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Gorchist was the Regent of the Sabbat during most of the 19th century. He was assassinated around 1860s, being substituted by Melinda Galbraith.

Biography[]

Gorchist claimed the Sabbat's Regency around the same time the Sabbat Inquisition was created, in the beginning of the 19th century. He was an European Cainite and the primary signatory of the Purchase Pact of 1803, which ended the First Sabbat Civil War. In the early nights of his Regency he ordained that no Templar could become a member of the Black Hand, or vice versa, and ordered the Black Hand operatives to disperse their numbers among the other Sabbat packs.

It was he who changed the seat of Sabbat power to the Americas, focusing the sect's attentions away from Europe when he journeyed to Mexico City where many notables of the sect gathered. When that city fell to the Sabbat, it became their capital and black heart. The regent even discussed moving his haven there, and honored Archbishop Melinda Galbraith with a seat in his Consistory. During his travels through the Americas he drum up support for the Purchase Pact and installed Francisco Domingo de Polonia as the first Archbishop of New York, to the continued frustration of New York's sitting Bishop, Ecaterina the Wise.

During the Mexican–American War of the 1840s, the Camarilla based in the U.S managed to conquer and pacify many of the Sabbat's territories, while the Lasombra and Tzimisce were too busy accusing each other of failure. Regent Gorchist enforced peace in Mexico City and outlying areas through the Black Hand, but when mortal violence rocked the region, the packs used the opportunity to disguise their own battles among the bloodshed that ensued, and war was surely to escalate out of control if not for Gorchist sheer force of will. He maintained an admittedly tenuous sense of order, pulling the Sabbat back from the brink. Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.

According to the Sabbat's official account, Gorchist was assassinated by a Ravnos's suicidal gambit, in the 9th day of June of 1863 at the eve of the French invasion of Mexico City that took place at the height of the Second French intervention in Mexico; his assassination sparked the Second Sabbat Civil War and Melinda Galbraith emerged as his successor, acting as Regent by the time that the Code of Milan was revised in 1933 as the Second Sabbat Civil War drew to a close.

The opening line of the revised Code of Milan still invokes Gorchist's authority in determining the Code's validity, though he is not listed as a signatory of the Code.

References[]

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