Vampire the Masquerade: Winter’s Teeth Brings the Second Inquisition Back in Force – CBR – Comic Book Resources

Vampire the Masquerade: Winter's Teeth #2 includes The Anarch Tales #2, where the Second Inquisition attacks the protagonist's downtrodden coterie.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Vampire: The Masquerade - Winter's Teeth #2 By Tim Seeley, Devmalya Pramanik, Addison Duke, and Andworld available now.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Winter's Teeth #2 comes with the short stories of The Anarch Tales, which feature a downtrodden Anarch Coterie from the wrong side of the Twin Cities suburbs doing their best to find blood every night. In #2, they had received a summons to help out someone in exchange for a decent supply of not-too-sketchy blood bags, and they had climbed on their car and headed to the Twin Cities to complete the job.

However, their trip is interrupted by the nightmare of every modern vampire: the Second Inquisition.

RELATED: Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York is a Biting Tale about Conspiracy Theories

Many supernatural fiends of the World of Darkness have worked hard through the centuries to live among humans undetected, predicting that if humans knew about them they would be in great danger; there's strength in numbers, after all. To achieve this goal, vampires created the rules of the Masquerade, a set of Traditions enforced by the Camarilla aimed at hiding their presence and actual influence from prying mortal eyes. This didn't catch all the violations of the Masquerade, and one of the roles of the First Inquisition was to catch and bring Final Death to any vampires that they found.

As the centuries went by and humans developed new technologies, it became more and more difficult to hide in the shadows. Photography, in particular, was a pain to deal with; suddenly the eternally young -- or eternally deformed -- faces of vampires could be recorded, stored, and contrasted through the centuries. The fact that many of the Camarilla, Anarch, and Sabbat leaders were elders and terrible at using new technologies didn't help at all; they either dismissed them as useless or feared them, forbidding them entirely. Certain clans, like the Nosferatu, cursed to hide in the sewers due to their deformed appearance, learned to master them. Internet was a blessing for these information dealers, who went as far as creating the parallel worldwide web Shrecknet, even as reports and incidents with organized vampire hunter groups like the Society of Leopold kept popping up.

RELATED: Vampire the Masquerade: Winter's Teeth Makes a Classic Clan Royalty

This brief honeymoon period came to a screeching halt in 2007-08, when many international agencies coordinated a hit on London and Vienna. London's massacre, covered in The Fall of London, put an end to the millennia-long reign of Mithras, a Ventrue Prince of the 4th Generation. Meanwhile, the Second Inquisition took out the Vienna Chantry, the de-facto headquarters of Clan Tremere, the scholars, blood sorcerers, and main researchers of the Camarilla, leaving them headless and scattered.

The coordinated attacks, which seemingly came out of nowhere, stroke fear in the heart of the Camarilla --and many Anarchs and members of the Sabbat, a group that up until that moment had not cared that much for the Masquerade. This had rippling effects; the Tremere were forced to claw back their niche, many Sabbat Lasombra defected to the Camarilla, unsettling the balance, while the Gangrel and the Brujah left the same Ivory Tower, partly because the stifling Traditions had not protected them.

Shrecknet went down, there's a ban on electronic communications, cell-phones are rationed, hot keyword lists are distributed among Kindred so that they avoid raising any flags with the NSA, and instead of sending encrypted e-mails for sensitive topics, vampires send old-fashioned couriers, as explored in Vein Pursuit and the upcoming Night Road. Meanwhile, the Second Inquisition kept observing, catching, and experimenting on vampires, which they call "blankbodies," and which still perplex them --although by the time when Winter's Teeth rolls in, they have at least learned that a wooden arrow to the chest will immobilize them.

RELATED: Vampire: The Masquerade: How Winter's Teeth Connects to Bloodlines 2

Ironically, the vampires that are best equipped to avoid the attention of Second Inquisition hunters are the Thinbloods; their generation is so high that their blood is incredibly diluted, making them more human than vampire. They still need to drink blood, but many can also eat food, walk under the sun and pass as normal Kine. Sometimes, they can even infiltrate the Second Inquisition to protect their own kind.

This is what happens in The Anarch Tales #2; two Hunters, equipped with attack dogs, bows and arrows, andprotective masks take out every member of the Coterie... except for Colleen, who has enough human left in her to smell good enough to the K9s. While her coterie friends are staked and unceremoniously put in a band, the SI only calls her a "Renfield" (the SI word for "ghoul"), telling her to remain compliant if she wants to live.

And while Winter's Teeth and The Anarch Tales doesn't mince images showing how nocive vampires are for humans, it's difficult not to feel bad for them knowing what the Second Inquisition has in store for them.

NEXT: Crusader Kings III's Vampire: The Masquerade Mod Is The PERFECT Conversion

X-Men: An Omega-Level Mutant Is Back To Full Power

Bea is a European transplant currently living in Toronto.You can endure her shameless self-promotion by joining her five Twitter followers at @BeaCaicoya.

Visit link:
Vampire the Masquerade: Winter's Teeth Brings the Second Inquisition Back in Force - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero