1000 years of Blood, Conquest and the Wall

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History of Carlisle, Kindred and Kine:

The earliest recorded inhabitants of the land which now plays host to the city of Carlisle were the Carvetti tribe of Brythonic Celts, who dwelt in what would become Cumbria during the pre-Roman iron age. The settlement which existed in the place of modern Carlisle was known as Luguvalion, meaning “the strong place of Lugus” (Lugus being a local Celtic deity). Mortal history records little of this time in the county’s existence, and Kindred history records even less. Doubtless life among the Carvetti was harsh, and mortality rates high. If vampires existed in the county at this point, they likely did so only in small numbers and without organisation. The lupines were strong and numerous during this period of history, and those of the werewolves who hailed from the Pictish tribes to the north were especially ferocious. Iron age Cumbria was not a hospitable place for the children of Caine.

This began to change in AD72, when Roman armies arrived and built a timber fort on the site. Forcible assimilation of the Brythonic Carvetii into Roman culture began, and the city’s named was Latinised to Luguvalium. While Roman organisation and tactical brilliance proved more than a match for the Celts, the same could not be said for the Picts who lived in what is now Scotland. The savage raiders from the north took a steady toll upon the Roman forces stationed in the county, not least due to the activities of the furious werewolves who lived among the Pictish ranks. Emperor Hadrian’s solution was to build a great wall across the border, which proved more than adequate for its purpose. The original Luguvalium timber fortress was destroyed in AD 103, and replaced with a second wooden fort. This was in turn replaced with a stone fortress in AD 165, which is when vampires first began to exist here in any meaningful numbers.

Arriving in the wake of Roman expansion, Vampires of Clans Ventrue, Brujah, Nosferatu, Gangrel and Lasombra began to settle in the steadily-flourishing town. Romano-British occupation of Luguvalium remained largely unbroken, and the vampires who dwelt here found the town to be to their liking. Although lupines were still strong in the surrounding countryside, the children of Caine had organisation and the expansion of mortal civilisation on their side. The settlement continued to flourish throughout the first Millennium AD. In 1092 William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, ordered the construction of a major Castle here. At this point the city had become known as Caer Luel, as old Celtic naming conventions had fallen back into use following the withdrawal of the Romans from the British isles. Caer Luel had developed into an important military stronghold, as it was the last English town before the wild lands of Scotland. While the Kingdom of Scotland refused to submit to force of arms, however, the influence of the Roman Catholic Church continued its inexorable march north.

Under the reign of King Edward I – the so-called “Hammer of the Scots” – Carlisle became an important staging point for the military subjugation of Scotland. During this period the majority of Carlisle’s Lasombra vampires moved north, re-establishing themselves in the shadows of Scottish Catholicism. The vampire Prince of Carlisle at this point was the powerful Baron Nathaniel, a Brujah of the 5th Generation and vassal of the Methuselah God-Prince Mithras of London. Nathaniel invested himself heavily in protecting Carlisle, using his powerful influence over the minds and hearts of mortals to ensure that the best available commanders be given authority over the city’s military capability. In 1315, Robert the Bruce led his armies in an attack upon Carlisle, using siege ladders in the effort to get his troops over the stone walls. Leading the city’s defence was the brilliant Andrew Harclay, the first Earl of Carlisle. Under Harclay’s command, the armies of Robert were repelled, though the siege would leave lasting marks upon the city. A handful of Kindred had travelled south alongside Robert’s forces, and among these was a young Gangrel ancilla called William Balfour. When the besieging army was defeated, Balfour chose to stay in Carlisle and swear fealty to Baron Nathaniel.

