Something dead approaches. It moves with the calm of someone who already knows the outcome. It stalks as bold as a revenant lion. Bullets and threats slide off its skin, raindrops on obsidian. Eyes like the tinted windows of a luxury car, mouth like an iron maiden, smile like a blood-stained crown. Those tinted windows roll down. Its words violate you. You’ll put that gun to your head if it asks. Its voice is full of chains and meathooks. You dance like a marionette, as it leads with all the grace of storybook nobility. In obeisance and despair you realize Prince Charming is Bluebeard.

The Ventrue are rulers, yes, but more than that they’re winners. They’re the best and the darkest, the lords and generals of the night. They don’t ask, they take. You start, they finish. They come, they see, they crush.

History is written by the victors, and the Lords are always writing. Just ask. They love their histories. They will tell you how the blood of deities and kings distilled into Vitae in the cradles of civilization. They will speak of Troy — of the lares and mares, the household gods and lingering shades of the dead who protect the noble families. They will teach you how to read between the lines of the epic poem, the Aeneid. They will show you how Aeneas vs. Achilles is a metaphor for the Man vs. the Beast. They will speak of their divine inheritance: the five-fold aegis and the mastery of men and animals. Flip the pages and watch a parade of triumphant cadavers marching down the centuries. Eternity is a banquet held in their honor — wassail! wassail! — and the wine, that is the life, is ever flowing.

Let the other clans toil and trouble. The Lords shall exalt. Carpe noctem!