Campaign of the Month: October 2017
Blood & Bourbon
The Lasombra
“Know you this, my progeny,
that our land is forever the land of darkness.
Know that when the time comes,
darkness shall consume my soul,
as it will one day consume yours.”
Lasombra’s words to her childer
Rumors of Clan Lasombra’s defection to the Camarilla are exaggerated. Individual Cainites do not easily leave the Sabbat, never mind an entire clan. In truth, the keepers have always had a sizable antitribu population, especially in the Middle East and Latin America.
Following the Gehenna Crusade in the aftermath of 9/11, this portion of the clan has emerged from the shadows. Aided by a small (but notorious) number of defectors from the Sabbat, and a surprising number of antitribu ensconced within the Camarilla, these Lasombra claim to the “true” clan and decry their Sabbat clanmates as _antitribu_—a label these rival keepers furiously contest.
The groundwork for this move took the better part of a decade. It was in 2016, following a great gathering of the clan in Cairo, that the Lasombra antitribu proclaimed their entrance in the Camarilla. The process is currently quite slow-going. For all the fact that these Lasombra assure they have never been members of the Sabbat, the Night Clan is intensely distrusted by the Camarilla. Many princes have made extraordinarily onerous demands of Lasombra would-be residents of their domains, ranging from blood bonds to turning over staked elder clanmates. Some keepers hope to eventually see a Lasombra justicar and Inner Circle representative, but such a thing is likely quite far off, if it will even happen at all. The greatest benefit these Camarilla Lasombra see to “coming out” is that they no longer wish to live in fear of their Sabbat clanmates.
In New Orleans, Philip Maldonato has emerged as one of the most high-profile antitribu (or, perhaps now, simply Camarillo-affiliated Lasombra) seeking to bring his clan into the Ivory Tower. Between Maldonato’s patronage and New Orleans’ status as a major port, Big Easy city has become one of the prime (and literal) ports of entry for keepers seeking entrance into North America. Prince Vidal has proven surprisingly tolerant if not welcoming of the Night Clan in his city, a fact that is doubtlessly a consequence of his centuries-long association with one of its elders. New Orleans now plays host to a large number of Lasombra transients, while the clan’s permanent presence continues to steadily grow under Maldonato’s watchful gaze.
Never one to pass up new friends, Antoine Savoy has been equally quick to offer competent and ambitious keepers a place by his side in the French Quarter. Several have already taken up his offer. For all the fact that Vidal may be one of Clan Lasombra’s greatest advocates in the larger Camarilla, the keepers are ruthlessly pragmatic. To individual Lasombra, it looks increasingly likely that Savoy is going to become prince. Baron Cimitière, meanwhile, seems to have no particular objection to Clan Lasombra’s presence in New Orleans; for him, Vodoun and service to the loa comes first, above clan or sect or covenant.
All things told, New Orleans is one of the better Camarilla cities to be Lasombra.
Genealogy
|
e. = Embraced |
• 7. Philip Maldonato (e. many centuries ago, a. mid 18th century)
• 9. Conroy Westphal (e. early 21st century, a. 2016)
• 10. Roger Ferris (e. 2016)
• 10. Talibah Mahmoud (e. early 21st century, a. 2016)
• 11. Nico Cimpreon (e. late 20th century, a. early 21st century, d. 2016)
• 11. Alonzo Collazo (e. early 21st century, a. 2016, d. 2017)
• 12. Catherine Ward (e. 2017)
• Roberto “Gamberro” Vaccaro (e. early 21st century)
Kindred by Lasombra Status
Lasombra Status ••••
Philip Maldonato
Lineage: 7th gen. childe of Shu’ayb al-Mohager
Embrace: Many centuries ago
Status: Camarilla •••••, Hardline Sanctified ••••, Lasombra ••••
Coteries: Augusto Vidal’s inner circle, Cabildo ••••
Philip Maldonato has been the seneschal of New Orleans for as long as Vidal has ruled the city, but he was the Ventrue’s confidante, lover, and right hand for centuries even before then. He enjoys a more even-handed and sagacious reputation than the prince, and most Kindred would consider him the perfect choice to succeed Vidal—were it not for the recent disclosure of his Lasombra blood. The clan isn’t yet that high in the Camarilla’s esteem. Nevertheless, Maldonato remains one of Clan Lasombra’s most respected elders in the United States and a vital facilitator for the Night Clan’s entry into the Camarilla. He assumed the role as primogen for his clan in New Orleans to no one’s surprise.
