[b]Faction Name:[/b] Unknown
[b]Allegiance:[/b] Unknown ([url=http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Christopher_Houghton]Christopher Houghton[/url])
[b]Location:[/b] Malibu, Chateau Marmont 
[b]General Information:[/b]

For a group of immortal midnight runners, the Kindred in Los Angeles have always had short memories. Most vampires in the city have a history within LA that goes back a few decades. Maybe they were around for the riots mundane mortals blamed on racially charged conflict, likely they were around for the explosion of Camarilla and Anarch violence and mistrust. But the timeline of the City of Angels' history goes far past the recent conflicts, to the days when Los Angeles was no more than a far away outpost of the Spanish Empire. And for nearly as long as there's been a Los Angeles, there has been a shadowy group of Kindred in the shadows, using figureheads from the Anarch to the Camarilla to the Sabbat over it's long history to remain hidden from view. 

'Led' by a mere child, this shadow group built Los Angeles, established the golden age of Hollywood, and built Los Angeles into a cultural epicenter for not just the New World, but the Old World as well, using beauty and art and careful planning to accomplish their goals. Recent events in Los Angeles have escalated to the point where the secret powers behind the city have lost direct control, leaving the group in a position to pick the next 'figurehead' to throw their immense and ancient power behind. 

For so long as there is Los Angeles, those ancient few that crafted the city's growth and ensured the city's unusual balance of power will endure. 

[hider=Eva]

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/5_zps2184489d.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Eva
[b]Generation:[/b] 5th Generation (through Diablerie)
[b]Clan:[/b] Toreador 
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Auspex, Celerity, Presence
[b]Personality:[/b]

The woman known simply as 'Eva' is said to have more spirit and life than most of the living, let alone her fellow Kindred. Playful, charming, quick witted, yet typically reserved be it in public or private. Eva is a performer and storyteller, a founding figure in the behind-the-scenes power structure of Hollywood and the entertainment business based in the city. 

If confronted, Eva is likely to work for compromise and mutual understanding, having what her sire calls "a diplomat's heart." If challenged or insulted, the response from the beautiful vampire is probably going to be swift and deadly. Though she seems ever certain of herself and in control of any situation she finds herself in, those close to Eva suspect the woman has finally begun to grow restless.

And none can say what she might do to sate her restless spirit.

[b]Biography:[/b] 

The early history of the woman now known simply as 'Eva' begun in the pre-history of the New World, when life revolved around the spirits of the seasons and tribal society. Exactly how and when has been lost to time, and Eva's memory, but it wasn't long after the Catholics began to spread in what they called the land of California, after a fictional paradise ruled by Amazons, that Eva began to have consistent interaction with the Europeans. Though Eva recalls the initial contact to be peaceful and explorative in nature, the Native admits it's hard to think back to first contact without thinking of the death that followed in the wake of the Europeans. 

Eva lost her entire tribe to disease and fighting with other tribes, a great tragedy in her early mortal life that barely registers a pang in her heart anymore. Mostly due to her survival, Eva grew to learn much and more about the Europeans, their ways, and their languages. The pretty native girl became the explorer's go-to native for the area, both as guide and interpreter. It was in this role that the Ghoul of a powerful Old World vampire came across the native girl that would be perfect for the Ghoul's master. 

Taken in the dead of night, the Native would awake on a ship bound for the Old World. Eva has said it would be improper to call the Old World vampire her sire, more "a donor of immortality and the blood of the undying." Her years in the Old World were lengthy, harsh, and desperate times during her captivity by her sire. Eva thinks of them little, and speaks of them even less. Her sire slain by an enemy, Eva was left to fend for herself, and would return to the New World after decades spent touring the great cities of the Old World, including Kindred society therein. 

When Eva returned to her homeland, she found that the Europeans had been busy in chasing their imperial pursuits, a fledgling city named Los Angeles had been established by the Spanish Governor of the territory. It was there Eva would settle, beginning a long period of careful reconnaissance that would result in Eva knowing every face and name in the Valley, alive or undead. Or so she thought. Unknown to her, the Spanish leader of Los Angeles was under the influence of a vampire, a Toreador like her. A Toreador that Eva found herself connecting with quickly, both in terms of personality and their artistic visions. 

