Index of Coterie Types (Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition)

As always, I thank my patrons Alan, Keeper, Ferny, and Dave.  If you enjoy what I do and want to help keep me doing it, please consider becoming my patron!

    One of the reasons I'ven't posted in a while is that I have buried myself in a big V5 project, converting everything ever written about the Kiasyd to V5.  This includes a quick sketch of Strasbourg, the only city in the world with a Kiasyd Prince, and that the first one, to boot!

    Anyway, while doing so, I tried to assay the various coterie types published among the books, only to find that no one had made such an index!  The travesty of it!  So I did it myself.  It's not glamorous, but it might hopefully be useful to someone.  Every coterie type published until now for V5:

1. Blood Cult (Core, p. 197)
1. Formally condemned as violations of the Masquerade, blood cults have nevertheless resurged with the coming of Gehenna.   This coterie entices mortal worshippers, feeding them vitae or just enslaving them.  Many blood cults reveal enough supernatural truth (though not always vampiric lore) to alert the Second Inquisition, adding yet more implacable foes.
1. Domain:  Lien (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Herd: (🩸🩸🩸)
3. Status Flaw:  (🩸) Suspect
4. Possible extras:  Enemies (🩸🩸), Haven (cult church or compound), Mask Flaw (🩸🩸) (on the Second Inquisition radar), Retainers
2. Carnival (Chicago By Night p. 260)
1. Carnival coteries move from place to place, bringing the party with them.  Where Nomads celebrate rootlessness, Carnivals strive to make an impression on mortals, Kindred, or both, depending on the coterie's style.  Some Carnivals appeal to elders by providing deliberately anachronistic entertainments, recalling Dust Bowl circuses or further back, medieval troubadours.  Others organize raves with cutting-edge music spun by six-figure-a-night DJs.  Not all Carnivals are devoted purely to entertainment and the chance to feed, however.  Their spectacles might include politics and theater or Cainite rites, hidden in plain sight.
1. Domain:  None
2. Contacts: (🩸🩸🩸) (fans in every town)
3. Fame:  (🩸🩸🩸) (a wandering spectacle)
4. Retainers:  (🩸) (daylight help)
5. Possible Extras:  Allies, Herd (fans who follow), Resources
3. Cerberus (Core, p. 197)
1. The coterie exists to protect or guard a certain spot or important location, such as a grave, a portal, or the vault of a priceless relic.  Cerberus coteries often become "legacy coteries", with membership passed down to generations of new vampires.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Haven:  (🩸🩸)
3. Possible extras:  Adversary, Haunted flaw in Haven, Status (for legacies)
4. Champions (Core, p. 197)
1. The coterie exists to fight for a cause, possibly even one that mortals might recognize as worthy: clean up the neighborhood by devouring drug-dealers, for example.  Thin-bloods often begin their unlives as champions.  Thicker-blooded champions likely consider themselves anarchs or at least anarch sympathizers, although a clever Prince of the Camarilla can put even the highest-minded vampires to good use.  In the end, even champions have to make the hard choice between their human charges and their vampiric urges.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸) and Lien (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Allies:  (🩸)
3. Enemies:  (🩸🩸)
4. Possible extras:  Adversary, Contacts
5. Commando (Core, p. 197)
1. The coterie exists to fight its master's enemies: the vampiric equivalent of a SWAT or special operations team.  You may even disguise yourself as a squad of the city's tactical police, as long as you don't try to pass as officers in front of a real one.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Mawla:  (🩸🩸🩸) (whoever tasks you with your missions)
3. Status:  (🩸)
4. Enemies:  (🩸🩸)
5. Possible extras:  Adversary, Haven (base of operations), Mask
6. Corporate (Chicago By Night p. 260)
1. Corporate coteries exist to further the economic and territorial goals of their members.  They use modern business methods, supplemented by the strongarm tactics and psychic manipulation members can bring to bear as Kindred.  Corporate groups are either wracked with infighting or tightly organized in pursuit of their goals, with little room in between, as their selfish goals make or break members' social bonds.  In modern nights, Camarilla traditionalists consider Corporate coteries gauche but useful, since they have the collective skills and resources to harness contemporary capitalism.  Stereotype holds that Ventrue lead many of these coteries, but while it is true the clan has long functioned inside bourgeois institutions, the edifice of global capital is too large for any one clan to dominate.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸) and Lien (🩸🩸)
2. Influence:  (🩸🩸) (business community)
3. Resources:  (🩸🩸🩸) (the portfolio)
4. Possible Extras:  Contacts, Herd (interns)
7. Day Watch (Core p. 198)
1. The coterie guards the undead city from mortals, especially during the day when most Kindred sleep.  Each member must be a thin-blood with the Day Drinker Merit, or the Storyteller needs to provide them another means of remaining active by day.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Influence:  (🩸🩸)
3. Enemies:  (🩸🩸🩸)
4. Possible extras:  Allies, Contacts, Haven, Mawla, a shared relic or ritual allowing activity by day
8. Diocese (Children of the Blood p.83)
1. The coterie represents the cult leadership within a territory.  From secret meetings in dingy basements to regional bosses of pyramid schemes, to shining offices of gaudy mega churches, they are the leaders.  They are responsible for ministering the followers, directing the cult’s efforts and building its influence and congregation within a given domain.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸🩸) Lien (🩸🩸) (a diocese domain might be a large, rich, and well-integrated area, but it is only secure if the local prince or baron is on-side.)
2. Influence (Church):  (🩸🩸) (An established diocese hascinfluence within its borders and in the cult.)
3. Herd:  (🩸🩸) (the true believers, most devout of the mortal cult or those tied to the mask)
4. Mask:  (🩸🩸) (a diocese can either have a well-established front, a shelter, pyramid scheme, an evangelical church, or be completely secret.)
5. Flaw:  (🩸🩸) Enemies (the success of one cult in any area inevitably draws the ire of others.)
6. Possible extras:  Allies, Resources, Retainer, Status, a shared relic of significance to the cult, Adversary, Suspect.
9. Envoys (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 195)
