Welcome to Crucible.

(You players know the city of Crucible by another name. You know the city as Portland. Portland, Oregon has never existed in this chronicle. The city that you know as Portland has always been called Crucible.)

Crucible... the melting pot. The east coast has New York, and the west coast has Crucible. Where New York was besieged with European immigrants in the later part of the 1800’s and all through the 1900’s, Crucible was filled to its seedy brim with Asian and Balkan immigrants. Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Czechoslovakian, Russian, Romanian. Crucible quickly became a city of suspicion, mystery, paranoia, folk tales, and mysticism. The Asian folk brought with them their gods and their demons, their faith in herbs and pressure points, and their great honor. The Slavic community brought with them their passion, their superstition, and their dark secrets. Predominant among the Slavic peoples were the Romany; the gypsies, or rom. Even with this great flux of people from the Asian area of the world, these people are still a minority, even in Crucible. The general populace is mixed; with the "common white man" still holding the majority of the population.

Religion has been kept fairly standardized, still being predominantly Christian. There are some asian temples, and some secret groves where strangers tend to forget what they saw...
Crime in Crucible is usually dark and secretive, subtle and mysterious. The Japanese Yakuza hold the largest section of organized crime, with the Chinese Triad and large Chinese gangs pulling up a close second. The gypsies hold their own in the criminal circuit, dealing mostly in quiet cons and scams. Business is high-tech in Crucible. Every office building is at least 15 stories high, with the tallest (Netherdyne Corporation) being 85 stories. Computer, security and medical companies take up most of the space in the downtown portion of the city.


Crucible is a city true to the Gothic-Punk feel of the Vampire game. Visualize, think, feel... The Crow (both movies), Blade Runner, Strange Days, Doom Generation, Lost Boys, Darkman, Batman(the Tim Burton movie..#1), The Matrix, Queen of the Damned, Blade (I & II), Underworld... and saturate them all into present-day Portland, Oregon. Then you will begin to feel the city of Crucible.
For music, look to the Goth crowd, Concrete Blonde, Switchblade Symphony, Mephisto Waltz, and to soundtracks from The Crow (again, both), Lost Boys, and such. Fashion: Sometimes more important than money or influence. You are defined and catagorized by what you wear, where you go, who you're seen with. The Gothic-punk world of darkness has more cliques than any real world. Station and status are all-important.
Go Goth, with The Crow (both), The Matrix, Doom Generation, Queen of the Damned, Blade (I & II), Underworld and the retail shops, Hot Topic, Metro, Spartacus. Leather, latex, lace, velvet... studs, chains, piercings. If you want to look like lunch, wear a basic dress shirt and slacks. If you look like you belong on Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place, both kindred and kine will chew you up and spit you out.