Paris by Night
Change is Constant. If you find that Terrifying, it is because you are sane.
Paris is the capital of the Sixth French Republic. It has been the capital of all five previous republics and the seat of all three recent attempts at having a monarchy of Metropolitan France, and both French Empires. Of all the nations that called themselves "France" in the last three hundred years, only the brief lived fascist government elected to place their capital anywhere else (they put it in Vichy instead). The current nation is over fifty years old, putting it in second place after the Third Republic which persisted for seventy whole years. There has never been a nation that has owned Paris that did not have at least one woman born before the country's inception live to see its death.
City Statistics
"Paris" is defined many different ways. It is of course a city, but it is also the administrative heart of the country - and in this aspect it is called the Île-de-France. The City of Paris has about 2.5 million people in it, but the contiguous urban area that surrounds it called the "aire urbaine" has another 10 million. The French definition of the aire urbaine requires that all parts of it contain at least 40% of their population that commutes into Paris, so on a typical workday it is no exaggeration that the city center will swell by more than four million or so people. It gets crowded.
The urban extent of greater Paris is divided into sections that are called "communes" (linguistically related but ultimately distinct from the Cauchemar Communes Syndicate) and they are individually distinct from Paris in almost exactly the way that Colma is distinct from San Francisco or Harlem is distinct from New York. A Parisian commune is often defined historically and so they range in size from a few hundred to over a hundred thousand people each. Some communes are basically just neighborhoods, while others are large and important enough to have many neighborhoods in them. But hey, there are over fifteen hundred communes in total and they can't all be gems. Heck, there are relatively few people who even know all the communes of Paris, and the government itself seems to have forgotten about more than a handful of them.
But Paris also gets filled with the Supernatural. France is big noise in the secret world mastery department, as well as medical research and of course it is perpetually near the top the art and fashion scene. And that attracts supernatural creatures. The Cauchemar Communes alone claims a membership of about 2000, and if anything that number is a bit low since there are a number of cells of the Communes that follow the instructions of the Revolutionary Committee in a double-secret fashion, and the Cauchemar seriously do not know exactly how many of these guys there are.
Paris is well acknowledged to be under the complete "control" of the Communes by the other major Syndicates and none of them really try to exercise much in the way of power in the city. The World Crime League hosts an embassy and shipping business that hosts about 120 League members. The Covenant is very weak and ill-trusted in the city, and the Apostolic Exarch has just a couple dozen in his flock. The largest foreign Syndicate is the Makhzen, who have about 200 members. But they are extremely poorly organized, and actually have three different Mehtar councils that meet in three different languages (Arabic, French, and Hausa) and don't seemingly acknowledge each other. Currently when the Inner Circle wants to send a communique to the Revolutionary Committee they do so through the French-speaking Mehtar Council that meets in Clichy-sous-Bois, but that has changed at various times and may well change again.
Paris is the 17th largest economy of the world, falling comfortably between Turkey and Holland. If you compare it to cities instead of whole countries it comes in 5th. It has millions of square meters of office space and is easily and contemptuously the most important and richest city in Europe. While there are many groups and individuals who go to Paris and never make it, it is a simple fact that any organization that doesn't have a presence in Paris simply does not matter on the world stage. So it should come as no surprise at all the Shattered Empire, the Marduk Society, and The King with Three Shadows all have a presence in Paris as well.
City History
Paris has been held by three Syndicates. At the dawn of the Common Era it was a minor Makhzen outpost deep in Gallia. But just eight hundred years later it was firmly under Covenant control. Less than 800 years later the Cardinal had renounced the Covenant and the city was under the sway of the Ash Walkers. All out supernatural war ripped the city apart, and ultimately the remaining Ash Walkers fled to Switzerland. The devastated supernatural population recovered mostly from immigration, and within two centuries the replacement Cardinal had been executed and the city was under control of the Communes.
The history of Paris as a city is well over two thousand years in the making, and from the human end the rise of the might of Paris is pretty much synonymous with the creation of France as a nation and the development of French nationalism and national identity. The King of France was once basically just the mayor of Paris, and as he extended his reach, the borders of modern France became a reality. But in terms of supernatural history and politics, almost none of that matters. By the late 1600s, the Red Crusade had one way or another basically emptied the town of supernaturals of all types. The Ash Walkers had not been kind to those members of the Covenant who had not accepted the reforms, and when the Covenant had retaken the city they were at least as harsh to those who had. By the end, seemingly every native supernatural creature of Paris had fled or perished. At that point, Paris' status as one of the richest and most powerful cities in Covenant territory made its resettlement a high priority. And while new generations of Transhumans, Witches, and Leviathan rose from human stock, the Covenant nevertheless sent many members of the flock to live in Paris and re-establish control against their inclinations. The Anti-Pope vowed not to lose the city again, and employed methods of control on the flock of Paris so severe that less than a hundred years later the city was again in open revolt.
