The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Welcome to Galway

As the bus made good time towards the city, Lash took the opportunity to pull up a map of Galway on his smartphone. According to a brief history of the town, the location at the mouth of the Corrib River had been continuously occupied since 1124 A.D.. Which, of course, made it a good location for a vampire colony.

Unfortunately it also made it strategically important and the city site had suffered multiple attacks by various parties over the centuries, making the establishment of a vampiric colony a challenge there. Over the years several clans had tried and failed. Only when Clan Magnar had risen to prominence in the area did a colony friendly to Ventru finally appear in the mid 1500's.

Of course, none of the vampiric information was actually on the town's official social media pages. But Lash had spent enough time at Magnar's estate that he had more than a passing familiarity with the region. Including the vampire holdings, now fairly extensive after being built up over the last five hundred years or so, that honeycombed the city. Holdings he was fairly convinced were now in the Hand's possession, if Magnar's dying words were accurate.

Unfortunate; he had initially hoped they'd be able to use the warren of secret passageways through the city's Old Quarter to move secretly through the city while hunting the safehouse down without the humans being any the wiser. Now, however, in an ironic twist so tight he could taste it, they'd be much safer on the city's streets in broad daylight amongst the humans.

A quick look over at the two van Tallert nestari revealed them both rigidly sitting in their seats, working hard to not look like they were tense, and not paying attention to any one thing. Which, of course, made them look exactly that: tense and overly alert.

Not that he blamed them. They had just been through one of the most brutal firefights Lash had ever experienced and lost well over two thirds of their entire force. To transition immediately into another mission with no downtime to process everything that just happened could possibly compound the trauma, psychological and emotional, they had just suffered. He'd have to keep a close eye on them to watch for any cracks in the facade that they still were holding it together.

Vampires were creatures of the hunt, evolved to relish the chase and the take down, and to savor a well-earned blood meal. They were also warriors from the cradle to the grave, ready to go to battle whenever the need arose, grim and unrelenting on the battlefield, whether it be against psionics, werewolves, or each other.

But they were also still the children of Humanity's original ascension from the beasts to the top of the pyramid. As such, they still possessed many of their progenitors' flaws and weaknesses, and boasted a host of their own. The least of these were definitely not how they processed psychological and emotional trauma. A dark and grim people who embraced the Night that kept them safe, vampires nevertheless suffered from depression, anxiety, and a variety of other mental illnesses just as their human cousins did.

The Qos Viran and other SpecOps units of the Clans of the Night were vigorously trained to harden themselves against the mental and emotional insults they could suffer as they fought on distant continents for clan and people. But the common soldier was not. Resilient enough to withstand the trauma of a battle, even an extended one, without training, they were significantly under-trained to quickly process that trauma and move to another battle. Especially if they had incurred heavy losses, which Narcist and Truk just did.

With a final measuring look at the two, Lash settled back into his seat to mentally take stock and plan the next stage of the operation.

To have other parties involved in Ventru's betrayal wasn't that surprising. To find out they were technologically advanced humans, however, was. Much as Mordecai and his Lone Gunmen worked to protect psionic society specifically, and the various mutant cultures of the Dark Edge from accidental discovery, the various clans worked to keep knowledge of vampire society as secret as possible.