Quickly, the two began to push Los Angeles from a backwater to a destination. Whereas the Spanish Missions forced Indians to labor without compensation, the self sustained farming economy of Los Angeles boomed--in large part because the city mandated Indians be paid for their labor, doubling and tripling Los Angeles' population and turning the city into the territory's largest. After the US military took the city after the Mexican American War, the new Military Governor was quickly taken in by the small secretive group of vampires.

When Los Angeles failed to live up to the grand ideas of that group, change followed. To drag Los Angeles into a greater class of city, the situation of clean water had to be fixed; resulting in one of the largest civic projects in North American History, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was Eva's first hands on project. She was seen speaking to organizers and engineers and labor leadership, though no recorded mention of the woman would survive. The success of the Aqueduct brought new kinds of industrial success to the city, and another spike of population. 

With the success of their city, the secret group turned their attention to something that excited their Toreador artistic instincts: the new invention of moving pictures, of film movies. Through front companies and secret partnerships with mortals, the vampires would be behind the greatest early success of Hollywood, Eva herself said to have gotten a then unknown named Charlie Chaplin his opportunity to be a film star. From Silent Film Hollywood to the Golden Age of Big Studio Hollywood to the modern high-tech blockbuster driven Hollywood, Eva has had her finger on Hollywood's pressure points from it's inceptions. She has some measure of control over nearly every studio, agency, and Guild in town. 

She even holds a vote with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When the Camarilla lost their hold on Los Angeles, a hold they never truly had, Eva found her city entering a new, dangerous time. Though Eva refuses to make a drastic, overt, move she has begun making smaller moves--for the first time allowing herself to make waves in the open, despite the vulnerability in stepping away from the shadows. 

Eva fears if she does not, their city will be lost to the cold authority of the Camarilla or the madness of the Anarch...or, worse, the invasion of LA by groups nearly as good as remaining a secret as Eva's own group.

[/hider]

[hider=The Coterie]

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/abe_zps8d913ddb.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Etō Abe 
[b]Dharma Rank:[/b] 5
[b]Dharma:[/b] The Dance of the Thrashing Dragon
[b]Direction:[/b] East
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Skin Shintai, Yang Prana, Cultivation
[b]Personality:[/b]

Daring, bold, and utterly without fear--the exact opposite of the shy, timid, paranoid Abe that existed before he died and his spirit returned, with a new chance for Enlightenment that had escaped him during his life. Still as thoughtful as he ever was, and at base an introvert, the constant push and pull of his very nature is a fitting manifestation of the push and pull exerted upon his spirit by the forces of nature that go beyond mere nature to the supernatural. Though he is trying his best to drink and fuck his way through the unlife, in his current Coterie he has found an unlikely group of people with an aim for chaos and beauty that Abe finds himself drawn to, if not outright dedicated to.

Abe is cool enough to breeze into any Hollywood dance club or Malibu beach party, with charm and confidence in spades. A smooth operator, with the balls of a cat burglar. 

[b]Biography:[/b]

Born and raised in Tokyo, Eto was ever a kind, gentle, hearted boy. The kind of boy that was usually teased and bullied from the earliest grades to the completion of his education. Abe escaped into his studies and countless Mangas. After school he was hired as an accountant to a massive financial corporation based in Tokyo, where he had lived all his life in the shadow of it's crowds and towering skyscrapers. Even his co-workers mocked him for his push-over nature. Though even that was no match to the mocking he received from the few women in his life he ever dared to make a move on. 

Abe's death was no more spectacular than his life: he died because a neighbor simply didn't notice him standing next to his car, and ran over him. But when Abe returned as a member of the undead, a Kuei-jin, he returned with an explosion of confidence and life. Instantly Abe knew what his path would be, and how he could achieve Enlightenment by exploring the passions of life that had always been denied to him, sometimes denied by his own then timid nature. Never again would that be the case. 

The first thing that needed to happen, was a change in location. Abe would spend decades in Hong Kong before eventually leaving the city after watching the Matrix for the first time. All of a sudden Abe knew where he needed to be, where the stars never stopped shining and the sun never set on the glamorous life: he needed to go to Hollywood--the needed to go to Los Angeles!

It wasn't very long before Abe attached himself to a talent agency that specialized in Asian born actors and actresses. After fucking his way through the entire lineup of the agency's models and actresses, and some of the actors, Abe ran afoul when an actress he'd been with recently turned up dead; completely drained of chi. Though the local Camarilla Prince at the time was concerned of the event, it was the intervention of the prettiest woman Abe had ever seen that eventually kept his name from the Prince's inner circle. 

