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Vampire: the Masquerade
Midnight Siege
From Graceful Salons to the Halls of the Consistory
For half a millennium the Kindred of the Camarilla have warred with the Cainites of the Sabbat. In the modern nights, though, the sect war can no longer be hidden behind the armies of kings or the fires of the Inquisition. How then do the sects resolve their conflicts without alerting the oblivious eyes of the kine?
Domains Topple and Vitae Flows Freely
Midnight Siege takes a look at conflict between the Camarilla and Sabbat in a real-world sense. In an age of instant communication, the Children of Caine must be ever more careful to keep themselves hidden from the mortals who would destroy them. This book explains not only how the struggle between the sects takes place, but gives character and chronicle advice for stories that take place in the midst of such conflict.
For half a millennium the Kindred of the Camarilla have warred with the Cainites of the Sabbat. In the modern nights, though, the sect war can no longer be hidden behind the armies of kings or the fires of the Inquisition. How then do the sects resolve their conflicts without alerting the oblivious eyes of the kine?
Domains Topple and Vitae Flows Freely
Midnight Siege takes a look at conflict between the Camarilla and Sabbat in a real-world sense. In an age of instant communication, the Children of Caine must be ever more careful to keep themselves hidden from the mortals who would destroy them. This book explains not only how the struggle between the sects takes place, but gives character and chronicle advice for stories that take place in the midst of such conflict.
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2001
21 people want to read
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October 17, 2017
When I was a university student at Penn, I ran a year-long Vampire chronicle that took place during the Sabbat siege of the East Coast. It was heavily focused on the battle, and I spent a lot of time playing out the Sabbat attack and the Camarilla's efforts to counter it. There was a Sabbat attack on Elysium and withdrawal by the Camarilla elders to a secondary fallback point, Sabbat mass-Embraces thrown into battle, and Sabbat driving through the city and causing chaos to force the Camarilla to spend resources responding to it. The Camarilla reached out to some Assamites living in the city and brought them onboard for the duration of the siege, but nearly fell in the hour of their victory as one of the Primogen attempted a coup for the princedom, believing that he would have led the defenses better and could keep the city safer in the future.
All this was before I read Midnight Siege. Which is to say, the information here is well-organized and comprehensive, but there isn't that much that's new. It's not news that the Sabbat use mass-Embraces and are better at street fighting, whereas the Camarilla excel at information-gathering and manipulating the background conditions of the city itself. There are a lot of examples elaborating on these, but most of it just enumerates these basic points.
There were a few tidbits I wouldn't have thought of, though. Camarilla cities can sometimes be worse to live in than Sabbat cities, because a corrupt government allows more levers for the Camarilla to pull, a large homeless populatoin provides more sources of blood, run-down buildings can easily be turned into emergency havens without too many questions, and so on, whereas the Sabbat aren't numerous enough to turn a city into a violence-ridden hellhole by themselves and their disdain for mortal affairs means it's harder for them to manipulate the fabric of mortal existence to their liking. Because of that, if the Camarilla knows it's going to lose, it'll sometimes engage in a last-ditch project of civic improvement. A clean, well-lit city where people sleep soundly with roofs over their heads is a city where it's hard to be a vampire.
Similarly, the Sabbat pride themselves on freedom and self-determination, so the archbishops can't just order in packs. Instead, they have to give suggestions or point the younger Sabbat at Camarilla elders and allow ambition to take its course. And the Sabbat likes to tactically break the Masquerade and force the Camarilla to waste resources to cover it up, but there was one tactic specifically that stood out to me. Embrace a childe, telling them about their new vampiric existence, and make sure every word of it is lies. Vampires are alien parasites seeking to conquer the world for their masters beyond the stars. Vampires must kill anyone they feed from to make sure that person doesn't become a vampire. The Camarilla has to clean up after the, and maybe they'll convince some other neonates that their elders are hiding things from them.
Also, the Camarilla beats the Sabbat in mystical might now that the Tremere antitribu are gone. There are Tzimisce koldun, but they are rare and most Sabbat don't know they exist, and what Sabbat Thaumaturgy still exists isn't systematized like the Tremere's was. Either that, or it's Dark Thaumaturgy and the Sabbat Inquisition is going to come down hard on any use of it after the city is taken. So whereas the Sabbat has more combat prowess than the Camarilla, the latter can often use Thaumaturgy to help even the odds.
But other than the occasional tidbit like that, most of the information is easily extrapolated from the Guide to the Camarilla or the Guide to the Sabbat. This book is nice, but it's not necessary.
All this was before I read Midnight Siege. Which is to say, the information here is well-organized and comprehensive, but there isn't that much that's new. It's not news that the Sabbat use mass-Embraces and are better at street fighting, whereas the Camarilla excel at information-gathering and manipulating the background conditions of the city itself. There are a lot of examples elaborating on these, but most of it just enumerates these basic points.
There were a few tidbits I wouldn't have thought of, though. Camarilla cities can sometimes be worse to live in than Sabbat cities, because a corrupt government allows more levers for the Camarilla to pull, a large homeless populatoin provides more sources of blood, run-down buildings can easily be turned into emergency havens without too many questions, and so on, whereas the Sabbat aren't numerous enough to turn a city into a violence-ridden hellhole by themselves and their disdain for mortal affairs means it's harder for them to manipulate the fabric of mortal existence to their liking. Because of that, if the Camarilla knows it's going to lose, it'll sometimes engage in a last-ditch project of civic improvement. A clean, well-lit city where people sleep soundly with roofs over their heads is a city where it's hard to be a vampire.
Similarly, the Sabbat pride themselves on freedom and self-determination, so the archbishops can't just order in packs. Instead, they have to give suggestions or point the younger Sabbat at Camarilla elders and allow ambition to take its course. And the Sabbat likes to tactically break the Masquerade and force the Camarilla to waste resources to cover it up, but there was one tactic specifically that stood out to me. Embrace a childe, telling them about their new vampiric existence, and make sure every word of it is lies. Vampires are alien parasites seeking to conquer the world for their masters beyond the stars. Vampires must kill anyone they feed from to make sure that person doesn't become a vampire. The Camarilla has to clean up after the, and maybe they'll convince some other neonates that their elders are hiding things from them.
Also, the Camarilla beats the Sabbat in mystical might now that the Tremere antitribu are gone. There are Tzimisce koldun, but they are rare and most Sabbat don't know they exist, and what Sabbat Thaumaturgy still exists isn't systematized like the Tremere's was. Either that, or it's Dark Thaumaturgy and the Sabbat Inquisition is going to come down hard on any use of it after the city is taken. So whereas the Sabbat has more combat prowess than the Camarilla, the latter can often use Thaumaturgy to help even the odds.
But other than the occasional tidbit like that, most of the information is easily extrapolated from the Guide to the Camarilla or the Guide to the Sabbat. This book is nice, but it's not necessary.
November 3, 2020
as usual there’s more lore in a random vtm book than some games have in the entirety of their collection
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