Getting on the List

It's not easy to get on the Red List. There are all sorts of monsters among the Kindred, and to achieve the sort of sick fame that demands the title "Anathema" takes time, effort and a truly warped set of actions. It is only the worst of the worst that make it onto the list, the vampires whose whispered names freeze even elders' blood.

In order to put a name on the List, the justicars of two clans must agree to prosecute this action, one bringing the name of the potential Anathema forward and the other witnessing the fact. The vampire's crimes are then read to the assembled justicars and other witnesses, and unless anyone can mount a sufficient objection (an unlikely event), the document of Anathema is signed and a new name is added to the list. Once a vampire is put on the Red List, the only way off is death.

The Camarilla At War

According to official Camarilla doctrine, the Sabbat does not exist. After all, the Camarilla claims hegemony over all vampires, including those who don's want any part of the sect. Technically, then, the vampires of the self-proclaimed Sabbat are really just members of the Camarilla in massive denial of their true affiliation.

Needless to say, expounding on this question of logistics while a Sabbat pack is pouring into your haven, guns blazing, is about as effective a defensive tactic as putting a bag over your head and shouting, "Nanny nanny boo boo." Either is a good way to get turned into a small pile of ash posthaste.

Regardless of the technicalities, the Sabbat is out there - as are the Lupines, Cathayans, the Risen Dead and any number of other enemies, all hell-bent on the destruction of the Camarilla. As a result, the Camarilla has been forced to create tactics and strategies for every contingency from a full-scale Sabbat invasion of a city to the extraction of a prisoner already buried up to her eyeballs for Creation Rites. Declared or not, the Camarilla is in a war - a constant war for its very survival - and if its methods of defending itself aren's up to snuff, then the sect is doomed.

Make no mistake, the Camarilla's approach on the battlefield is effective. The sect has lasted half a millennium, after all, even in the face of constant assaults. The recent reverses the Camarilla has suffered notwithstanding, the sect's generals and tacticians know what they're doing, and are very, very good at what they do.

They have to be. The price of failure is extermination.

Strategies

Offense

On a grand scale, the Camarilla's strategy is much the same as the Roman Empire's was - the idea is to make the world Camarilla, to assimilate rather than conquer. Ergo, the Camarilla doesn't mount offensives, and doesn't seek to take Sabbat cities by storm. That's not the Camarilla way - for one thing, open combat in the streets is akin to taking the Masquerade out back and shooting it. For another, it is a truism that while the average Camarilla vampire is older, stronger and more powerful than the average Sabbat vampire, on any given battlefield there are going to be a lot more Sabbat vampires than there are Camarilla ones. Numbers will tell, and in stand-up fights, too often Camarilla vampires get swamped by the sheer weight of the opposition.

So, instead, on those rare occasions when it's on the offensive, the Camarilla resorts to subtler techniques. Often, Camarilla offensives work through mortal and ghoul pawns. A favorite tactic is to locate a neighborhood in a Sabbat city that is home to a particularly annoying pack, buy up the real estate and pour money into a high-profile "urban renewal" project there. A few ghouls get tucked into the construction crew to clear out any "obstacles" to the project, and voila, the Camarilla takes the pack's haven and stomping grounds out from under them and buries them - along with a member of the pack or three - under tons of nice, shiny new concrete and steel. The idea behind this, and other, similar tactics is to crowd the Sabbat back, neighborhood by neighborhood, taking out handfuls of combat effectives each time. The process is efficient, quiet and deadly, and when done properly serves to eliminate the Sabbat advantage in numbers. By the time the constriction finishes, the Sabbat leadership is boxed in without reinforcements and can be picked off from a position of strength.

In a nutshell, the Camarilla's ultimate offensive strategy is nothing more than a process of slow subsumption, rather than fast assault. Pitched battles tend to make the mortals paranoid (or dead), often spark riots and other catastrophes among the kine that make it difficult to keep a city functioning, and lead to massive conflagrations that can make vampiric existence extremely unpleasant. It's far better from every perspective to strangle the Sabbat out of a city and have a city left behind afterward.

Defense

Unfortunately, there are few occasions these days when the Camarilla can afford to go on the offensive. While Europe's perpetual stalemate plods on toward the millennium, fierce battles are raging in North America, and the Camarilla is losing them. On the East Coast, the Sabbat is taking city after city, going on the offensive after years of tentative aggression. On the West Coast, the so-called Anarch Free States (ultimately friendly to the Camarilla, for all their bluster) are being overrun by Cathayan invaders, and to the south squats the Sabbat stronghold of Mexico City. North lie the endless forests and acres of tundra that the remaining Lupines call home. In North America, the Camarilla is in a box, one that's getting smaller all the time.

With the situation as dire as it is, the Camarilla is determined to hold on to every last inch of ground that it can. The sect's strategy is primarily a defensive one these days, and one that is in some senses hamstrung by the necessity of maintaining the Masquerade and otherwise upholding the Traditions, even in the midst of war. A defense of a city that blows the lid off the vampiric presence is worse than losing the city to the Sabbat; no single city is worth the price of irrevocably breaking the Camarilla's oldest and most sacred Tradition. Such a move would, in the end, cost the Camarilla the city in any case, and the rest of the world not long after.

So the cordon must be drawn and the perimeter established early. If the Sabbat never sets foot in a city, there's no chance that the Masquerade will be broken by those defending the city from the Sabbat. Rather than focusing on driving the Sabbat out of occupied territories, the Camarilla prefers to do its utmost to keep its enemies from infesting any more of its territory. An ounce of prevention is worth several pounds of cure, especially under these circumstances.

Moreover, the Camarilla's strategy is predicated on big pictures, not little ones. Individuals, apart from rare exceptions, are ultimately expendable; cities and real estate are more important. Vampires are, in the end, replaceable. A Camarilla vampire who is captured should not expect rescue; the Camarilla's strategists learned the hard way that it's not worth losing three vampires and a half-dozen highly trained ghouls just to get a single prisoner out. These days the Sabbat doesn't even bother kidnapping Kindred for bait, except when the head of the local Camarilla forces is extremely inexperienced or gullible. The place and the sect are what matter in Camarilla strategies, not the individual. In the end, the Sabbat must be kept out of the cities and the sect must be maintained; all else must in the end be sacrificed to that goal.

Дата добавления: 2015-12-08