MtKG: Montreal by Night

Deviations in the Consensus

• Juste pour rire: a long-running (over 18 seasons!) prank-comedy show based in Montreal has led locals to be somewhat credulous of 'its just a prank'.
• A city of festivals: a strong tourism industry and civic culture result a calendar with wall to wall festivals and special events for most of the year, with few lulls save for extreme weather, civil disorder or other natural disasters. There will, of course, be day drinking.
• Everyone is on strike: every civil servant, from nurses to cleaners, bus drivers to the police themselves, are in a constant state of low-level dissent and strike organization against the austere policies of the provincial and federal authorities. City vehicles are covered in slogan stickers, police wear brightly-colored camo pants in violation of uniform code and transit operators will let fare violations slide depending on the mood.
• Pour le service en anglais, pesez sur le 2 (For Service in English, Press 2): due to being a hotbed of anglophone activity, language police (a pejorative for the Office Quebecoise de la Langue Francaise, or OQLF) are especially strident in Montreal. All signage and workplace communications must be bilingual and French first (or else).
• Roads fit for a king: Quebec has the unenviable reputation of having the worst roads in Canada, and Montreal arguably has the worst of the province. Corruption in infrastructure spending, sweetheart deals with low-quality contractors using substandard materials, combined with the valley's extreme weather and heavy urban wear make cracks and potholes a genuine threat to public safety.

Factions in Montreal

Traditions

Major Presence

• Celestial Chorus
• Cult of Ecstasy
• Dreamspeakers
• Hollow Ones
• Order of Hermes
• Virtual Adepts

Minor Presence

• Akashic Brotherhood
• Euthanatoi
• Sons of Ether
• Verbena

Celestial Chorus

The third most powerful traditionalist group in Montreal, missionaries of the Chœur Céleste arrived in the 1600s alongside French colonists and fur traders with the goal of saving the souls of the natives. For a time Montreal was a city blessed with potent True Faith, with many churches tending to Catholic faithful and the cross erected at the top of Mount Royal acting as a shining beacon. Now the neon cross is a hollow beacon used by infernalist vampires to watch the city at night and the demon that slumbers under the mountain casts nightmares and maledictions on the city.

For other religious denominations, Montreal has always been a safe harbor city. The particulars of protected language education in the city, which implicitly permit the formation of private schools in an ethnic group's language of choice, has allowed minority religious denominations to avoid secular assimilation. Sufis and Kabbalists are numerous among the Chorus, as well as a growing number of awakened Khalsa from northern India.

Notable Groups:

• Knights of the Temple of Solomon: the largest formation of Choristers in Montreal is largely foreign, composed of volunteers from elsewhere flocking to embattled city in order to defeat the Sabbat. As with their Disparate kin, the Templars have a great number of unawakened lay members.
• Electric Knights of Saint Isidore: a small group of Techgnosi (magi who attempt to blend faith and technology) who seek to turn the Neon Cross back into a holy symbol. Make use of blessed powered armor festooned with bright lights.
• Commission of Special Religious Schools: representing the lay communities of foreign-language religious schools founded by various religious minorities, including Jews, Greeks, Muslims, Armenians and Sikhs.

Cult of Ecstasy

Notable Groups:

• After Hours Social Club: Ecstatics who fit the 'conventional' image of the Tradition of late, these seers make ample use of synthetic drugs, hallucinogens and alcohol to enhance clubgoing experiences. Some own venues, work as DJs or organize events. Many more are party-goers errant, living day to day and meal to meal on the waves of the purest high.
• Cult of X-Fit: a group of Ecstatics who practice extreme fitness and wellness culture, the new drugs of modern society. Many of their members are media-savvy influencers, members of the police or otherwise well-placed in society.
• Les Bon-Vivants: a long-standing movement within local Ecstatics, opposed to temperance but also the use of hard synthetic drugs. They prefer good food, good wine, hard liquor, fine cigars and increasingly, the now-legal weed. Most are old hands in the hospitality industry, though a growing number are critics, writers, restaurateurs and well-heeled investors with sophisticated appetites.

