Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:00
我方才意识到,尽管我初拥了你,并引荐你加入秘盟,但我们实际相处的时间并不算长。除了我对你的所作所为,以及我留给你的这些小笔记以外,你对我一无所知。你可能会认为我是个玩弄生死的轻浮怪物吧。
然而,在面对第二审判庭时,我绝不敢疏忽大意。他们十分可怕,你必须严肃应对。否则,你就会迎来真正的死亡。
能得到我的提醒是你的一大幸事。我在审判中失去了许多密友,甚至几乎无法保全我自己。有时,我们会忘记令血族凌驾于凡人的优势有多少是仰仗于避世戒律。我们会忘记他们的软弱源于未知。一旦他们了解了真相,强弱关系就将被颠覆。
我不想揭开自己的旧伤疤,但不得不如此:当第二审判庭开始进攻伦敦时,我狼狈地从那里逃了出来。我那时正在友人的庇护所中做客,突然间有人破门而入。阳光洒满了室内,吾友未能爬到安全地带便已灰飞烟灭。我被严重烧伤,他们只消一眼便能看穿我的身份。说来惭愧,最终救我一命的是我的敏捷,以及我对伦敦下水道网络的了解。我曾经住在那里;下水道有许多历史。
日落后,我前往机场,想借用安妮夫人的私人飞机,但他们已经占领了机场。我在无数庇护所间辗转,但都无功而返。庇护所几乎都被摧毁,尚且完好的也被凶神恶煞的血畜所占。我很快便意识到,即使在街道上行走也是件难事,凡人们将可憎的摄像头铺天盖地地安放,我根本无处藏身。
我不得不动用压箱底的妙计。我假装是一名逃离当局的非法波兰移民,打动了一名可爱的年轻人,他愿意让我躲进后备箱,将我带离了城市。我难以抑制心中的感激,将一枚跟随我两世纪的戒指赠与了他。
第二审判庭屠尽了伦敦血族社会的权贵。他们让维多利亚·艾什如丧家之犬般逃窜。如果你无法抑制与他们一战的欲望,切记要以吸血鬼的方式作战。切勿公平对决,切勿正面对决。
——V.A
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:02
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I realize we didn’t actually spend much time together even as I Embraced you and brought you into the Camarilla. You don’t know me beyond what I did to you and from these little notes I have left you. Maybe you think me a flippant monster toying with matters of life and death.
Well, when it comes to the Second Inquisition, I am not playing games. They are terrifying and you must take them seriously. Otherwise, you really will die.
I want you to appreciate these words. I have lost many dear friends to the Inquisition and almost died myself. Sometimes we forget the advantage the Masquerade gives us over the mortals. We forget how weak they are made by their ignorance. Once they learn the truth, they are not so weak.
I do not like to talk about this, but I made it out of London when the Second Inquisition started its assault. I was in the haven of a friend when the doors were bashed in. There was sunlight everywhere, my friend collapsing into dust as he tried to claw his way to safety. I was burned badly, and from my wounds they could easily tell what I was. Embarrassingly, I was saved only by my speed and knowledge of the London sewer network. I used to live there, at one point, and the sewers have a lot of history.
After sundown, I made my way to the airport with a view to borrowing Lady Anne's private jet, but they had seized that too. The same happened to me at countless other havens. All destroyed or full of terrifying kine. I soon realized it was even difficult to walk the streets, the damnable cameras the mortals put everywhere detecting me when I tried.
I had to fall back to my oldest tricks. I pretended to be an illegal Polish immigrant on the run from the authorities, and a sweet young man drove me out of the city in the trunk of his car. I was so overcome with gratitude, I gave him a ring I'd had in my possession for two centuries.
The Second Inquisition killed the high and mighty of London Kindred society. They made Victoria Ash run like a dog. If you have a burning desire to fight them, fight like a vampire. Unfairly, and from far away.
V,A
我们的古老传统——上级控制、下级服从、共同遵守避世戒律——是我们用于抵御数个世纪以来最大危险的不挠之盾;我们面临着一场新的战争:人类对抗血族,牧羊犬对抗恶狼的战争。第二审判庭中既有我们在梵蒂冈的宿敌,又有来自十几个国家的秘密警察和影子士兵,更有来自数十个国家的猎人小队;他们对抗的不仅是秘盟,更是我们全族。他们打着反恐战争的幌子向我们开战,以“防止造成恐慌”和“确保行动安全”的名义向主人隐瞒自己的行为。第二审判庭已经让我们付出了高昂代价,在维也纳、在伦敦、在由不知名总管看守的,充满阳光的密室中。我们的资源枯竭,行动受阻;我们必须了解这些敌人,削弱他们的攻击,然后将他们的矛头转向那些愚蠢到站在象牙塔外的人。» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
Our ancient traditions, of control and obedience and especially of Masquerade, are our greatest shield against the greatest danger facing us in centuries: a new war of human against Kindred, of sheepdogs against wolves. This Second Inquisition pits our old enemies in the Vatican, the secret police and shadow warriors of a dozen countries, and hunter cells in a dozen more, against not just the Camarilla but against all of our kind. They go to war against us in the guise of their War on Terror, concealing their actions from their own masters in the name of “preventing panic” and “operational security.” Already the Second Inquisition has cost us dearly, in Vienna and London and in nameless sunlit rooms guarded by faceless seneschals. Our resources drained, our movements hampered, we must understand our enemies, blunt their attacks, and then turn their panopticon gaze toward those foolish enough to stand outside the Ivory Tower.
新生代审判官 The New Inquisitors 第二审判庭是一个艺术性称谓,创造这个词的人无疑是个奇才;它既强调了我们如今面临的危险,又提醒我们以前经历过这般处境。当然,对梵蒂冈来说,这只是八百年前为将我们逐出基督教世界而建立的神圣审判庭的延续。梵蒂冈曾经审时度势,将组织名改为“宗教法庭”,后来又改为更温和的“信仰理论部”,但审判之火虽然可能有所收敛,但从未熄灭。
与梵蒂冈类似,非宗教背景的审判官们同样为自己的真实目的披上了一层委员会制度的温和外衣。目前,第二审判庭正以“跨政府反恐特别工作组”(ITFECTR)的名义运作,并且可能随着下一次政治风向和官僚潮流的变化再次改旗易帜。因此我们在谈论二审,或者说第二审判庭时,不会考虑他们的官方(何况他们大都不是官方组织)身份。
这种命名骗术无疑也是为了混淆视听,妨碍我们的走卒或者其他的潜在调查者。举例而言,曾有一份基于《信息自由法》,向“跨国异常威胁评估联合工作组”索要工作文件的正式请求;这份请求从未被落实,因为这个评估组在2007年宣告“解散”,其核心成员随即重组为了“反恐方案规划多边联络委员会”。
这种官僚主义的空壳游戏让第二审判庭在不同的赞助者之间易手,其管辖权归属和预算来源在不同的国家之间变换,他们从文职部门变为军事机构、军事机构变为秘密组织,然后又变回文职部门。但第二审判庭的核心始终不变:五个驱使着越来越多的走狗,循着网络和暗影对我们发动追猎的无情敌人。
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The Second Inquisition is a term of art, doubtless coined by some gifted Artiste who wished to emphasize the danger we face, while perhaps reminding us that we have seen such things before. Certainly, to the Vatican this is simply a continuation of the Holy Inquisition established to burn us out of Christendom eight hundred years ago. The Vatican found it needful to change that body’s name to the Holy Office, and then to the still more anodyne Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but the inquisitors’ fire, banked though it may have been for a time, never went out.
Similarly, the secular inquisitors keep their true purpose masked behind bland committee-driven titles. Currently, the Second Inquisition operates under the rubric of the Intergovernmental Task Force on Extraordinary Counter-Terrorist Response (ITFECTR), but this name shifts with the political winds and bureaucratic tides. Thus, we refer to the SI, or the Second Inquisition, as such regardless of their official (or most likely, unacknowledged) status.
Such nomenclatural legerdemain also has the doubtless intentional effect of muddying the waters for our tools and other potential investigators. For instance, a Freedom of Information Act request for documents concerning the “Joint Working Group on Transnational Unusual Threat Assessment” never reveals that after the JWGTUTA “disbanded” in 2007 its core membership immediately re-formed as the Multilateral Liaison Committee for Counter-Terror Scenario Planning.
This bureaucratic shell game switches the Second Inquisition from patron to patron, its jurisdiction and budget sloshing between nations, from civilian to military to clandestine and back again. But the core remains the same throughout: five relentless foes hunting us through silicon and shadows, with an ever-growing pack of curs on their leashes.
