When Light Succumbs to Darkness

-Narrated by Ilajh Ionnesku, member of Clan Ventrue, dead on the fourth Night of White Ashes, early 1999.

And then night came. And at its head, an army of fangs, claws, swords, and guns, with Sabbat throats crying out for only one thing: blood.

Whether because some of our best and most cunning ghouls survived the traps laid by Sabbat and the thousand-times-damned Setites, some of us in Camarilla managed to realize, or at least glimpse, what was happening. Marcus's group, sidelined by the city's Elders and Ancillae, especially by high office when they warned us something was wrong, was suddenly dragged from marginal darkness into blinding light, with dozens of eyes and ears fixed on them as if they carried the answer that could undo our sentence of Final Death.

The outlook was bleak, and worst of all, we all knew where this was heading: Kindred forces against Kindred forces. A terrible thing for Camarilla Traditions and the Masquerade. The truth is, with hardly any reliable intelligence, we had to act blind, guided by assumptions.
Those of us gathered split into small units made of vampires from nearly every clan. There was an American Kindred, I think Toreador, who told us they used similar formations in the United States, though unlike us, European Kindred, they kept them as permanent structures called War Squads. The thought of organizing like Sabbat disgusted me, and I am sure I was not the only one in that room. But I can tell you this: five pairs of eyes and ears see and hear more than one, and when you are moving blind, better to have too much than too little.

No need to explain to you, Mr. [omitted], how we are in Europe. You have spent enough time on this continent to know for yourself. But indulge me if I insist on one thing: here, unlike much of the world, we do things differently. Why? Many ask. The reason is simple: tradition. It was so, has been so, and will remain so, however heavily it weighs on all of us.
European Kindred are individualists by custom. We prefer solitude, to play for our own side, and to keep others out of our ambitions and contests. That way we owe no debts, and we shield our backs against greed and envy that would breed enemies everywhere. You can hardly expect otherwise from a land inhabited by creatures as old as the land itself.

The truth is Sabbat was, surprisingly, clever enough, to grant them an adjective rarely earned in their vain existence, to exploit this small weakness. But it is a lesson carved into memory, and one we will not repeat.

From the forces I mentioned, we formed five squads of six to eight Kindred each, mostly Brujah, the few Gangrel still left in the city, whom we were forced to authorize for "reinforcement Embraces," and Malkavians. This wing handled street patrols, and with help from the few ghouls still under our protection, hunted and destroyed cells, packs, and concentrations of Sabbat while above all preserving the Masquerade. We could not allow mortals to discover us after six centuries of anonymity over one careless mistake.
Meanwhile, two of the five groups, formed by Nosferatu, Gangrel, and Brujah, were tasked with locating surviving sewer-rats and determining whether those zones were safe or infested.
I was in one of those latter teams, and I can give thanks, because we were lucky enough to suffer the least damage in those first nights.
It turned out Sabbat had been using the sewers. There we discovered they were still infiltrating packs into the city through old abandoned underground aqueducts that Camarilla Nosferatu had failed to inspect in their supposedly exhaustive maps. That is how we ran into pack after pack of Sabbat, and I can assure you we sent at least one of their famed Templars, whom Sabbat proudly hails as Kindred-killers, straight to hell.

As I said, Prague Camarilla's main retaliation force operated on the surface, and it is the one bleeding most heavily these nights. At least until now, it had support from that agitator Carlak and his Brujah. I could not tell you where they are at this moment; we have had no word from them for hours. The Primogen remain in one of the city's Elysiums, keeping contact with field squads and gathering every piece of intelligence that might help us through these fateful, uncertain nights. Above all, they handle one of this war's most delicate fronts: masking everything from mortal senses. Believe me, they do it impressively well, especially given the stories of how little subtlety our squads show in their zeal to clean the city of Sabbat packs. Subtlety is not their strength. Just look at Drazen's ears... do you like fang earrings? He must have a dozen, unless I have lost count.

Prince Pro Tempore Carlak, as I understand it, has recruited dissenters from Sabbat ranks. How did he manage it? Well, before being Prince, Carlak is Brujah, and no one needs reminding how easily his clan proves itself a hard enemy in street fighting. That is how Carlak has taken prisoners from packs he defeated. To those who survived, he pardoned crimes against the Blood in exchange for fighting on his side. Whether they like it or not, whether we like it or not, we have to coexist like this for now... and when this is over, we will settle accounts with those members on probation.

After all this, I believe Camarilla forces in the city, after these first nights, cannot exceed half the manpower we might have counted at the beginning had things not gone so badly. By comparison, we have lost truly powerful and ancient vampires in the first nights of this madness, not to mention the economic damage, while Sabbat has little to lament beyond joking about the loss of shovelhead packs. That is how brutally real it is.