The Gray Pieces

-Narrated by Marcus Konietzko, member of Clan Toreador and chess-player, survivor of the Nights of White Ash.

During the reign of Prince Vassily of Toreador, the Independent Clans were not well treated in the city. Very, very few lived among Prague's narrow streets, and they were seen as simple pawns rather than cunning bishops... or so Vassily believed.

For many years, some claim for centuries, the Independent Clans fought not to win a place in the city, but for something as simple as the right to create childer or invite more members of these outcast, litigious clans into Prague.

Every attempt ended in disaster. Vassily, and above all the city's now-defunct Primogen Council, would for some reason allow only a narrow, tightly controlled Independent cell to settle. As if that were not enough, they made sure to keep them confined and monitored in the Ghetto, Prague's old Jewish quarter.

As you can imagine, Europe is no gentle board on which an Independent can make first moves. So we kept a meager number of Giovanni usurers, Ravnos trash, and bellicose Setites exactly where people wanted them: locked in the same cage, clawing and biting each other for a scrap of city. In truth, the only scrap they could reach, and I assure you they had no intention of sharing it equally.

All of that changed (at least in the shadows, beyond our senses) with Bishnu's arrival.

In the decades before the Sabbat uprising in Prague and its subsequent decline, this Ravnos antitribu managed, through contacts among his clan's marginalized members, to bring the three factions into alignment. In the shadows, they worked for the Sabbat while, in full moonlight before the rest of the city's Kindred, they continued staging their cruel, picturesque war over that shard of domain.
Promises were made: broad domain expansion, highly profitable financial contracts, and the word that once the city became Sabbat they would be treated as brothers in the ranks. The Independents sold not only bodies, but souls. They condemned not only us, and least of all themselves, but in what still seemed too little for them, they condemned the Sabbat as well, without the Sabbat even noticing.

From a tactical standpoint, and from a chess player's eye, the strategy was, for lack of a better word, perfect... pity it eventually collapsed under its own weight, at the mercy of fate.

In the decades before 1998, the Sabbat, aided by the Independents, infiltrated equipment, machinery, "manpower," and its best pieces into the city in ways that escaped our notice.
It came not from the august Keepers, and still less from the selfless Demons... it was forged by those least expected by Sabbat high command: the antitribu.
Almost all operational plans were run by the antitribu (something that still eats at Lasombra pride). The most important members of each antitribu lent aid to pull the rug from under the Lasombra and the sect's few Tzimisce, and most were not even from Prague.

For the antitribu, dignity and respect are nearly sacred. They have spent years, perhaps centuries, enduring the High Clans of the Sabbat and bearing their yoke, used as disposable pawns while those same clans place their best pieces where it suits them. The antitribu structure, forged under that burden of dignity and respect toward their own brothers, is what made them work together like the finest-oiled parts of a machine of destruction.
This time they were not going to let Lasombra and Tzimisce hurl them into a desperate assault against the Camarilla wall while waiting to see if the wall finally cracked.
The antitribu unleashed intelligence, cunning, spies, covert action, and deliberate misunderstandings before they ever loosed the dogs of war.

Nomadic packs gathered every coin they could seize, from ducti to rank and file Sabbat, to fund the operation. Some even say Ravnos antitribu, along with Brujah antitribu, outright stole Lasombra money. Masterful. The amount amassed was so great that citing figures is tedious.

All this money was managed by those best suited to handle and hide it from Camarilla eyes: the Giovanni. They still call it, as a joke, "Family Financing." Giovanni have always had money; who would suspect they had just a little more than necessary?... Fools.

The Black Hand also contributed heavily, and if that still does not tell you the scale of what this became, it should. From my point of view, this group holds the board's best and most seasoned pieces. They are so deeply embedded in the Sabbat that whenever it snaps its fingers, some enemy falls into frenzy from fear alone. They did not merely provide large sums; they orchestrated a plan to involve, knowingly and unknowingly, several dozen Brotherhoods.
You drop rumors over Prague of old, potent-blooded vampires who, what a coincidence, remain in torpor, watched only by ancient ghouls and the occasional childe Embraced in the last decade... and without meaning to, you have served the menu of the day, and discovered the restaurant is fully booked.
All at once, like piranhas.

Among all movements to date, the King appears on the board and the name Vincent Day is heard, aided by a cunning Ravnos antitribu knight named Czysco. He acts as mediator with Giovanni and Ravnos to bring Sabbat into the city, arranges agreements with traitors inside Camarilla ranks to prepare the enfilade, and times nomadic pack assaults from the outskirts with those already inside. Finally, he castles with the Setites, used to keep Camarilla's most dangerous pieces occupied for as long as needed, such as the former Keeper of Elysium, whose Final Death was well earned.

Bishops are brought in with their Templars, pack ducti and Black Hand agents coordinate troop movements, and between one move and the next we have a staggering 150 Sabbat Kindred waiting at the line to hurl themselves onto the city and send it to hell.

That is what happened. One after another, like waves breaking on a shore. And knowing the antitribu and their differences with Keepers and Demons, most who helped were also antitribu, while the so-called Sabbat "pure bloods" kept the bench warm.