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:04
暮光计划 Project Twilight
美国政府从来没有过名为“暮光计划”的官方项目,甚至连猎杀超自然的非官方统一计划也没有。在某些情况下,来自缉毒局(DEA)、美国疾控中心(CDC)、联邦调查局(FBI)、国家安全局(NSA)和其他联邦政府机构的特工会偶然发现我们的活动,并在从我们手上幸存后开始进一步调查。从20世纪80年代开始,这些调查开始发生重合,并形成了一个非正式的信息共享网络。参与该网络的特工将这一调查项目称为“暮光计划”,这一命名的灵感来源并非某部油腻的跨物种儿童爱情故事,而是美国著名节目《阴阳魔界》(Twilight Zone)。
我们的应对措施曾经几乎完全扼杀或策反了这些所谓的“猎人猎杀者”,但基地组织对纽约和华盛顿的袭击彻底改变了游戏规则。国家安全局摆脱了体制束缚,积极控制了全球电子通信;瑞士银行将保密记录交给了美国恐怖主义和金融情报局(OTFI),以供筛选极端主义金融家。以上两项进展揭示了某些有着数百年历史的异常活动账户:我们的账户。
那些长期以来一直建议我族远离互联网,警惕人类银行的人,他们的先见之明在后续的事件中得到了证实。OTFI和NSA 的网络流量分析突破了避世戒律,美军敢死队突袭了我们的庇护所。这些黑色行动的先锋队最初可能以为自己在攻击基地组织,但在恶战之后,幸存的士兵发现了我们的真实身份。那些参与过“暮光计划”的老兵突然接到命令,被要求在正午前往阳光明媚的华盛顿庭院进行紧急汇报。他们的上级原谅或清除了他们的逾矩记录,并提拔他们领导不记名部队,赋予了他们自主执行任务,发动黎明突击的权力。
如前所述,美国在第二审判庭中起到的具体作用依然很难确定——有些亲王甚至可能试图引诱NSA或FBI攻击叛党或其他造成麻烦的人,并在之后理所当然地掩盖自己的踪迹。然而,在过去的15年间,总体情况已经尘埃落定。美国的军费和黑色预算为这些猎人提供了无法追查的海量资金,这些资金储存在非法账户和乏味的探测项目中。新的暮光计划由三大主要部门组成:隶属国防部的情报甄别办公室(IAO),代号“曙光”的NSA/CIA联合特许项目,以及被赋予了新任务和新面貌的FBI特别事务处(SAD)。
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The United States government never had an official “Project Twilight,” or even an unofficial unified program to hunt the supernatural. Occasionally DEA, CDC, FBI, NSA, or other federal agents stumbled onto our activities and survived to investigate further. Beginning in the 1980s, these investigations began to overlap, and an informal information-sharing network grew up. The agents in this network called their investigation Project Twilight, a reference not to oleaginous interspecies children’s romances but to the Twilight Zone of American television fame.
Our countermeasures had almost completely stifled or co-opted these “hunters of hunters” before the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington completely altered the game board. The National Security Agency, freed of its institutional fetters, aggressively acquired control over global electronic communications; the Swiss turned their once-secret records over to the U.S. Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to sift for extremist financiers. Those two developments revealed anomalous patterns of activity in certain centuries-old accounts: our accounts.
Those who had long advised our kind to stay off the Internet, and to distrust human banks, were proven completely prescient by what followed. OTFI investigations and NSA traffic analysis pierced the Masquerade, and American death squads stormed our havens. The black ops at the spear tip may have initially thought they were assaulting al-Qaeda cells, but soon enough the survivors discovered our true nature. Suddenly the old Project Twilight veterans found themselves called in for urgent noontime briefings in sunny Washington courtyards. Their superiors forgave or wiped clean their irregular records, and promoted them to head up nameless units with quiet authority to task and unleash sudden dawn raids.
As noted, the specifics of the American effort in the Second Inquisition remain hard to pin down — some Princes may even have tried to sic the NSA or FBI on Anarchs and other troublemakers, and then rightfully covered their tracks. However, the general picture has clarified and solidified in the last fifteen years. The American military and black budgets provide these hunters with oceans of untraceable funding, stored in illicit accounts or in tedious-sounding line items. The new Project Twilight comprises three main elements: the Information Awareness Office (IAO) of the Defense Department, a joint NSA/CIA Special Access Program code-named FIRSTLIGHT, and the retasked and rejuvenated Special Affairs Division (SAD) of the FBI.
情报甄别办公室 The Information Awareness Office 2002年1月,在秘密行动方面资历颇深的美国海军上将约翰·波因德克斯特(John Poindexter)在国防高级研究计划局(DARPA)内部成立了一个办公室,目的是建立对美国所有可能威胁的“全面情报甄别”。DARPA的每一项不成熟的实验项目都获得了巨量资金,用于分析全球互联网上的每一篇帖子和电子邮件,使用毫米波雷达远距离识别特定嫌疑人,以及最著名的在危机分析中短暂建立“期货市场”等任务。
对我们来说,最重要的是,全面情报甄别哨兵的感知力远超我们对机械和算法的想象:关联随机数据极大地去除了掩饰我们活动的迷雾和疑虑。波因德克斯特的团队在几次全球经济和政治推演中不断发现异常现象,并最终勾勒出了我们的轮廓。在将这些分析与新的OTFI金融报告相结合后,IAO在美国企业和政府的高级委员会中确定了一定数量的秘盟人手。我们的走卒发现自己的权力和和情报的来源都被慢慢地切断——并且有时还会被外科手术式打击从美国彻底清除。
波因德克斯特重新启用了他在里根时代建立的人脉网,他过去的下属和共谋者那时已成为了国家安全机构中执掌大权的管理层。他们派出了CIA准军事人员排、NRO“安全专家”小队,甚至还有几支海豹突击队。被支配术控制的仆从、绯血成瘾的血仆,甚至还有几个蠢到“亲力亲为”的梵卓,醒来后发现自己身陷在阳光明媚的热带地区建立的黑牢当中;他们被人用圣水执行水刑,逼迫说出IAO发现的“吸血鬼恐怖主义阴谋”的更多细节。2003年10月,我们设法操控了美国国会,利用公民自由问题做文章,在IAO对我们造成过大损害前断绝了他们的资金来源。然而,我们随后便发现,避世戒律依然无法复原。
IAO的各种项目仅仅是潜回了五角大楼的秘密资产之中,并以其他名义继续进行。波因德克斯特钦点的继任者海军上将罗伯特·法雷尔(Roberto Farrier)接手了前任的工作,并且加快了脚步。法雷尔亲自监督并统合了IAO的运作,使其脱离了国会与五角大楼的监督,彻底成为了知情者仅限于他的珍珠港办公室的黑色项目。他将拥有可行性的DARPA项目悉数投入到反血族分析中,并在获得情报后立即将其武器化。他还负责协调美国与其他军事机构对我们的攻击,在官方声明中将那些行动谎称为“军事演习”或者“反恐打击”。由于没有和主要指挥机构建立直接联系,IAO有其局限性:他们的军事力量仅限于通过掠食者无人机或者潜射巡航导弹进行数次轰炸,一个可否认的准军事组织,以及印度洋与密克罗尼西亚地区的几处戒备森严的黑牢。但IAO确实有能力动用美国在秘密行动和监视工作中投入的近乎无限的预算,并且愿意将这些财富花在任何有可能烧毁我们庇护所的人身上。
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In January 2002, the American veteran secret warrior Admiral John Poindexter established an office inside the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency with the goal of establishing “Total Information Awareness” of all possible threats to the United States. Every half-baked and experimental program in the DARPA in-box got massive funding, directed to such tasks as analyzing every post or email on the global Internet, identifying specific suspects at long distance using millimeter-wave radar, and most famously briefly establishing a “futures market” in crisis analysis.
Most importantly to us, the Total Information Awareness sentries perceived far more than we had imagined mere machines and algorithms could: correlating random data removed far too much of the concealing fog and doubt around our activities. Poindexter’s team prodded at the anomalies in several global economic and political maneuvers until it discerned our outline. When it coupled those analyses with the new OTFI financial profiles, the IAO identified a number of Camarilla assets within the higher councils of American corporations and government. Our tools found themselves slowly cut out of the flow of real power and information — and occasionally, surgically removed from America entirely.
