James Milligan

Ventrue, Regent of the North and Prefect of the Carthian Movement

Conventional belief says that only one Kindred, Prince Farragut, lived in Chicago during the Great Fire and survived to meet the wave of immigrant vampires who came seeking their fortunes in its wake. Rumors continuously circulate, however, about two other Kindred who claim to have arrived very soon afterward; perhaps as the last flames were being put out. James Milligan is one of these Kindred. Those familiar with the Regent know that he did in fact live in Chicago well before the Fire; he was one of the early Irish immigrants brought to the town to dig the original portage canal that brought trade and travel to this spot on the shores of Lake Michigan. James then moved, as he puts it, “out West, where there was still work that needed doing.” Somewhere out on the nation’s emerging railroad network, Milligan met his sire and joined America’s fast-growing Carthian Movement. He had not been Kindred for long when he heard of the conflagration sweeping through his former hometown, and raced back to look after the welfare of the family he left behind.

After the Fire, both the mortal and Kindred populations of Chicago exploded across the prairie, quickly becoming an even larger, wealthier and more influential city than it had been before the devastation. Milligan was in his element; in true Carthian style, he organized the inbound Kindred, many of whom came here with no covenant loyalty to speak of; by the time of the Columbian Exposition, many of these wayward Kindred called themselves Carthians, and promised that the new Chicago would be a bold experiment in how Kindred can run a city. Although the covenant at large tends to disagree with the notion of Princehood, Farragut seemed to understand the Carthian ethic that a Prince who governs least governs best. Under his leadership, the Movement flourished; under the Carthians’ influence, Chicago’s labor movement flourished as well. All the while, Milligan was there in the shadows, making sure everything went according to plan.

Sometime around the 1950s, though, the Movement changed is tone, and Milligan along with it. With the Prince already receding from city leadership and no other covenant approaching the Carthians’ influence, goals for the ongoing “revolution” became scarce. Chicago already did its best to be free of the paranoia and xenophobia that drives many Kindred communities; newcomers were welcomed, provided they didn’t cause trouble. The Regency system allowed every Kindred resident to have a closer relationship with those in power. No Kindred, for any reason, was persecuted unfairly. The Carthian Movement stopped looking for new freedoms to fight for and began concentrating on defending and consolidating all that they had fought for, and thus their outlook became more and more conservative as time went on. As their critics put it, the revolution had become the establishment.

Tonight, Milligan is well aware of this attitude toward his movement. Whether or not he cares is still unknown. Milligan spends his nights acting as an almost-Prince, being the Regent most likely to flex his political muscles at large. Milligan and Harrison Whyte acted as a dynamic pair among the city’s leadership; confederates when the well-being of Chicago was at risk and eager rivals whenever the stakes were just a bit less than life and death. Milligan does not share this relationship with the current Invictus Regent, E. C. Featherby. Being somewhat new to the Regency game, Featherby is often overruled or simply ignored by the overbearing Milligan. As for the other Regents, Bishop Pryce is heard from rarely enough that his opinion is usually discounted, and the remaining two, Stagger Lee and Anton East, are normally too absorbed in their respective covenants’ occultisms to bother with political minutiae. With the city to look after, Milligan is hardly concerned with what he sees as a minor twinge of criticism regarding his methods.

Kindred of Chicago