1. This group serves on diplomatic missions, functioning as negotiators and mediators between disparate parties.  Most often, envoy coteries form in the wake of conflicts between warring factions.  When two or more cults come to a compromise, they sometimes task their younger members with forming such a coterie so shared service and common causes can transcend old grievances.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸🩸) (mortals from diverse backgrounds and professions)
3. Resources:  (🩸🩸) (pooled cash and assets)
4. Status Flaw:  (🩸) Suspect
5. Possible extras:  Mask (cover identities for different domains), No Haven (always on the move)
10. Excommunicates (Children of the Blood p. 84)
1. Within any religion there are those who fail or fall.  They learn too much too fast or say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person and find themselves the scapegoat in a witch hunt.  Those who were once of the cult who are no longer, and the cult does not forget.
1. Contacts:  (🩸🩸🩸) (the cult might have made you purge your outsider acquaintances but any you’ve retained are loyal or too terrified to rebel.  Maybe one remains within the cult, alerting you when they’re closing in.)
2. Loresheet:  (🩸🩸🩸) (secrets discovered that led to the cult turning on you.  A mistranslation or mistake in the sequence of events that irrevocably changes the narrative.)
3. Mask:  (🩸🩸) (Documents, drivers’ license, and passport the cult provided you with before they declared you outcast.)
4. Special:  Excommunicate coteries always have one or more Flaws (usually Excommunicated) related to the cult they escaped from, such as Adversary, Enemy or Despised.  These can be applied individually for groups from multiple cults or as a coterie background for groups from a single cult.
5. Possible extras:  Adversary, Destitute, Influence (outside the cult), No Haven, Shunned.
11. Family (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 150)
1. The family coterie is one of reliance, connection, and support networks.  Vampires within this coterie may be related in a mortal sense as well as through the Blood, and they likely recruit mortal members of their extended family to assist them in their plans.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Ally:  (🩸) (a connected mortal family member)
3. Contacts:  (🩸🩸) (family, extended family)
4. Resources:  (🩸🩸) (cash and assets on loan from the family)
5. Enemies:  (🩸🩸) (one or more mortals who oppose the family business)
6. Possible extras:  Herd (extended family members), Influence (family business), Mawla (vampire within the same family), Retainers (a family ghoul), Fame Flaw: Dark Secret (family criminal connections)
12. Fang Gang (Core p. 198)
1. The coterie operates as a criminal gang, or possibly as a crew of burglars or con artists.  The fang gang may disguise itself as part of the city's organized crime syndicate, or act as the Prince or Baron's liaison with them.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸), Portillon (🩸)
2. Contacts:  (🩸) (fence or other criminal middleman)
3. Enemies:  (🩸🩸)
4. Possible extras:  Haven (clubhouse), Herd (human members/victims of your gang), Influence (organized crime), Retainers, Status (likely with anarchs)
13. Flagellant (Chicago By Night p. 260)
1. Flagellant coteries have a mocking name, given to them by Kindred who may or may not care about the plight of the kine, but don't go around being so publicly remorseful, or so desperate to make amends.  Flagellant coteries try to redeem their members for the harm they visit upon mortals.  The coterie sponsors charitable works, and individuals behave as good Samaritans and occasionally, as vigilantes, hunting down mortals who prey on their own.  Most vampires have few objections to this sort of thing, but that changes when Flagellants go after other Kindred.  The most extreme of these coteries may act as judge, jury, and executioner over vampires they believe mistreat the kine.  Some coteries even abuse the Blood itself, treating the sick by giving them vitae.  Thus, the Camarilla keeps a close watch on these "kindly coteries".
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸) and Lien (🩸🩸)
2. Allies:  (🩸🩸🩸) (mortals they've helped)
3. Influence:  (🩸) (local charity)
4. Adversary:  (🩸🩸) (Flagellants almost always annoy a local Cainite)
5. Possible Extras:  Contacts, Loresheet (Golcanda or some other reputed path to salvation), Retainer (nursed back to health with vitae)
14. Fugitive (Chicago By Night p. 260)
1. These vampires are on the run.  The Second Inquisition is after them.  The Camarilla proclaimed a Blood Hunt upon them.  Anarchs want to treat them to a stake-and-boot party.  The pursuer may even be a single, potent vampire.  Fugitive coteries keep low profiles, cultivate resources they can take with them or liquidate, and develop contingency plans for when their pursuers catch up with them.  It's rare for every member of the coterie to be hunted.  Instead, one or two Kindred on the run convince others to go with them due to bonds of love or camaraderie.  In any case, Fugitive coteries survive or perish based on the bonds of loyalty members hold for one another.
1. Domain:  None
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸🩸) (help on the run)
3. Mask:  (🩸🩸) (Cobbler; fake IDs available for members)
4. Resources:  (🩸🩸) (cash and a lightproof vehicle)
5. Retainer:  (🩸) (daylight driver)
6. Special:  Fugitive coteries always have one or more Flaws related to whoever or whatever is pursuing them, such as Adversary, Enemy, or a Flaw such as Known Blankbody
7. Possible Extras:  Allies, Despised, Shunned, Loresheet (when being hunted because they know too much)
15. Gatekeepers (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 150)
1. The gatekeepers coterie utilizes their skills in communion with (and potentially control over) the dead to establish a type of coterie common among the Hecata and other Oblivion users, providing spiritual aid and counseling to some, spectral assaults and sabotage against others.  They are prestigious users of animated corpses and ghosts as servants.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Lien (🩸), Portillon (🩸)
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸) (graverobbers, morticians)
3. Resources:  (🩸🩸🩸) (stolen from the dead)
4. Retainers:  (🩸🩸🩸) (a wraith servant and spy)
5. Enemies:  (🩸🩸) (a vampire hunter who recognizes the coterie dealing with the dead)
6. Status Flaw:  (🩸) Notorious (dealings with dark entities)
7. Possible extras:  Mawla (accomplished necromancer)
16. Hunting Party (Core p. 198)
1. The coterie specializes in hunting and capturing humans with particular qualities of the blood.  With knowledge of, and tastes for, humors and resonances spreading among thin-blood cookers and Toreador gourmands alike, coteries on the make often choose to become coteries on the prowl for others.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Ally:  (🩸) OR Mawla:  (🩸) (blood broker)
