The New Haven Chronicle, subtitled New Haven: Dust to Dust, was a background Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle that was designed and written to take place before the Chicago Chronicle. It was played via flashback posts in ongoing chronicles taking place after its time, particularly the Chicago Chronicle and the DC Chronicle, with its events informing the behavior and goals of characters continuing into later games.
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Theme
The themes of New Haven: Dust to Dust revolve around the volatile political landscape of New Haven, Connecticut, a small city in the center of the contested New England Domains, where Camarilla, Anarchs, and Sabbat all fight for dominance in a state of constant standoff.
Themes explored in this game include:
| Et Tu? Yet each man kills the thing he loves: the coward with a kiss and the brave man with a sword. |
Inevitable betrayals plague the characters, not only as they are betrayed by their allies but as they must decide who among their friends they will in turn betray themselves. |
| Haves and Have-Nots Only in stories does it end in pleasing tragedy; in life it grinds on and on and on and on. |
Characters must confront the power abuses of the Camarilla while deciding whether the unstable and dangerous worlds of the Anarchs or Sabbat are actually any better. |
| The House Always Wins If you play long enough and you never change the stakes the house always wins. The house takes you. |
Characters must struggle against and survive (or not) in a world where the powerful among them inevitably succeed and take what they want to, no matter how they try to fight or plead with them. |
Plot
The Domain of New Haven, CT, under the control of Toreador Prince Jean le Marchand, is the central location and power bloc around which events of the game revolve.
Politics
New Haven is among the most precarious of Domains, situated in the middle of the hotly contested New England area where the Sabbat are constantly on the move and only a few steps away from the enormous city of New York. Influential because of its Ivy League schools and the old money that live around them, New Haven is in a constant state of trying to rival its sister city of New York, which leads to competition between the two cities that can range anywhere from friendly to aggressively violent.
Over the course of the New Haven Chronicle, the Prince suffered from a debilitating mental illness that caused him to become more and more unstable and cruel, executing members of the city according to his whims and causing serious concern over his ability to protect his Domain. As a result of these and other abuses, the Anarchs, led by Baron Ian Kross, successfully conquered the city and destroyed its Prince, making it the only major Anarch city on the east coast for a brief period of time. Eventually, however, the new Anarch state was destroyed from within by Camarilla infiltrators and from without by military shock troops, and the city was once again conquered, this time to become annexed as part of the Camarilla Domain of Boston. Sabbat who had been conquered in the first wave of violence largely relocated to the warfronts in New York, while the handful of remaining Anarchs, deprived of their leader, were routed and dispersed across the United States.
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 House of Aurelius suffered severe internal fighting over unorthodox Embraces and defections to the Anarchs, love affairs and friendships were shattered by the revolving door of betrayals as different sects took power, and the depredations of the Sabbat saw a large number of local vampires killed or permanently damaged.
In the supernatural realm, the proximity of the powerful artifacts held in the Harvard museums gave rise to several incursions by creatures from other worlds, including the Demon Thralian and the Nephandi Mage Artemis Persepolis, both of whom contributed to the city's inability to stabilize by very directly damaging the fabric of reality underlaying it.
Players
| Annie Triplett Colin Thomas Hope Gutierrez Ian Kross Marcus Aurelius Rosalina de Leon Vincent Kincaid |
Jason Addison Jackson Trapp Jimmy Francetti Xander Savage |
Karla Artis Mila Kross Mimi Rosano Vanessa Keasley |