CLAN

VENTRUE



History of Clan Ventrue in New York City

The Ventrue of New York City are one of the most tightly-knit clans in the United States, an ironic position given their original state of infighting and disorganization. The history of the clan goes back all the way to the founding of the city, and involves countless plots, intrigues, and occasional moments of brilliance.
The first Ventrue to settle in New York City was Peter Van der Waals, a Dutch expatriate who arrived in the fledgling city in 1665 and immediately assumed the title of Prince, an easy enough assumption considering there were only about a few dozen vampires in the New World at that time, and most of them Tremere. One of them, however, was Immanuel St. James, an old friend of Van der Waals from Europe who had control of the Eastern Colonial Chantry. Recognizing that the Ventrue was well suited for a task no one really cared about anyway, St. James extended to him the full blessings of the Tremere.
Once established as "Prince of the City" (a title that would surely convulse any European Prince with laughter) Van der Waals began organizing matters as best he could, and with only a handful of Kindred within a hundred mile radius, he allowed for a rather loose reign. At first, the only other Ventrue were his two progeny, Peter Van der Zant and Roland Herrn, a Franco-German cartographer. Together, with the help of a few scattered Ventrue in Philadelphia and Boston, Van der Waals watched as the city slowly began to take shape.
Then in 1684 both Van der Waals and Herrn were discovered by a Puritan Vampire hunter and were mercilessly exterminated. Van der Zant felt that St. James was the most qualified to take over the reins of power, and so did the Tremere. St. James accepted the crown gladly, and made his first act as Prince to hunt down and bring back the Vampire Hunter for justice.
As the century turned and the Colonies grew more prosperous, the Kindred population began to slowly expand, matching the increase in mortal population. The next Ventrue to settle into the area was Sir Thomas Hutchinson, a Ventrue elder Embraced in the thirteenth century. Hutchinson, an old crusader, was a shifty character who was exiled to the Colonies by the Prince of London; but St. James allowed him to settle down and start a small circle of progeny.
Right from the beginning, Van der Zant and Sir Hutchinson did not get along; Van der Zant felt that Hutchinson's little coterie was decadent, their flagrant lifestyle courting discovery by mortals; and the knight dismissed Van der Zant as a prissy worry-wart who was terrified of making commitments. The truth was that both were a little correct in their assessments of each other.
By the time of the Revolution, New York had acquired Wolfgang von Gottlieb, a powerful Ventrue ancilla who moved into the region from Philadelphia, having recently arrived in the Colonies from his home in Prussia. Although the Prince extended him the fullest courtesy, he was immediately met with grudging hostility from both the other Ventrue and their childer. Van der Zant thought he was an upstart modernist, and Sir Hutchinson and his brood dismissed him as an intellectual bore, not to mention a Prussian, of all things. Von Gottlieb responded by ignoring them the best that he could and attempted to remake his fortune through a printing press.
Shortly thereafter Aleister MacTaggart entered the city, and Gottlieb made immediate friends with the assertive Scottish elder. By the beginnings of the nineteenth century, the total number of powerful Ventrue in the New York area numbered only nine, and with the exception of Van der Zant and his progeny Lucas Carver, both of which sat on the Council, they were politically powerless and ineffectual, more concerned with themselves than with increasing the wealth of the Prince's domain.
The City's growing importance as a harbor brought more prosperity to the region, and as the nineteenth century progressed Immanuel St. James found himself the Prince of a city with much potential, indeed. By the middle of the century he realized that he would need to re-organize matters to suit the needs of his expanding domain. He invited the great Marius Vespasianus into the City in 1853, offering him not a place on the Council, which the Roman methuselah disdained, but the task of organizing the Ventrue into a cohesive clan.
With the help of Gottlieb and MacTaggart, Marius performed this task admirably. Sir Hutchinson offered some bitter resistance at first, but within a few years Marius won him over through simple logic backed by concrete evidence that unity equaled prosperity. Van der Zant, at first intimidated by Marius, soon became one of his most vocal supporters -- a fact that tended to grate a bit on St. James, who was worried that the mercurial Van der Zant might start considering Marius a candidate for the Princeship. Fortunately for the Prince, Van der Zant's progeny, Lucas Carver, was in disagreement with his Sire and remained constantly suspicious of Marius. While in terms of loyalty Van der Zant might be an unknown, it was clear that Lucas was firmly in the camp of his Prince.
Marius ordered Hutchinson to Embrace the rail tycoon E. Emmet Smith, a close friend of J.P. Morgan and Vanderbilt, and he suggested to the Prince that the Ventrue function with the mortal society instead of in spite of it; and so in 1888 Marius formed Gravitas, Inc., and encouraged the Ventrue to take more open -- but cautious -- roles in human society.
Meanwhile, St. James realized that a few more Ventrue not under the direct control of Marius would perhaps serve his interests. To help him regulate organized crime and the police department, St. James had Carver Embrace Blackie Swathman, one of the principle criminal bosses of the city, and Jim Connor, a corrupt Irish inspector. These first steps -- making the police and gangsters part of his coterie instead of the Ventrue -- would later prove to be quite wise when the Prince and Marius were to split one hundred years later; even though Connor fled to Marius in 1955. It is a fact that Marius still finds rueful enough to fill him with self-anger, but at the time the Prince was struggling with his very existence against the Old World mind-set of the Tremere, and Marius saw the benefits of carving a whole new type of city. . . .
By the end of the century things had more or less fallen into place. Marius held most of the financial strings of Kindred society in the City, and the Prince held the political strings, including the police, organized crime, and even the mayor's department.