3. Possible extras:  Herd, Influence (organized crime)
17. Maréchal (Core p. 198)
1. This coterie serves and guards the Prince or Baron, doing their bidding as attendants and hatchet-men.  Their direct access to the ruler means that influential elders attempt to insert their childer into the coterie ~ indeed, every member of the coterie may be Primogen get.  Elders left out use every means at their disposal to turn (or break) the coterie to their advantage.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Status:  (🩸🩸🩸)
3. Possible extras:  Adversaries, Influence, Mawla (Prince/Baron), Retainers
18. Missionaries (Children of the Blood p. 84)
1. Each diocese starts with a mission, trusted cult members spread the word to new, often hostile, territories.  The missionary’s task is building the foundation for a diocese.  Lucky Kindred find themselves promoted to lead the fledgling diocese or, should the elders decree, shipped off to another mission.
1. Domain: Chasse (🩸🩸) (a target area for Missionaries is likely to hold assets valuable to the cult.  Wealthy, influential mortals, abundant feeding grounds, or a place of significance to the cult.)
2. Mawla:  (🩸🩸🩸) (deciding who spreads the word is not a task entrusted to mere neonates.  The Mawla of a missionary group has influence within the cult.)
3. Resources:  (🩸🩸🩸) (Missionary groups are usually well-funded.  Emissaries to a new territory must secure a Haven and a place to conduct worship either openly or in secret.)
4. Status:  (🩸🩸) (Kindred chosen to become missionaries should have already proven themselves worthy for the task.)
5. Possible extras:  Mask, Retainer, Suspect.
19. Nemeses (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 55)
1. Formed from the ranks of Kindred who were kept down in life or unlife, nemeses coteries exist to ruin their enemies and improve the lot of those who suffered like them.  Far from altruistic, most such coteries behave this way as a form of catharsis, often escalating until vengeance consumes them and all thoughts of questing for equality are long forgotten.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸)
2. Contacts: (🩸🩸) (downtrodden kine)
3. Influence: (🩸🩸) (marginalized mortals)
4. Enemy: (🩸) (a mortal who the coterie wishes to ruin)
5. Status Flaw: (🩸) (Suspect)
6. Possible extras:  Herd (survivors), Retainers (survivors)
20. Nomads (Core p. 198)
1. The coterie travels from place to place.  It might pose as (or actually be) a band, theater troupe, or other itinerant artists.  Indeed, this coterie might perform exclusively for Kindred audiences at Princely courts, not just second-tier rock clubs in the old factory district.  Alternatively, nomad coteries might be refugees from the Gehenna War or just "kings of the road."
1. Domain:  None
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸🩸) (audience, promoters, travel bookers, etc.)
3. Retainers:  (🩸🩸) (at least one adult to handle daytime travel problems)
4. Status Flaw:  (🩸) Suspect
5. Possible extras:  Herd (fellow travelers)
21. Plumaire (Core p. 199)
1. Birds of a feather flock together, and social coteries like plumaires ("feathered ones") exemplify this adage.  United by ties of social prominence or simple common enthusiasms, social coteries appear in Camarilla courts and anarch alleys alike.  Some plumaires unite under gothic, club, or other countercultures, sharing similar tastes in music and fashion.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Lien (🩸🩸)
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸🩸) (fellow members of your subculture)
3. Possible extras:  Adversary or Enemy (rival fashionista), Status (for high society Plumaires)
22. Questari (Core p. 199)
1. The coterie exists to accomplish a great enterprise or objective.  Questari coteries often form of their own volition, pursuing their purpose out of desire rather than by edict.  They may chase a target, hunt a relic, or solve a mystery.  They may often need to leave the city.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Contacts:  (🩸🩸)
3. Possible extras:  Haven with Library, Mawla, Resources (research budget)
23. Rectorate (Chicago By Night p. 248)
1. A Rectorate is a coterie dedicated to the acquisition and management of esoteric knowledge.  The title comes from the term for an ecclesiastical or academic administrator's Domain.  Like a Questari coterie, a Rectorate is devoted to a specific purpose, but seeking out the subject of its concern is secondary to organizing and managing it.  A Rectorate usually operates from a secure location where it can safely store items (or people) of interest, perform rituals, and organize operations over their chosen protectorate.  Many traditional Tremere chantries are coteries of this type, though in modern nights, these are much less common than they used to be.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Resources:  (🩸🩸)
3. Retainers:  (🩸) (daylight guardian of their secrets)
4. Possible Extras:  Contacts, Enemies
24. Regency (Core p. 199)
1. An elder of the Camarilla chose or created the coterie to guard their legacy as they were Beckoned into the Middle East.  They hold the elder's vote among the Primogen.  Anarch elders who feel the Beckoning likewise facilitate the selection of a steering coterie in their place, or just appoint one to a watching brief on the Council.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Mawla:  (🩸🩸) (major-domo or zampolit)
3. Status:  (🩸🩸🩸🩸) (or 🩸🩸🩸 for anarch Regencies)
4. Advantages:  Select up to 10 dots shared among Haven, Herd, Influence, Resources, and/or Retainers
5. Flaws:  Select the same amount of dots worth of Flaws as Advantages, above
25. Saboteurs (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 84)
1. The saboteur coterie is one without an immediate powerbase or roots within their new domain, but their reach among the kine is likely impressive.  They often have the support of a vampire assigning them to the task of spying, assassination, or political disruption.
1. Contacts: (🩸🩸) (disenfranchised, outsiders, etc.)
2. Influences: (🩸) (surveillance companies)
3. Mawla: (🩸🩸) (the vampire who set them to their task)
4. Mask: (🩸) (cover identities)
5. Resources: (🩸🩸) (liquid cash to assist with their cover story)
6. Adversaries: (🩸🩸) (at least one vampire who would oppose their mission with violence)
7. Possible extras:  Domain (if the coterie is embedded in their current locale), Status Flaw: Suspect
26. Sbirri (Core p. 199)
1. This coterie disguises itself as one type of coterie, while secretly serving another Prince or Baron that they feign allegiance to.  Their patron hand-picks a group of Kindred, and then dispatches them to another city or sometimes to a separate faction within the same metropolis.