Poindexter had called on his old Reagan-era network of assets and conspirators, now influential administrators in the national security establishment. They freed up platoons of CIA paramilitaries, squads of NRO “security specialists,” and even a Navy SEAL team or two. Dominated thralls, ghoul addicts, and even a few foolishly “hands-on” Ventrue found themselves awakening in black sites in the sunny, sunny tropics, invited over holy waterboarding to share more details of the “vampire terrorist conspiracy” IAO had found. We managed to manipulate Congress into officially defunding the IAO over civil liberties concerns in October 2003 before it could wound us too severely. However, we soon discovered that we could not re-stage the Masquerade.
The various IAO programs simply submerged back into the Pentagon’s secret assets and continued under other names. Poindexter’s hand-picked successor, Admiral Roberto Farrier, continued and accelerated his work. Farrier personally supervises and unifies the threads of the IAO, keeping it an entirely black project run out of his office in Pearl Harbor without Congressional or Pentagon oversight. He turns promising DARPA projects toward anti-Kindred analysis, weaponizing their findings as they become available. He also coordinates American and other military attacks on us, bureaucratically disguising the operations as “training missions” or “counter-terrorist strikes.” Without a direct line to main command authority, the IAO has limits: a few Predator drone strikes or submarine-launched cruise missiles, a company of deniable paramilitaries, renditions to one or two carefully guarded black sites in the Indian Ocean or Micronesia. But the IAO does have a tap into the so-far limitless American clandestine operations and surveillance budget, and willingly spends its lucre on anyone and anything that might burn out one more of our havens.
曙光 FIRSTLIGHT IAO在2002年进行的第一波突袭导致了多名血族的最终死亡,其中包括一名华瑞兹市的下水道居民,本能成为女间谍的克索基特尔(Xóchitl)。克索基特尔可能是IAO在第二审判庭诞生后拿下过的最高价值目标,因为她一直在利用支配术缓慢影响国家安全局的副局长,费利西蒂·普莱斯(Felicity Price)。在掌控者消失后,普莱斯设法摆脱了支配;她使用的确切手段尚未明了,但很可能是DARPA此前的研究成果。“感冒初愈”的她不仅对诺斯费拉图,还对秘盟的氏族结构、传统,以及我们整个北美网络中大得令人不安的部分有着第一手的了解。她很乐意地经受了IAO对她的每一项测试,甚至自愿接受了圣利奥波德会社专家的检查。她的诚意得到了IAO的认可,他们将她送回了NSA,她的仕途完好无损,权势更是大大增加。
在接下来的一年里,普莱斯与圣利奥波德会社的CIA盟友合作,建立了一个从全美智能产品中筛选血族行动迹象的特许项目。最终的成果便是“曙光”,由NSA和CIA共同运行的的ECI(额外受控信息)指定隔离系统。通过卫星、线人,和国安局无休止的拦截,来自全世界的信息源源不断地流入曙光。普莱斯的队伍只会在极其特殊的情况下允许新的分析师加入曙光:最基本的条件是在阳光暴晒下接受一名利奥波德之子或者其他熟练猎人的监督。这一人员招募的瓶颈是曙光的最大弱点——他们认可的猎人数量一直不够。
为了弥补组织的人手短缺,普莱斯试图将自己的日程安排密度提升到自虐的程度,甚至在搭乘飞机的途中也不停地传达指示和制定计划。她不断习惯性地一路向西环游世界,尽可能让自己身处正值白昼的时区,并在秘密机场和军事基地举行高强度连续会议。每次会议都会为曙光设下一项新任务,将我们中的一员定为目标,并转交给IAO、FBI,或是第二审判庭的外国分支部队之一进行猎杀。
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The first wave of IAO strikes in 2002 brought the True Death to, among others, a sewer-dwelling would-be spymistress in Ciudad Juárez named Xóchitl. This may have been the highest-value target the IAO hit in the entire Second Inquisition, because Xóchitl had been slowly grooming her own Dominated tool within the National Security Agency, Associate Director Felicity Price. With her handler gone, Price managed to throw off her condition — the exact methodology she used remains unknown, but was likely something developed early on by DARPA. She “came in from the cold” with first-hand knowledge of not just the Nosferatu, but of the Camarilla’s clan structure, traditions, and an uncomfortably large piece of our entire North American network. She gladly underwent every test the IAO could throw at her, even volunteering to be examined by specialists from the Society of St. Leopold. With her bona fides established to the IAO’s satisfaction, they returned her to the NSA, her career intact and her access vastly increased.
Over the next year, Price worked with the Society’s CIA allies to establish a Special Access Program to sift all U.S. intelligence product for signs of Kindred action. The result was FIRSTLIGHT, an ECI (Exceptionally Controlled Information)-designated compartment within the NSA and CIA bureaucracy. Information flows into FIRSTLIGHT from all over the world, gathered by satellites, informants, and the endless seining of NSA intercepts. Price’s team only reads new analysts into FIRSTLIGHT under very specific conditions: full daylight, at the very least, under the supervision of a Leopoldite or other aware hunter. This staffing bottleneck is FIRSTLIGHT’s great weakness — there just aren’t enough proven hunters to go around.
Price attempts to make up for this shortfall with a punishing schedule of briefings and planning, often while airborne. She habitually and continually flies westward around the world, holding rapid-fire meetings at secret airfields and military bases, remaining in daylight as much as possible. Each meeting produces another FIRSTLIGHT tasking, another one of us targeted, turned over to the IAO, the FBI, or one of the Second Inquisition’s foreign arms to be hunted down.
特别事务处 Special Affairs Division 在IAO运作的前三年中,其分析师偶然破获了数十起此前一直被认为互不相干的谋杀和失踪案。在暮光计划的老男孩网络听闻了追猎怪人的新许可即将下达后,有人让IAO和FBI特工主管马库斯·奎斯托(Marcus Questor)搭上了桥,后者此前负责为濒临撤裁的特别事务处监视美国南部地区。SAD最初是美国当局在与卡彭
(译者注:阿尔·卡彭,黑手党头目,WOD中成为了一名梵卓)的警匪大战中组建的一支反血族敢死队,从20世纪50到60年代开始将业务扩展到调查不明飞行物和大脚怪目击事件;当局在911后重组了这一部门,他们此后便完全失去了调查思路,将注意力浪费在了对所谓“恶魔浸染者”(Demonically imbued)的偏执调查上。
奎斯托利用IAO持有的一部分信息,为多起高关注度案件编造了令人信服的“真相”,以此给自己的官场履历镀金,并暗中将SAD中的老派“范海辛”集结到了自己的旗下。仅仅两年,他就升任助理处长,然后是准副处长,最后成为了特别事务处处长。奎斯托与IAO的来往为事务处提供了数百条(可惜都是法庭无法受理的)线索,并让他们在官方预算收紧时能够访问遭到泄露和充公的血族银行账户。
SAD的正式总部设在西弗吉尼亚州克拉克斯堡的刑事司法信息服务部,他们在蓝岭山脉的一个在冷战时期于山体内部挖掘修建的设施中设立了档案馆、专业培训中心,以及军械库。SAD在美国各地的行动通常都依靠当地的FBI办事处作为掩护。奎斯托将事务处的重点重新放在了以反血族为目的的猎杀、掩盖和调查行动上,并将此前的“神秘学犯罪”业务特化为了躲避政府内部审查的掩护。特别事务处也是FBI与第二审判庭国际合作伙伴的正式联络部门。
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During the first three years of IAO operations, its analysts incidentally solved scores of heretofore isolated murders and disappearances. By this time, the Project Twilight old boys’ network had caught wind of the new dispensation to hunt down weirdness, and someone put the IAO in touch with FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Marcus Questor, who supervised the Southern region for the almost moribund Special Affairs Division. The SAD had begun as an anti-Kindred death squad during the Bureau’s war against Capone, branched out to investigate UFOs and Bigfoot sightings in the 1950s and 1960s, and badly lost the thread during the Bureau’s post-9/11 restructuring, distracted by paranoid investigations of the so-called “demonically imbued.”
Questor used the tranche of IAO information to close a number of high-profile cases with plausible cover stories, burnish his bureaucratic credentials, and to covertly unify the old-school “ Van Helsings” in the SAD behind him. Within two years, he was promoted to Assistant Director, then to Associate Deputy Director and head of the Division. Questor’s pipeline to the IAO provides the Division with hundreds of (sadly legally inadmissible) leads, as well as access to compromised and confiscated Kindred bank accounts when official budgets tighten.
Formally based out of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia, SAD maintains its archives, specialized training center, and armory in a Cold War-era facility dug into the Blue Ridge Mountains. SAD agents operate all over the country, usually under cover in regular FBI field offices. Questor has refocused the Division on anti-Kindred hunts, renditions, and investigations, leaving its former “occult crimes” specialization as a cover against internal Bureau scrutiny. Special Affairs also serves as the formal FBI liaison office to the Second Inquisition’s international partners.
