Chantries
This is a page for detailing various NPC mage chantries and cabals.
Most of the locations listed on this page can be found on this map.
Tradition Chantries of LA
Los Angeles has a large and vibrant Mage community, since it is one of the largest cities in the world and is a major center of the shaping of public opinion. Also, it played host to the second Great Convocation, also called the New Horizon Convocation to attempt to elect a new Council of Nine (See Book of Madness Revised and the Storyteller's Handbook) back in December 2001. Most of the Chantries and Cabals have been mostly engaged in their own affairs rather than cooperating with any overarching outside force other than perhaps their respective Traditions. They had to hunker down quite a bit in the Harrowing and the following Technocratic crackdown on Willworkers that followed, but there are voices calling for renewed interest in the Council, which did not meet formally in the months following the Harrowing until the Eye of the Storm along with the leadership of the Academy of Thorns and the House of the Setting Sun brokered the Council's reconstitution and the appointment of new Councilors symbolically held at the Seat of the Nine, the same Chantry that had hosted the New Horizon Convocation, with a renewed commitment to putting a stop to Nephandic manipulations of the area. That Council meeting took place on April 29, 2011, in Story 8, Chapters 3-4.
Local Council Representatives
Correspondence: Vik RAM (Four Winds Chantry. Elected as of 4/29/2011)
Entropy: Master Black Betty (of the Mictlan Chantry)
Forces: Master Horatio Vanderbeek bani Fortunae (head of The Academy of Thorns)
Life: Christi Knight (Seat of the Nine administrator. Elected as of 4/29/2011)
Mind: Reverend Banh (Head of the White Plum House. Elected as of 4/29/2011. Had been vacant since the demise of Master Lo Hau of the Lung-Chuan Dojo during the Harrowing)
Matter: Professor Hugh Forsyth (A Chancellor of the Charles H. Fort Memorial Research Institute)
Prime: Brother Bassi (Rolling Waves Chantry. Elected as of 4/29/2011.)
Spirit: Malintzin (Mictlan Chantry)
Time: Elijah Levi (A Chancellor of the House of the Setting Sun)
The Academy of Thorns
Location: Los Angeles, CA. Near the Loyola Marymount University campus, in a large house of unusual design on the bluffs overlooking the Ballona Wetlands. Several of the surrounding houses are also occupied by Mages or cabals that are associated with this Chantry.
Node: This Chantry has a 3-point Node connected to the Ballona Wetlands which it overlooks. This Node has been badly threatened in development, but seems to still be holding.
Type: College Chantry
Tradition Structure: Closed. Order of Hermes
Cabals: (4)
Horizon Realm: This Chantry was once connected to a vast Horizon Chantry of the same name, but the Reckoning has sundered this link. This Horizon Chantry had material world locations in two other cities as well - each can be thought of as a “chapter” of the Academy itself. Since the disconnection from their Horizon Realm, the various sites have grown increasingly independent of one another.
Leadership Type: Pedagogical. Led by a Dean or headmaster, Master Horatio Vanderbeek bani Fortunae (also the local Hermetic Councilor). There is a panel of deans, but the headmaster is chair of that panel, and his is the final word.
External Relations:
Herald: Jerome Haller Bani Quaesitor.
Other Notable Members: Formerly, Athene Nemesis Descoteaux bani Fortunae was their Dean of Admissions, but she has been outed as a Nephandus and killed. Harry Fontana bani Fortunae, Reginald St.John Whitmore bani Flambeau, Majidah Bint Khaldun bani Shaea.
The Charles H. Fort Memorial Research Institute
Location: Palos Verdes Estates, CA
Node: Level 1
Type: Research and Exploration
Tradition Structure: Open, but mostly Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts
Cabals: 2
Leadership Type: Council of Deacons (Chancellors include Prof. Hugh Forsyth, the local Etherite Councilor and the Chair of this panel, and the Virtual Adept Harmonious Banhammer)
External Relations: On excellent terms with the House of the Setting Sun, but otherwise more focused on more distant Etherite and Adept connections.
Other Notable Members: Prof. Yuri Cherenkov, Son of Ether.