Cauchemar history is tied closely with the French Revolution. Both because the early Communes made common cause with mortal revolutionaries and because the general anti-church fervor is pretty similar across both groups. It's important to realize that there are crucial differences in that the Cauchemar Commune really only had one enemy: the Anti-Papacy and the Priests who spoke for it. They didn't have a three headed dragon of King/Noble/Priest to fight, and so the Communes never got as paranoid as the mortal revolutionaries did. However, the opposition they faced in other nations was no less complete - for the beheading of the Blue Cardinal was a rallying cry that hardened the position of the Heresiarch Council and they bade every Covenant City to form military orders to fight the Communes. And fight they did, though it went surprisingly badly for the crusaders. The Communes took major cities all the way from the Low Countries to the Iberian Peninsula. As the 18th century wound to a close, mortal agents of the Communes smuggled Communes warriors into Rome and the Heresiarch Council was almost expunged. Romanian Blood Knights turned them back at the very gates to the Black Vault, and lines of truce were drawn. The Cauchemar of Paris called for military excursions elsewhere and their agents toppled the Bumin Horde altogether. But between the Covenant and the Communes there was peace, and thus Paris itself did not feel the sting of supernatural war all through the 19th century.
But even that peace eventually came to an end. In the early part of the 20th Century the Black Crusade began and Covenant forces began in earnest to attempt to reconquer Paris and destroy the Communes at their core. They had forgotten nothing, and they had learned nothing. This invasion was brutal and destructive, but ultimately futile. Not only did the Communes end up in control of basically all of Deutschland and Scandinavia, but the Anti-Pope's position in Rome was almost completely discredited both in and out of Europe. But perhaps the most important fallout as far as the supernatural citizens of Paris are concerned is that any feelings of sympathy that the average supernatural Parisian had towards the Covenant were squeezed out like blood from a stone.
Mortal government has changed over a dozen times since the Communes first raised their banner. But supernatural society tends to mostly ignore it these days. The mortals that the Communes made common cause with over two centuries ago to attempt the seemingly impossible task of toppling the church are all dead. These nights the Communes lack an identity with the French Nation, and there hasn't seemed any pressing need to tie their fates to those of any of the seemingly endless parade of human governments. The Communes have in their way become the disinterested and out of touch creatures of darkness they took arms against when musket-balls were cast by hand.
Power
When pushed far enough, the crowd will accept nothing less than blood. And why should they?
Paris is an interesting mix of nationalism and internationalism. On the one hand, Cauchemar ideology strongly supports expansion and cooperation with supernaturals from other places. On the other hand, the wounds left from the "Resettlement" after the Red Crusade and the outright war of the Black Crusade are still pretty fresh in the minds of many of the older Parisian supernaturals. Xenophobia is pretty common amongst the magical creatures of Paris, and while they have reasons, it's definitely incongruous with the internationalist rhetoric that gets everyone fired up around here.
Politics in Paris are really... complicated. And that's hardly surprising in its way, because the entire political system basically runs on the personal charisma of whoever happens to say that they are running it today. Outside the direct sphere of influence of the Revolutionary Committee, Paris is an anarchist commune grown to about the limit of what that system can support. Anyone who wants to put a project together pretty much just has to convince enough other members that it's a good idea for them to help with the project. Quite often who is "in charge" of a project may not be especially clear - more than one creature who is thought of as a demagogue by another actually thinks that the other is actually the demagogue!
The really important thing is that the Communes have no problem with supernatural stuff showing up on the TV, so long as no one can track it down to anyone in particular. Anonymity isn't just government, it's a way of life. And it's the soul of the Communes' Silence. So sometimes the news will just report a strange sighting of a huge ghost cat or a crawling mass of murderous shadow. As long as it stays rumor and no names are named, the Communes are totally happy to just let the story die in a newscycle or two and not name any names. If anyone gets named or specified however, they can expect the Vanguard to come looking for them with sharp knives.
Second to the Revolutionary Committee, the largest power base is the Committee for Public Safety. They are the self appointed guardians of order in Cauhemar society. Not just in Paris, but the whole world. The Paris Committee for Public Safety gives marching orders (in the form of "suggestions") to Cauchemar Vanguards all over the globe. And these are basically followed, despite not being theoretically binding, because being thought of as a Vanguard pretty much implies that you follow the suggestions the committee gives, and being thought of as being on the committee pretty much implies that Vanguards follow the suggestions you give. While there are nominally no leaders, rules, or binding orders, the Vanguard is the most regimented and tightly disciplined of the communes in the Cauchemar Communes.
Other communes certainly exist, and they are usually drafted as either an advisory committee (like the Revolutionary Committee or the Committee for Public Safety), or as social clubs without even acknowledged informal leadership. These tend to have names that represent their function or goals such as the "Independent Artist's Salon" or the "Ensemble of Dangerous Madmen". Coming in all sizes, it is generally expected that even Bands in Paris will name themselves, because if they don't, others will find a name that fits for them.
Places to Go
The Paris Metro goes around central Paris with pretty good coverage. But the aire urbaine has been expanding much faster than new Metro stations have been put up. If you get out of the City of Paris, and certainly once you're out of the Île-de-France, you're pretty much required to get into a car and drive somewhere. Once you're in Paris proper, traffic and especially parking is a nightmare from which there is no respite or escape. For this reason, many Parisians drive to the outskirts and then park their cars and switch to mass transit or bicycle.