1. Mawla:  (🩸🩸) (handler or messenger)
2. Mask:  (🩸)
3. Possible extras:  Adversaries on tearget city's Primogen, other Advantages from the coterie's supposed cover type
27. Schism (Children of the Blood p. 84)
1. The cults of the night are as vulnerable to schism as the faiths of the kine.  Minds questioning the early translations of the word.  Minor changes in inflection or interpretation change the meaning of entire verses of scripture.  Leading a schism is dangerous, powerful cults reject change fervently and any vampire leading a schism needs total conviction to their cause.
1. Loresheet:  (🩸🩸🩸) (the keystone ‘truth,’ the basis of your conviction the cult has lost its way.)
2. Resources:  (🩸) (it takes more than an idea to beget a schism)
3. Status:  (🩸🩸) (the leader of a schism is a wise or respected member of the cult already.  Their status grants them access to the scriptures that prompt their discovery.)
4. Possible extras:  Influence, Fame, Adversary, Despised, Excommunicated.
28. Somnophile (Chicago By Night p. 260)
1. Many coteries are rumored to be Somnophiles, but the term is primarily used as a slur ~ as slang, it actually comes from the old days of the Sabbat, where loyalty to old, torpid elders was likened to a sexual fetish.  True Somnophile coteries represent the oldest vampires, who may well sleep, but are just as likely to dwell in ancient labyrinths (as was the fad shortly after the fall of Rome), masquerade as younger vampires, or otherwise place multiple degrees of secrecy between themselves and modern Kindred.  A Somnophile coterie's patron is often powerful enough to send messages through Disciplines, as omens or dreams, or have penetrated mortal institutions so completely they can relay messages through proxies that can never be traced back to their point of origin.  Each coterie has its own reasons for obeying these hidden masters, from Bahari religious convictions to ambitious Kindred convinced their association will bring them power, as major players in the Jyhad.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸)
2. Loresheet:  (🩸🩸) (their master teaches them secrets)
3. Mawla:  (🩸🩸🩸) (the somnolent or distant elder)
4. Possible Extras:  Allies, Retainers, Status (guardians of an esteemed vampire)
29. Theologian Society (Children of the Blood p. 84)
1. The coterie is a cult of cultists pursuing universal truth.  By comparing the various ways the Kindred worship, they might unlock a dark power or path to true redemption.  This is among the most dangerous of coteries, the SPCs remain embedded within their cults but it is a brief misstep to becoming hunted excommunicates.
1. Haven:  (🩸🩸🩸) (a clandestine location, perhaps a forgotten old speakeasy or a hidden cellar where meetings can be held in secret.)
2. Resources:  (🩸🩸) (access to the restricted libraries, scriptures, and sensitive research materials of the members respective cults.)
3. Retainer:  (🩸🩸) (a ghoul or thrall, a doorkeeper charged with watching over the coterie’s Haven and steering away the uninitiated.)
4. Possible extras: Allies, Contacts, Suspect.
30. Think Tank (Cults of the Blood Gods p. 195)
1. Consisting of old and more established Kindred think tank coteries are advisors, strategists, and researchers for a given cult.  Preferably, they are a small group of individuals who are part of the membership, but leaders sometimes hire think tanks when they are trying to take their faith to the next level.
2. A think tank can take a small cult and grow it into a powerful entity through their expertise.  They tend to research the best ways to recruit in a particular city, how to disseminate information, and how to use the local laws to the cult's advantage.  They have almost unlimited access to the logistical aspects of the church so they can create new procedures or policies for the benefit of the leadership.
3. Most think tanks are long-standing allies who have spent years working together, but some come together for a specific task and dissolve once they complete their goal.  Members of think tanks are often procedural specialists, efficiency experts, former bureaucrats, marketing geniuses, or experts in a subject critical to a cult's interests.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Allies:  (🩸🩸🩸) (analysts, bureaucrats, soldiers, etc.)
3. Haven:  (🩸) (a small office as base of operations)
4. Possible extras:  Resources (profits made from selling their services), Retainers (librarians, scholars)
31. Vanguard (Chicago By Night p. 235
1. Vanguard Coteries are most common among anarchs, though Camarilla coteries surrounded by the most hostile political rivals may also belong to this type.  "Mastery in one domain, revolution in many," is the Vanguard way.  These coteries establish a strong Domain among their enemies, but after seeing its borders, check further ambitions in favor of making their own position as strong as possible.   This allows them to be "first among equals" in any embattled alliance and prevents enemies from crushing them.  After that, a Vanguard engages in a campaign of destabilization against established powers.  The point isn't conquest, but to make the Vanguard a better alternative to the enemy.  Vanguards might call themselves Soviets, Syndicates, Councils, and the like.  Once entrenched, the Vanguard assumes decision-making powers over other Kindred, with their ostensible consent, though naturally, this springs from realpolitik more often than a shared ideology.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸🩸🩸)
2. Status:  (🩸) (anarch, usually)
3. Enemies:  (🩸) (reactionaries and bootlickers!)
4. Possible Extras:  Adversary, Mawla
32. Vehme (Core p. 199)
1. Named for (and possibly descended from) the vigilante secret society in medieval Germany, Primogen task this coterie to protect the Masquerade at all costs.  The Vehme has the authority to arrest and subdue violators, if need be, to bring them before the Prince and Primogen.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸)
2. Influence:  (🩸🩸🩸) (especially in police and media)
3. Status:  (🩸🩸🩸)
4. Possible extras:  Adversaries, Mawla (on Primogen or Anarch Councils)
33. Watchmen (Core p. 199)
1. The coterie patrols the city and protects it from intruders, especially anarchs and werewolves.  Camarilla coteries established in border cities to repel Sabbat influence or to colonize newly won territory also count as Watchmen.  Anarch cities call their Watchmen (who also guard against reactionaries and Camarilla infiltrators) the Committee of Public Safety, the Cheka, or the Eyes of the People.
1. Domain:  Chasse (🩸), Lien (🩸🩸), Portillon (🩸)
2. Status:  (🩸🩸) (Camarilla)
3. Possible extras:  Contacts, Retainers

