Precedent
The Traditions of the Camarilla obtain in Denver whole and entire, as this court has read them since the rails came. Where an edict is silent, precedent governs. Where precedent is silent — the Prince is not.
Denver · Autumn 1994
Fontaine's Law
Being the standing edicts of the Domain of Denver, as entered in the Rolls and maintained by the office of the Seneschal. Set down in this present form in the autumn of 1994.
The Rolls of the Domain of DenverThe Standing EdictsPresentation
All Kindred entering the domain shall present themselves within three nights: first to the Herald, who keeps the docket, and then at Elysium, before the court. Until you are presented, you are no one; the domain owes you nothing, not even its protection, and the office declines to record what has become of those who tested the point.
(So entered, 1897.)
Elysium
Elysium is the Corinthian Opera House, and it is sacred. And Elysium is likewise — by writ of Her Grace — any room in which the one called Null Saint performs, from the first note to the last, wheresoever that room may stand and whosoever may own its door. No violence within such walls, no Discipline raised in anger, no weapon carried past such doors. The Keeper's word within the house is the Prince's word; where the house cannot be found until the hour says so, the word travels with the music. Those who forget are reminded once. The office keeps no record of second reminders, there having never been occasion to enter one, and trusts the new writ will not oblige it to begin.
The Rack
The Rack is Five Points — Welton Street and the blocks that keep it, where the city buries its dead too quickly to count them, and the only ground in Denver upon which the hunt is licensed. You will feed there with discretion, under the rules of the Mistress of the Rack, whose seat is the licensed house called MILK, below the street where Broadway crosses the vein. You will take no vessel twice in a season. You will leave what you take breathing. You will settle your accounts with her house before dawn. Feeding elsewhere is forbidden, unless permission is granted by the landholder, priced as the landholder prices it, and recorded with the Mistress of the Rack.
Progeny
No childe is made in Denver save by the Prince's leave — in writing, obtained in advance, entered in the Rolls.
(Per the ruling of 1912.)
Ghouls
Ghouls are property, and property is registered. Every ghoul made or kept within the domain shall be entered with the Keeper of the Rolls. An unregistered ghoul is a controlled breach of the Masquerade, and its keeper shall answer for it as for one. The office is aware this strikes the newly-made as cold. The office was keeping ghoul registries when the newly-made were warm, and has buried the consequences of every city that neglected them.
Boons
A boon unrecorded is a boon unenforceable. Debts between Kindred shall be registered with this office, which will enforce what it can see, and published by the Salon, which will make certain everyone else sees it. The court does not collect debts it cannot see, and counsels you — with what the young mistake for humor and the old recognize as kindness — not to extend them.
(So entered, 1902.)
The Roads
The roads belong to the Sheriff. Kindred arriving by road or rail shall present to his office; Kindred departing owe notice of their leaving. What enters Denver by land is subject to his inspection, whatever the manifest may say, and the office observes that manifests have been known to say remarkable things.
(Reaffirmed, 1934.)
The Wires
No business of the Blood shall touch the mortal airwaves, presses, or wires. Broadcast is Masquerade; the Masquerade is the First Tradition in modern dress; and a signal, once loosed, cannot be recalled by any power this office has ever entered in its books. Unlicensed signal traffic within the domain is a breach, and will be traced.
(So entered, 1969. The office confesses the matter is presently under examination, and invites any Kindred possessing knowledge of a certain signal to volunteer it — while volunteering remains the pleasant option.)
The High Country
The high country is closed. By writ of Her Grace as Duchess of the High Mountains, no Kindred shall travel southwest of the city into the high valleys without the Prince's written leave. The mountains are her domain, her concern, and — the office is instructed to record — her gift to no one.
(So entered, September 1994. The reader will note the freshness of the ink, and the office hopes not to take up its pen on this page again for some while.)
Spoilage
Report what spoils. Tainted vessels, sickened herds, and fouled feeding grounds shall be reported to the Sheriff's office without delay and without embarrassment — the office emphasizes: without embarrassment, embarrassment having cost more cities than ambition ever did. Sanitation is the Masquerade's oldest servant. The office kept these books through the winter of 1918, remembers precisely what it was obliged to enter in them, and does not intend to keep such pages twice.
(Standing since 1918.)
Petitions
Petitions to Her Grace are received through the Herald and are styled, after the old legal form, as prayers — for that is what the word has always meant, whatever the mortals' churches have made of it since. You will kneel to deliver yours. The court commends the posture; it clarifies the relationship.
Office of the Prince of Denver · 6 September 1994 · In force from the reading
Provisional Edicts of the Crown
Her Grace Cecilia Fontaine, Prince of Denver, Sovereign of the Queen City of the Plains, Duchess of the High Mountains and Mistress of the Headgates, has been pleased to set down the following. They are provisional. They are not open to petition. They are in force from the reading of this notice.
Vitae
I
Until further notice, no Kindred shall give or take the vitae of another Kindred within the domain of Denver. No bonds. No healing. No oaths. Violation is a matter for the Sheriff.
Ghouls
II
No Kindred shall create a ghoul. Those already made are to be presented to the Scourge within seven nights, with a name and an address. This office is aware that several of you will find this embarrassing. Present them anyway.
Injuries
III
Any injury which has not closed by the following night is to be reported to the Sheriff before it is discussed with anyone else. Concealment will be treated as the greater offence, and will be easier to prove.
Vessels
IV
No vessel is to be taken from twice. Vessels are to be drawn through the Mistress of the Rack, and are not to be lent, shared, or recommended.
The Roads
V
No Kindred shall depart the domain, nor be received into it, without leave of the Seneschal. The mortal authorities have closed the mountain roads on their own account. The crown asks only that you do not make yourselves interesting to them.