Robert Congo
Ghouled: Late 18th century
Status: Ghouls •••••
The herald and majordomo of Philip Maldonato, Robert was once a slave of Congolese origin who was “freed” by Maldonato and subsequently educated in both scholarship and politesse. He is responsible for many of the (literal) day-to-day details of Perdido House’s administration.
Annabelle “Bella” Bellerose
Ghouled: 1883
Status: Ghouls ••••
Rocco Agnello’s former herald. This svelte, morose beauty haunts the dimmer parts of Elysium. She says she doesn’t like the limelight. Notable for her dry sense of humor, superficial banter, gloomy quips, and enduring look of boredom. She is the hound’s eyes and ears, acting glibly as his official mouthpiece. Following her domitor’s final death in the 2016 Battle of Mt. Carmel, she’s found her way to the seneschal’s service.
Kâmil
Ghouled: Mid 19th century or prior
Status: Ghouls ••••
A former eunuch soldier-slave in the Ottoman Empire, it’s a question of some uncertainty how old Kâmil is and how he found his way into Maldonato’s service half a world away. He first appeared by his domitor’s side in the mid-19th century and has served him as a bodyguard and driver ever since. Although his primary function remains martial in nature, Kâmil holds postgraduate degrees in a number of fields and just as often serves his domitor as an investigator and general problem-solver.
Lasombra Status ••
Conroy Westphal
Lineage: 9th gen. childe of Suleiman ibn Abdelmalek
Embrace: 2005
Status: Camarilla 0, Invictus 0, Lasombra ••
Coteries: Leviathan Committee ••, Low Table ••
A child prodigy Embraced at the age of 10 in Saudi Arabia, Westphal found the Islam-dominated culture of the Middle East’s vampires poorly to his liking. He gladly relocated to the United States after the 2016 Cairo Accords at the invitation of Philip Maldonato, his grandsire’s cousin, and serves as whip for his clan. Arrogant to a fault, Westphal believes he’s smarter than just about anyone he meets—and isn’t shy about it, or the fact that he’s usually right.
Talibah Mahmoud
Lineage: 10th gen. childe of Shadya Kanaan
Embrace: 2001
Status: Camarilla 0, Lasombra ••, Unaligned -
Coteries: Leviathan Committee ••, Low Table ••
The clan’s sole Abyss mystic, Mahmoud has always just wanted to be left alone to study. As a mortal, she was an autodidact who pursued strange interests that marked her as a blasphemer in her homeland of Egypt. As a vampire, she immerses herself in shadowy arts even her fellow Lasombra find unnerving. She relocated to New Orleans after the 2016 Cairo Accords. She is short of patience for fools and has little appetite for politics: to her, the petty squabbles of the Kindred mean nothing next to the cosmic nothingness of the Abyss and study of its dark mysteries. Sometimes she tries to enlighten other licks. Usually she’s disappointed by them.
Lasombra Status •
Catherine Ward
Lineage: 12th gen. childe of Alonzo Collazo
Embrace: 2016
Status: Camarilla 0, Hardline Sanctified •, Lasombra •
Coterie: Red Right Hand •••
Hector Lowe
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
Catherine’s near-constant companion, Hector’s life trajectory largely mirrored Catherine’s. Born to immigrant parents and immersed in the Catholic Church from a young age, Hector’s early years were spent on the straight and narrow, even serving as an alter boy. That came to an end when his father was deported in in Hector’s teens and he was drawn into increasingly unsavory work to ‘support’ his mother and sister. By 2016 he was a fully initiated member of a criminal gang, the Cottonmouths, in Algiers. When most of the gang vanished in 2016 he found himself the inheritor of portions their ill-gotten wealth—that good fortune was not to last however as months later Catherine Ward came calling on him at the Ventrue’s prompting.
Originally planning to kill him as both a sinner and loose end, Catherine found him repentant in the face of the combination of overt demonstration of the supernatural and religiously inspired reckoning visited upon him. Hector threw himself on Catherine’s untender mercies, seeking to save not his life, but his soul. The rest is, as they say, history.
Years in service to Catherine has served to break down any remaining loyalty or attachments to Hector’s past life. These nights he is entirely his domitor’s agent, a repentant and masochistic servant of the damned. Those same years have hardened the street brute, under the watchful gaze of the many more professional former service members he was surrounded by, into a genuinely skilled fighter, marksman, and foot soldier to the Sanctified.
His relationship with Catherine is uncomplicated: she is the savior of his immortal soul even as she remains a tormentor of his mortal body, regularly torturing him at his own insistence to help ‘purge’ his more impure desires. As nights have gone on the Lasombra has had to develop increasingly cruel and creative tortures for him—not that she objects.
Sarah Anne Widney
Ghouled: 2015
Status: Ghouls •
Once the ghoul of Caroline Malveaux-Devillers, Ms. Widney was one of the early ‘gifts’ given to Catherine in her role as the ‘leader’ of the Red Right Hand, there to support their transition into the All-Night Society and handle many of the day-to-day administrative requirements that the krewe required to take their lives public and private across the veil. These nights she serves as a capable day-to-day administrator that handles finances and many other more mundane requires for the krewe. That role has gradually expanded into assisting with all manner of Masquerade-related matters (including inconvenient bodies). The irony of her growth into that role is not lost on Widney. Catherine has tended to take a much firmer hand with the once-butler, though whether to her pleasure or chagrin is less clear from the famously taciturn ghoul.
Timothy Jackson
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls 0
Father Jackson was once a merely covetous priest, perhaps beneath the attentions of the Sanctified as he quietly supplemented his income with money from the church’s coffers. That changed when he found himself how lucrative extorting his fellow corrupted members of the clergy—child molesters and simple fornicators both—could be. For his part, Father Jackson found his own vices mild. Catherine disagreed. Though initially inclined to see him slain for his intransigence, his ‘reform’ and subjugation presented a lever window into the Church without perverting a ‘genuine’ man of God.
Roberto “Gamberro” Vaccaro
Lineage: Unknown
Embrace: 2016
Status: Bourbon Sanctified •, Lasombra •, Camarilla 0
Coterie: The Hetairoi ••
The Sicilian-Honduran neonate as the Gamberro acts as Antoine Savoy’s main liaison with New Orleans’ criminal underworld, particularly the Black Hand. A de facto soldato serving a mafioso capo allied with the international Vaccaro dynasty, the arrogant adolescent runs a French Quarter, racially diverse street gang, Reyes de Hielo, that has connections to Honduran-US drug smugglers, the Mexican Los Zetas cartel, and domestic cocaine dealers.
Corbin “Spook” MacCready
Ghouled: 1974
Status: Ghouls ••
Irish-American Mafia associate and “cleaner” who specializes in body disposal, breaking and entering, murder, and similar illicit activities. Originally from Miami, he’s survived the final deaths of at last two previous domitors, and likes to say he always knows how to pick the winning side. Former ghoul of Rocco Agnello’s who defected to the Bourbons after the 2016 Battle of Mt. Carmel.
Dionisio “T-Bang” Melgara
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
An original Miskitu member of Roberto’s cocaine ring who accompanied him during his stowaway international escape. Avid ‘sampler’ of the gang’s snowy product. Simultaneously paranoid about cops, ICE, gnomes, ghosts, and lobster aliens, although he enjoys outwitting the police with an almost religious fervor (gnomes are impossible to outwit). When not nigh-ODing on cocaine, he’s a remarkably good drive-by shooter and sniper, as he was one of the Contra’s child soldiers and killed more men than most Army Rangers before he grew his first pubic hair. He used to dream of using drug money to free his people, but he’s since settled for dreaming of snorting mountains of cocaine and having sex with a giant rabbit goddess–or at least crack whores he forces to dress up in abandoned mall Easter Bunny costumes.
JayPee “Manila Ice” Tupas
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
A Filipino wannabe b-boy and rapper descended from the city’s last Filipino consulate general. His more immediate ancestors abandoned drying shrimp in the lower French Quarter to build a chain of dry cleaners they manage from Bayou St. John. When not locking delinquent debtors in freezers, selling expired credit card numbers, or otherwise assisting the Ice Kings, JayPee spends his time posting crappy Spanglish rap and dance videos on his MeVid channel and/or lambasting Dougy Two-Toes’ social media posts (as the two used to be friends but had a bad falling out over something neither can right remember).