Coterie type average a net of about 6 dots, with a general range of about 4-8 dots.  Several outliers exist, however, both above and below that range.

Dr. Jonathan Stepford, Apprentice in the Third Circle of Mystery (Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition)

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Quote:  "Now, now, no need to be crass.  Come on in; Mary's really outdone herself tonight!"
Clan:  Tremere, House Tremere
Sect:  Camarilla
Coterie:  The Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom (rectorate again, after a decade and a half as vanguard)

Mortal Days
Louis Pasteur was still new and making waves when the Great Blizzard hid Jonathan Stepford's murder.  The forensic doctor's first thought once he'd become the fangs in the snowy white himself was of how much easier it would have gone for the rapidly-cooling body slowly pinking the snow with its dregs if he'd had some of that new local anesthetic he'd read of so much in the medical journals.

Like many doctors of his day, Jonathan'd been a York Rite Freemason and an Odd Fellow and an Elk, filling his social calendar with ceremonies and celebrations and the methods of furthering a career that fester and flourish behind closed doors.  The city of New York wouldn't initiate the office of Chief Medical Examiner until Jonathan was 71 years dead; such cloak-and-dagger, brandy-and-cigars methods were the only way he saw to earn the money he deserved doing the work he'd been put on Earth to do.  He'd had a wife, Constance, and the silly thing had argued with him ever so much as women began to press once more the idea that they should be Masons and the like.

Dr. Stepford prided himself on his breadth of reading, always seeking new translations of Auguste Ambroise Tardieu and Johann Ludwig Casper.  Professional journals flooded hid mailbox everyday and he mostly kept almost up-to-date with nearly all of them.  His epistles often appeared in local papers, famously remarking that the spirit of the age had left the United States to rest for a time in England.  It would return, he said; Emerson and Thoreau's ghosts would not let its absence stand.  The precursors to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn held his fascination, but it was the Fellowship of the New Life, with its message of pacifism, vegetarianism, and simple living that held his fiercest allegiance.  An avid subscriber to their journal Seed-Time, he worked hard to spread the group's ideas among the wealthy New Yorkers who were his peers.  Even joined the socialist splinter group called the Fabian Society.

What could he say?  He liked organizations, and the well-ordered life that came with their dictates.

His sire never told him which of these groups ~ professional, fraternal, occult, political ~ provided the light for his star to shine and catch the old man's eye, but Jonathan believes it must have been one of them.  The field in which he worked ~ forensic medicine ~ was a relatively new, certainly, but he was no Pasteur, after all, no medical genius breaking new ground and defying the scientific consensus with truth as his shield.  

Jonathan has since come to discover that intellectual humility is a rare diamond in the Tremere rough, and one Henderson often exhorted him to keep.  To this day, however, he doesn't consider it a possible cause for him to be given the gift of immortality he was given in the flying ice that night.

Kindred Nights
60 years passed, and with them four families for food, for companionship, for appearances' sake.  New York City with Constance, of course, then Fiorella in Philadelphia, Detroit's Geraldine, and finally: Mary.

Mary won Jonathan's heart in a way no other of his wives had.  Suburban Chicago offered fertile soil for their life together, as full of quiet and pleasantries as anything can be for a vampire and the family from which he fed.  Jonathan nearly remembered what it was to gasp in surprise when Mary herself suggested they adopt their three children, before Jonathan had found the moment to do so himself.  He wanted an illusion, to fool mortal society and his own conscience that human happiness was available to him; she just fretted over the difficulties of the urchins' life.  The goodness of it felt tantalizingly real to Jonathan, almost as if it was something he could take on himself.

