Seattle is the last bastion of the Camarilla's power in the North American northwest. Below it lies the Anarch Free State of California, a domain that despite its lawlessness and anarchy has yet to fall since its inception in 1944. Above it is Vancouver, ruled with an iron fist by the Ventrue Siegfried, who owes no allegiance to any of the vampiric factions. Seattle is not exactly surrounded by its enemies, but it has no friends either.
Still, it had managed to exist peacefully until the so-called Week of Nightmares, in July of 1999. Seattle's small Ravnos population went berserk for no apparent reason, attacking each other and occasionally others in a mad fit of bloodlust. No one but the Ravnos population was seriously damaged, but several Masquerade breaches occured, requiring immediate attention.
More disturbingly still, later reports from around the world confirmed that this fit of madness was not an isolated incident.
Of course, this information was spread around the elder circles, and not disseminated for the various ancilla or neonates. Eventually, in the case of Seattle, the mass frenzy was blamed on Anarch agitation. Blood Hunts were called, a Scourge was selected, and unlife became very difficult for any of the Kindred who was not firmly entrenched in the elder's courts.
After two years of being hunted and brutalized, the Anarchs struck back. The fighting was brutal, but short. Within a matter of days nearly half of the city's elders fell, either into torpor or to the Final Death under the fangs and claws of their so-called lessers. The fighting itself ended with the destruction of the Anarch's power base in a conflagration that consumed nearly half of the city's warehouse district.
Now, with no appreciable activity from the Anarch faction, Seattle is slowly falling back into the sense of normalcy it enjoyed before the Week of Nightmares. Is this merely a lull in the fighting, with the Anarchs biding their time for another strike, or has the threat passed for the time being?