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:05
纽伯格小组 The Newburgh Group
在英国,第二审判庭经由纽伯格小组进行运作;纽伯格小组是一个非正式但联系紧密的英女王政府高级顾问团体,其领导者为西蒙·纽伯格(Simon Newburgh)爵士。该小组没有官方职权,也几乎没有官方记录——我们怀疑它的成立与奥秘会(Arcanum)那群窥探者有关。纽伯格通过幕后渠道领导英国政府通讯总部(GCHQ)内部的联合威胁应对小组(JTRG);GCHQ是英国的电子情报机构,相当于美国国家安全局。英国的国家安全机构,军情五处,准许JTRG根据GCHQ发掘的情报采取行动,其中优先度最高的是来自联合行动小组的情报,该小组专为追查暗网上的性交易和非法销售而成立——正如你所知,我们的活动与此类贸易之间存在着相当大的重合。
但纽伯格小组的行动不一定需要依靠JTRG。纽伯格,也可能是他的奥秘会主子,将伦敦大都会警察局的伊沙克·汗鉴定为了真实信仰者。我们对此的记录十分稀少,这点并不奇怪,但汗的儿子和女儿确实在有着疑似血族参与迹象的情况下失踪了。(他们可能被初拥了,但至今下落不明。)在纽伯格的支持下,汗升任为伦敦警察反恐部队第13特别行动处(SO13)的指挥官。SO13在官方记录中于2006年10月与前特别行动处SO12合并,成立了新的反恐指挥部SO15。但汗领导的SO13中坚力量实际上依然作为独立部队得到保留,专门致力于在英国追捕和摧毁血族。SO13的“杀手”们受到了GCHQ和《官方保密法》的保护,并在必要时能够呼叫SAS突击队和皇家海军陆战队的增援;他们烧毁了伦敦几乎所有的庇护所。2013年11月,SO13发现了伦敦亲王安妮夫人的休眠地——你肯定还记得那张汗上尉提着她的首级的照片。
在官方认为伦敦被“清理”完毕后,SO13将注意力转向了其他英国城市,并开始调派调查小组——偶尔还有杀手小组——前往欧洲其他地区或其他大洲参与第二审判庭的行动。纽伯格小组安插在GCHQ内部的人手早已和NSA的同行建立了联系。作为“五眼联盟”的合作伙伴,英美两国会周期性地就“梯队”全球电子监控计划中筛选的情报和信息进行比对。费利西蒂·普莱斯十分乐意为JTRG提供曙光收集的情报,此后普莱斯和纽伯格更是在“五眼联盟”的其他成员国:加拿大、澳大利亚和新西兰找到了志同道合的合作伙伴。这三个国家以SO13为蓝本组建了自己的猎杀团队,其经费由IAO或者被充公的血族财产承担。
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In the United Kingdom, the Second Inquisition operates through the Newburgh Group, an informal but close-knit body of highly placed advisors to Her Majesty’s Government headed by Sir Simon Newburgh. The Group has no official remit, and barely any official existence — we suspect the hand of the prying Arcanum in its founding. Working through backstairs channels, Newburgh directs the Joint Threat Response Group within GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency and equivalent to the American NSA. The British security service, MI5, sanctions the JTRG to act on intelligence developed by the GCHQ, especially by the Joint Operations Cell created to track sex trafficking and illicit sales on the Dark Web — the overlap between our activities and such commerce is quite substantial, as you will recognize.
Or it was before the JTRG began its work. Newburgh or his Arcanum minders identified Captain Ishaq Khan of the Metropolitan Police as a true believer. Our own records are understandably sparse, but Khan’s son and daughter did disappear under circumstances that could imply Kindred involvement. (If they were Embraced, we have not yet found them.) With Newburgh backing, Khan rose to command of the London police Anti-Terrorism Unit, Specialist Operations Branch 13. On paper, SO13 merged with the former Special Branch, SO12, in October of 2006 to form the new Counter-Terrorism Command, SO15. But in actuality, Khan’s hard core of SO13 remained an independent unit devoted exclusively to hunting down and destroying the Kindred in Britain. Reinforced by SAS commandos and Royal Marines when necessary, and protected by GCHQ and the Official Secrets Act, SO13 “slayers” burned out virtually every haven in London. In November 2013, SO13 discovered the resting place of Lady Anne of London — you doubtless remember seeing the photograph of Captain Khan holding her severed head.
With London officially “cleaned,” SO13 turned its attention to other British cities and began seconding teams of investigators — and occasionally slayers — to Second Inquisition operations in other parts of Europe and elsewhere. The Newburgh assets within GCHQ had long since connected with their NSA counterparts. As two of the Five Eyes partner nations, the U.K. and U.S. routinely combine intelligence and information culled from the ECHELON program of global electronic surveillance. Felicity Price happily added JTRG to the FIRSTLIGHT distribution list, and Price and Newburgh soon identified like-minded partners in the other Five Eyes countries: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Their own hunter-slayer teams burgeon on the SO13 model, funded by the IAO or by seized Kindred treasuries.
第八管理部 Eighth Direction 布鲁赫昔日曾经利用过各种手段对苏联进行管控,克格勃是他们用于执法的主要机构。克格勃的竞争对手,简称“格鲁乌”的红军军事情报总局在1990-1991年的动荡时期之前曾经一直处于前者的控制之下。然而,正如苏联解体所表明的那样,布鲁赫和克格勃的控制远非牢不可破。反对布鲁赫政权的秘密抵抗势力最初正是在格鲁乌内部形成了雏形。20世纪70年代期间,负责作战军事情报的格鲁乌第五局指挥官伊罗宁·阿尔希波夫(Ieronim Arkhipov)将军成立了一个秘密部门,以识别并孤立克格勃在红军内部的影响力。这一被称为第八管理部(восьмое управление)的部门最终确定了关于叛党苏维埃的真相,并且——据我们推断——采取了行动。
第八管理部在多大程度上参与了(如果有的话)执政党的垮台、苏联的解体以及对芭芭·雅嘎相关信息的掩藏,目前尚未可知。格鲁乌显然没有动机透露他们在自己的政府解散时扮演了什么角色。这个部门在政权更替后依然对自己的新主人充满着恐惧:布鲁赫的影响力依然普遍存在于克里姆林宫的最上层,持有大量机密档案的前克格勃上校摇身一变成了手握数十亿贿款的政治寡头和黑手党头目。
某个显然与普京关系密切的人在2009年设计了格鲁乌负责人,阿尔希波夫将军的门生瓦伦丁·科拉贝尔尼科夫(Valentin Korabelnikov)的突然辞职。失去了科拉贝尔尼科夫的支持和保护,第八管理部——此前于2004年主动加人了第二审判庭——被迫缩小活动规模。
第八管理部曾经有能力将手持木桩的阿尔法小组(Spetsnaz)派往前苏联各地的避难所,但现在他们只能将为数不多的“演习机会”留给最高价值或最为紧迫的目标。乌克兰和叙利亚地区是两处主要的例外,第八管理部可以在俄罗斯秘密军事行动的掩护下于当地行动,但这些战局也有着特定的风险。为了降低风险,第八管理部资助并指导了数个被称为“边防军”(Akritai)的东正教猎人教团。毕竟,早在与我们族内的反叛者走到一起之前,俄罗斯的情报部门就与我们有着许多共同之处,筚路蓝缕就是其中之一。
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While the Brujah more or less ran the old Soviet Union, their primary enforcement arm was the KGB. Its rival ministry, the Red Army military intelligence arm known as the GRU, remained under KGB control until the convulsions of 1990 and 1991. However, as the fall of the USSR demonstrated, Brujah and KGB control were far from absolute. Within the GRU, covert resistance to the Brujah regime accreted informally at first. At some point during the 1970s, General Ieronim Arkhipov, commander of the GRU Fifth Directorate responsible for operational military intelligence, set up a covert office to identify and isolate KGB influence within the Red Army. That office, the Eighth Direction (восьмое управление), eventually established the truth about the Anarch Soviet and — we theorize — took action.
To what degree, if at all, the Eighth Direction played a part in the fall of the Communist Party, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the Baba Yaga disinformation campaign remains unknown. Certainly the GRU has no incentive to reveal its possible role in dismantling its own government. And it has much yet to fear from its new masters. Brujah influence remains pervasive at the highest levels of the Kremlin, as former KGB colonels with archives full of secrets become oligarchs and Mafiya lords with billions to spend on bribes.
Certainly someone close to Putin engineered the abrupt 2009 resignation of GRU head Valentin Korabelnikov, who had been General Arkhipov’s protégé. Without Korabelnikov’s support and protection, the Eighth Direction — which had eagerly joined the Second Inquisition in 2004 — has been forced to scale back its efforts.
Where it once sent stake-wielding Spetsnaz troopers into havens all over the former Soviet Union, the Eighth Direction now saves up its few “training missions” for the highest-value or most urgent targets. The main exceptions are in the Ukraine and Syria, where the Eighth Direction can operate within the fog of covert Russian military operations, although those theaters carry their own risks. To mitigate them, the Eighth Direction subsidizes and directs several chapters of the Orthodox hunters known as the Akritai. Working through cut-outs is, after all, one of the traits Russian intelligence has shared with us long before the rebels co-opted them.
秘密特种行动营 BOES 勒森魃和妥芮朵在巴西鏖战了几个世纪,但唯有“嘉年华之城”里约热内卢没有被战火波及,那里对所有氏族开放。不知是血族的争斗还是饕殄让当地的血畜不堪其扰,他们最终用烈火与利剑发动了反击。巴西国家警察的虔信与仇怨都远非我们的巨额贿款所能动摇,他们收集了大量失踪者、受害者、被绑架者和被吞噬者的档案。可能是得到了来自圣利奥波德会社的提点,巴西虽然已经在20世纪80年代建立了精英特警队,但他们又另行组建了自己的
Batalhão de Operações Especiais Secretas (BOES),即秘密特种行动营。
BOES的资金最初来自扣押的犯罪资产,后续转而开始利用扣押的血族资产;他们在各地的军警或特警部队中安插了五到六人的士官(comandarias)小队,其中包括:圣保罗(ROTA部队)、贝洛奥里藏特(BOPE部队)、里约热内卢(BOPE部队)、维多利亚(BME部队),以及其他州与城市的当地部队。这些士官会花费数月甚至数年时间侦查一座城市,查明其中的血族势力范围与人员动向。在侦查结束后,BOES的“飞行预备队”就会进驻,一次性打击尽可能多的目标,并在必要时开始逐个街区扫荡城市。
BOES在成立的前几十年里活动范围集中在非秘盟城市,因此我们并未关注他们的袭击。事实上,你恐怕不难猜到,有几个当地的妥芮朵亲王甚至会利用BOES铲除竞争对手。但在圣利奥波德会社将BOES完全纳入第二审判庭后,我们同样受到了极大的威胁。BOES的战士们持续进行了数十年的狩猎,他们在某些方面比地球上其他任何部队都要经验丰富。加入
“Sagradas”(即圣徒,他们的部队称号)的新进人员会接受BOES中最为资深的老兵的训练与煽动,这种做法削弱了他们的惊恐与疑虑,让我们的战术不再有效。在美国军方的支持和IAO的资助下,BOES将业务扩展到巴西之外只是时间问题:事实上,他们的士官小队可能已经在波哥大(哥伦比亚)、加拉加斯(委内瑞拉)和罗安达(安哥拉)开始了行动。
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Lasombra and Toreador have warred over Brazil for centuries, with the exception of the “Carnival City” Rio de Janeiro, which is open to all clans. Whether Kindred strife or Kindred satiety finally drove the kine to respond, when they did it was with fire and sword. Brazilian national police officers whose faith or hatred outweighed our substantial bribes assembled thick dossiers of the disappeared, the victimized, the kidnapped, the devoured. Possibly tipped off by the Society of St. Leopold, while Brazil’s states and cities created elite squads of special police in the 1980s, they formed their own Batalhão de Operações Especiais Secretas (BOES), the Special Secret Operations Battalion.
Funded by seized criminal assets at first, and then by seized Kindred assets, the BOES inserted five- or sixman comandarias within the military police or special operations police in São Paulo (ROTA), Belo Horizonte (BOPE), Rio de Janeiro (BOPE), Vítoria (BME), and other cities and states. Those comandarias scout a city and map out the Kindred turf and activity in it for months or even years. Once this is accomplished, the BOES “flying reserve” squads move in, strike as many targets at once as they can, and then begin clearing the city block by block if need be.
Because BOES for its first decades concentrated on non-Camarilla cities, we paid little attention to their raids. Indeed, it would likely not surprise you to learn that several local Toreador princes put the BOES on the scent of their rivals. But once the Society of St. Leopold brought BOES fully into the Second Inquisition, it became a significant threat to our activities as well. In some cases, BOES platoons have decades of hunting experience, more than any other human fighting force on the planet. The most veteran among them train and radicalize the new recruits to the “Sagradas,” (the Sacred, as they call the unit) blunting our kind’s weapons of shock and doubt. With U.S. military backing and funding via IAO, it is only a matter of time before they expand their operations outside Brazil: indeed, BOES comandarias may be operating in Bogotá, Caracas, and Luanda already.
圣利奥波德会社 Society of St. Leopold 天主教审判庭的真正核心,利奥波德会社——或者说圣利奥波德会社——在1231年由穆尔瑙的利奥波德和教皇格雷戈里九世共同建立,并在那之后从未停止对我们发动猎杀。这个组织的兴衰与我们的疏忽大意密切相关:避世戒律曾经卓有成效,最终甚至让教会以为利奥波德十字军是群迷信的疯子。到了20世纪,梵蒂冈已经切断了对利奥波德会社的正式庇护与支持,将秘密行动完全托付给了梵蒂冈自己旗下的情报组织,已有数百年历史的神圣联盟(自1930年起被称为实体会)。由于宗教与金融方面的庇护皆被剥夺,会社理所当然地在内讧与党同伐异之中逐渐走向解体。然而,随着各种鲁莽的行径让避世戒律的破绽越来越大,利奥波德会社也随之死灰复燃。
一名来自奥地利的狂信徒,人称“铁处女”的英格丽德·鲍尔,于1998年晋升为至高审判官,开始了对我族的全面圣战。甚至早在美国军方参与审判前,英格丽德的“神光”(Gladius Dei)突击部队就用凝固汽油烧毁了一个又一个庇护所;这些“虔诚之举”(autos-da-fé)既是为了鼓舞会社成员的士气,也是为了削弱我们的实力。她重新激活了实体会与CIA在冷战时期建立的联系渠道,并通过意大利和波兰的北约联系处与美国军方建立了联系。鲍尔提前安置好了自己的人手,NSA和IAO甫一揭露我们的踪迹,他们便开始引导美国分析师对此进行理解。
美国人投桃报李,向利奥波德会社提供了军用物资(尤其是温压火箭榴弹和大规模探测用光学器件),并往教堂奉献盘里投放了数十亿美元。这令鲍尔有能力排挤或收买会社中的对立派系,并全面致力于开展与协调第二审判庭。
2005年,教皇本笃十六世在即位后不久便将利奥波德会社重新纳入梵蒂冈的控制,将利奥波德追封为圣人,并谨慎地将会社与实体会以及教会进行了重新整合。由奥地利的圣利奥波德担任主保圣人,以正式自治团体形式存在的圣利奥波德会社就此诞生。(与圣人同源带来的权力一定让鲍尔十分满意。)自2007年起,会社的主教就获得了实体会的全面管理权。在实战中,会社的神光黑色行动部队以实体会特别行动小组(ESOG)的名义行动。在这之前,实体会主要从事常规情报收集,并利用CIA和其他可否认的特工采取直接行动;神光的加入使梵蒂冈真正拥有了秘密行动的能力。利奥波德会社的人员招募规定与实体会的其他成员不同,反而更像是主业会(Opus Dei):他们允许非神职人员和女性加入,不过目前会社中的高级教区领导人都是天主教圣职者。
本笃教皇在2013年的退位可能是为了保护会社免受来自教廷或其他地方的敌人的攻击,也可能是为了专注于执行主教事务,而借退位将会社的行动指挥权交给了鲍尔。自2005年以来,ESOG不仅招募了瑞士卫队的精英,还招募了来自世界各地特种部队中的天主教徒,并将他们部署到二审圣战的最前线。那些比教友更激进的神通术士、标新立异的技工,以及旧利奥波德会社中的其他“非常规”人员成为了ESOG X小队(非教徒称其为“第10小队”)的核心,这是一支不受梵蒂冈管束的快速反应部队。受会社控制的实体会拥有着高度现代化的法令、熊熊燃烧的狂信,以及长达八百年的狩猎记录,是第二审判庭的主心骨。血族必须抽其髓,断其骨,方有一线生机。
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The true core of the Catholic Inquisition, the Society of Leopold — or St. Leopold — has hunted us continually since its foundation in 1231 by Leopold of Murnau and Pope Gregory IX. Its fortunes waxed and waned with our own carelessness: the increasing effectiveness of the Masquerade eventually convinced even the Church that the Leopoldite crusaders were superstitious mad men. By the twentieth century, the Vatican had severed its formal ties of patronage and support, moving its clandestine energies entirely into its centuries-old intelligence organ, the Holy Alliance (known as the Entity since 1930). Denied the cloak of faith and patronage, the society was well on its way to disintegration through backbiting and factionalization. With the escalating reckless piercings of the Masquerade, however, it returned in force.