Until 1957, that is.  Two Nosferatu, children by the standards of the undead and children in human appearance as well, happened to discover the Stepford family as they practiced their skulking.  Peter and Tammy Walenski were their names, and they had plucked themselves from a house of abuse by alcohol and flame before the Nosferatu primogen immortalized their young bodies.  Elysium was shocked when the two revealed what they had seen to Sheriff Balthazar.  The Brujah wanted to execute Jonathan on the spot, Scourges being less common in those premillenarian nights.  But Prince Lodin stopped him, took the Tremere into a private room muffled with hanging cigar smoke with brandied blood available at a moment's ease.

The Prince told Jonathan that he would survive this crime, for the wound to the Masquerade was small and easily bandaged.  He would even be allowed to keep his wife, though not his children.  Jonathan, swept aside by his fear of losing the tenuous hold he'd had on happiness, hastily agreed to whatever price would secure this seeming mercy.  Lodin smiled the kind of smile only Ventrue faces can hold as he revealed what Jonathan had agreed to.  The Tremere would be Blood Bound to the Prince, starting with his first drink that very hour, and he would Dominate his wife into killing his children.  Jonathan's face fell, but he knew he would keep his overzealous bargain.  "Anything to keep Mary," his hollow voice told the Prince.

"And keep her, you shall," Lodin replied, "for she shall be your childe."  Upon re-entering the main body of Elysium, Prince Lodin made a big scene about the cunning Tremere having defeated him with metaphysical manipulations and political chicaneries, just grandiose enough to sell it and not a bit more, and Jonathan carried out the sentence.

For decades he served Lodin as his hidden agent in the Chicago Chantry, curtailing Nicolai's influence and trying to enjoy some semblance of life with his beloved wife.  The War of Chicago struck the nigh-forgotten note of hope in his breast.  He, like everyone else, thought Lodin had fallen beneath the claws of the Lupines, and so he ran.  Bundling Mary and what resources he could into their station wagon, he sped all the way west to California, the two of them recovering from their own battle with the Lupines by means of the Highway Patrol corpses they left trailing behind them like breadcrumbs.

They settled in Oakland (well, Alameda), halfway across the continent from what they'd had to deal with in the Windy City, and for months it seemed like they could rebuild anew.  They made contact with Regent Duncan Campbell and the Brujah Prince of the East Bay Amanda Koller and began to settle, even to smile again.  The Prince found her appetite for power whetted by that conflict and everyone can see it.  The Stepfords have grown comfortable with the limited freedom they have found here, and fear what Sir Olaf will do as Amanda's star rises ever more.    No doubt the broken Prince danced when the Alameda Chantry proved so vital in the face of the Wan Kuei invasion, which Jonathan did all he could do to aid, despite never gaining a true understanding of Blood Sorcery.

Plots and Schemes:

• Burying the Landmine:  Lodin knew of Petra's Embrace well before the mage's daughter was even abducted.  It is so easy to send information to distant masters in this day and age.  From the beginning, the Broken Prince had instructed Jonathan to implant the Gargoyle with a sequence of commands and triggers that would eventually turn this weapon away from the Wan Kuei and towards his enemies.  It's been a dozen years since that war ended, and Lodin seems to be biding his time until the situation is right.  The conditioning continues apace, but there has been plenty of time for Jonathan to consider how he might align his own liberation with whatever Lodin's plans for Petra might be.  After all, it is not Lodin himself who is Petra's master.  If only he could warn Prince Amanda before the scheme is sprung.
• Strange Visitors:  Wheelchair-using Brujah anarch Susan Langston has called upon Jonathan in his role as doorman of the chantry repeatedly over the past few months, wanting to speak to Duncan.  The requests have gone from uncertain asks to casually calling on the deaf Regent.  Jonathan respects his Regent, and enjoys relaxing with him from time to time, but he's done some investigations on the rabble-rouser.  She is a member of a gang with one of the House Carna traitors in South Berkeley.  He doesn't yet know what is bringing her around, or what he can do with the information after he gets it, but he'd love to find out.
• How Far Would You Go To Be Free?:  Jonathan has heard that the Sabbat have a ritual by means of which they can break the Blood Bond.  Just before the day-death takes him, after sending Mary off to the bunker that protects her from the sun, he has been known to sit in a richly appointed chair, a glass of undrunk brandy scenting the air, pondering how he might approach them.  They are monsters, he knows, and believe in leaving humanity behind.  Neither of those is the good Victorian doctor; how might he force them to teach him this most valuable of tools?

Domain and Haven:

• Alameda Point / Naval Air Station Alameda (stats to be determined once I finish writing up the rest of the chantry):  While most of the chantry, including Jonathan's wife, sleep in basements scattered throughout the decommissioned naval base for safety from the burning sun, Jonathan serves as the public face of the East Bay Tremere in many cases.  Accordingly, his daytime rest is had in the USS Hornet museum.  The aircraft carrier provides wonderful protection against both Sol and any attack from Kindred or other supernatural beings.  Many of the Kindred in the East Bay know to call here before seeking any other member of the Grove.
• 2805 Otis (Resources 🌢🌢):   In order to receive more personal guests and maintain his mask, Dr. Stepford uses his own meager investments and the money he can steal from the sleeping and groggy patients whose blood he drinks to maintain a cozy home in Alameda's East End neighborhood.  Giving him the comfort that can only come from retreating into memories of a cozier time, he has had Mary decorate it in a mid-century style, only slightly updated to reflect the tastes of a culture seven decades more recent.  Every other month or so, he takes her on a vacation to the house for a weekend to forget the life they've been forced into and pretend to just be the conservative suburban couple they once were.
• In recognition of their role preventing the spread of the Wan Kuei, Prince Koller has granted the Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom domain rights over all of Alameda.  Notable hunting grounds include the South Shore shopping center, Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach, and the 19th-century storefronts of the Historic Park Street Business District.  Dr. Stepford prefers to haunt Alameda Hospital and the various skilled nursing facilities that surround it, drinking deep from those unaware by sleep or anesthesia.