In gratitude, and in large part in pursuit of the woman, Abe continued a pattern of getting into trouble with his hedonistic ways just so he might run into that woman, Eva, again. After the Camarilla Prince was taken down in murderous fashion, Abe leapt at the woman's suggestion that he might join her little band of undead. Mostly to get into her skirt, but also because he liked the live and let live attitude in which she approached the city of Los Angeles. An attitude he approved of much more for his new home, LA, than the attitudes held by the Camarilla or Sabbat. 

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/ciel2_zps68984a48.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Ciel Leonie
[b]Generation:[/b] 8th Generation
[b]Clan:[/b] Caitiff
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Temporis, Thaumaturgy, Auspex
[b]Personality:[/b]

Ciel has the soul of a scientist. Her best personal assets are her abilities to wander at the natural (and later supernatural) world, to appreciate the cycles of nature and how everything and everyone has a part to play. Most of all, the width and breadth of her imagination. Outside of that, most consider Ciel to be a sociopath--even though she is not, even Ciel can understand why some people would think that. Little matters to her in the world outside her own personal fascinations and intellectual pursuits. She cares more of facts and logic than people and their (typically) flawed logic. 

While this might normally make Ciel a perfect candidate for the ordered nature of the Camarilla, her Caitiff origins leaves her with a bitter distaste in her mouth over the Camarilla and their Princes. Nor does she have an overly favorable opinion of the Sabbat, and it's brutish mentalities. Ciel admires the Anarch movement in Los Angeles, but after meeting Christopher and Eva, Ciel sees just how Los Angeles has been able to execute Princes and primogens and keep on ticking without a hitch unlike any other city in the world's history. 

[b]Biography:[/b]

No one knows much about the Caitiff known as Ciel Leonie. Some believe she may have been a European aristocrat, others that she was once a Southern Belle at the height of the Antebellum period. No one can speak to the circumstances of her Embrace, and none have come forward claiming to be her sire. Ciel herself has always refused to comment on the matter of her origins, except for private wonderings that she has never shared with anyone. Trust has always been an issue for Ciel, not entirely surprising for someone who started her unlife abandoned and alone without an understanding. 

Initially Ciel used her knowledge of popular culture and mythologies to guesstimate that she had been turned into a vampire. After all, the fangs seemed to be the final piece of evidence in which she simply could not dispute. After a fragile mental state that persisted throughout the traumatic events, Ciel eventually began to use her intuition and personal intelligence to gain stability and safety, including a move to Las Vegas during the boom of it's Mafioso golden age. 

Eventually Ciel found her own lusts and desires distracting her from her studies and thinking, requiring her to go out and eventually run across other vampires--or Kindred, as she quickly learned from observation that they referred themselves. It was at a Rant that Ciel first encountered Kindred society, and at a Rant where she would meet a gorgeous Toreador with a connection to Frank Sinatra. For the first time in her unlife, Ciel felt safe around another Kindred, though her scientific soul kept her a distance from that Kindred for decades until an attack on her from minions of the Vegas Prince drove Ciel into the arms, and Coterie, of the Toreador she'd met so many decades before at an Anarch Rant in Las Vegas. 

This is the first Coterie of her unlife, and Ciel believes she could not have picked a stranger one if God himself had intervened. But for someone driven by their curiosity and imagination, Ciel finds herself fascinated with her new Coterie, to say nothing of her Coterie's ability to sate every lust and desire she ever shares, keeping those distractions from interrupting her studies. 

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/shaka_zpsab895892.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Shaka Jonze
[b]Generation:[/b] 9th Generation
[b]Clan:[/b] Brujah
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Celerity, Potence, Dominate 
[b]Personality:[/b]

Shaka Jonze is, at his core, a chameleon that manages his various lives and multi-faceted personality with a desperate dexterity. He's made thuggery-as-resistance appealing, urging others to be loud and wild and reckless. He never tries "rise above" the way things are. He is not trying to "be better.", most comfortable when he knows people want to kill him, when he loves the thrill of not fearing anyone. He is free when he doesn't give a fuck about anything, including continuing his own life, when he feels like the world--for a change--is his.

There are few Shaka holds real loyalty to, only the loyalty of his thugs and the gang. Among the Kindred of LA there is only the loyalty of the Coterie to him. 