Also known as “The Fortean House” and “Casa de Foilhat” to less reverent Mages of the city, this Chantry is heavily involved in the study and cataloguing of unusual phenomena and supernatural events. They make some effort to release some of their less overt findings to the Sleeper world or at least to targeted portions of it, hoping to loosen the Consensus. The Mages of this Chantry aer an excellent clearinghouse for information regarding unusual phenomena, advancements in technomagical practice or theory and the like. Several of the Chantry's etherites are involved in the publication of Paradigma, their Tradition’s leading internal scientific journal. The Chantry itself occupies a 20-acre beachside estate on the Palos Verdes peninsula.
Four Winds Chantry
Location: Los Angeles, CA. A large, two story former fraternity house that is still marked with the greek letters Tau Alpha (first greek letters of the words four winds). The main body of the building itself is the frat house, but most of the real chantry is in the top floor, the basement and an outbuilding. The main members live on site, its Library is in the attic and the extensive basement has a ritual area called the sanctum (not actually a Sanctum, however).
Node: level 2 Node
Type: Research Chantry
Tradition Structure: Mixed. Cult of Ecstasy & Order of Hermes prominent, but Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts also represented.
Cabals: 4 cabals (~20 members), one of which is The Scene: Chuck Taylor (CoX, leader), Kun Yu "Silent Running" Lagounov (Virtual Adept), Ithiel ibn-Epaphras bani Solificati AKA Brett Amjad (Hermetic), Dale "EZ-T" Anberry (Ecstatic)
Leadership Type: Panel of Deacons (Including Vik RAM, local Virtual Adept Councilor)
External Relations: Allied with the Mictlan Chantry and the White Plum House
Herald: Chuck Taylor
This chantry was allied to Overwatch, and its members engaged in several joint actions with Overwatch's operations cabal. Notable would be playing the cavalry to help extract the Overwatch team from the old church in Venice, CA where they were caught in a three way battle between themselves, Nephandi and Black spiral Dancers. Following that they also maintained a safehouse where Sleepers were sheltered against the monstrous invasion of Los Angeles. Relations with this chantry were badly strained when Steve and Linda killed two of their men in an unfortunate friendly fire incident for which Steve claimed full credit.
The House of the Setting Sun
Location: Los Angeles, CA. Just off Mulholland drive in the Santa Monica mountains.
Node: Level 1
Type: College Chantry
Tradition Structure: Mixed. Verbena and Cult of Ecstasy mostly.
Cabals: 3 - The Harlot Queens (Elijah Levi, Golightly and 4 others, all CoX), The Witches of Westwood (Molly Brennan and three other Verbena), The Tinseltown Cabal (has 7 members and is mixed Verbena / CoX. Star is part of this Cabal)
Leadership Type: Panel of Deacons (Elijah Levi, Golightly, Star and Molly Brennan)
External Relations: This Chantry is at least on speaking terms with most of the city's other Chantries.
Other Notable Members:
This Chantry is in a large house just off Mulholland drive. It is, among other things, a high class bordello and the nerve center of an expensive ‘escort service’ catering to well-heeled men and women. The Harlot Queens cabal runs this aspect of the Chantry, and each member works there in one capacity or another, though only two of them are actual sex workers. Three of the Tinseltown Cabal’s members are involved in that aspect of the Chantry's business too in one way or another, though not necessarily full time.
The Lung-Chuan Dojo
Location: Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA. The Chantry house itself has been overrun and pretty much destroyed, but one of their cabals managed to escape.
Node: drained and destroyed
Type: destroyed
Tradition Structure: Closed. Akashic Brotherhood (various factions, including Wu Lung)
Cabals: Destroyed. Its lone surviving Cabal fled and formed the White Plum House, below.
External Relations: The late Master Lo Hau was one of the lynchpins in the local Council, and often succeeded in bridging gaps between the various rival factions. His death during the Harrowing was a blow from which the local mage community has not really begun to recover until recently.
This once beautiful dojo and indeed most of the block on which it stood remains a burned-out ruin to this day.
The Mictlan Chantry
Location: East Los Angeles, CA. The Chantry itself is not pictured above; that's one of the murals in the neighborhood that double as protective wards. The Chantry itself is a pretty unassuming place - from the outside. Inside is a different story. However, the Chantry was also damaged in a recent bombing attack by a Nephandic agent.
Node: Level 1 (in the chapel of a funeral parlor next door)
Type: War Chantry
Tradition Structure: Open. Euthanatos, urban Dreamspeakers, Verbena and Celestial Chorus.
