Ask any Gangrel or Ravnos, and they’ll tell you there’s always been drifters among our kind, kindred whose restless Beasts drive them to cross the horizon. It’s not just them though; even the crustiest among us ache for freedom, pining for the open road. Sure, some may hear it louder than others, but we all yearn for a certain measure of freedom, to roam unfettered by the morass of city politics where licks blind you into thinking the only mobility that matters is up and down their social ladder. Thing is, we’re not all suicidal enough to go roaming the hills and forests naked where werewolves roam and shelter’s a roll of the dice. All of that changed in the 1800s.
America pioneered the first true freedom for kindred, laying down tracks for iron horses. The Ventrue may have paid for the railroads, but we were its true barons, our herds traveling with us in boxcar buffets and building ever further west at our direction. We taught them signs to mark safe territory and places to avoid, making them scouts for our growing network. By the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of transient workers, human nomads, passed through Chicago alone, seeking freedom, adventure, and possibilities, and we moved with them.
Times change. Between Henry Ford’s Model T, developments in farm machinery, and even air travel, humanity moved us away from the rails and reduced the need for the migratory laborers that we moved among. We changed too. Many nomads, like the Free Spirits, established themselves as biker gangs or truckers. We’ve got those too, dating back as far as ’35, but Chicago makes a special case. It’s the only place in America where all six of the major railroads meet. We’re where the rubber of the road meets iron track, and as the Cammies lock down their glass fiefdoms, more of us establish mobile Baronies.
The Beckoning and the Second Inquisition have affected us just as much as it has the city licks. They created holes in our network and the networks of those who oppose us, no less so in Chicago. The Windy City was always a hub for us, a place for safehouses and moving smuggled cargo. It’s time for us to return there, shore up what remains and possibly even stake new claims.