Second Inquisition



Individuals and small groups inside intelligence agencies like the Okhrana, MI6, NSA, and the DGSE have stumbled into the Jyhad many times. Vampires have used agents as pawns and fled temporary cells of government trained hunters throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Camarilla assets within mortal states and the sheer impossibility of such an “immortal conspiracy” between them always diluted and drowned any real coordinated human response. 9/11 and the global “War on Terror” changed all that. The Camarilla gambled on an attempt to turn the American security state against the Sabbat and Anarchs, and every vampire lost. Massive surveillance programs and big data analysis pierced the Masquerade; when the NSA penetrated and flipped the Nosferatu SchreckNET after 2004, the mask came off for good. A joint NSA/CIA Special Access Program called FIRSTLIGHT coordinates aware agents all over the Western world, liaises when possible with the Brujah-hunting Eighth Direction of the GRU, and funnels arms and support to the Entity, the secret service of the Vatican. The traffic in intelligence does not go only one way: the Entity now incorporates the newly re-canonized Society of St. Leopold. Beginning in 2006, the British anti-terrorist police unit SO13, under the leadership of Captain Ishaq Khan, has systematically cleared London, beheading Queen Anne in November of 2013. The FBI’s renewed Special Affairs Division stakes vampires from Long Island to Las Vegas, wherever their own investigations (or off-book FIRSTLIGHT briefings) find them. Israel’s Unit 8211 tracks elders following the Beckoning to the Gehenna War and targets their abandoned domains. France’s Calcédoine program within DGSE has driven Villon into hiding and slowly clears Marseilles. SOCOM units operate in 177 countries around the world, with an unknown number of FIRSTLIGHT-cleared officers within them ready to order another haven hit with thermobaric missiles. Half a dozen governments hold Kindred in scores of very sunny black sites, experimenting on them to discover their weaknesses and true nature. The unknown Toreador who first dubbed it a “Second Inquisition” did not err. Two of the strongholds of the Camarilla have fallen, and more been besieged. Anarch and Sabbat havens have been burned out wholesale. The Giovanni uncovered, sundered, and forced to align with their Hecata brethren. Thousands of Kindred met with Final Death. The unthinkable has happened: Humanity grows bold enough to resist their masters. Mitre and crown once more join forces to end the bloodline of Caine. The hunters are hunted, again.