Cabals: 3 - including The Light Bringers (Juan "Ace" ventura, Dreamspeaker Red Spear type. Zed, Euthanatos. Charlie, (female) Euthanatos. Hussein Malik (Jules Horn), Muslim Dreamspeaker)
Leadership Type: Democracy
External Relations:
Herald:
Other Notable Members: This Chantry houses the city’s other surviving Master: the Euthanatos known as Black Betty.
This Chantry is on a war footing lately. Its members were already somewhat militant, but the recent outbreak has prompted the Chantry to vote nearly unanimously to embrace the Slayer Proposal. In particular they are enthusiastic about hunting the walking dead, vampires and possessing entities. One of their Chantry rules bans unsupervised “fausting”, IE making deals, allying and cooperating with supernatural creatures.
The Rolling Waves Chantry
Location: Malibu, CA.
Node: None
Type:
Tradition Structure: Open. Celestial Chorus, mostly.
Cabals: 2
Leadership Type: Pedagogical, led by Brother Bassi (Chorister Councilor)
External Relations:
Herald: Mary Beatrice
The White Plum House
Location: The International Buddhist Meditation Center on 928 South New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown.
Node: None
Type: Squatter Chantry
Tradition Structure: Akashic Brotherhood only. It remains to be seen whether this small Chantry will open its doors to other Traditions.
Cabals: 1. Five members: Reverend Banh (a vietnamese monk resident at the center, a Mind Adept and now the Akashic Councilor), Darting Hare (a Korean monk and Chantry Herald), two younger Vajrapani (one of whom is a white female) and one Wu Lung who has not been on camera yet.
Leadership Type: Pedagogical, led by Reverend Banh.
External Relations: This small Chantry is generally deemed a sad shell of the once-powerful Lung-Chuan dojo and disregarded as largely irrelevant in local Mage politics, but they do have a Herald that keeps in touch with the other Chantries. They are understandably mostly concerned with internal matters and security at the present, though that seems to be changing somewhat, and Reverend Banh recently played a significant yet humble part in settling the contention the surrounded reforming the Council.
The Seat of the Nine
Location: The Culver Hotel, downtown Culver City
Node: Level 5, directly beneath the Chantry.
Type: Council Chantry
Tradition Structure: All
Cabals: None of its own, but a handful of Mages, and there is a scheduled rotation of Cabals from other Chantries that come through.
Leadership Type: Pedagogical, directed by its Administrator, Dr. Christi Knight (Verbena Councilor)
External Relations: See below.
This long-empty Chantry has a proud yet troubled history. It was constructed in order to provide a secure, well fortified redoubt where the city’s mages could gather on mostly-neutral ground, and to which they could retreat in the event of major disasters or concerted attacks on their existing Chantries by the Technocracy. When the Reckoning robbed the Traditions of Horizon, Doissetep and the Masters, this is where the reeling Disciples and Adepts of the staggered Traditions gathered to reconstitute the fallen Council of Nine away from the hateful eyes of Nephandi and Technocrats in the New Horizon Convocation of December 2001. The years since have not been kind. The main Council of Nine did not elect to remain here but rather scattered to their own power bases elsewhere in their largely unsuccessful attempts to rally and reorganize the Traditions for the Post-Ascension War reality. The local Chantries have squabbled and skirmished and withdrawn into themselves, and their local Heralds and Council representatives retreated, leaving the optimistically named Seat of the Nine seemingly empty and desolate.
However, the leadership of the Academy of Thorns was unwilling to entirely abandon the site, and they quietly maintained a security detail and the hotel's management on behalf of the local Council, and they also supported one pair of Magi (the fugitives Jonathan Roberts and the Dr. Christi Knight) secretly taking up residence within the Chantry to protect it and responsibly harvest Quintessence from its Node for their own and the Academy's use in recompense for their clandestine stewardship of the site.
On 4/29/2011, the Chantry was formally reopened. It was agreed that Christi Knight would remain as the administrator of the Seat of the Nine’s daily affairs, and that a rotation of cabals and carefully vetted mages from the various area Chantries would see to its operation and protection, and a call would go out for volunteers to take up positions there to assist Dr. Knight on a more regular basis as well. Also, the various member Chantries agreed to collectively see to the monetary needs of the newly reopened Chantry as well beyond what the hotel could provide, just as they had done in years past. Thankfully, its complement of Custos watchmen that oversaw the hotel upstairs and basic security had never been removed but simply passed under the Academy’s direction, and so they were restored to the Chantry’s own direct control at this time.