Thralls, Tools, and Enemies:

• George Burton (Enemy 🌢🌢, Nuisance): George Burton believed in a lot of bizarre fringe sciences in his youth. Thankfully, the New World Order of the Technocracy saw that he had some reason about him, and reached out to talk about the errors of logic found among the Society of Ether he'd found himself in. His only daughter, as dutiful and perfect as ever the daughter of a Mind mage could be, was last seen by her Mythbusters coworkers in 2002. Mustering all the resources and Procedures available to him, he quickly discovered the bloodsucking reality deviants infesting Alameda Point, where the Mythbusters performed their most dangerous experiments. With no answers beyond that, he began a cautious war, hoping to find answers before he found vengeance. Almost two decades later, the flame of hope has died down to an ember, and that ember itself grows cold and dark. This does not bode well for the Tremere, as George's amalgam-mates have begun to pressure him to go on a full offensive. (Data ❇️❇️❇️, Forces ❇️❇️, Matter ❇️❇️❇️, Mind ❇️❇️, Primal Utility ❇️)

Kindred Relationships:

• Camarilla (Infamy 🌢🌢 former cleaver / Camarilla Status 🌢🌢, Bastion of Decency): Vampiric society certainly doesn't offer many options for clean living, does it? The anarchs refuse to accept any semblance of order and the Sabbat are . . . distasteful. The Camarilla alone offers Dr. Stepford and his wife a chance at common American decency and a stable life.
• House Tremere (Loresheet: Descendant of Karl Schrekt 🌢🌢 / Loresheet: The Pyramid 🌢🌢, Living the Dream): What could be better than life as a Tremere? The blood served in the chantry is of a spectacular vintage, well spiced by brandy and Cuban cigars, the study is plushly appointed, and there is little to do all the long nights than to study and practice. Here, Jonathan has found a quiet unlife where knowledge and political power can be wed for all eternity.
• Regent Duncan Campbell (Our Savior) Sheriff Darius (A Threat) Petra (A Tool) (Coterie Advantages 🌢🌢): Jonathan much prefers the Calafia-Hippolyta Grove of Evergreen Wisdom to the child-regent Nicolai Antonescu's Hyde Park Chantry. There is a freedom to be found here, a willingness to invest in the projects of its members. Regent Campbell relies on collegial friendship rather than supernatural force and pawns with ungodly power to maintain the cohesion of the group. Of course, there is at least one such pawn with ungodly power, created in the early part of this millennium to fight against the Wan Kuei of San Francisco, but the Gargoyle now named Petra serves the Grove as a whole. No one member of the East Bay Tremere can unilaterally command their secret weapon, but Dr. Stepford is the chantry's expert on mind control. Darius is the inspirer of worry for Dr. Stepford, though to be fair, that anxiety is due less to his personality, with its strange blend of gentle prayer and shadowy brutality, and more to his position. Jonathan, after all, knows well what it is to owe loyalty to both Regent and Prince, and how little there is to trust in such a position.
• Mary Stepford (Living in the Past 🌢, Guilt-Tainted Love): Jonathan just didn't have the heart to not mess with Mary's head. Knowing full well what the piling build-up of its repetition would inevitably do to his wife's mind, he has repeatedly made use of his Dominate to protect her from her memories. He destroyed her to save her, and now he comforts himself with the dull predictability of a life that hasn't noticed the last seven decades of societal change. Mary is still here, standing by his side, and in fact her star has been on the rise for some time now thanks to her innovative application of the domestic arts to Blood Sorcery, while he struggles to politick his way up the Pyramid as a vampire who leans more heavily into his mental powers than his sorcerous ones. Despite this, Jonathan feels no jealousy, or really only the slightest bitl he just loves her too much to begrudge her the respect of her peers.
• Sir Olaf Holte, the One-Eyed King (Long Bond 🌢 / Mawla 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢, Swallowed Disgust): Kindred are denied happiness by whatever force, God or alien or otherwise, that has left them what they are, and this destiny was fulfilled for the Stepfords when a Chicago street thug showed up in a beat-up car on the streets of Alameda on Christmas of 1994.  He had a present for them: a burnt crisp of a man in the back seat with one piercing blue eye left of his former grandeur.  The One-Eyed King told Jonathan to drink, and the Tremere couldn't resist even what dregs of Lodin's blood were still holding them.  He drank and he renewed the Ventrue's hold over him.  Every May 1st now sees Jonathan travelling to Chicago on Olaf's orders to once more renew the hold.  Thus did the hidden King of Chicago's streets maintain one tenuous tendril of influence elsewhere, a bolthole in case things went bad like they had before, and an influence in the famously Sabbat-contested East Bay.
• Tammy Walenski (Vengeance):  Jonathan can never forgive Tammy and her now-truly-dead brother for damning him so fully.  Humanity had begun to root in his heart and then she ripped it from his grasp, leaving him a hollow monster.  One day, he will be his own man again, and she will pay.  Maybe he'll stake her for the sun atop Olaf's own ashes.
• William Albert Grissom (Mawla 🌢, The Son I Wish I Had): A fledgling in the Las Vegas chantry, William was assigned to be Jonathan's apprentice in recognition of his efforts against the Wan Kuei. The former CSI technician approaches the initiation that will make him a Tremere in his own right, and the mixed pride and grief at losing the specific bond he'd fostered with the boy provide a vaguely-welcome relief from the many heavy things on Jonathan's mind.

