The
History File
2000: A Year of Reckonings
Joshua looked back on 1999 as a difficult year, to be sure. Fate was turning out to be more cruel than he could have imagined when he'd first journeyed to Necropolis on a whim two years before. He had survived the never-ending struggles with the Sabbat, exacted vengeance upon the Technocracy, built a new bastion for the Traditions only to see it fall in the outbreak of the Avatar Storm. With Morgan's aid, they had rescued his pater Demetrius, to hear later of the old Magister's own downfall in the defense of Doisstep. The Storm itself had wrought some change upon Joshua, it seemed; after enduring the storm of Avatar-shards that nearly tore the dragon to pieces, he found himself able to withstand the storm in the Gauntlet when so many others could not.
As 2000 began, Morgan and Joshua had lost so much: good relations with the Order of Hermes, his own magick losing potency, Camarilla clans like the Ventrue degenerating and cutting ties to the Gangrel. But as their globe-spanning adventures drew to a close, more immediate concerns in Necropolis took over.
It was still early in the year when a longtime friend, one Maggie O'Grile, pushed her luck too far. This Salubri had long eked out a precarious existence in the area, what with the prevalence of the Tremere and their never-ending drive to extinguish the Salubri entirely. Maggie had helped the Gangrel more than once over the years, but the threat of a Masquerade breach pushed her relationship with the Gangrel to the limit. In fact, the Salubri was willing to break the Masquerade to preserve a foolish Sleeper's life, and when she bluffed, the Gangrel were forced to take a life for it. After being forced into manipulating a Sleeper's memories to preserve her breach and then witnessing the boy's death, Joshua knew that Maggie had gone too far this time. It only ended with the Salubri's Final Death, and Morgan had to reconsider the Tremere's traditional hatred for the Salubri line.
As if this wasn't enough, the townhouse Morgan and Joshua had called home since 1998 was burned by a Janissary assault, courtesy of the new Wizards' March the Order of Hermes began against the Tremere. For consorting with the massasa, Joshua was included in their list of targets. Only a few of the Gangrel witnessed the results of this attack firsthand, but it spelled the end of Joshua's public life as a Tradition mage. Presumed dead in the fiery assault, Joshua was forced to do nothing to correct this presumption. His Tradition mage allies could never know of his survival, or so he thought; to tell them would be to tell the Order, for the Janissaries had learned of Joshua's haven through his unfortunate friends.
After this attack, Joshua established a new haven for Morgan and himself near Fleming Park. Kept secret for years, the elegant Victorian house was close enough to the cave system beneath Fleming that Joshua connected the two. Ever since the Nephandi incident beneath the park, the dormant Node needed watching -- one never knew when the stars would be right again, and the dark energy of the Node might awaken again. The caves also served him well as a Sanctum where Joshua could practice and refine his arts, to adapt to the post-Reckoning world. Though magick was more difficult than ever to practice, he persevered through alchemy, ever-expanding areas of study, and sheer force of will.
Springtime brought the latest major Sabbat offensive came on the heels of this incident with the Salubri, and before long, a whole section of the city had been cut off by the assault of the Sabbat. The Palatine Gangrel were instrumental in beating back the advance; once again, their treaty with the Camarilla brought them into the fray. Joshua himself took on the task of Masquerade duty as the leader of the Missouri Militia, using the trigger-happy mortals day and night to surreptitiously take out Sabbat packs and havens, all the while keeping the Masquerade from being blown out of the water.
The Sabbat proved tough to crack, though; at one point, it was rumored that they'd run off with a Militia tank. But the best efforts of Marcus Smythe, the Sabbat leader, proved insufficient for the task. Before the end of spring, the enemy had been routed. Many a Gangrel went hunting for a meal of Sabbat vitae, and by periodically crossing the river, the Palatinate citizens kept themselves in fighting trim -- not to mention keeping the Sabbat in line.
The Gangrel had their own Sabbat problems to handle, as well. A nomadic pack decided Fleming Park would make an easy target, and took up residence...much to the chagrin of the Gangrel residents there. The Malkavian antitribu of the pack, a devious child with a penchant for using fire, was the most memorable of the bunch. The relatively small, weak Sabbat pack required a concerted effort from the Palatinate to destroy them.
