Dream (VTM)

The “Dream” was a Cainite utopia of enlightenment and learning shepherded by a cabal of long-lost methuselahs — took root in Byzantium over a millennium ago.

Overview
As is ever the case with the Kindred, though, the Dream spurned loves and malicious treacheries conspired to lay low  the  Dream,  and  the  ultimate  betrayal  came when its primary caretaker fell to foul diablerie during  the  Crusades. Since then,  the  ragged  banner  of the Dream has persisted in one form or another in the hands of would-be successors, but none with the glory of its original champion, Michael, the Patriarch.

The Tomb of the Patriarch
The focal  point  of  Byzantium’s  Dream,  the  Hagia Sophia,  remains  a  monument  to  both  the  ambition and  perfidy  of  the  Kindred  condition. According to Kindred historians, a replica of the medieval basilica of Constantinople’s  Hagia  Sophia  exists beneath the “true” Hagia Sophia, standing silent testament to the patriarch’s ambition for the Dream.

Some Byzantine elders still regard the Tomb of the Patriarch as a great spiritual landmark, and Kindred of all clans have safeguarded its legacy since the fall of its progenitor. Indeed, scholarly Kindred regard the Tomb of the Patriarch as a treasure of the Damned on the order of the Library of Alexandria, holding both verifiable history and clues to the prophesied fate of the Damned.

The academic riches of this ancient haven are difficult to access, however,  as  feuding  factions  of  Kindred  still war over the right to its legacy. The Tomb tragically lies at the forbidden center of a hostile entente, with vampires of the mutually suspicious factions choosing to keep the Tomb inaccessible rather than share its intellectual and spiritual bounty among outsiders and the godless. Thus, the Dream is all but broken in the modern nights.