Torpor
VI
Those lying in torpor are to remain where the Sheriff has placed them. They are not to be moved, roused, fed, or visited.
The Corinthian
VII
The Corinthian remains open and the docket will be heard on schedule. The court will be seen to be calm, and every one of you will assist in this.
These edicts will be lifted when their cause is lifted, and not before.Promulgated by Percival Wren, Herald of the Court, Keeper of the Docket.
Sealed at the office of Vernon Pell, Seneschal.
Sealed at the office of Vernon Pell, Seneschal.
The Six TraditionsThe Headgate DoctrineAs this court reads them. The reading is called the Headgate Doctrine, and the reader is advised to learn why.
The Traditions are the old law — older than the Camarilla that enforces them, older than any court now sitting, older, if certain of my correspondents are to be believed, than the cities in which courts first sat. Their origin is argued by scholars with more leisure than sense. Their authority is argued by no one who remains available for argument.
What differs, city to city, is the reading. I have seen the Traditions read as scripture, in courts where age alone was throne enough and a neonate addressed an elder's shadow before the elder. I have seen them read as suggestion, in domains that no longer exist. Denver reads them neither way. Denver reads them as this state reads water — and I ask the newly-made to attend, because no lesson in this book will serve you longer.
The mortals of Colorado divide their rivers by a doctrine they believe they invented: first in time, first in right. The senior claim is served before the junior. The recorded right defeats the remembered one. In drought, the eldest appropriation drinks first and the newest goes dry, and no one calls it cruelty, because it was all written down, and everyone could read the book. Her Grace found this doctrine waiting for her in the land itself, recognized it as the truest thing the kine of this territory ever wrote, and made it the court's. Hence the name the harpies gave her readings, half in respect and half in resignation: the Headgate Doctrine. Everything in Denver flows. Everything flows through her.
Mark what this is not. It is not the ancestor-worship of the old courts. In Denver your elder's centuries are not an altar; they are a senior appropriation — a recorded, defensible claim that will be served before yours because it was filed before yours. The old are paid first because the old filed first. File your claims. Keep your record clean. Wait your turn. This court has honored every recorded right on its books for a century entire, and that — more than the Sheriff, more than the Writ, more than Her Grace's regard, which you will never see and should never wish to — is why Denver obeys. The water has always arrived.
The First Tradition
The Masquerade
Thou shalt not disclose thy nature to the herd. The lie is elder than the law, and it alone stands between our kind and the fire.
As Denver reads it
A breach of the Masquerade is the one account this court settles in Final Death, and the reader is invited to notice that the sentence required no adornment. A breach contained before mortal authority takes notice may be entered as a controlled breach and priced — in standing, in boons, in chastisement — but the office prices generously, and the price compounds. The office further observes that the mortals' curiosity has been unusually well-fed this season, and that its patience for error has thinned accordingly.
The Second Tradition
Domain
A domain belongeth to the one who holds it. Upon another's ground, hold their word as law.
As Denver reads it
Only the Prince claims domain. All other holdings are grants — recorded in the Rolls, held of her, tenancies and not titles, whatever airs their holders give themselves at Elysium. The doctrine is prior appropriation: first in time, first in right; the recorded grant defeats the ancient memory; the ancient grant defeats the recent ambition. Consult the Rolls before you hunt, trade, or build. "I did not know whose ground it was" is a sentence this office has heard, priced, and published, and the publication is available upon request as a caution to others.
The Third Tradition
Progeny
Thou shalt make no childe save by thine elder's leave. The Blood is not thine to spend.
As Denver reads it
The Prince's leave, in writing, in advance. The Embrace is the largest appropriation our kind can make — a permanent draw against the herd, the domain, and the peace — and it is granted as senior water is granted: rarely, formally, and upon the record. Progeny made without leave are the sire's debt made flesh, and the court forecloses upon both. The office chooses the word forecloses with care, having selected it from several harsher candidates.
The Fourth Tradition
The Accounting
Thy childer are thine account. Until the court receive them, their sins post to thy ledger.
As Denver reads it
Until a childe is presented, recognized, and formally released before the court, every act of that childe is entered against the sire — standing, boons, blood, the whole of it. Release is itself an instrument: recorded, dated, witnessed. The great houses of this city release their childer with care, and the court marks well what a house is willing to loose upon the world. Newly-released childer of great houses would do well to remember that the court is, at this very moment, marking them.
The Fifth Tradition
Hospitality
Coming to a foreign city, present thyself to the one who rules it. Ere thou art acknowledged, thou art nothing.
As Denver reads it
Three nights, the Herald, Elysium — see the Second Item, which the reader has of course already committed to memory. This court extends hospitality with genuine grace; Denver was built by arrivals and has not forgotten it. But an unpresented Kindred discovered in the domain is not a guest, is not a resident, and is not — in the narrow legal sense recognized by the Scourge's writ, which is the only sense that will attend the proceedings — anyone at all.
The Sixth Tradition
Destruction
Thou shalt not destroy another of thy kind upon thine own authority. That right belongeth to the Prince alone.
As Denver reads it
The right of destruction is Her Grace's — whole, undelegated, and exercised, in this office's long observation, with a restraint the young invariably mistake for reluctance. One recorded instrument stands: the Prince's Writ, borne by the Scourge, standing authority over the unaccounted and the unpresented. Within the Rolls, you are protected by every page of this book. Outside them, you are the Writ's business, and the Writ does not keep books. The office suggests — and after a century of keeping this particular volume, the office permits itself the warmth — that you remain within them.
So entered, so maintained, so it has been and so it shall be kept.
— Under the seal of the Prince —
Entered in the Rolls. Maintained by the office of the Seneschal. Corrected; never erased.