An Austrian fanatic named Ingrid Bauer, the so-called “Iron Maiden,” ascended as Grand Inquisitor in 1998 and began a full-fledged crusade against our kind. Even before the American military got into the inquisition business, Bauer’s Gladius Dei shock troopers burned out haven after haven with napalm, autos-da-fé rituals meant as much to build society morale as to weaken us. She reactivated old Cold War contacts between the Entity and the CIA, and with the U.S. military through Italian and Polish NATO liaison teams. When the NSA and IA O uncovered our traces, Bauer’s assets were already in place to shepherd their analysts toward understanding them.
The Americans repaid Bauer’s efforts tenfold, providing the Society of Leopold with military grade materiel (thermobaric rocket-propelled grenades and mass detection optics especially) and a few deniable billions for the collection plate. Bauer could now sideline or buy off opposing factions in the Society and devote it entirely to carrying out and coordinating the Second Inquisition.
Soon after his elevation in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI brought the Society of Leopold back under Vatican control, re-canonized and carefully re-integrated with the Entity and the Church. It now formally exists as a personal prelature, becoming the Society of St. Leopold, the patron saint of Austria. (The retroactive assignment must have given Bauer a certain satisfaction.) Its Bishop has directed the entire Entity since 2007. Operationally, the Society’s black ops Gladius Dei act as the Entity Special Operations Group (ESOG). Previously, the Entity primarily engaged in conventional intelligence gathering and used the CIA and other deniable agents for direct action; the addition of the Gladius Dei to its ranks gave the Vatican a true covert operations capacity. Unlike the rest of the Entity, but like the Opus Dei (through and with which the Leopoldites and the Entity often work) the Society of St. Leopold can initiate lay and female members, although its higher Provincials are now all Catholic clergy.
Pope Benedict may have resigned in 2013 to protect the Society from its enemies in the Curia and elsewhere, or he may have resigned to serve full time as its true Bishop, with Bauer left in operational command. Since 2005, ESOG has recruited not only the cream of the Swiss Guard, but Catholics from other elite special forces units all over the world, and deployed them to the front lines of the SI’s crusades. The even more radical theurgists, unorthodox operators, and other “ loose canon” types from the old Society of Leopold became the core of ESOG Team X (or “ Team 10” to more secular audiences), a quick reaction force operating out of the Vatican. Armed with hyper-modern ordinance, burning faith, and the records of a 800-year-long hunt, the Society-controlled Entity is the backbone of the Second Inquisition. It must be broken for the Kindred to survive.
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:06
第二/第三方合作伙伴 Second- and Third-Party Partners
在过去的十年里,第二审判庭已经扩张到了最初的五名核心成员之外。除了与曙光和纽伯格小组合作的其他三个“梯队计划”成员国外,还有五个国家提供了足够的情报或军力,这总计八个国家可以算作二审的“第二方合作伙伴”,他们在二审的行动规划会议中拥有着席位。
法国对外安全局(DGSE)带着名为“翡翠”的威胁识别系统加入了第二审判庭。弗朗索瓦·桑戈尔(François Senghor)中校注意到了翡翠系统的异常发现与红衣主教黎塞留(Richelieu)的暗影内阁收集的“绝密威胁”档案之间存在着惊人的吻合。曙光的支持令桑戈尔得以在DGSE内部创建“玉髓”项目,这一项目使弗朗索瓦·维龙(译者注:François Villon,巴黎的妥芮朵亲王)被迫潜匿,并将我族驱除出了马赛。玉髓项目于2011年拓展到非洲,和法军部队一起部署到了马里、尼日尔、加蓬和科特迪瓦。
以色列和瑞典都在曙光与他们的国家通信情报机构取得联系后加入了队伍。以色列的8211部队会监控长老们奔赴火焚末日之战的行踪,并将反推得出的路径发给曙光,使二审能够趁机攻击无人领导的血族城市(这就是在响应大召唤前确保城市中的秘盟继承人地位足够稳固的重要性)。瑞典的G-Kontoret(“G部门”)在该国神秘莫测的的军事秘密机构IB内部工作,他们对神秘学家(疑似奥秘会成员)锡德·帕姆(Thede Palm)于1946年建立的T部门的旧档案进行了重启。G部门在二审的研究工作中发挥着越来越大的作用,已可与纽伯格小组和圣利奥波德会社平起平坐。
我们几乎没有关于日本国防情报总部和波兰国内情报机构ABW内部二审单位的信息,但我们可以假设,在东亚或东欧地区策划审判行动时,IAO和利奥波德会分别担任两者的“高级合作伙伴”。然而,鉴于日本和波兰地区的审判庭猎杀的频率与烈度都在不断增加,两国情报机构内部显然已经组建了由二审提供情报和资金支持的影子部门。
第二审判庭已经在所有主要西方国家和美国军事同盟国中安插了个人或小队规模的人手,但尚未建立全面听从命令的猎人指挥部。话虽如此,这些国家建立指挥部也只是时间问题。我们认为最可能建立指挥部的有德国(柏林举义可能已经引发了二审的反扑)、南韩、捷克(ESOG第四小队已经部署到了布拉格进行“净化行动”)、哥伦比亚、约旦、意大利、乌干达、西班牙(虽然是个小国,通信情报机构的实力却不容小觑)和菲律宾(猎人小队已经混入了杜特尔特总统的敢死队当中)。土耳其、泰国、印度、尼日利亚和墨西哥的政治压力或者动荡局势使二审暂时无法与当局进行全面合作,但这些国家无疑都会在未来十年内出现在曙光和IAO的简报文书当中。
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In the last decade, the Second Inquisition has expanded beyond its initial five core members. In addition to the three other ECHELON countries partnered with FIRSTLIGHT and the Newburgh Group, five more nations have provided enough intelligence or muscle to count as “second-party partners” and get seats at the table during operational planning sessions.
France’s DGSE intelligence agency had already created a threat-identification system called Emeraude when they joined. Lt. Col. François Senghor had noticed that the anomalous findings from Emeraude eerily fit, of all things, a profile of “most secret threats” assembled by Cardinal Richelieu’s Cabinet Noir. FIRSTLIGHT support has allowed Senghor to create the Calcédoine program within DGSE, which has driven François Villon into hiding and begun to clear Marseille of our kind. Calcédoine expanded into Africa in 2011, accompanying French troops deployed to Mali, Niger, Gabon, and Côte d’Ivoire.
Both Israel and Sweden came on board thanks to FIRSTLIGHT contacts with their own national SIGINT groups. Israel’s Unit 8211 tracks elders-en route to the Gehenna War, and passes along backtraces to FIRSTLIGHT so the SI can hit their now-leaderless cities. (Thus the importance of establishing solid Camarilla succession in a city before heeding the Beckoning.) Sweden’s G-Kontoret (“the G-Office”) works within that country’s shadowy IB military-clandestine apparatus, having reopened the old files of the T-Kontoret founded in 1946 by the occult scholar (and possible Arcanum member) Thede Palm. It increasingly takes on greater responsibility in the SI’s research work, alongside the Newburgh Group and the Society of St. Leopold.
We have almost no information about the SI units inside Japan’s Defense Intelligence Headquarters and Poland’s domestic intelligence agency ABW, but we can assume that the IAO and Leopold, respectively, act as their “senior partners” when planning actions in East Asia or Eastern Europe. Given the increased frequency and intensity of Inquisition hunts in Japan and Poland, however, it’s clear that those two agencies have growing shadow offices suckling on the teats of SI information and finance.
The Second Inquisition has inserted assets and cells on the individual or squad level within all major Western nations and American military allies, but has not yet spawned fully dedicated hunter commands. That said, it is only a matter of time before such commands emerge on the ground there as well. We specifically expect them in Germany (where the Berlin rising may have already triggered just such a thing), South Korea, Czechia (ESOG Team 4 has deployed into Prague for a “cleansing operation”), Colombia, Jordan, Italy, Uganda, Spain (which has excellent SIGINT capacity for its size), and the Philippines (where President Duterte’s death squads already include random hunter teams). Local political pressures or turmoil keep the SI from full cooperation for now in Turkey, Thailand, India, Nigeria, and Mexico, although all of them doubtless appear on FIRSTLIGHT and IAO briefing books for the next decade.
