Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Sept 25, 2014 3:07:19 GMT -8
My, how far Seattle has come.
Everything is moving so quickly now.
When the flames finally died down in the wake of the 1999 WTO riots and the smoke cleared, much was revealed. The Anarchs, by and large had proved they could move the Cainille into moving mountains. Between the L.A. Riots and the WTO Riots, the so-called Movement had discovered real power, and had the will to execute it. Or had they? Though the Anarch attempt to kill Prince Orleans had failed, the Movement at large still considered the WTO riots to be a success. They believed that they had mastered using technology to move people in the ways they desired on par with the most august Presence user. No longer was the power to sway hearts and minds limited to the Elder caste of Kindred. It could be handed out on message boards and email threads, transmitted over bluetooth headsets through hacked cell towers.
A Justicar is dead. Shortly after the world was made aware of the grisly murder of Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon, Seattle received a politely worded invitation to host the next Conclave. This invitation, signed by the Inner Circle, came as something of a political shock. The next decade was a grueling trial as Archons and heavily guarded Justicars came through the city inspecting various aspects of it for 'safety'. This was largely believed to be a cover to investigate both the relatively new Prince and the actions leading to the death of a Justicar.
2000 - The Kingdome is demolished to make way for a new football field. The population of Seattle is more than 560,000. Experience Music Project, Saul Allen's homage to rock 'n' roll music, opens. George W. Bush is elected President of the United States. International Space Station begins operations.
Months dragged out into weeks as the city was squeezed by outside political influence. An untold number of Ancialle and Elders swept through Seattle to wring as many boons and physical wealth as they could. The carpetbaggers came and left in waves, leaving subtle desolation in their wake in the form of Masquerade breeches and street conflicts. Some were paid to keep the peace, others extorted boons to ensure the precious veil was maintained.
The glorious climax was spending a month hosting the most powerful, old and influential Kindred the Camarilla had to offer. Of the occupants of Seattle, only those with Status 5 were allowed to attend. Of those, only the Prince was granted a voice. The usually sharp tongued Toreador was surprisingly quiet and broody through the event; no doubt a symptom of the political pressures he was suffering for the death of such an important Camarilla member. While numerous topics were discussed, the murder of the Nosferatu Justicar was but a footnote. In the end, Seattle was largely absolved of the crime, but a keen political mind would note there is no statute of limitations of Kindred murder. No doubt these events will continue to haunt the Pacific Northwest for many years to come.
With the event over and done, Europe has become something of a dirty word around the Seattle Court. Having so many finger in their pies have left people disliking fingers and pies altogether.
So the Anarchs had been ‘successful’ at proving their point in 1999. But at what cost? - was the question on the lips of many detractors. It became clear that the Camarilla was under siege from all sides, and that it could ill-afford such an enemy steeped in the modern nights. For some, that meant holding up the treaties and edicts like a badge - for others, like a burning cross. In the end, the moderates won however. There were enough voices of caution to urge that the *real* threats the Sabbat and their disregard for the Masquerade and the alien Cathayans were not worth turning their backs to for the time it would take to mount an offensive against the Anarchs decentralized movement.
2001: September 11 attacks: Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center in New York City, damage The Pentagon in Washington, DC. War on Terror declared. Afghan War begins. Wikipedia founded. The Alaskan Way viaduct was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.
While this question was being asked, the Kine once again managed to demonstrate their power to destroy one-another. 9/11 changed the way that everyone, Kindred and Kine alike viewed security. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no Kindred were involved in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, though they are not counted among the official victims for obvious reasons, some Kindred were surely among those slain — a Nosferatu warren was hidden in a sub-level of one of the Towers and a number of Ancillae of various clans maintained havens in the Towers. But the Camarilla was very quick indeed to make use of the PATRIOT Act against enemies, real or imagined. City governments in Camarilla domains soon applied for federal Homeland Security grants supposedly for anti-terrorism programs or to improve First Response, but which were instead diverted for improved surveillance equipment to spy on known or suspected Anarchs.
2002: 2002 Chechen rebels seize theatre in Moscow. America demands Iraq allow unfettered access to weapons inspectors. Guantanamo Bay detention camp is established. Rose Revolution in Georgia. Independence of East Timor.
2003: Iraq War begins, triggering worldwide protests. War in Darfur begins. The Human Genome Project is completed. Second Congo War ends with more than 5 million dead. Second Liberian Civil War ends. Space Shuttle Columbia is destroyed on re-entry.
2004: Enlargement of NATO and the European Union incorporates most of former Eastern Bloc. Union of South American Nations formed. Madrid train bombings. Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Boxing Day Tsunami occurs in Indian Ocean, leading to the deaths of 230,000.
