The Chicago Chronicle, subtitled Chicago by Night, was a play-by-post Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle that ran from February 2006 through December 2011, with an epilogue written in November 2015. It was played via asynchronous forum posting and writing at the Chicago by Night forum website. It was a semi-closed game, allowing new players only on approval from its admins.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Theme
The themes of Chicago by Night revolve around the rapidly destabilizing vampire political situation in Chicago, a city simultaneously one of the most influential in the Americas and still considered a backwater by most of vampire society at large, where the action echoes the upheaval going on around the country.
Themes explored in this game include:
| Down in Flames War and peace are actually friends who mock us. |
Characters must face the fact that some things have been, or are about to be, irreparably destroyed, and that they must build something new in order to survive. |
| Enemy of My Enemy A king is called friend or enemy not by the deeds of his arm or decrees of his throne but by where he stands upon the borderlands. |
Characters must form alliances, often with dangerous or unpredictable forces, and decide if the price of doing so is worth what they stand to gain. |
| The Ones We Love Love: the most beautiful of dreams, the most terrible of nightmares. |
Characters must recognize and deal with the pain they have caused their loved ones, whether through violence, absence, or destruction of their lives. |
| Secret Identities Little streets and little houses, all of them the same; little boys and little girls and not one of them will ever guess our names. |
Many characters are not what they seem, with hidden identities, clans, relationships, and even species that have far-reaching consequences on events. |
Plot
The Domain of Chicago, IL, under the control of the Brujah Prince Alphonse Capone, is the central location and power bloc around which events of the game revolve.
Politics
Chicago is a hotbed of political intrigue, upheaval, and outright warfare. The Prince feuds with the nearby Ventrue-controlled domain of Gary, Indiana, which he wants to annex as part of his territory; the local Anarch movement is powerful and seeks to turn Chicago into their first major midwestern Domain; Independent factions intentionally destabilize the city from within while the Sabbat war offensive circles it in hopes of destroying its vampires utterly. Within the Camarilla, the Circle plots to wrest power from the Prince for their own gain, building huge edifices of power through commerce and human political connections, while outside of it, the fallout of the failed Anarch revolt of New Haven dogs the city and vengeance-fueled quests for destruction and personal vendettas threaten to destroy all progress.
Over the course of the Chicago Chronicle, elders were impersonated in order to investigate their whereabouts, Independent Speakers were ejected from Primogen Council meetings before being allowed to return later, and the Council was in a constant uproar of changing membership and jockeying with the Prince for control. Eventually, the Prince was betrayed by his own Cabinet members and destroyed, the power vacuum quickly filled by a succession of ambitious ancilla including the Anarch sympathizer Ian Kross, and the city finally conquered by the Sabbat and thoroughly destroyed, prompting its surviving members to flee to other safe havens.
Social & Supernatural Plots
Social plots are complex and often rely on the established alliances and relationships among the vampires in residence. Among other things, the Setites of Albuquerque destabilized the city in pursuit of escaped prisoners they desperately wanted to recover, elders and sires who felt ownership for the city's population frequently attempted to remove, remand, or destroy them to save face, and characters struggled with Sect membership, with many moving from Camarilla, Anarch, or Sabbat and back.
In addition to the surface-level exploits of the city's residents, huge forces lurked in the depths beneath Chicago, including the slow-moving but vicious feud between torpid Methuselahs Helena and Menele, their agents upon the earth above, and behind all the demon Gulfora, whose mere presence in the city increased the emotions, passions, and defeats of those around her to a fever pitch.
Players
| Anne Myers Genevieve d'Joie Ginevra Bianchi Jehoshaphat Walker Maeve Glaistig Tungsten Phillips |
Annie Triplett Arianna Popesco Claudia Danut Colin Thomas Doc Evelyn Summerfield Ian Kross Jacque Beaumont Jean Claude Danut Lawrence Wilson Richard Augustine Zen Pentecost |
Clare Coe Gabrielle Kalija |
| Connie Hume Kiera Uplander |
Corwen Baker David Stevens |
Dave Hamlet Pagliaccio |
| Frances Rowat Bellini St. Germain Jenny Ginetti |
Ian Hume Chason Wells Draven Blake Serin Darkhome |
John McIntosh Dominic Vaughn Paige Black Pham Hong Viktor Alexandrov |
| Jon Huizar Malefortuna Giovanni Nakhti |
Kat Thomas Daniela Graff |
Keileigh Alford Kaylani MacGregor |
| Monique Mooney Zhora Jones |
Teresa Thomerson Gentle Wind |
Tom McCoy Johnny Dirnt Mickey McCann Penumbrius |