[b]Biography:[/b]

Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Compton, few know the streets of LA better than Shaka. His father and uncles were members of the Black Panthers, his cousins blood sworn members of the Crip massive street gang engaged in a bitter war with rival gang the Bloods. In a game, as Shaka has explained, "where you either dealt or used, I decided early on I'd be a dealer and not a user." By the time he was in high school Shaka was a well known rapper in the growing scene of LA's gangsta rap. When the King riots exploded in Los Angeles, Shaka was pulled into the Crip/Bloods conflict.

Though he would go on to become a leader in the Crip gang, his successful underground rap career turned Shaka into a figure that could talk to either side of the conflict. Seeing an opportunity, the gang of Kindred that secretly controlled many of the great street gangs of Los Angeles targetted Shaka for the unlife, assuming he would make an excellent mouth piece and pawn. 

Instead within a few years of his unlife, Shaka was already beginning to win supporters from the older, more powerful Kindred in control of the vampiric gang. When he faced certain Final Death at the hands of powerful enemies, Shaka found his thug ass saved by a pretty woman that seemed to know way too much about way too many people. Hard to impress as Shaka has always been, the Kindred calling herself 'Eva' impressed him that day. Enough for Shaka to form an alliance with the woman; with her help, Shaka could take over the vampiric gang for once and for all. In return, Shaka would use the gangs (both Kindred and street types) as eyes and ears and foot soldiers for the woman's agenda. An agenda that focused on Los Angeles remaining the unique haven it had always been; the kind of shit Shaka Jonze could get behind.

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/miranda_zps24788902.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Miranda 'Mandy' West
[b]Generation:[/b] 8th Generation
[b]Clan:[/b] Lasombra 
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Dominate, Obtenebration, Potence
[b]Personality:[/b]

Even tempered, intelligent, and measured: Mandy West is every bit the sweet Jewish girl in unlife as she was in life, although her warmth and girlish charms aren't always as genuine in the unlife as they had been in life. A melancholy persists deep within Mandy West, one never seen by anyone except for the very rare few that she lets that close. Despite this bittersweet mix, even those close to Mandy typically only see the positive attitude 'can-do' girl. Even inside the intimate, comfortable, protection of the Coterie Mandy can be shy; except with Eva, with whom she shares a connection so close even members of the Coterie joke they think Mandy and Eva share a blood bond and just don't tell anyone. 

Outside her personal life, Mandy West is the Jewish girl that ran her father's company, heavily expanding it and turning it into a national force: she is cut throat, she is determined, and she is highly skilled in communications. Now she helps run several important corporate Boards in Hollywood. Like the rest of her Coterie, Mandy wants Los Angeles to remain as it is, and as it has always been: free. She genuinely considers Hollywood and it's movie industry to be so universally loved that Los Angeles should be left a neutral zone.

[b]Biography:[/b]

Mandy likes to say not much of her life matters anymore, and generally speaking she means it quite a bit, although she still has a soft spot for the Jews of the world. She fondly recalls her parents and her life, but it's all become a happy dream that comes to her in clips and phrases. A memory born too long in the past to be fully remembered. Her only real tie to her life is her business portfolio, where she has managed to retained access to a presence in several industries she sees as key, maybe most important in Los Angeles being her Banks and her Import/Export buisness, with the most warehouse space on the entire west coast, and exclusive deals with the Port of Los Angeles--acquired only through Eva's help. 

Though she is far from young, being Embraced at the end of the 18th century, Mandy is still new to the West Coast. She was able to avoid conflict in New York City, carving out a niche as an independent friendly to the Camarilla, and anyone else, for that matter--save for the Sabbat. Her sire has called Mandy's Embrace the best decision he ever made; admitting the girl is "a much finer quality person that I ever was or will be." Considering the difficulties and bad choices in her sire's life, this seems a sad but true statement. The only time Mandy has ever felt rage was after her Embrace, something she did not want from someone she did not want it from. 

Feeling victimized and wanting to avoid further conflict, her status as a Lasombra was overlooked until she openly refused the branch of Lasombra antitribu working within the Camarilla. At that point it became clear to her she was on someone's hit list, and it was time to get out of town. At a movie premiere in Manhattan, distracted with paranoia and unable to enjoy herself, as much as she loved movies, Mandy ran into a tall exotic beauty that seemed to sparkle, and not just for the diamonds she wore. Faster than she'd ever expected, Mandy found herself telling this exotic woman all her problems. When the woman revealed herself to be in a position to help Mandy relocate to the Hollywood Hills, Mandy jumped at the opportunity for safety in a dream location as opposed to danger in New York City.