Other Tradition Chantries
The McIntyre Apple Farm
Location: Prattville, CA. Farmhouse and attached orchards and groves.
Node: The oak grove nestled behind the orchards is a Node of modest size.
Type: Ancestral Chantry.
Tradition Structure: Verbena only.
Cabals: The McIntyre Family (Three members of the actual family: Joyce McIntyre, her son Ian and her niece Rowena Brennan plus Helen Tyndale).
Status: Active.
Overwatch HQ
Location: Newberry-Baker, CA
Node: none
Type: War Chantry. Occupied an abandoned and heavily refitted missile silo.
Tradition Structure: Mixed.
Cabals: Overwatch team, The Last
Status: Abandoned, then destroyed.
More details of Overwatch HQ itself can be found here. This was Devin Knight's Chantry and the home base of the previous Overwatch Chronicle. Linda was resident at Overwatch for a while assisting the mages and receiving medical treatment, and Steve spent some time there as well. The site came under attack from Endron teams led by Black Diamond at one point, and later was abandoned after it was severely damaged during a fierce battle with the minions of "HBG" that left both Devin and HBG himself missing. Shortly after the site was abandoned, a technocratic airstrike leveled its upper works, apparently in retaliation for the Chantry's involvement in the debacle in Los Angeles.
Pandora's Box
Location: New Bremen, GA
Node: none
Type: Night club with attached upstairs meeting and study area as well as extensive sub-basements.
Tradition Structure: Mixed
Cabals: Currently none.
Status: Destroyed. The building itself is gone and the site is now a parking lot. Three floors of sub-basements survive underneath the parking lot, however.
This Chantry was founded by the Ecstatic mage Matthew Teil, who later had a brief relationship with Linda Lee, and rescued her from a Garou attack when she became a Fomor.
New Horizons Chantry
Location: New Bremen, GA
Node:
Type: This chantry's front is the New Horizons Shelter.
Tradition Structure: Mixed. Celestial Chorus and Virtual Adepts prominent.
Cabals:
Status:
Linda's daughter Krissy lived at the New Horizons Shelter for a while until she ran away and eventually ended up in foster care before vanishing again.
The Temple of Tyche Milo
Location: Manhattan, New York, NY
Node:
Type:
Tradition Structure: Mixed. Cult of Ecstasy, Verbena, Order of Hermes (open membership).
Cabals:
Leadership Type: Led by a Panel of Deacons.
Status: Active
In the top of the North Tower of The San Remo (145 Central Park West), a high rise on Central Park West. is a luxury 27-floor co-operative apartment building in Manhattan located between West 74th Street and West 75th Street, one block north of The Dakota. Opened in 1930, the San Remo is described by Glen Justice of the New York Times as "a dazzling two-tower building with captivating views of Central Park." As a housing cooperative, its board has a reputation for "lenient admissions standards" compared to the conservative, old-money boards on the other side of the park.
The Chantry itself occupies the top 3 storeys (each an apartment, supposedly) of the North Tower and the Corinthian temple on the roof, directly opposite Demi Moore's condo atop the South Tower. Naturally, given its real estate, a significant percentage of this Chantry's members are quite wealthy or at least well connected, though not all are.
Ro's former Chantry in NY, also home to both Phil and Alfie.
Technocratic Constructs
The Society for Mutual Progress & Development
Location: US Bank Tower, formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center is located at 633 West Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles, California.
Originally built in 1987, this 1,018-foot, 73-storey skyscraper is the tallest building in California, and is the housing place for one of the Los Angeles area’s largest, best known and most powerful Technocratic Constructs: the rather prosaically named Society for Mutual Progress & Development. The Construct takes up a number of whole floors on this building and is spread in individual suites and penthouse offices in several others, but the building also plays host to many Sleeper businesses and agencies of various types.