2005: IRA end military campaign in Northern Ireland. 7/7 attacks on London Underground. Angela Merkel becomes Germany's first woman Chancellor. Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. Second Intifada ends. Israel withdraws from Gaza. Cedar Revolution in Lebanon triggered by the Assassination of Rafic Hariri. Second Sudanese Civil War ends. Hurricane Katrina kills nearly 2000 people in the Gulf of Mexico. 80,000 are killed in an earthquake in Kashmir. The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becomes President of Iran. Death of Pope John Paul II; Benedict XVI becomes Pope.
2006: Independence of Montenegro. Second invasion of Lebanon. Mumbai bombings. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf becomes President of Liberia, and thus Africa's first elected female head of state. Execution of Saddam Hussein. The Baiji, the Yangtze river dolphin, becomes functionally extinct.
2007 - 2008: Spike in food prices and subprime crisis help trigger global recession. Assassination of Benazir Bhutto. End of Monarchy in Nepal. Barack Obama is elected President of the United States. Cyclone Nargis kills 133,000 in Myanmar. Gaza War begins. Kosovo declares independence, to mixed reaction.
This attempted Camarilla crackdown did not stop the Anarchs from delicately curating a number of brutal high-tech assaults on the bourgeois Camarilla Elders who remained staunchly anti-Anarch for the sake of staunchness. The Great Recession of 2008 was a staged maneuver to empty the bank accounts of certain Camarilla Elders and their interests, and it worked. It also nearly brought about the collapse of the world’s financial systems. Justicars dispatched archons to bring down multiple 'offenders' but some of the apps and infrastructure the Anarchs had created had already begun to gain popularity among many younger Kindred.
The era after 2008 marked some of the most aggressive anti-Anarch fighting between the Camarilla and the Anarch Elders, with one Justicar going so far as to demand that the Nosferatu turn over SchreckNet to the Justicariate in it’s entirety to combat the Anarchs’ ‘Red Question’ initiative.
2009: Gaza War ends; Gaza blockade continues. Sri Lankan Civil War ends. Election protests begin in Iran. Second Chechen War ends. Boko Haram rebellion begins in Nigeria. Death of Michael Jackson. Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper, is completed. Great Recession officially ends. Formation of BRICS economic bloc. Treaty of Lisbon ratified.
To spite the continued aggression between Anarchs and the Elders of the Camarilla, at least one Clan, the Nosferatu appear to have thrown in with the sects tech-savvy members to create an open Kindred internet. SchreckNet is now open to all Kindred, though it's understood that the Nos have their own hidden sections. There is rumor that some apps and tools commonly used by Kindred were developed jointly, as both the Anarchs and the Nosferatu seemed to realize how devastating to the Masquerade a cocky Ancilla or Elder posting automatically geo-tagged pictures on a social networking site could be. The Anarchs have, by and large entered into an era of more than usual peace with the Camarilla, and though there is still tension between the two sects, it is understood that each has the power to greatly harm the other, and that there are far worse threats than the uncomfortable silence that might follow an uncouth outburst at an gala about 'sticking it to the man'.
2010: A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills 230,000. Threat of Greece defaulting on its debts triggers the European sovereign debt crisis and Ireland's bankruptcy. The largest oil spill in US history occurs in the Gulf of Mexico. The website Wikileaks releases thousands of classified US documents. Arab Spring triggered by self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010 in Tunisia. 2010 Kyrgyzstani revolution. 2010 Nigerien coup d'état.
2011: Death of Steve Jorbs. Arab Spring: revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya follow, as well as uprisings in Yemen and and Bahrain, and protests in several other Arab countries. Syrian civil war begins. Occupy movement inspires worldwide protests. News International phone hacking scandal. A 9.0 earthquake and the meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Deaths of Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Jong-Il. Iraq War ends. Riots flare across England. World population reaches 7 billion.
2012: The Higgs boson is discovered. Hurricane Sandy kills 209 people in North America, while Typhoon Bopha kills over 1,600 in the Philippines. UN Climate Change Conference agrees to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020. Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense against the Palestinian-governed Gaza Strip. Guinea-Bissau coup d'état. The Seattle Mardi Gras riots occurred. The Seattle Great Wheel, one of the largest Ferris wheels in the U.S., opened.
2013: The Chelyabinsk meteor falls to earth. Edward Snow releases classified documents concerning mass surveillance by the NSA. President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi is deposed by the military in a coup d'état. Croatia becomes a member of the European Union. The Euromaidan protest begins in Ukraine. The Seattle Oceanhawks win the Superbowl. A socialist candidate wins a city-wide election to the Seattle City Council, making her the first socialist to win.
2014: Seattle passed a local ordinance to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
It's Saturday the 27th of September, 2014 and my Seattle has come a long way.
Yet still...
There's a bell in the church outside of Belltown that never rings true. There are shadows on the walls that seem only to appear when looked at sideways. There are sometimes the unexplained sounds of old saloons and toothless jaws biting at the cold air. To some, it feels like there's something empty here, like something was lost along the way. Certain candles never really produce much light or heat.
In Seattle, they say, the scent of ashes is never really washed away with the rain.
Welcome to the Modern Nights.