But the twentieth century would not be kind. While the Prince's erratic behavior during the end of the century drove the first wedge between the Ventrue and the Council, it wasn't until the collapse of Wall Street and the Great Depression that the cracks began to visibly widen. All the Ventrue felt the shock of this catastrophe, and even Marius was forced to divest and trim his sprawling network in order to survive. But rather than coming to their aid, the Prince used the Depression as a lever against the Ventrue, alienating them farther. True to his calling, however, Marius managed to keep the Ventrue on an even keel, steering them around the shoals of the Prince's deepening madness and unpredictability. As the century began to grow more chaotic, he countered by adding to his clan's base of power and expanding their horizons. In 1931 he accepted into the Clan Rachel Warwick, a wealthy European who was fleeing the continent and wanted a new start in America, and in 1947 he had Don Antonio Spinozi Embraced, giving him a major foothold into the Mafia. Using his powers of persuasion and the lure of a ghoul's immortality, he put a state senator in his pocket in 1951 and he gained the servitude of an ambitious Roman Cardinal later that same year. In 1954 he invited Jonas Howe into the clan, a capable millionaire from Texas who was in trouble with his own Prince in Dallas, and in 1955 Jim Connor defected to Marius's side, fleeing the coterie of the capricious Prince.
But despite his efforts, the situation seemed to be getting worse as the century revealed new surprises. When the Anarch riots of the forties weakened the Camarilla's hold on Brooklyn, Marius and his Ventrue were too occupied with wartime business to really be of much effect, and after that, the next few decades seemed to move with a pace that left even Marius dizzy. Sensing the Camarilla's weakness, the Sabbat began a war and struck deep into Queens and the Bronx. The Council was unable to make realistic and forceful decisions, and the Prince began to show signs of complete mental collapse. Europe was in turmoil as the twin ravages of war and communism flamed across the Old World. Technology spiralled upwards; men where flying and splitting the atom, religion was declining, and even the arts were whoring themselves to electricity. . . . The world seemed out of control, and many of the elders found themselves genuinely panicked for the first time in centuries. It seemed that Anarchy was to have her way with the whole world. . . and the Prince was responding with a strategy of denial, whimsy, and paranoia.
In 1955 Marius decided that the situation had reached a point of crisis. The Prince was no longer capable to rule, and the Sabbat were encroaching unchecked into northern Manhattan. He decided to grasp the nettle and enter politics. At first he was subtle -- he reined in the Ventrue and formed the "Venturi Business Association," an "out in the open" organization of businesses that actually represented the core of his Clan. The VBA was a network of like-minded Ventrue outside of the decadent Primogen Council. The Board of Directors was as follows: Marius as CEO, with seats being held by Sir Thomas Hutchinson, Wolfgang von Gottlieb, Aleister MacTaggart, E. Emmet Smith, Rachel Warwick, Jonas Howe, and Don Spinozi. Peter Van der Zant was asked to attach himself in an advisory capacity, acting as a liaison between the Clan and the Council. (However, the fact that Lucas Carver was ignored was a clear but unavoidable slight to the Prince.) Together they represented some of the best financial minds that Kindred society had to offer, but their goal was not simply to make money . . . secretly, they plotted for an eventual coup d'etat, an attempt to knock over the now incompetent St. James and to install a new Prince. . . . In order to further this end, assets were brought into the city all the way from Boston to Washington D.C. Marius still had many connections; promises were made to other Princes, favors were called in. More mortal politicians were dominated and controlled, in direct violation of St. James's precious rules. Finally, by the middle of the sixties, the Ventrue were ready. They would wrest control of the city from St. James. Marius would save New York.
In 1965 they made the attempt, and it failed utterly.
They were betrayed; betrayed by the progeny of an old enemy of Marius's, a vampire he once turned over to the Society of Leopold. Marius was stunned, for the traitor was Rachel Warwick, a vampire who had worked her way up the ladder of power since the early thirties and had become a trusted member of the clan, even holding a seat on the VBA. The truth was even more bitter than that, for she was not really even a Ventrue -- she was a Giovanni spy under the command of St. James, using her powerful magic to successfully masquerade as a Ventrue for over forty years. He had welcomed her in, and not a single one of his Ventrue had ever suspected. All in all, it was a masterful stroke.
St. James moved with uncharacteristic speed. Peter Van der Zant -- his old friend and supporter -- was "discovered" by vampire hunters and burned at the stake. Brooklyn erupted in violence, and three key Ventrue were murdered by Brujah Anarchs -- Chase Weintraub, a security systems analyst, Lillian Mainz, one of Gottlieb's progeny with impressive Toreador contacts, and a member of the VBA itself, E. Emmet Smith. In return for these assassinations, the Prince declared Brooklyn to be a Free Zone. Within three days, six highly placed ghouls were assassinated, including the state senator and the Cardinal. And to add insult to injury, Sir Thomas Hutchinson was persuaded to leave Marius's side and join the Prince, his betrayal bought for the price of Van der Zant's newly vacant seat on the Council. Finally, the Prince called a conclave of all the East Coast Princes. And though most of them loathed St. James, when gathered together and witnessing his swift action, all felt the touch of rebellious progeny at the back of their necks . . . there could be no doubt that St. James was the rightful Prince: the Ventrue were slapped down, and slapped down hard.
Fortunately for the Clan, Marius was too powerful to be removed or publicly humiliated, but the Prince was certain that the Roman methuselah would get the message. And even though Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx were lost to the Anarchs and the Sabbat, there was still a rightful Prince on the throne.
Today the Clan functions as a very tightly woven and highly organized family, the experiences of the past having taught the Ventrue a valuable lesson. Marius has taken a more commanding role, and relationships with the other clans are minimalized as far as possible. There is a detente of sorts between Clan Ventrue and the Council: both know that they are enemies, but both understand that the cost of war would be too dear to risk.
And yet, if the Prince falls, the Clan will move to fill the vacuum like a well-oiled machine. Of that, there is no doubt. . . .