The Catacombs of Paris are a creepy testament to something or other. They are the remains of a spiderweb of stone mining tunnels underneath Paris, and some of them have been converted to other uses. Most famous of course is the ossuaries, which are tunnels that have been filled up with the bones of the dead, both in jumbled piles and in neatly arranged rows. But that's just the part on the map. There are secret tunnels that lead to chambers that are used by criminals as full service movie theaters and literally underground fight rings (seriously). And if you go to the right part of the caverns, there's a way to straight up walk into Mictlan. Many Leviathan and Vampires of all types make their homes in the catacombs where the light of the sun and the eyes of the law never reach them.
The Louvre is possibly the greatest art museum that will ever exist. It's huge, and it has works seized from all over Europe and the world. Like the British Museum, walking through it like touring an active crime scene. A beautiful crime scene. The Louvre had been a palace for centuries, but it became a museum in 1793 when the Revolutionary Government and the Cauchemar Communes needed a place to store all the shit they had taken from the previous power groups. It's served by two metro stops, it has tens of thousands of priceless objects of artistic and historical significance, and it has a secret underground portion called "The Vault" where the Communes keep all the magic stuff that they don't know what to do with or that they think needs to stay under lock and key. Above ground and below, The Louvre is perhaps the greatest monument to the might of France and the Communes.
Moulin Rouge is one of the oldest and most influential nightclubs ever. It's not just a movie where Australians and Scots play French people, it was literally the center of the world wide decadence movement in the 19th century. Over the top burlesque, absinthe by the glass, and sound-proof rooms. What more could you want? It's also the home of a group of totally dead-serious "whore witches" who really seem like they belong in the pages of Tarot. Expect to drop a fair amount of change, because while the area is glamorous as anything you've seen, it costs a hefty pile of euros to even get a plate of hors d'œuvres.
L'Ile Saint-Denis is a suburb North of Paris proper, but the commune is actually on an island in the Seine and is only a few kilometers out from Paris. There is no metro or rail connection here, and the area has become a ghetto for Africans and Arabs. The majority religion is Muslim, and most people here don't speak French. The French authorities don't really try to enforce order, and it probably wouldn't go well for them if they did. Missing people are pretty common, and thieves from all over the city come to trade their hauls back and forth. It's just across part of the river from the regular Saint-Denis, which is the industrial commune where the football stadium is. It's important to realize that you can cross over from what is apparently the heart of France to what looks like a Moroccan black market just by crossing a bridge.
Le Depot is the largest gay sex club in Europe, not counting BDSM micro nations like Other World Kingdom, Llanrwst, or the Dominion of Melchizedek. It is dark, huge (over 1400 sqm), and rather... strong smelling. There are theme rooms and an actual on-site maze. It attracts sex tourists from all over the world and gets a lot of vampire traffic. Every wannabe Lestat simply has to make an appearance here, and the proprietor plays the Marquis de Sade role as well as anyone. If you prefer to have lace and ruffles at your collar or just like wearing black leather straps, this is a place to visit. For others, the high prices, rampant pick pocketing, and probable std threat will make it somewhat distressing. Still, supernatural creatures can and do get a lot of business done here, as it is a place where you can be overheard saying absolutely anything about supernatural politics by "normal" people and still be completely ignored.
Paris in Horror
If you're from the US, there is a good chance that you think of Paris as romantic and sophisticated. Certainly, that is the way it is portrayed in a great many movies. And that's not unreasonable, considering that Paris is genuinely a hub of art and artists, both of whom are known for sophistry and romance. Actual French horror cinema probably gets the most props for having brought the concept of "erotic horror" to the fore in a way that is way less gross than the offerings of Tokyo. Las Comtesse Noir and Le Viol du Vampire are famous movies that feature our two favorite things: vampires and naked ladies. But it's not all sexy vampires, there's La Morte Vivante (which inspired the excellent Rob Zombie song "Living Dead Girl"), which is about zombies and naked ladies.
But it's not all even about naked ladies. You can get some good old fashioned paranoia and distrust out of Eden Log, Malefique, or Cache, and you probably should. There is an amazing amount of reanimated Nazis and the dangers of "chemicals". Pesticides in French movies raise the dead, chemical concoctions transform normal people into Mr. Hydes, and so on. From Le Lac Des Morts Vivants to L'Ambime des Morts-Vivants, the Nazi-Zombie problem in France is apparently pretty intense. And indeed, it is. Between super science and a large number of Death Gates, Parisian supernaturals have to deal with Castle Wolfenstein reduxes fairly often.
French Film also gave us some of the greatest chase scenes in history. If you are willing to take a step back from specifically Horror, District B13 is probably mandatory viewing for anyone wishing to describe any action scene. Hell, one of the premiere car chase scenes is in The French Connection, which isn't really French Film, but it is connected anyway (sorry, had to be said).