Roger Ferris
Lineage: 10th gen. childe of Conroy Westphal
Embrace: 2016
Status: Camarilla 0, Lasombra •, Invictus 0
Coteries: Guard de Ville ••, Leviathan Committee ••, Low Table ••
A former CIA case officer turned station chief who spent more than a decade in the Middle East, Roger quit the agency after he lost two fingers and was brutally tortured following a fouled op in Jordan. Formerly in charge of the Malveaux family’s physical security, protection, and corporate-political espionage, Roger was Embraced during the 2016 Battle of Mt. Carmel and now works as one of the hounds on the Guard de Ville. In life, Roger was a frighteningly devious and manipulative bastard with a tested IQ of 142 who never stopped scheming how to advance his patrons’ fortunes, and was utterly without scruples. In undeath, those qualities have continued to serve him well.
Ben Chandler
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
The right hand of Roger Ferris, Ben knew his domitor long before either of them were brought into the Kindred world. An ex-Marine who’s a massive slab of a man at 6’8" and nearly 300 lbs, Ben is the blunt end of the stick used when his domitor’s efforts require direct action. Though far from a dunce, Ben is used mostly for his intimidating presence and physical skills. Truly enjoys his job and his boss, both for his professionalism and the opportunity it has given him. Diehard fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide and often wears a ball cap for the school. This earns him a great deal of “love” in New Orleans, though few people have the guts to say anything to the titan of a man.
Brett Goodman
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
Before his ghouling, Brett Goodman was ostentatiously a “profiler” and “investigator" for the Malveaux family. In actuality, he’s a conman, spy, and expert at breaking and entering who uses his talents to infiltrate groups and buildings on behalf of his domitor. He’s also a consummate womanizer who loves nothing more than to sleep with a pretty girl and brag about it to anyone who’ll listen.
Kayla Graves
Ghouled: 2016
Status: Ghouls •
A high school and college beauty pageant winner (as well as former Miss Louisiana), Kayla grew up wanting to be a cop after her father’s murder when she was nine years old. Upon joining the force, she was assigned to VICE as bait in prostitution stings. Years of such work and sexual harassment from co-workers left her feeling dirty and cheap. Roger Ferris offered her a better paycheck working for the Malveaux family and Kayla happily jumped ship to the private sector. She still serves as a honeypot who draws in men with access to information her domitor finds of interest, but appreciates that he doesn’t treat her like a bimbo. Also serves occasionally as discrete muscle, as she’s often underestimated for her looks.
Fallen Lasombra by Status
Lasombra Status •
Nico Cimpreon
Lineage: 11th gen. childe of Leon “8-Ball” White
Embrace: 1988
Final Death: 2016 (28 years undead)
Status: Anarch Movement ••, Bourbon Sanctified •, Camarilla 0, Lasombra •
Coteries: Leviathan Committee ••, OXR •••
Born in Miami, Nico quickly became disillusioned with society’s idea of justice when his old man and a handful of other cops got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist after they bludgeoned a black man to death. After the Miami Riots of 1980 Nico headed out to California, where he fell in with a drug smuggler who turned out to be a lick. His subsequent Embrace had him heading back to Miami before settling in New Orleans shortly after Katrina. He fell in with Antoine Savoy despite (or perhaps because of) his Anarch tendencies, scoffing at the idea of the Movement bowing and scraping to a prince for paltry handouts. He viewed those who’d let a Ventrue put them on their knees with contempt. Nico’s natural charisma might have made him a valuable asset to Veronica Alsten-Pirrie once she defected to Savoy’s camp since she didn’t seem interested in running any rants, but he disappeared in early 2011, long before the split. Nico returned to the city in 2016, where he fought against Sheriff Donovan during the Battle of Mt. Carmel and met final death. It came out afterwards that he was Lasombra; he’d long been presumed to be Caitiff.
Other Fallen Lasombra
• Alonzo Collazo (11th gen. childe of unknown sire, Bourbon Sanctified, e. early 21st century, a. 2016, d. 2017)
Character Portal
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Assamites |
Brujah |
Caitiff |
Gangrel |
Hecata |
Lasombra |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
-kavians |
Nosferatu |
Ravnos |
Salubri |
Setites |
Toreador |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Tremere |
Tzimisce |
Ventrue |
Kindred |
Bloods |
by:
False_Epiphany