The early fifteenth century was a time of upheavals for the Kindred of Carlisle. The Anarch Revolt had begun and vampires warred nightly among themselves, with rebellious childer attempting to destroy their own Sires. Baron Nathaniel was beginning to feel the pull of the Methuselah’s Thirst, and his own court started to fear his appetites. Nathaniel at this time found himself increasingly in opposition with his own Nosferatu Primogen, an elder known as Nest. As their rivalry began to escalate, many resident Kindred thought that only a madman would seek to directly oppose the ancient Brujah. It looked as though Nathaniel would be impossible to depose, until news of some slight made by Nathaniel against Mithras found its way into the court of London. When the enraged Ventrue Methuselah came to Carlisle in person, Nathaniel retaliated by confronting the Prince of London in single combat. If the Brujah believed that his tremendous strength and speed would allow him to defeat the three thousand-year-old Ventrue, he was sorely mistaken. Mithras smote him into dust, and left his descendant Granville Smith in Carlisle to act as a “Warden” in case Nathaniel’s bloodline had any foolish ideas of revenge. Nest, meanwhile, quietly retreated into the shadows, and lent his support to William Balfour as Nathaniel’s successor. Balfour assumed the throne, and took the Scottish title of “Laird” rather than the traditional “Prince”.

While the Anarch Revolt and the subsequent Catholic Inquisition ravaged the Kindred populace of Europe, the British Isles remained relatively serene. The nascent Anarch Movement found little sympathy in Carlisle, and the Lasombra of Scotland were too busy warring among themselves to be a threat to the city. William Balfour was present at the Convention of Thorns in 1493 when the Camarilla was founded, and from there it looked as if Carlisle’s Kindred would remain solidly under Camarilla govern. The sixteenth century saw William Balfour’s power and respect as Laird increase tremendously. The Gangrel proved to have remarkable political competence, and steadily worked himself into a position where none of his court’s elders would have much to profit from deposing him. Towards the end of the 1500s, Balfour called upon the loyalty of his court in an effort to rid Cumbria of its lupine population for good. Carlisle’s vampires had suffered at the claws of the werewolves for many a long century, and the time had come to address the situation. The war which followed was ferocious and bloodthirsty, and established Carlisle’s status as a city of militaristic Kindred. Although fully half the court’s numbers were lost during Balfour’s war of extermination, the casualties suffered by the lupines were sufficient to cripple their numbers in the county from that day onward. Determined not to allow his enemies to recover, the Laird formed squads of Kindred to patrol the countryside around the city and make sure that any newly-arrived werewolves met a swift end.

In the wake of the war, Carlisle’s vampires began to Embrace quickly in order to replenish their numbers. Unfortunately, the loss of veteran warriors in battles with the werewolves had weakened the city against further attack. In 1641, fifty years after the werewolves had been declared defeated in Cumbria, the English Civil War broke out. In 1644 parliamentarian soldiers laid siege to royalist Carlisle, but were repelled by the armies of James Graham, the Marquess of Montrose. They returned in 1645 under the command of Leftenant General Alexander Leslie, and met with considerably more success. With Carlisle’s inhabitants trapped and slowly starving, the Sabbat finally made its move against the city. Bartholomew, a Tzimisce Bishop of Glasgow, led his packs into Carlisle and began slaughtering the resident Kindred. The starvation of the mortal populace had likewise affected the city’s vampires, and most Kindred simply did not have enough blood in them to be effective against the Sabbat invasion. William Balfour was heavily injured in an attack, and although he managed to escape his would-be assassins, he disappeared shortly after. Sir Robert Kael, Balfour’s sergeant-at-arms, fled the city after the disappearance of the Laird along with Mister Jarvis, the Toreador Master of Elysium and the Warden Granville Smith. In the space of a week, every non-Sabbat vampire in Carlisle was either dead, missing or had fled.

What happened in Carlisle while under Sabbat rule is largely unknown to the Camarilla. From November to December of 1745 Carlisle was occupied by the forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart during the Jacobite Rebellion, but was swiftly reclaimed by the English. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a number of efforts were made by Camarilla Kindred (mostly based out of Newcastle) to reclaim Carlisle from the sword of Caine, but none were successful. The Sabbat of Carlisle, for their part, proved to be a significant thorn in the side of Camarilla domains to the south, and raids launched from Carlisle resulted in the final deaths of numerous Camarilla elders over the two and a half centuries of Sabbat rule.