The skyscraper that houses this Construct was the focal point of the Harrowing known to the Technocracy as Incident 05092010-B17 and more colloquially as “The Non Event”. The modified, weaponized containment device that triggered this event was on the 65th floor, a bit higher than most of the actual Construct itself. Pretty much the whole Sleeper population of the building at the time was turned into monsters, fomori or zombies during the Harrowing. The top 10 floors of the building were utterly destroyed in the explosion that ended the Harrowing (including part of the Construct), and the rest of the interior of the structure was badly damaged as well. Thankfully the containment device was triggered at night when the building was sparsely populated, mostly with security people, janitorial staff, Sleepers that were working late and the like, rather than being stuffed full from top to bottom, though the losses were still considerable. Reconstruction and expansion to the structure using more advanced materials than the original design (and to the Technocracy's specifications) is ongoing.
Type: Administrative Construct
Nodes: Classified
Convention Structure: All, but primarily Syndicate and NWO - this Construct is a joint regional coordinating center for both Conventions.
Amalgams: Classified
Horizon Construct: Classified
Leadership Type: Amalgam Prime.
External Relations: Classified
Notable Technocrats: Special Agent Luz Martinez (NWO Black Suit), Agent Sumner (NWO Black Suit), Special Agent Wilt Jackson (Syndicate Enforcer), Harry Milton (Iteration X trooper), Hart (NWO Watcher), Edgar J. Perkins (Syndicate Manager, SPD)
Center for Energetic Instrumentality
Location: Inglewood Oil Field, College Boulevard, Ladera Heights, CA.
The PXP (Plains Exploration & Production Company) offices that run this oil field are a significant Syndicate Construct, the Center for Energetic Instrumentality. PXP is a limb of the much larger and more notorious petroleum corp Endron Oil, and thus also a part of Pentex. This facility is a significant Primal Energy (Quintessence) extraction facility, controlling one large Technocratically “sanitized” Nodes, and is run as a large Primal Venture as well, feeding huge amounts of Primal Energy and capital alike to the area’s Technocratic operations, though it also uses a considerable amount of both of these in its own research and development efforts.
Type: Research & Resource Extraction
Nodes: Classified
Convention Structure: Syndicate mostly, but there are also a handful of Progenitors.
Amalgams: Classified
Horizon Construct: Classified
Leadership Type: Triumverate.
External Relations: Classified
Techno-Cosmic Research Institute
Location: El Segundo, CA. The command center for this Construct is located at Boeing Satellite Systems at 2060 East Imperial Highway, El Segundo, CA 90245, though it has satellite facilities and operations in many of the area's other facilities.
The Void Engineers maintain a sprawling Construct in the aerospace industrial sector of El Segundo, taking advantage of the presence of Boeing, Raytheon and similar entities as well as the Los Angeles AFB and Square-Enix (yes, Square-Enix) as well as other tech companies.
Type: Classified
Nodes: Classified
Convention Structure: Void Engineers
Amalgams: Classified
Horizon Construct: Classified
Leadership Type: Amalgam Prime.
External Relations: Classified
JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratories
4800 Oak Grove Dr
Pasadena, CA 91109
Both the Void Engineers and the Glass Walkers were involved in the creation of JPL back in the thirties and forties, both pushing for increased extraterrestrial exploration capacities and to improve the pace of technological progress, and the two kept a sort of detente that mostly (after the resolution of a “Situation” that led to the separate creation of GD&L in the late fifties around the same time as JPL was transferred from the Army to NASA) continues to this day, to the point that a number of Glass Walkers and their Kinfolk from the Glittering Dreams Sept are still involved in the Sleeper side of the JPL facility in Pasadena either working for Caltech, for Nasa or as grad students or interns. The Glass Walkers and the Void Engineers studiously ignore one another's existence and presence most of the time, and when they cross paths professionally, both maintain a quiet policy of ignoring the other’s supernatural connections and focus on the job at hand for the sake of the particular technological advancements with which JPL is involved.
Type: Research Construct
Nodes: Classified
Convention Structure: Void Engineers
Amalgams: Classified
Horizon Construct: Classified
Leadership Type: Triumverate
External Relations: Classified
Genlabs
Location: New Bremen, GA
Node: none
Type: Laboratory complex.
Convention Structure: Progenitors, New World Order
Status: Abandoned
This is where the original Ashton Knight was killed, and where the clone that is presently in play in this chronicle was created and woke up.
Nephandic Labyrinths
Comments (1)
Hal! said
at 9:38 am on Dec 21, 2011
Daniel, you're way, way more than welcome to add content to this page if you'd like to. I was never really all that up on the mage chantry scene in NB, for instance, and I know that I'm missing a couple from there. Wasn't there an observatory or something?
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