The War saw the Unconquered at their level best and at their absolute worst. In many ways, The First Estate lived up to its name by holding kindred communities together through main strength and using their best minds to keep the fighting in the war at a bare minimum. But, on the other side of the coin, the loss of the masquerade was a major loss of power for the Invictus and it incited utter panic in many of the eldest members of that covenant.
To say that the Invictus doesn't adapt well to change is not completely accurate, they CAN. It's just that most choose not to. And this has been the case with many of the elders in the first estate. Most went forth with grand plans to correct the whole problem. They found that the loss of a goodly portion of the kindred community was fairly crippling to their plans. Often, The Invictus had gotten into the habit of having others fight their fights FOR them. Additionally, Human knowledge of the Masquerade made many time-tested strategies obsolete overnight. Finally, as the war continued, there was a lot of throwing things up against the wall just to see if they would stick. And all during this maddening sickening spectacle, news of this elder or that elder fleeing into torpor. "Eclipse" became something of a dirty word in Invictus circles. It was cowardice and many of the younger vampires saw it as such.
In many cases, during the war, Invictus paralysis caused much more damage than the humans attacking the kindred communities. In some cases, dithering from the inner circle or the prince cause such trouble that assassinations were attempted, The successful attempts often backfired spectacularly as the city ended up burning from the Prince's or Inner Circles "Omega Plan"
The main problem for the Invictus though was not from the humans and the loss of the Masquerade. It was the internal rift that the war caused. Many kindred come to the Invictus with the idea that if they serve long enough, eventually, they'll be the one's being served. But for anyone embraced in the last 30 years or so, this involved a much smaller time scale. These are people from 2 generations that are used to a much higher pace of life. Where they might expect to serve for a year, their elders are thinking more like 50. It's the same problem that afflicted the Mob in their first years in America. Old school mustache Pete mobsters carrying out age-old vendettas and holding the reins of power, with much younger Mafiosi who knew this new country and had pretty good ideas about how to do business.
Eventually, the young turks get sick of letting the old guys wet their beak from the businesses they built. It will ever be the way of things that large numbers of Alpha wolves will have troubles with one another. The only thing that was holding things together in the old Invictus was the power of elders, the oaths, and the web of favors and obligations. Now that structure was crumbling.
Tonight, there are few elder Invictus still walking the night. Many of them have strong ties to their houses and childer and refused to go into the earth and leave them in the lurch. Such elders have taken steps to try to adapt to the modern nights, and while for some it is slow going, others find it easier. Many of those elders were former carthians who got fed up with the seemingly rudderless covenant that they belonged to and jumped ship long ago. So things have come oddly full circle. More common are Invictus Ancillae who are finally being invited to the big chair after a long, long wait. The rank and file of the covenant now are people embraced within the last 30 years. Young by most reckonings. Most of them are battle-hardened, seasoned intriguers, and there is a statistically significant number of them that possess the merit Torpor Connection…Not all of them by choice.
Many of the Invictus houses went to great lengths to pull together in the war. In the face of human incursion, long vendettas and internecine strife got settled in a fortnight. The Invictus is now a byzantine and labyrinthine edifice of houses with treaties, webs of oaths, shared blood, smaller houses subsumed into larger ones and guilds taking refuge within certain family structures. This has been a good thing because it has kept the Invictus largely whole in the face of a massive generational split.
Also: The general strife between the Invictus and the Carthian Movement has given way to a far more equitable arrangement. When the Movement approached some of the younger members and talked about getting things done, most of the younger members listened. While the Movement and the First Estate are never going to exactly be friends, The Invictus is now more willing to fix things that are broken…provided you can convince them that it IS broken. But if you can, they fix it with dizzying speed. The Movement still wants to experiment, and that's not something that the Invictus are really ever going to be comfortable with. Status Quo is in their DNA.
Still, The Invictus is slowly but surely returning to power. Many through cunning business practices. Some through political strategy. Others through cagey use of existing resources. Many in the covenant realize that they may never have the iron control they once enjoyed over a world entirely ignorant of their machinations. But that doesn't stop them from dreaming and working towards a fat powerbase. The one difference now is that the Invictus had, in the nights before the Revelation, grown soft and complacent. That will probably not happen again.
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