New England Wars

The New England Wars, known by American Kindred as the British Invasion, was a conflict fought between various Kindred parties for the control of New England.

History

Prelude

Revolt in Boston ignited the fuse that led to the American War of Independence, but New England was a source of anarchy and strife for more than just mortals. As far back as the 18th century, fierce packs of werewolves—known to the colonist Kindred as "Lupine"--bit and tore at any vampire bastion in the area, isolating vampires to their towns and cities like castaways on islands in an unstoppably tempestuous sea. The severe winter time became one of extreme famine for vampires in the region, forcing many to cannibalism or the sleep of torpor, as the kine population rarely surged outside spring or summer. The Sabbat routinely sent war packs to terrorize and subjugate Kindred throughout this pocket of the thirteen colonies-turned United States, on more than one occasion utterly gutting Vermont of its Camarilla and Anarch populations. The onslaught of monsters and inhospitable environment improved little until the 19th century reached its end. The Sabbat, who long held a cruel gauntlet over any Kindred daring to cleave to another sect, found themselves in a defensive war against invaders from across the ocean. British Kindred under the yoke of the Camarilla Prince of London, the god-emperor Mithras, arrived, but not as allies to the few Camarilla in New England. The British Camarilla came to seize the territories for their master a century after they'd fallen from mortal Britain's grip. What followed was a three-way war between the New England Camarilla, the Sabbat, and the British Camarilla, the latter of which was led by a coterie known as the Triad. While no side definitively won the war, by the 20th century the respective sides had carved out domains and buried themselves deep, with borders rarely shifting.

British domain

Open fighting in the streets, the docks, and more rarely, the forests and mountains, had become a bygone activity only the Sabbat favored. Now, warfare was a matter conducted via assassinations, economic persecution, property sabotage, and exploiting or threatening an enemy's mortal associates. The primary Lord of the British Triad was a vampire under the epithet of "Pendragon," and for much of the 19th century, Pendragon focused her war efforts on Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont , much to the joy of the notoriously combative Sabbat in those states. The New England Sabbat—known as the Crimson Tide—met Pendragon's challenge with a combination of brutality and adroit subtlety. Massachusetts fell to the Triad early, with the Malkavian Prince of Boston Quentin King becoming one of Pendragon's puppets. While the thought of a puppet state under foreign rule pleased few New England Kindred, few could deny the relative peace Boston was able to maintain, unlike the domains in Massachusetts' sister states.

The New England Camarilla never existed in great numbers (in large part due to Sabbat abductions, murders, and raids on poorly protected domains), leading to their existence as two underground movements: the Kindred of Liberty in Massachusetts, who through sabotage and politicking attempted to undermine and oust Quentin King and his Triad supporters; and a coterie named the Gemini League in New Haven, Connecticut, who through a combination of Ventrue financing and Tremere rituals protected their domain, but increasingly isolated themselves. Behind all of them, a large coterie previously known as the Web (believed to be an exclusively Nosferatu affair, though they never declared their numbers and membership) spied on their peers and enemies. To this night, few could make an informed guess as to the network allegiances and objectives, though some believe they were an oversized Anarch gang looking to set every faction against the other for as long as it kept everyone beyond itself weak.The wars raged on, and only in recent years have the scales of power tipped.