The Lost Nights refers to the near-destruction of Sacramento's kindred by parties still mostly unknown. The attack, a combination of advanced biotechnology with strange magicks. infected the kindred with parasites that attacked Vitae and the heart. Many of the Domain's kindred, including many elders, were destroyed, while the remainder were rendered torpid for a period of three nights and badly weakened for many nights afterward.
History
Following Frost's tenure as Requiem ST, DredLoke took over for a brief period of time. His original intent was to wipe out the existing Kindred population of Sacramento, essentially rebooting the Requiem setting[1]. This turned out to be unpopular with many of the existing Requiem players at Twilight Valley, and Dredloke's second tenure ended after only a week. DaevaDude then took over as TV Requiem ST, and he started his tenure by combining elements of what Dredloke had been doing (the attack which wiped out the kindred) with his own ideas, and revealed that many of the Kindred that had been thought destroyed were only badly injured and left torpid by the attack[2]. The result was a less thorough reboot than Dredloke had intended, as several TV Requiem players chose to keep playing characters they had established prior to Dredloke's second tenure as TV Requiem ST.
The attempt to identify and deal with those behind the Lost Nights was the primary plot source through out Daevadude's tenure as a Requiem Storyteller.
The Enemy
The Kindred of Sacramento have not yet fully sorted out the identities of those behind the Lost Nights, or their motives for launching the attacks. They have determined that Horizon Pharmatech is involved in the attack, and several individuals associated with that firm have been identified as being possibly or definitely associated with the Lost Nights.
The "Lost Nights" Weapon
The initial attack of the Lost Nights was an airborne one, released by tanker trucks posing as mosquito sprayers. As best the Kindred of Sacramento have been able to determine, this airborne weapon targeted Kindred Vitae and included microscopic eggs which insinuated themselves into the flesh of Kindred and their ghouls, where they hatched into tiny larvae that fed on and destroyed Vitae, leaving behind an ammonia-like substance and doing great damage to the flesh of the hosts. The lifecycle of these parasites is mysterious, as these organisms leave behind evidence of their existence but have not themselves been found in any host bodies to date.
Subsequently, Kindred of the Domain have been attacked with two variants of the Lost Nights weapon. One was encased in ammunition fired by paramilitary forces apparently in the employ of those behind the Lost Nights, while another was injected into bombs that were implanted in two Kindred, causing the shrapnel resulting from the bomb explosions to infect those injured with the Lost Nights organisms. To date, neither of these variant weapons has proven as deadly as that used in the original Lost Nights attack, as none of the three Kindred subjected to them (O-Yama, Konstantin Malevich and Adolph Edel) suffered effects nearly as serious as those inflicted by the original attack.
The touch of the strange Worm-Things encountered by many of Sacramento's Kindred during a shared dream, but also encountered in the physical world on two occasions, inflicts damage and causes Kidred Vitae to react in the manner consistent with the Lost Nights weapon. As with the variant weapons discussed above, the touch of these creatures has not to date proven as dangerous as the original Lost Nights attack, the injuries sustained by those touched by the creatures (Jayant Nagaraj, Dr.Ith Lazarus and Dr. Lazarus' ghoul servant, Harold) have been serious but nothing approaching fatal.
