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!// ---- Clan Ventrue has not known a better era than this since the height of the Roman Empire. Paradise City recalls older names in the minds of their elders. //Alexandria. Carthage. Camarilla//. Has there ever been such a glorious monument to power, domination, and decadence as this modern day Sodom? It also fails to recall the whispered names that ended the previous reign of the Julii. But right now Rome isn't burning so there's no shame in fiddling away. Paradise City is rife with opportunities for the Lords and the halls of power are open to those with the acumen, the willpower, and the temerity to seize it. From the top of Upper Paradi to the streets of Lower, someone has to be in charge, and in the undead world, that someone may as well be a Lord. From CEO to gang leader, the Ventrue still run the gamut of backgrounds, but all of them share a common desire to be masters of their own destinies. Paradi City is history in the making and the Lords plan to be there for each moment of it, distilling their Blood into the ink with which it's written. That one of their own is High Prince only highlights to younger Ventrue how high they could climb with the right experience, daring, and allies. Equally perilous is the long drop downwards if they fail, but large risks earn large rewards for those willing to take advantage of their moment, when it comes.