[img=http://i1203.photobucket.com/albums/bb396/rubixon/samkat2_zpsfefbe635.jpg]

[b]Name:[/b] Samantha Hart
[b]Generation:[/b] Ghoul
[b]Disciplines:[/b] Celerity, Auspex, Presence
[b]Age:[/b] 22
[b]Personality:[/b]

Samantha Hart is a humbled soul; having gone through some of the worst case, and humiliating, circumstances a Mid-Western country girl that left home to gamble on a career in Hollywood can go through. Such an experience has left Samantha infinitely wiser than she was when she first arrived to LA, and as such Samantha can sometimes be the infamous prototypical Los Angeles resident; shallow, jaded, and cynical. 

Though Samantha would admit there was little of the heartfelt Midwestern humanity left to her after years of abuse, in the years following her 'freedom', Sam has found her humanity coming back to her a little bit at a time. 

Holds an addictive personality that she has learned to get a grasp on the hard way; a painkillers addiction followed a cocaine addiction--all of which was overshadowed when a young vampire forced upon her an addiction to vampire blood. Though Samantha has managed to kick her past addictions, she sometimes gets into trouble with alcohol, to say nothing of her current addiction to the blood of the vampire that 'freed' her. 

Vampires don't seem to scare her much, even if she admits they should.

[b]Biography:[/b]

The daughter of a small town pastor and a small time model turned born again Christian, Samantha Hart grew up in Small Town, USA. She would call her childhood happy and fulfilling, and in recent years had admitted she acted entitled and naive when she declared she would not simply get a man, have a baby, and become just another girl working at Wal-Mart that never could escape the small town in which she raised. Her entire life people had told Samantha how pretty she was, and by her Senior year she had to drop cheerleading in order to meet all the modeling requirements she had.

Surely if she could get paid to model wedding dresses and summer fashions for local boutiques she could make it as a model or actress in Los Angeles? Today, Samantha admits it ironic her favorite film was Pretty Woman: a tale about a girl who'd gone to LA with dreams and ended up street walking. But Samantha had much more success than that; her first month in LA she'd gotten a job as a model. She felt as if she were on top of the world, the star of her very own reality TV show. That the modeling agency was in truth a high priced escort agency that took young girls new to LA looking to 'make it', got them addicted to free clothes, free high fashion living, and any drug the girl wanted to numb the pain--so long as she did what they told her to do, and with whom they told her to do it.

It was a mere few months in that hell that Samantha thought a kind, older, wealthy man she'd met at a charity function on the arm of some wealthy John would take her away from it all. And he did; but never could Sam imagine that she'd simply traded one sort of abusive dependence for blood bonded slavery. Samantha lost count of the days and the weeks and the months she spent under the vampire's control. Her sharpest memory is of the day the vampire woman came into her life, and did take away her away from all the abuse and pain.

This woman, Eva, offered to give Samantha's life back to her. According to Eva, the road would be painful and long, but eventually Samantha would be free of influences both narcotic or supernatural. In the end, with Sam unwilling to lose the incredible sensations of vampire blood, the two women agreed on a compromise: Samantha would serve Eva, not in the master-slave dynamic of the prior vampire, but in many ways like just another pretty assistant to a high powered executive. The opportunity represents Sam's first real 'job' in Los Angeles, one she is paid for. Though Sam spends all her time at the Chateau or in Eva's Malibu estate or the Hollywood Hills complex, she has her own little apartment to call home.

It's not the jet setting life of a model, or the glamour of a Hollywood actress, but it's real. Even if supernatural. Add into it the jet setting life of a model and glamour of a Hollywood starlet are all part of her job at the side of Hollywood's most powerful, and little known, figure. For once in her life, Samantha Hart may have just lucked out. Now all she has to do is avoid becoming the undead, or just another dead mortal pawn in the game played by all of LA's vampires. 

As a means of creating stability in her life and a connection between them, Samantha requested Eva dub her 'off limits' to all other Kindred in the city. Though vampires don't seem to bother her, Samantha has been known to become possessive of Eva when it comes to other mortals. That most that see her walking down the street assume her to be a gold digging bimbo airhead no longer bothers her. If anything, these days, she's more likely to act the part to throw people off than be offended by it. 

[/hider]