The Second Inquisition (often shortened to SI) is a union of various secret services with the witch-hunters of the old Inquisition that has begun to systematically hunt vampires all around the globe.
Overview
After 2004, the NSA managed to crack SchreckNet and gained firsthand knowledge of the existence of a race of undead bloodsuckers that were spread in all corners of the world. Sharing their knowledge with other intelligence agencies, the united secret services contacted the Vatican, whom they knew to have experience fighting the undead. The Church accepted, granting them access to its resources as well as the experienced witch-hunters of the Society of Leopold.
After years of careful research, the Second Inquisition had targeted Vienna as the "capital of vampires" and prepared a strike against their headquarter. In 2008, a united USSOCOM and Vatican ESOG force augmented with experienced Brazilian hunter-killer teams stormed the Chantry of Clan Tremere and destroyed it, blaming it to an ISIS terror attack to the public. London, Las Vegas, Paris and Marseilles were largely cleared of vampiric activity, with numerous captured vampires being placed in black sites and experimented upon to discover their weaknesses.
The united might of these forces overwhelmed the undead. Domains weakened by the disappearence of Elders that were called to the East by the Beckoning fell, with dozens of their number dying. The Anarchs blamed the Camarilla for failing them at a critical moment and a global revolt took place against them, further weakening the sect. Communications between domains has become a dangerous affair, with most vampire domains becoming isolated islands that fall back to using complicated codes to send each other messages. While the Camarilla has banned any form of electronic communication, the Anarchs flaunt this rule, skirting dangerously close to violating the Masquerade and bringing the Inquisition on their heads, but are better connected with each other as a result. The Sabbat has lost much of their strongholds and has to resort to clandestine terror attacks in other domains. The ones who fare best in this climate are, ironically, the Thin-bloods, who are human enough to throw their hunters off the hook.
Organization
The existence of the Second Inquisition is a clandestine secret even among the various secret services they draw from. Most of the common personell only know of coordinated strikes against "terrorists" and similar acceptable targets. Their operations are guided by an intra agency collaboration called FIRSTLIGHT that strives to keep their activties hidden from the public and even their superiors. This has much to do with paranoia; FIRSTLIGHT believes that any government official could be compromised and be a secret slave to a vampire. The word "vampire" is not used in official briefings. Instead, the agents speak of "blankbodies", referring to the low body temperature of the undead that marks them as inhuman.
References
- VTM: Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition, p. 39, 56, 360-366