Dreamspeakers

Notable Groups:

• Red Spear Society: the militant arm of the Dreamspeakers has swelled in numbers with the resurgence of decolonial and native sovereignty movements in Canada, taking a particular interest in the city. Montreal borders several reservations such as the southern shore's Kahnawake, which provide ample recruiting grounds. Some locals balk at the Spear's strict hierarchy or their preference to remain in strength while doing little of consequence.
• The Guardians of the Eastern Door: a group of local awakened primarily from the Mohawk nation (though they will accept other Iroquois) dissatisfied with the Red Spear Society. Calling on blood ties to New World garou of the Uktena tribe, the Guardians have access to southern Quebec's significant caerns and many powerful fetishes. This involvement with Garou politics has not been without consequence however, as war has broken out between the wolves of Europe and the Americas and the magi have called to arms by their allies.
• Les Sèvitès de Mont Royal: a small group of Haitian voudoun who serve the large immigrant community, but otherwise quite insular. Reportedly friendly with Samedi vampires over mutual interest and distrust of les blancs.

Hollow Ones

The most powerful Tradition in Montreal, the Hollow Ones benefited from Sabbat dominance of the city and aggression towards more recognizable traditionalist magi. The insular and sectarian nature of Chorister, Dreamspeaker and Hermetic communities present on the island created a large community of orphans who awakened to disparate and often contradictory paradigms, eventually rallying around their shared alienation from society. The island's Hollow Ones are generally categorized by the decade they awakened in, which gives general indication of political tendencies.

Notable Groups:

• Anarchists: the largest current tendency is formed largely of people who awakened in the late 2000s and early 2010s, taking advantage of the housing bubble to communalize large swathes of foreclosed buildings in the island's East End. Awakened members vary from witches and psychonauts to crafty indie makers cobbling together in-home drug labs and surveillance-foiling clothes and makeup. Fellow travelers of Anarch vampires.
• X/"Sellouts": the remnants of unaffiliated Hollowers who were active in the 90s, the X (as they call themselves) or Sellouts (pejoratively by the rest of the Tradition) settled back down and became an invisible authority inside of Sleeper society, particularly in media and business. Few progressed spiritually since the 90s and many have since defected to the Technocracy.
• MTLDotCom: a seemingly nihilistic web 2.0 news listicle/outrage farm website is actually one of the great pillars of Montreal's Hollow Ones, providing a training ground for critical thought, thin-slicing and the passive destruction of societal norms through the instruments of the Technocracy. Frequently import guest writers from other Traditions.

Order of Hermes

Notable Groups:

• House Thig of McGill: Montreal's thriving community of Thigs is based out of the city's prestigious McGill University. While most universities in the nation are wholly Technocratic institutions, McGill is accorded a certain privilege as neutral ground owing to one of its most famous graduates and donors being a member of the Thigs who was the star of a popular 1960s sci fi serial that transformed the shape of Consensus. The Thigs of McGill therefore practice a fantasy of utopian science, wielding phasers and materializing meals at a whim.
• House Shaea of Concordia: tightly connected to the Queer Alliance of the island's largest public university and dispersing members among the library staff, House Shaea embraces the paradox of true names in an era of fluid identity. House Shaea also serve as a critical source of falsified documents for foreign magi new to the island, and often act as fixers and fences for other traditionalists.
• House Solficati of Snowdon: the city's alchemists draw heavily from the Kabbalistic practices of British Sephardim who emigrated to Montreal in the 19th century, their neophytes likewise drawn from the city's Jewish community. Increasingly they also recruit from communities that provide paliative care workers to aging alchemists, typically immigrants from the Caribean and Southeast Asia and particularly the Philippines, as discriminatory immigration policies often result in their fine minds being wasted in menial labor.

Virtual Adepts

Notable Groups:

• Deep Urbanists: a society of technologists, architects, urban planners and activists who have been building the ideological framework of revolt against authoritarian governance and ubiquitous corruption in the province. The Deep Urbanists consider the city's current social democrat government and mayor as major victories, but are confronting the dual threats of a new wave of reactionary ideology in the province and a possible Technocratic-led purge of their assets in government.
• Games Industry Workers of the World (GIWW): an activist clique trying to simultaneously undermine the harmful colonial and authoritarian memes of Syndicate and NWO-produced video games and improve conditions for thousands of workers in the industry local to the island. Many slip bugs into in-development games as primers and principae for alienated budding magi who would otherwise be discovered by the Technocracy.
• Cybergothic Horde: a coalition of LARPers and clubgoers who use technomantic assistance to bolster their experiences, led by a married Maker couple. Though considered insular, they contribute to the city's frequent protests by building anonymized black clothes, adapted armor and homemade respirators to deal with SPVM riot cops.

Technocracy

Major Presence

• New World Order
• Progenitors
• Syndicate

Minor Presence

• Iteration X
• Void Engineers