dissented, claiming that he had only been looking out for his own and that the Setites had never been so cloistered.

Sansaricq informed him that that’s how it was going to be in the future; all Setite activity would be an extension of the central temple he planned to head owing the Italians wasn’t how the temple would be profitable. Disgusted, Steven stood to leave. Before he could go, however, Sansaricq plunged an envenomed dagger into Clarke’s back.

He dispatched cronies of his own to eliminate the body, which he thought would reach Final Death as the poison worked its way through Clarke’s cold veins. His lackeys buried Clarke beneath a bodega that was being leveled and rebuilt as condominiums. The venom hadn’t been as potent as Sansaricq suspected, however, and Steven Clarke arose just under a year later from an agonizing torpor.

Since that time, Sansaricq’s plans have moved steadily toward their culmination, but he hasn’t quite brought the younger members of the clan to heel yet. Now he knows the depths of Sansaricq’s lust for power, and he plans to use this information to keep the Setites out of Sansaricq’s grasp. It’s for his own sake as much as anyone else’s, of course knows too much to be an altruist.

Still, if he can keep the temple decentralized, he can at least allow individual Setites to choose their debts rather than be Embraced into them. That is, if he can keep his head on his shoulders and Sansaricq at bay.