1860s – Civil War, Camp Randall Necromantic Spillover
⚔️ 1860s – The Civil War & Supernatural Mobilization: The Battle for Camp Randall
“While men drilled and died for union or secession, other wars played out behind the veil—wars for memory, for control of death, for the fate of souls.” — Whispers-to-Stone, Bone Gnawer Galliard
As the American Civil War raged across the country, Madison, Wisconsin—far from the front lines—played a more esoteric role. The establishment of Camp Randall in 1861 as a training ground for Union soldiers also created a psychic crucible where trauma, transition, and mortality ripped open the local Gauntlet.
Unseen by most, the land around Camp Randall became a battleground of spiritual convergence, where Garou, mages, vampires, and the dead themselves clashed, bargained, and wove fate.
🪖 Camp Randall: More Than a Military Base
- Located adjacent to the Capitol Node, Camp Randall became a site of extreme resonance due to:
- The mass emotional energy of recruits confronting death for the first time.
- The presence of the wounded and dying, many of whom left spiritual imprints on the land.
- The imprisonment and death of over 100 Confederate soldiers, whose neglected graves and spiritual unrest created a Wraith anchor point.
This cocktail of blood, fear, pain, and purpose generated a temporary Necropolis, one of the few in the North where Wraiths manifested unbidden, walking in silent columns near the training grounds at dusk.
🐺 The Garou and Dreamspeakers Respond
Recognizing the spiritual volatility, a coalition of:
- Bone Gnawers
- Children of Gaia
- Dreamspeakers came together to reclaim and anchor the Node’s resonance, before it could fall to Wyrm or Weaver exploitation.
🌀 Their Actions Included:
- Ritualizing Death: Bone Gnawers performed howling rites to guide restless soldier-spirits to Luna, preventing them from coalescing into Spectres.
- Death-Warding Caerns: A temporary minor Caern was opened in the adjacent woods (now lost), focusing on Mercy, Memory, and Transition.
- Spiritual Weaving: Dreamspeakers used the ambient energy to create Ward Webs that stretched into the Umbra and kept predatory spirits at bay.
These efforts were not without cost—some Dreamspeakers were consumed by banes masquerading as war totems, and several kinfolk vanished into the Gauntlet, never to be seen again.
🧛 Giovanni and Tremere Necromantic Infiltration
The Giovanni, ever hungry for spiritual power, saw in Camp Randall an opportunity for profit and experimentation.
- Giovanni agents posing as Union quartermasters and undertakers embedded themselves in Madison, collecting spiritual essence, names, and ashes of the dead.
- They constructed soul jars and shards of entropic resonance from these fragments, many of which are still rumored to exist in basements under State Street.
At the same time, the Tremere Chantry in Chicago sent its own agents to disrupt the Giovanni and harvest souls for Thaumaturgic refinement:
- These two factions often clashed silently in ritual duels beneath the camp’s chapel or in the unrecorded basements of the infirmary.
- Rumors persist of a pact formed in 1864 between a rogue Tremere and a Confederate Wraith, one that gave rise to a blood-cursed revenant line hidden in Wisconsin.
🪦 The Dead Walked: Wraith Activity and the Shadow Conflict
- The Confederate POWs who died of exposure and neglect became the core of a haunting storm, a restless spectral legion called the Unnamed March.
- These Wraiths carried both the rage of their imprisonment and the conflicting political ideologies of the South, making them unstable, unanchored, and susceptible to Spectre manipulation.
- Attempts by the Hierarchs of Stygia to claim the souls were thwarted—some say by the Nameless itself, whose prison beneath the Node fed on spiritual entropy to strengthen its seals.
🔥 Ritual Collisions and Umbral Scarring
- In 1863, during a solar eclipse, a tri-faction ritual collision occurred:
- A Bone Gnawer rite of remembrance,
- A Giovanni necromantic extraction,
- And a Tremere blood-binding circle all intersected.
- The energies clashed, creating a spiritual explosion that:
- Ruptured a shallow Umbral boundary, allowing Banes to enter through Camp Randall’s reflection.
- Melted part of the Gauntlet over the infirmary, turning it into a localized spiritual echo zone (later paved over, but still active in ghost encounters today).