The remainder of 2000 was no less interesting for the beleaguered Hermetic and the Gangrel Jarl. The summer brought an incursion of Bone Gnawers and Get of Fenris, invading Fleming Park thanks to the double-dealing of a clever Black Spiral Dancer pack. Though the Gangrel had nothing to do with the werewolves' problems, the Garou in Fleming could not be ignored. Convinced that the Gangrel wronged them, the Fenrir and the Gnawers worked to unearth sleeping Gangrel and attack any they found. Even bringing the heads of the Black Spirals wasn't enough to convince the Garou of the Gangrel Clan's innocence. Instead, the Lupines demanded the impossible: a spirit-quest.
Little did they know of the mage the Gangrel harbored, though. With Joshua's help, the Clan journeyed south to take out a nest of fomori -- the same family of fomori the Nephandi had used against them the previous year. It was satisfying enough to eradicate the fomori, but it wasn't enough. Only a trip into the Penumbra, and a battle with the monsters feeding on the Wyrm-taint the fomori encouraged in the small river valley, was enough to satisfy the Garou in Fleming Park. Faced with the sight of an enormous fang taken from a Thunderwyrm, the werewolves were forced to depart. The Gangrel lived up to their end of the bargain, and they were the ones grinning at the end.
As if this wasn't enough, problems with Hawk, a fellow citizen of the Palatinate, required the attention of Morgan and Joshua to resolve them. Unnr Snowtop, Hawk's Sire, was not one to keep in good contact with her childe. This is normal for the Gangrel, of course. But her return was not a fortuitous one. She brought an old rivalry into the Palatinate, and before long, Unnr was in need thanks to a fellow elder, called Jakal. Joshua had occasion to question Unnr at length about this old score before it was settled, and he learned enough about the Black Hand on that night to make him shudder.
In the end, the Gangrel fought for more than secrets, though. Facing off against the puissant elder Cainite, a number of the Palatinate's most powerful members fell or were wounded grievously. It was reminiscent of their earlier battle with Dod, Gretchen's Sire. Although the Clan managed to defeat Jakal, a number of them were sorely tempted to diablerize the creature. Only Morgan was able to hold off the wounded, hungry Gangrel left standing. After Jakal was destroyed, more than one of the Gangrel wondered how many other errant Sires they would have to slay before Gehenna finally arrives.
As the year 2000 waned, the Clan tackled a new challenge that came from within. A small coterie of vampires, clueless neonate Gangrel, arrived in Swope Park to beg for sanctuary. Although clueless Gangrel were nothing new to the citizens of the Palatinate, one does not become an elder vampire without learning to be suspicious. In this case, it turned out to be quite warranted! Between the "clueless Gangrel" being Setites in disguise, the Assamites hunting them, and an implacable adversary known only as Kenemti, the Clan had its hands full. Joshua still does not know just what Kenemti is, only what he is not -- not a vampire, not a mage precisely, but something else...
By the end of the year, the Gangrel had sorted out the Setite-Assamite problem, in that the former had stolen an item of power that the latter wanted badly. They weren't above teaming up to take on the Gangrel, though, when the Palatine Gangrel ambushed both sides in the barrens outside of Necropolis. Although the Clan found out just how deadly both sand-snakes and jackals could be in a fight, the Gangrel survived where the outsiders did not, and the clan elders gave Joshua the talisman everyone had fought and died for: an amulet of Egyptian make, which he wears to this day.
And so the year of the new millenium passed, seeing the demise of the Sabbat of the wasteland in favor of a "dark new millenium:" waves of shovelheads repackaged for the sake of convenience, with many old faces Joshua could recognize pulling the strings behind the scenes. Gehenna, it seemed, was not coming hot on the heels of the Ravnos' demise. But for himself, for the Order of Hermes, it had already come and gone. What was the end of the world waiting for? Did he really want to find out? After years of studying vampire physiology and capabilities, Joshua turned his attention to the study of vampire culture and mythology -- finally learning why they once called themselves "Cainites." It was a term that he kept, much to the chagrin of the Palatinate's Camarilla allies...