Things changed in 1892, when the Gangrel David Balfour managed to persuade Tremere Regent Edward Bainbridge of London that reclaiming Carlisle was a worthy project. Intrigues within Clan Tremere had left Bainbridge’s Childe, Markus, in a bad situation, and Markus found himself assigned to lead the reclamation. Horrified at such a prospect – but determined to succeed nonetheless – Markus gathered his coterie of Thaumaturges and headed north, along with every poor bastard that he could coerce into helping him. This reclamation at first looked no less doomed than any of the others, but the Thaumaturgical power of Markus and his hangers-on proved to be far more potent than anyone had expected. A dozen Sabbat were slain in their first assault, including some of Bartholomew’s own pack. The elder Tzimisce promised bloody vengeance upon Clan Tremere, but the high casualties of that first battle with the Camarilla resulted in him having to face down a number of challenges from within his own ranks. Eventually Bartholomew caught up with Markus’ war coterie in person, and tore through half of their numbers without blinking. Markus fled the scene along with one other Tremere survivor and a handful of Camarilla soldiers.

It appeared as though this effort had been defeated, until the remnants of the war coterie were approached by William Balfour. Recently awoken from torpor, the Laird was furious that the Sabbat still held the city, and immediately assumed control of the war party. Balfour lent some much-needed muscle to the heavily-depleted coterie, as well as knowledge of the city’s secrets. Markus figured that his renewed assault upon the Carlisle Sabbat was a last gasp, but at least it had a chance of success. Having cast every protective ritual in his arsenal upon the Laird, Markus accompanied Balfour and the war party in an assault upon Bartholomew’s stronghold. The battle could have gone either way, but the one vampire who could have swung the odds for certain was the ancient Nest, who was still more powerful than either Balfour or Bartholomew. While in the end Nest did not directly intervene, neither did he prevent his own Clan siding with the Camarilla under the leadership of Voq. The majority of Kindred involved met torpor or final death that night, but when the dust cleared the Sabbat had been dealt a blow from which they could not recover. Bartholomew fled to West Cumbria, where the Sword of Caine was still heavily entrenched, and Balfour reasserted his position as ruler of Carlisle’s vampires. As word spread that the city had been reclaimed, former residents of Carlisle (and new arrivals looking to claim domain) began to flood back in.

The Camarilla managed to hold Carlisle through the twentieth century despite a number of attempted re-conquests. For most of the last century Carlisle has not been an area of military significance (barring the World Wars), although it has at times served as a crucial nexus of transport and industry. Although the city’s fortunes have risen and fallen since the Camarilla’s reclamation, Carlisle has never ceased to be a centre of supernatural activity. As an isolated city amidst an extensive area of countryside, Carlisle is both a fortress and a frontier for the Kindred and other creatures who stalk the night. Yearly intrusions by the Wylde Hunt, restless ghosts, the machinations of demons and the presence of a cabal of magi all served to keep the city’s vampires busy in addition to their own political manoeuvrings. The city has seen a steady turnover of younger Kindred (including a spate of killings by a seemingly supernatural hunter during the 1960s and the mysterious fiery destruction of Carlisle’s Setite temple in the mid-90s), while established elders continue to cling to their power.

As of the early twenty-first century, Carlisle has undergone some drastic changes. The biggest Sabbat crusade in decades resulted in the disappearance of both the Laird and Archbishop Bartholomew. The throne was temporarily occupied by Voq, before being taken by Nicholas Negroni. In the wake of Balfour’s apparent demise, most of the Laird’s privy council fled the city, while only Nest remained, as ever in the shadows. It is since believed that the ancient Nosferatu has retired into torpor, leaving the city’s destiny in the hands of much younger vampires. Between the recent upheavals in leadership and the continuing hotbed of supernatural activity, Carlisle continues to be a city of high rewards and even higher risks for the Kindred.