猎人与猎物 Hunter and Hunted 避世戒律对我们至关重要,对我们的敌人也一样。第二审判庭不能直接公开宣战,不能发动城市战将我们烧死,也不能将我们通通关进集中营,主要原因有二:其一,秘盟在第二审判庭的成员国政府中依然掌握着非常强力的手牌(俄罗斯的布鲁赫也是如此)。我们号令着企业、参议院、报纸、电视台,乃至整个国家——因此,二审为了保证行动安全,甚至不得不将行动对自己名义上的主人保密。我们在官方层面解散IAO之轻易为他们敲响了长鸣的警钟。其二,第二审判庭掌握的优势比第一审判庭少:它没有用宗教控制保护对象的灵魂,因此它无法减轻他们对我们的恐惧。在现代之夜宣布一场“反吸血鬼圣战”会引发全球性恐慌,并且可能导致一个甚至多个政府的倒台,令二审失去财富和兵力的来源。对猎人们来说,更糟糕的是,他们会无法避免各种愚蠢或自私的干涉,诸如“不死公民权力”、“与新物种谈判”、“获得知识的机遇”等血畜为了安心呆在畜栏里而想出的借口。即使是教皇本人也无法向自己的枢机主教阐明真正的威胁——谁知道五角大楼地下室的某个官僚悬在按钮上的手会有多不稳定?
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As we must, above all else, keep to the Masquerade, so must our foes. The Second Inquisition cannot simply declare open war, burn us out in urban combat, and corral us into camps for two main reasons: First, the Camarilla still holds very powerful cards within the SI governments (and the Brujah likewise in Russia). We command corporations, senators, newspapers, television stations, whole nations — thus, operational security requires the SI to keep their actions secret even from their own putative masters. The ease with which we officially dismantled the IAO provides a constant reminder of this. Second, the Second Inquisition has fewer advantages than the First: it does not command the spirit of those it supposedly protects, so it cannot assuage their fears of us. Announcing an “anti-vampire crusade” in the modern night would cause global panic, and possibly the fall of one or more of the governments whose treasure and soldiers the SI redirects. Worse, from the hunters’ viewpoint, they could not prevent foolish or self-interested interference on behalf of “undead civil rights,” “negotiating with a new species,” “the opportunities for knowledge.” Or any other excuse the kine would make to remain in their comfortable slaughter pen. Even the Pope could not inform his own cardinals of the true threat — how much weaker must be the hand of a faceless bureaucrat in some lower floor of the Pentagon?
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:07
对我们的猎杀 How They Hunt Us
由于上述原因,二审会将狩猎伪装成反恐战争或军事演习中的行动,或者利用圣利奥波德会社和边防军等可否认的盟友。SAD可能已经和残余的“浸染者”达成了和解,并以合法匿名权为筹码,驱使他们对我们进行猎杀。在亲王的正义未被贯彻或有所缺失的城市里,二审甚至可能会煽动自我厌恶或者保持所谓“独立”的血族向我们反目。然而,自从2012年堪称灾难的底特律猎杀以后,二审一直反对这种策略,并更愿意将蠢到试图投诚的血族送上解剖台。如今,当二审想让我们自相残杀时,他们要么动用炮灰,要么简单地向仇家双方提供彼此的庇护所地址。
这种新战术体现了二审的一大优势:它完全掌控了全球计算机网络,并且会积极地用网络谋害我们。可笑的惊骇网络(SchreckNet)几乎顷刻间就落入了NSA的手中,沉浸在硅文化中的短命凡人轻松地智胜了那些自诩为“黑客”的古代下水道鼠辈。多亏了诺斯费拉图将所有氏族的机密都放在同一个篮子里的龌龊习惯,他们的数据宝库为曙光和JTRG的分析师提供了绘制网络分析地图的基础。二审至少已经对我们于20世纪90年代到21世纪初在世界各地城市中的夜间动向有了大致的了解。
我们当中任何两名成员之间进行的联系都可能在分析地图上增添一条连线;有了足够的连线,反情报分析师就能查出其中隐藏的行为模式,担任这一工作的人甚至不需要理解其中的实情。第二审判庭就是以这种方式将维也纳的睿魔尔圣堂判定为了我们的关键活动枢纽,虽然他们以为那里是“吸血鬼全球密谋总部”,而非单个氏族的活动中心。抛开他们的误解不谈,IAO、BOES和ESOG X小队确实在2008年用一种至今不明的神圣遗物/钻地炸弹组合战术攻破了第一圣堂。这起维也纳“恐怖主义暴行”的发生地此后便一直被封锁,二审在该市的联合国毒品和犯罪问题办公室中一直维持着对官方的影响力。
二审将电子邮件、电话,当然还有各种形式的电子通信都纳入了监控范围,令其网络分析变得更加精密。曙光进行了大部分的初步分析,其余的则由TJRG和8211部队承担。GRU的信号情报能力可与NSA媲美,第八管理部则会独立完成自己的任务和分析,为曙光提供对各自发现进行交叉对比的有效途径(虽然曙光显然很少会对此表示感谢)。
二审还会试图诱导我们的动向。他们很少会对奔赴火焚末日之战前线的长老们进行干预,而是更倾向于阻止除此以外的城市间旅行。2004年(从未知来源)引入审判庭的“混沌镜”(Chaoscope)技术如今已经发展为了“照尸镜”(Xscope)系统,这一系统可靠性较前者稍低,但更容易大规模生产,现已装入了全球机场的毫米波全身扫描仪之中。装配照尸镜的机场会有一支二审管理员小队密切关注“白身”(Blankbody)信号,并向当地的二审执勤猎人以及——如有需要——当地宪兵发出警报。便携式照尸镜技术已经出现,但目前几乎仅在二审的实地行动中投入使用。伦敦是个例外,当地的闭路电视监控系统集成了仅向JTRG指挥部传输数据的照尸镜技术。
在将我们的活动与联络分析地图绘制完毕,把我们困于各自的城市之内,等我们的领袖离开以后,二审就会开始“净化”行动。在伦敦、巴西,以及如今的布拉格,审判官们都用了同一套战术:他们在同一时间攻击了尽可能多的庇护所,但又有意放过一些已识别的庇护所。(他们的目的是将我们逼至他们已经绘制好地图的地点。)之后,如果政治上或战略上允许的话,二审会派出装载了照尸镜的直升机或卡车,一个街区接一个街区地进行扫描与突袭。
为了阻止我们重整旗鼓,并平息某些大人物的担忧,二审会在我们一族中有人(通常是叛党小圈子)太过笨拙或饥渴,以致于暴露自身时对其所在地发动精准打击。在这类行动中,他们会派出一支猎人小队,并在必要时让一到两名二审官员与特战队或特警队混编。他们会根据实地战术考量,选择在黎明或正午发动突袭;即使是自信过剩的ESOG和BOES也不喜欢和我族夜战。任何幸存者——血仆、随从或在棺材之类地方被抓到的血族——都会很快发现自己在阳光充足的房间里遭到审问,然后在狞笑着的牧师面前被烧成灰烬。
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Thus, the SI carry out their hunts disguised as operations in the War on Terror or training exercises, or use deniable allies like the Society of St. Leopold and the Akritai. The SAD may have reached an understanding with the remaining “imbued,” using them to hunt us in exchange for legal anonymity. The SI may even, in cities where Princely justice is weak or wanting, use self-hating or so-called “independent” Kindred against us. Ever since the disastrous Detroit Hunt of 2012, however, the SI have deprecated that tactic, preferring to vivisect those Kindred foolish enough to try to come in from the cold. Now, when the SI uses our own kind against us, it is through cut-outs or simply by providing haven locations to both sides of a vendetta.
This points up a great advantage on the side of the SI: its complete and total mastery of the global computer network, and its willingness to exploit that mastery to our detriment. The laughable SchreckNet fell to NSA exploits almost immediately, mayfly humans steeped in silicon culture easily outwitting ancient sewer rats who fancied themselves “hackers.” That trove of data, thanks to the pestilential habit of storing up other clans’ secrets with their own, provided FIRSTLIGHT and JTRG analysts with the basis of their network analysis maps. For every city in the world, the SI has at least a general idea of our activities by night in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Every connection one of us has made with another potentially appears on these maps as a link; with enough links, a counterintelligence analyst can trace the pattern even though they have no comprehension of its true significance. That is how the Second Inquisition determined that the Tremere chantry in Vienna was a crucial hub of our activities, even if they believed it to be “the vampire conspiracy global headquarters” rather than the center of one clan’s activities. Regardless of their misperceptions, however, the IAO, BOES, and ESOG Team X did in fact destroy the Prime Chantry in 2008 with an as-yet-unknown combination of holy relics and ground-penetrating ordnance. The site of the “terrorist atrocity” has remained cordoned off since then, and the SI keeps a permanent bureaucratic presence in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in the city.
