Buenas Sangres (“Good Bloods”) is a vampire chronicle set in Buenos Aires from late 1987 to 1991. Six young undead are caught between Argentina’s return to democracy and a vampire court that keeps the masters who served the dictatorship.
| Type | Chronicle |
| Era | Late 1987 – 1991 |
| Location | Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, Uritorco |
| Chronicle | vbs |
| Spanish entry | Buenas Sangres |
Background
The companions are joined by accident, not ideology: some are anarchists, some depend on the Camarilla, one has no recognized right to exist. The contradiction is never resolved.
The court
- José López Rega, Tremere warlock, is Prince. Officially imprisoned or hospitalized, he rules from a sanatorium tunneled to Tribunales, the Colón and Elysium.
- Commissioner Lavín, sheriff, is the prince’s armed hand in the south, keeper of a private relic collection, and sire of one companion.
- Elysium meets at the Confitería del Molino (Rivadavia and Callao); its dome skylights admit the sun where the prince wants.
- Franco Macri, Ventrue of over three hundred years, primogen and magnate, collects forever on the rescues he grants.
The companions
- Aluc — died to the living in 1987 and kept singing. He remembers his sister Claudia only in fragments. Rock figure turned leading light of the anarchists.
- Carmen — Romani, under twenty. Tremere childe of Lavín, whom she fears and hates. Sister of Víctor, cousin of Angie.
- Víctor — upper-class Ventrue, favored son of the Macri family. He promised Angie to quit drugs, relapsed, and was embraced that night.
- Lilith Plutón — makeup artist working prostitution and blood-supply circuits, who pays and asks permission.
- Felipe — clanless taxi driver, an illegal childe, accused from the first night of a crime he did not commit.
- The Tooth Fairy — huge, noseless, scarred; lives in the sewers near the Colón and pulls fangs when interrogating.
History
The first night. A punk concert at a Lanús school ended in a raid. Aluc frenzied and drank from a policeman before a hundred people, breaching the Masquerade. Lavín staked him; he was tried at the Molino during a masked ball and punished under the dome. Meanwhile a vampire judge who had dominated Felipe was found drained, and Felipe was accused. The Tooth Fairy dragged the body to his lair.
Santa Felicitas. At the church of Santa Felicitas in Barracas the band captured Acraso, the sheriff’s guardian of the vacant domain. Interrogated in the Colón cellars, he lost two fangs and admitted he answered to Lavín, not the prince. After hunters reached the Colón haven, the band took the church and made a punk concert into a permanent assembly. The Federal Police raided it, Lavín outside as “adviser”, Acraso inside as a sergeant; the band broke the operation without casualties and the anarchists kept the church, linked to the memory of Felicitas Guerrero. Afterward the band swore respect to the prince’s domain at Elysium.
The embrace of Angie. Angie was Víctor’s love and touchstone. The harpy Lavinia warned him to keep her from the concert. To keep her, Víctor revealed he was dead. The court ruled she must die or he with her. Franco Macri used his right as sire and embraced her on the spot. Angie survived as Franco’s; Víctor was saved, indebted, and made answerable for his companions’ transgressions.
The exodus. Under a blood hunt, Carmen left for Córdoba to find her sister; Aluc made it a collective project. In Rosario the crimes against the family of a Rosario musician fall to Felipe, unproven. A song everyone knows came of that night. Beneath Uritorco lies Erks, an esoteric myth that proves to be an underground city. Aluc and Lilith stayed two years and built a community of vampires and hippies. Mariela disappeared there. Far below, something sleeps.
The scepter (1991). A new pact offers Menem in exchange for López Rega: topple the prince and the blood hunt is lifted. Breaking his sorcery requires the scepter driven into the chest of the entity beneath Erks — a gigantic, saber-fanged being called by legend an eight-thousand-year-old Comechingón and Vultán. The scepter must return to Erks afterward, not stay with Menem. Vultán demanded human food. The band intercepted a bus with twenty-nine children, executed the coordinator and marched the children into the caverns, Aluc beating a drum. Vultán ate nearly all, made one girl pull the scepter from his chest, and bathed in the others’ blood. Aluc carried the girl out with the scepter. The chronicle closes with the band wounded in the caves, planning to return to Buenos Aires.
Relationships
The cycle of Gary, the New World also begins in 1987; it ends with its eclipse, while this one runs to 1991. No crossings are recorded.
Open questions
- Who committed diablerie on the judge, and what proof the band holds against the sheriff.
- Whether Lavín means to protect, replace or bargain away López Rega; by 1991 he covets the princedom.
- What Claudia is: memory, apparition, vampire or sire.
- What happened to Mariela, and to the girl who pulled the scepter and her bond with Aluc.
- Whether the scepter returns to Erks.
- Whether the prince’s fall frees anyone or installs the next hierarchy.