- Scarred the local Node, causing a temporary flux in magical practices across southern Wisconsin for seven days.
🧿 Lasting Impacts of the 1860s Supernatural War
| Impact | Description |
|---|---|
| Camp Randall Echo Zone | Still haunted by ritual residue; spirits of soldiers sometimes manifest on anniversaries of key Civil War events. |
| Giovanni Artifacts | Several soul jars and resonance scrolls remain lost beneath Madison. One may be buried under Camp Randall Stadium itself. |
| Bone Gnawer Memory-Line | A sacred oral record of the war’s spiritual battles is still preserved and passed down by Bone Gnawer Galliards. |
| Capitol Node Instability | The Node temporarily dimmed during the war, requiring postbellum reconsecration by Chorus and Dreamspeaker mages. |
| Seeds of the Gahara Pact | First spiritual cooperation between Garou, Mages, and Kindred in Madison was forged here, though it would not be formalized until much later. |
🕯️ Epilogue
In the years following the war, Jay Dee and a wounded but wiser Lea Goodwin led ritual repair rites in the Capitol, binding spiritual leakage and codifying warding symmetries into the city’s stone. Camp Randall became a locus of forgotten sacrifice, known to few, protected by many.
Every now and then, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison will report cold spots in the stadium, dreams of dying in blue wool, or the faint sound of marching feet on snowless nights.
The battle may be over.
But the land remembers.
1868 – Waukon Decorah Returns
- Waukon Decorah, a Dreamspeaker shaman, fakes his death and returns to Madison to represent Wisconsin’s spiritual interests.
- He successfully ends the first Supernatural War of Madison, establishing temporary peace between Mages, Garou, and Kindred
1880 – Frank Lloyd Wright Arrives
- Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, secretly a powerful Mage, collaborates with Jay Dee to design a series of geomantically aligned structures across Wisconsin.
These buildings are not merely aesthetic—they are ritual anchors and containment zones for the Neverborn slumbering beneath Lake Mendota
🔮 Prehistoric & Mythic Eras
10–20 Billion BCE – The Big Bang and the Triat Begins
3.5–4 Billion BCE – Emergence of Life and Spirits on Earth
400 Million BCE – Ananasa Diversifies Insects
360 Million BCE – The Spider Spirit is Born
150 Million BCE – Age of Kings and Mokole Civilization
65 Million BCE – Fall of the Drachid Form and Age of Kings
2.5–1.75 Million BCE – Humanity Adopted by Weaver, Creation of Garou
100,000–10,000 BCE – Diaspora, Banestorm, War of Shame
🏺 Ancient History
6000 BCE – Sealing of the Nameless (First Binding)
5000 BCE – Fracture of the First Seal
4000 BCE – Rise of Babylon, Druidic Magick, First Shadow Tensions
3000 BCE – First Breach Attempt, Wounded Anchors
2000 BCE – Nephandi Almost Free the Nameless
1000 BCE – Third Fire Renewal by Croatan
🏛️ Classical to Early Medieval
1 CE – Dream of the Hollow Mask, Sentinel Appears
1000 CE – Silent Confluence and Renewal of the Third Seal
1634–1836 CE – Indigenous Stewardship, Colonial Spiritual War
🏙️ Modern Madison Founded
1836 – Madison Founded atop the Third Anchor
1860s – Civil War, Camp Randall Necromantic Spillover
1890s – Technocratic Assaults, Gahara Pact Forms
🔥 20th Century Events
1900–1915 – Capitol Fire, Fall of the Lords of Madison
1914–1920 – WWI, New Avalon Echo, Sabbat Probes
1920–1939 – Prohibition, Syndicate Rise, Madtown Mage Cabal Forms
1940–1949 – WWII, Truax Field Founded, Nephandi Rituals
1950–1959 – Kindred–Garou War, Cold War Occult Espionage
1960–1969 – Civil Rights Awakening, Hollow One Expansion, Malkavian Prophecy
1970–1979 – Olbrich Alliance, Sabbat Incursion, Eclipse Ritual
1980–1985 – Digital Web War, Capitol Murders, Nameless Awakens
🎭 Current Campaign Start
February 1985 – Opening Night: Madtown by Night Begins