Vloei Bloed
Camarilla
The Camarilla controls Durban. The Anarchs never posed a serious threat. Though the average age of the city’s elders actually number them as ancilla, Blood Bonds and choice enforcers help keep them in power. Besides, as the city matures, so do the interests of the Kindred. Every year, one or more Anarchs quit the gangs and swear their fealty to the Prince. As the Rack is gradually gentrified, the heyday of pub-dragging sets. The Prince likes to fondly quote Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Key Locations
In the Durban Central district overlooking Durban Harbour stands the venerable and exclusive Durban Club Manor. Here is the prime Elysium and haven of the Prince. The Primogen gather here for meetings and Kindred seeking to honor the Traditions come to this place. The Rack lies only a few miles to the north. While the Anarchs claim that territory, it is the prime hunting grounds for all Kindred in the city. The mortals call the Rack the Golden Mile, for it is door-to-door nightclubs, bars, and lounges of all sorts. Prostitution and white-collar drug use is common, despite the gentrification efforts that put the dives out of business and replaced them with fancier “nouveau” after-hours locales.
Clan Structure
Ventrue dominate and always have, with a close guiding relationship with the Toreador (the Prince and Primogen are supposedly a couple). The Camarilla are entirely white or mixed—that mixed heritage being of Asian descent, not black. There is one exception: the Sheriff is an old Gangrel of Zulu ethnicity who looks like a lion-man thanks to old battle frenzies (and rumor has it among some circles that he participated in the massacre of the Ajaba Court alongside the Simba). There are no other exceptions regardless of clan due to the pact with the Lupines. Should a black Cainite come from out of country, the Prince would immediately banish him, as the Lupines do not ask questions and would assume the offender was a violation of the pact. Effectively, a kind of apartheid still exists for the Camarilla in Durban, one of necessity and fear. Beyond the typical ruling clans, the Tremere established a chantry not far west of the Durban Club. Some Gangrel besides the Sheriff exist here, as do a handful of Malkavians and Nosferatu.
Rules
The Traditions are all upheld. The Lupine Pact has declared all black people in the entire province of KwaZulu-Natal as off-limits for either food, ghouling, or the Embrace.
Sabbat
The Sabbat has no presence in Durban after being driven out by a unified Camarilla and Anarch effort.
Anarchs & Autarkis
Anarchs have a substantial presence in Durban after breaking from the Prince’s rule following the establishment of apartheid. The dissolution of apartheid government, Truth & Reconciliation—none of that has changed the Anarchs’ mind. After all, the Lupine Pact still exists. The Anarchs have only loosely established gangs, mostly on that strip of the city jutting into the bay, known as the Golden Mile. Gang names include the Groenhoede, the Blood Wedge, and the Fracasso. Most feel, look, and dress as if they were stuck in the 1970s anarcho-punk scene. Many talk and act like it, too, as if hoping to bring it back en vogue and reinvigorate their ailing numbers.
The Anarchs broke from the Camarilla in Durban because of the Lupine Pact. They continue to feed off and occasionally Embrace indigenous people as they see fit, seeing that somehow as a blessing to the locals to be treated “equally” as victims. The Prince for his part has made a deal with the urban Lupines (rural Lupines do not know of it and would not honor it but also aren’t likely to be in a situation where it matters, by virtue of their rurality). That deal is this: any black Kindred, or Kindred victimizing blacks, found on the Golden Mile, or anywhere else in the city are considered to be renegades, and the Lupines may do as they please to them. As a consequence, urban Lupines occasionally undertake what the Camarilla coined as the “Golden Hunt”. Anarchs perish and the Camarilla clamps down on the Masquerade and all is well.
Kuei-jin
One last group does not fit into the Prince’s plans: the Hungry Dead. These Cathayans may be of South Asian persuasion but they’re still Kuei-jin. It began with a single “pilgrim” 130 years ago. Then the pilgrim had a pupil. Then another. Next thing the Prince knew, the Kuei-jin had a full Wu. That Corpse-Family only steadily grew over the decades, as immigration of South Asians continued into Durban at a high and steady rate. The Kin-jin couldn’t figure it out: where did they all come from? But they didn’t know that so many immigrants could and did import their diaspora culture, too. That culture transmission even birthed new paths across the spirit worlds (to which the Children of Caine are pathetically oblivious), enabling new Urns to rise among the immigrants, dig themselves up from their graves, and be tamed as new hin for the Court.
And a Court these South Asian Kuei-jin formed, naming it Pavitr Chehara ka Darabaar (“Court of the Holy Face”). Here, Hindi and Buddhist and Muslim and other religions traditions suborned their mortal beliefs under the Fivefold Way and the Dharmic Paths of Xue. For nearly a century and a half, this small diaspora Court has thrived far from India. Its members are intimately focused on the Road Back. Politics are of little interest. This is not an outpost of the Quincux or Japanese uji. Conquest is not a goal.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t pay attention. Their survival depends on awareness, especially in this foreign land.
Key Locations
North of Durban proper in the resort town of Umhlanga, the Umhlanga Hindu Society Hall stands. This suburban area seems entirely innocuous, which suits these Kuei-jin just fine. The Hall is a recently built temple; it was discreetly built over an old, forgotten, primitive well the Zulu dug some centuries ago. When they sold this parcel of land to colonists, the locals threw the earthen and clay bases of their pagan shrines into the bottom of the abandoned well. It became a source of power, tragic and damned though it may be, providing the Kuei-jin who came to settle here a Level 2 Dragon Nest. The Chi is accessed by meditating at any of the various Tamil Hindi shrines built throughout the temple.
Dharmic Structure
The Kuei-jin of the Court of the Holy Face are almost entirely from the Bijali Courts of (Southern) India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Hun-heavy and Balanced Dharma dominate: the Way of the Resplendent Crane and Path of the 1,000 Whispers primarily, but Flame of the Rising Phoenix and even a few Faces of the Gods count among these vampires, as the Bijali do not share the same prejudices against the “heretical” Dharma.
Rules
While the Fivefold Way guides the Court, there is also the unspoken rule against hunting for Chi “outside one’s community”. This has nothing to do with offending the Sunset People (or the hengeyokai who dwell in Hawaan not far to the north) but rather common-sense avoidance of both Western and African distractions and complications. One may even wonder why this Court came to this place. What the Ancestor’s original pilgrimage may have once entailed is now mystery. But it cannot be denied that with so many South Asian immigrants, many will take the Second Breath, and who would guide them if not the Kuei-jin?
Note that advancement through the ranks of Court and Dharma vary from the Quincux. Strict and challenging tests are given at each “Gate”, as well as proper social graces demonstrated. The leader of the Court accepts Ancestor or Brahmin as his title.
The Court of the Holy Face has little truck with the Yin or Yang Worlds, preferring to leave the local spirits alone. Likewise, the court has no business with other shen, including the doomed Kin-jin whom they are instructed to avoid and leave alone. The Camarilla and Anarchs both seem content to do the same in return. An undeclared “see no evil, hear no evil” truce exists.