Whispers:

• Every Vampire's Fear:  The Ivory Tower of the East Bay has noticed the difficulties, accidents, and just plain bad luck that have followed Jonathan for more than a decade.  Clucktongues have begun to speculate on the possibility of a haunting, a careless feed catching a victim's soul between worlds.  Worse, some of them claim that ghosts cannot see vampires well, being as they are dead-but-not.  Perhaps hauntings are contagious, they say.  No one has asked the Hecata who rule Rockridge about it yet.
• A New Shining City On The Hill:  As one of Karl Schrekt's descendants, and a true believer in the former Justicar's version of the clan post-Vienna, Dr. Stepford is always watching, evaluating the East Bay for Schrekt.  The Pyramid needs a peak, one chantry through which its business can flow, and Schrekt is using Stepford to investigate the possibility of making the Calafia-Hippolyta Chantry of Evergreen Wisdom that peak.
• No One Likes A Diplomat:  Jonathan Stepford wishes to build an alliance with the Heaven Promise Society that rules San Francisco, the tiniest sect in the nocturnal world of the Kindred.  Regent Demian's hatred of the Wan Kuei and wariness of Schrekt's new Inner Council has kept the Heaven Promise Society and the Camarilla in a state of ceasefire; Jonathan would end that stalemate with peace and friendship, and undermine the bookish pale lady.  Perhaps he sees this as his path to a Regency in his own right.  One that might have diplomatic immunity, no less.

Mask and Mien:

• With hair as comfortably warm a brown as the welcoming wood of a home-office chair, Dr. Stepford adopts the style of a suburban white man of the mid-20th century.  Sweater vests in calmly cool pastels provide a pleasant background to the pipe that is rarely far from Jonathan's mouth.  Immaculate, almost glowing, white button-up shirts, soft grey trousers, and loafers the color of his hair complete the look, though the brilliant brass pince-nez glasses atop his hawk's beak of a nose confuse it some.  Behind their round lenses, honey-colored eyes dart with exacting purpose to rest on any number of details in turn.  He keeps a smile on his face and a pleasant manner about himself, welcoming and gracious.
• Jonathan plays the part of the domestic lord at home with the sort of easy perfection that can only come from a desperate clinging, whereas at work (whether for the hospital or the chantry or even in less formal circumstances,) he tempers a crisp professionalism with a fatherly demeanor that manages to communicate both care and enforced distance.  This front melts away whenever he is alone with his wife, though the desperation remains to mark the genuine, tender love with which he treats her.  She is the only thing he really loves, and he is slowly destroying her to save her.  It is only in the rare moments he has alone, with nothing to do or nowhere to go that he lets himself realize that and search for a solution.  It hurts when he does that, so he keeps those moments mercifully rare.
• Alameda Hospital has a doctor among its staff by the name of Ira Levin, whose description matches that of Jonathan Stepford.  He works as an anesthetician and physician, and his paychecks are set to direct deposit into an account held by an Oakland food bank.   (Mask 🌢)

Sire:  the Spiritualist Henderson Nealy, childe of Ann Pudeator who was "killed" in the Salem Witch Trials, childe of Hartmut Feig, childe of Nathan Mendelssohn, childe of Karl Schrekt, childe of Lotharius, childe of Etrius
Embraced:  1888 (172 years old; 40 years old in seeming; born 1848)
Ambition: Slip free from this web of control spun by these monsters around me.
Convictions (Touchstones)

• For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays (Joseph Nolan, labor organizer in the Hospital Technicians' Union)
• Her face Is the summ’d sweetness of the earth, Her soul the glass of heaven’s grace, To which she leads me by the hand; Or, briefly all the truth to say To you, who briefly understand, She is both heaven and the way. (Meiying Tam, a Chinese-American housewife of a hospital doctor and friend of Mary's)

Humanity 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢▢▢▢▢▢
Generation:  11th
Blood Potency 🌢🌢

Strength 🌢🌢  /  Charisma 🌢🌢🌢  /  Intelligence 🌢🌢🌢🌢
Dexterity 🌢🌢🌢  /  Manipulation 🌢🌢  /  Wits 🌢
Stamina 🌢🌢  /  Composure 🌢🌢🌢  /  Resolve 🌢🌢
Health 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢 / Willpower 🌢🌢🌢🌢🌢

Athletics   /  Animal Ken  🌢 /  Academics 

Brawl   /  Etiquette 🌢🌢🌢  /  Awareness 🌢🌢
Craft   /  Insight 🌢  /  Finance 
Drive   /  Intimidation   /  Investigation 🌢🌢🌢
Firearms   /  Leadership   /  Medicine 🌢🌢🌢🌢 Anesthetics, Forensics
Larceny   /  Performance   /  Occult 🌢🌢
Melee   /  Persuasion 🌢  /  Politics  🌢🌢
Stealth   /  Streetwise   /  Science 🌢🌢🌢 Anthropology
Survival   /  Subterfuge 🌢   /  Technology 🌢🌢

Predator Type: Sandman
Blood Sorcery 🌢 A Taste for Blood ☥ Level One: Bind the Accusing Tongue, Blood Walk, Craft Bloodstone, Devil's Touch, Purity of Blood

Dominate 🌢🌢🌢 Compel, Mesmerize, the Forgetful Mind
Auspex 🌢 Heightened Senses