The SI develops more details for its network analysis by pulling emails, telephone calls, indeed every form of electronic communication, into its ambit. FIRSTLIGHT does most of the initial analysis, with backup from JTRG and Unit 8211. The GRU’s SIGINT capability rivals that of the NSA, and the Eighth Direction performs its own taskings and analyses, which provides a useful (though doubtless seldom appreciated) cross-check on FIRSTLIGHT findings.
The SI also attempts to channelize our movements. They seldom interfere with elder travel to the Gehenna War front, preferring to prevent lateral journeys from city to city. The early “chaoscope” technology introduced (from unknown sources) in 2004 has now become the somewhat less reliable but vastly easier to mass-produce “Xscope” system embedded in millimeter-wave body scanners in airports worldwide. An SI controller team at the airport keeps an eye out for “blankbody” signatures and alerts either tasked SI hunters in the area or, if need be, the local gendarmerie. Man-portable Xscopes exist, but for now remain almost exclusively in SI hands for field work. The exception is London, where the CCTV systems now incorporate Xscope technology on dedicated feeds to JTRG command posts.
Our activities and relationships mapped, penned up in our cities and leaderless, the SI moves to “cleansing” operations. In London, Brazil, and now Prague, the inquisitors hit as many havens as they can simultaneously, though not all those they have identified. (The goal is, again, to herd us toward places they already have mapped.) Then, if politically or tactically possible, the SI turns to block-by-block clearing with helicopter- and truck-mounted Xscope scanning and follow up raids.
To keep us off balance, and to placate specific interests, the SI launches pinprick raids wherever one of us (usually an Anarch coterie) has been too clumsy or thirsty for comfort. For these actions, they field a hunter team, or if need be embed one or two SI officers into a team of special operations soldiers or special police. Raids launch at dawn or noon, depending on local tactical concerns; even the ridiculously confident ESOG and BOES do not relish night combat with our kind. Any survivors — ghouls, hangers-on, or Kindred caught in coffins or otherwise — rapidly find themselves in sunlit rooms for interrogation and then a final combustion before a smirking priest.
兵来将挡 What is to be Done 第二审判庭的威胁真实且致命。但我们只要重新遵循五个世纪前让我们在第一次审判中幸存下来的真理,就不会迎来灭族之灾。我们必须尽可能强化对避世戒律的管控。我们的行动要伪装成常规犯罪,我们的捕食要伪装成单纯的人员失踪或人口拐卖。我们要抵制在极乐境之外卖弄风骚的诱惑。我们的资金要从受到电子管理的银行存款转换为黄金、毒品和现金。我们要远离互联网和可恶的手机,回归用纸笔与口耳进行传讯的作风。
我们必须继续拉拢情报界人士,特别是那些在势力上受到了反恐机构的现实和网络双重威胁的人。我们必须控制那些理论上有能力监管当地审判庭机构的立法者(或能够越俎代庖的立法者下属)。我们不能彻底削弱情报界;我们还需要依靠他们来获得信息和管控血畜。但我们必须再次将缰绳夺回手中。我们可以提供各种承诺:力量、知识、世俗财富,以及满足欲望,以此打动他们。
在短期内,我们可以将二审的注意力引向叛党和魔宴。该轮到我们将他们当成猎犬了。理想情况下,二审会在追击魔宴的过程中被卷入火焚末日之战——美军热衷于在海外陷入战争泥潭的作风显然可以为我们所用。说到美国,我们可以挑拨离间,让二审的其他派系对抗他们自负的出纳员和军械师。鲍尔认为她的会社应当身居高位,纽伯格小组则一定对被一个前血族奴仆说教感到不满。从历史上看,第八管理部对美国和梵蒂冈都持怀疑态度(也理所当然地不被信任);讽刺的是,如果美国与梵蒂冈在第二审判庭内部出现了意见分歧,持有决定票的就是第八管理部。在遭到二审锁定的庇护所中设置加剧派系纷争的假线索应该并非不可能。
最后,我们必须打乱二审的阵脚。我们要打击他们以为已经安全的地区,将斥候甚至整个小圈子派往他们的前线后方,比如说伦敦。审判官们会被从我们宝库中充公的海量金钱财宝迷住心窍;我们要派出与他们积极合作的“会计师”,以此怂恿他们渎职、贪污,并最终背叛。我们可以让他们以为他们中的一员已经倒向了我们;让猎巫人在对内部的猎巫中分散注意力将是一项有效且艺术的战术。
我十分推荐你使用薄血执行以上所有这些任务。许多薄血都能承受日照,或许还有能力混淆照尸镜的读数。他们渴望在我们的议会中获得晋升,因此将毫不挑剔地执行危险的任务。他们寻求新的猎场;何不向他们承诺夺回的土地将会归他们所有呢。最后,理所当然地,只要能削弱我们的敌人,损失多少薄血都无所谓。他们从来都只是消耗品。
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The threat is real, and it is deadly. But it is not existential, not if we fall back on the truths that enabled us to survive the first Inquisition five centuries ago. We must clamp down on the Masquerade wherever possible. Disguise our actions as conventional crime, our feedings as simple disappearances or human trafficking. Resist the temptation to peacock outside Elysium. Shift our funds out of electronically harnessed banks and into gold and narcotics and cash. Get off the Internet and off the confounded cell phones, return to hand-delivered messages or the voices of the night.
We must continue to co-opt the intelligence community, especially those already threatened by the War on Terror agencies’ claim to turf and footprint. We must own the legislators (or their over-powerful staffers) who theoretically oversee the inquisitors’ home agencies. We cannot weaken the intelligence community outright; we depend on it ourselves for information and control of the kine. But we must break it to our bridle again. Here, we have the promise of power and knowledge, along with secular wealth and gratification of desire, to offer.
In the short term, we can turn the attention of the SI to the Anarchs and the Sabbat. Let them be our hounds for once. Ideally, by pursuing the Sabbat, the SI will find itself drawn into the Gehenna War — surely the American military habit of walking into quagmires overseas can be turned to our advantage. Speaking of the Americans, we can play the other factions of the SI against their overweening paymaster and armorer. Bauer believes her society should hold pride of place, and the Newburgh Group must resent being lectured to by a former thrall. Historically suspicious of (and rightly distrusted by) both the Americans and the Vatican, the Eighth Direction ironically acts as the deciding vote when the two diverge within the Second Inquisition. It should not be impossible to lay false trails in targeted havens to encourage such dissension.
Finally, we must throw the SI onto the wrong foot. Strike where they feel secure, send scouts and even full coteries behind their lines: to London, for example. The inquisitors are awash in money and treasure confiscated from our own coffers; leave behind co-operative “accountants” to encourage malfeasance, embezzlement, and eventual betrayals. Convince them one of their own has turned to us; if we could distract the witch hunters with a witch hunt in their own ranks, that would be both effective and artistic.
For all these tasks, I urge you to consider thin-bloods as possible tools. They can often withstand daylight, and perhaps confuse an Xscope reading. They are eager for advancement in our councils, and will thus perform dangerous tasks without cavil. They seek new territories to hunt in; what better ground to gift them than ground they must retake. Finally, of course, we can lose any number of the thin-bloods if it means weakening our foes. They remain entirely expendable.
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-10-12, 00:08
QUOTE(蓝天鸿云 @ 2023-10-12, 00:07)
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SAD可能已经和残余的“浸染者”达成了和解,并以合法匿名权为筹码,驱使他们对我们进行猎杀。
附注1:《秘盟》拓展资源书成书于猎人5版之前,因此这里提到的浸染者可以认为已被H5吃书,或者只是让老玩家引入旧版角色卡的可选项
附注2:严正谴责P社把第二审判庭总体风味放核心书、部门介绍放秘盟书、具体设定放二审书的分割商法
Posted by: 蓝天鸿云 2023-11-02, 18:49
QUOTE(怀藏卷 @ 2023-10-12, 03:41)
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神通术士是哪一个?我记得有术士和法师。
在旧版本的The Inquisition和The Hunters Hunted II两本拓展书里,利奥波德会社会使用被称为神通术(Theurgy)的异能,使用者被称为神通术士(Theurgist),只存在于吸血鬼规则,和法师规则中的术士和法师没什么关联。