Operation Prom Dress (Vampire: The Requiem)

Operation Prom Dress:

At first, it was just an idea. Probably not even a good one really, but you know, Carthians in the higher level study groups need something to do.  The original idea came about after a largish breach of the Masquerade in the city of Detroit Michigan. The prince of that city issued an "All Hands on Deck" and asked each able-bodied kindred in the city to use their powers and social influence to smooth over the waters. It took time and effort, and naturally, the Invictus didn't seem to be pulling their weight much, but the waters got smoothed anyway.   But as the kindred of that city worked their asses off to cover up the problem, the leader of the carthians there, a woman by the name of Rada James became increasingly agitated at how the city seemed to slip back into its old patterns.  Carthians that had been gifted for service with greater feeding ground, domain, or status found that it was taken away months later under some pretext or another.

Rada reasoned that the political system was never going to favor Carthians even in the face of a disaster that the Carthians didn't cause, and had helped clean up. (The Sanctified had actually caused the mess in question. and other than two executions, lost no status as a whole)  No. In order to shake up the political process, you'd have to upset the entire applecart.

Rada was a member of a Carthian study group and she brought the problem to them.  

Resolved: The Masquerade is hurting both Kindred and Kine alike and needs to be dispensed with.

As you can imagine, the debate raged for months. Carthians do love a good argument.  Many interesting questions came up during this time. Like: Is it even possible to destroy the Masquerade? How would you go about it?  Could you do it in such a way that it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle?  So a separate, and by its very nature, secretive study group was formed to explore these ideas and determine if this were both desirable and feasible.

Plans began in earnest in 1995

Dominate is used to set up a reliable cell structure and the Carthians start working towards using their powers and influence in new arenas. Some create city influence that is more of an "Open Secret" than is usual. Others pour money and time into serology, gene therapy, and stem cell research.  Not only that, but they manage in many cases to convince and encourage the Ordo Dracul to do the same. After all, if they can create a synthetic blood substitute that vampires can live on, the possibilities are endless.

The media played and continues to play a role. Originally vampires were antagonists and a thinly veiled metaphor for syphilis. Now they were Emo and misunderstood. Passionate and in some cases, sparkly. The entire genre of paranormal romance novels has sprung up in the space of only a few short years and is now a multi-million dollar industry. That's no accident.

More secretive groups began working on other projects. One group of the Coder Clique developed a chip that had a powerful digital correction algorithm in it. Nobody is entirely sure how they pulled it off, but they made it so that if you added this chip to any digital camera, it could capture a vampire on frame. This becomes important later.

Not all of the projects went swimmingly. There are at least 4 separate instances of Carthians being forced by the higher echelons to claim membership in VII or in the Belial's Brood for being caught. All of them were executed for it.  A fact that the Carthian Movement still regrets to this night.

An effort was made to reach out, by vampires knowledgeable in such things, to the hunter group "Network Zero".  It was thought, and promised as such, that if the vampires could find a way to make the masquerade shudder, then the Network could help bring it all the way down with their footage.  At first, the Network was paranoid and refused to come to the bargaining table, but some quick work with dominate and a kidnapping or two brought them to it. and the release of DCA chip technology kept them there.

And that's where the plan was going. Television was going to have to be the vector.  It was the only medium that could reach vast numbers of people all over the world and all at once, more or less in real time. And since everything on tv turns up on the internet as well, it was a twofer.  But unfortunately, it was, paradoxically the hardest medium to establish the truth of vampirism to the world.  CGI had been around a long time, and so had stage magic. It was going to be hard to put anything on TV without dozens of pricks coming out of the woodwork shouting FAKE!

A volunteer was asked for. They got one.

His name was Pinky Berkowitz, He was a Carthian Daeva and in life, an outspoken journalist.  They secured a deal with the BBC for a series run of 6 episodes. "On The Prowl" was a unique form of reality television. It showed Pinky using his powers and telling all kinds of secrets. And feeding. The last episode culminated in a meeting with Derren Brown, Penn and Teller, and the Amazing Randi and a somewhat vigorous exhibition of vampiric powers and healing abilities. At least three of those men walked away from that meeting with their faith in skepticism shaken.

The response was slow to start at first. Most vampires, even the ones who knew Pinky personally could not believe he was on television. Moreover, they could not believe he was being seen clearly. Then, as is usual in these cases, once the disbelief wore off, every vampire in the world, bent their efforts to distort or distract the story. This of course was met with more than usual resistance by the BBC, which unlike many news organizations, has a reputation for integrity and a number of secret Network Zero people in their midst. Also, a lot of the attempts by the vampire community were at cross purposes with each other and created a number of problems and questions that aroused the interest of law enforcement and, eventually the espionage community.

But the Carthians had anticipated what was coming and although the network pulled support eventually for the program, the Carthians leaked the footage of the last four episodes to the web, where they went viral immediately.

Naturally, from that point onwards, Pinky Berkowitz went underground and for the most part stayed there. The Carthians timed this plan to coincide with a number of willful masquerade breaches, and a number of situations of causing other vampires, usually political enemies, to frenzy in places where they could be seen on camera or even, be caught by the police. Once the series concluded, the Youtube and Vimeo channels where the series leaked out became platforms for Network Zero which also exposed Werewolves to the world. a fact that has not endeared the werewolves to the vampires, or the hunters for that matter.

As it was, the shit hit the fan.