Rivers of blood flow through here

-Annex to the intercepted report of the Kerve spy Vlacek, member of the Nosferatu antitribu clan and priest of the Fires of the Dawn pack, disappeared at the end of 2000.

Charles IV Bridge
Trench Warfare

The Vltava carries more than water and ice. Rivers of blood run through it as well, the blood of Caine's childer. Charles Bridge, as it is commonly known, or the Bridge of Ashes, as the Children of Caine of both sects call it, is the main link between Old Town and Malá Strana and, as you might imagine, both the first and the last line of defense for the Camarilla and the Sabbat alike. This 520-meter bridge, the city's best-known monument, is also the place where more blood has been spilled and more death hangs in the air than anywhere else in Prague: a threshold of stone beneath which the river drags echoes of screams that dawn pretends not to hear.

Both the Sabbat and the Camarilla maintain a significant presence in the area, though most of it remains invisible most of the time. Yet neither war coteries nor packs are the chief problem in this territory. That distinction belongs to the local gangs and anarchists, who strike at either sect as they please and contest control every night with the shovelhead packs sent to the front. They lack a clear leader, but their knowledge of the ground is excellent, and night after night they tear away another block of the city from us.

The anarchists' leader is thought to be a Kindred of indeterminate age and power, one who has sired an increasing number of childer despite being very young in the blood. I therefore assume that this leader's sire, and likely instigator, cannot be more than ten or eleven steps removed from Caine. Rumor claims that this Kindred was, at some point in unlife, connected to the anarchs' lost heroine and one of the Camarilla's greatest enemies: Tyler.

Another name circulates among our own in whispers: a supposed "shepherd of souls" who haunts the bridge as though accounting for the dead. It is unclear whether this is always the same Kindred, or whether the city lends the title to different monsters whenever the war requires one. Some describe him as a deserter from every war; others as the only fool who still believes this strip of stone can hold up the whole night if someone defends it long enough. They say he was the one who taught the gangs to move through the bends of the Vltava as though they were trenches, and that he answers only those who understand that surviving is not the same as winning, merely dragging the same ghosts through one more night.

This information, of dubious reliability, was extracted under pressure from a cowardly young anarchist who lived several kilometers from the city. Before I was forced to end his existence, he claimed to travel with his own little childe, allegedly gifted with disturbing powers of clairvoyance and able to glimpse the city's future in dreams. My few incursions into that area have confirmed none of it; I never found a trace of the girl. The anarchist also spoke of the bridge veteran, a Kindred who had protected her for a time and used her as a guide to anticipate the movements of both sides, until he vanished and left behind nothing but fresh stories of impossible ambushes.

I suspect the anarchist maintained ties with a member of the local Camarilla, perhaps in search of refuge or power. I urge the Sword to begin an immediate search for the alleged clairvoyant. If she truly exists, her dreaming gaze has already fallen upon the city... and perhaps the city itself is dreaming of us from within.

My recent research into the statues on both sides of the bridge deserves separate mention. There are more than fifty of them, many now copies because the originals were ruined by the weather and rest in the National Museum's Lapidarium. Together they form, or once formed, part of an intricate and unknown network that some Koldun of our sect claim belongs to the geomantic defensive lattice of the Tremere chantry, steeped in clan sorcery. Even so, the network appears to predate even the alleged constructions of Master Zelios. I have been unable to learn more about its purpose or function. I consider it inactive. Or sleeping, which is sometimes the same thing.

Prague Metro
Underground War

The Prague Metro, the city's subway system, with its characteristic style poised halfway between the new and the old, should not delight anyone reckless enough to walk its lonely stations once night falls over the city.

The metro is one of the most fiercely contested bastions in all Prague, and one of the most strategically important. Its rails and stations bind together every dark and frozen corner of the city. Everyone knows that to control the subway network is to control the underworld, to rule the city from its entrails, and to possess one of Prague's richest reserves of herd.

During the Nights of White Ash, the metro, together with Prague's sewers, became one of the busiest and most overrun places at the hour of death. Its dark tunnels were baptized in fire and the ashes of hundreds of vampires from every side, all of them destroyed in that tenebrous interior amid the shriek of iron wheels on the tracks.

Among the Sabbat, many rites of initiation and games of Instinct take place there, while anarchists try to build small bases of settlement in every station across the city. For its part, the Camarilla seeks to recover control of the network, hoping for reinforcements from the finest agents for such an environment: the Nosferatu.

Many members of clan Nosferatu, whatever their alignment in this war, regard the metro as an extension of the sewers and therefore as territory that is theirs by right. For that reason, many whisper in the shadows that the sewer rats may be trying to exact a very high price from every sect and clan in exchange for safe and peaceful passage through the city's innards.