The vampires of the world are mostly split into two major factions, the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Generally speaking, the Camarilla represent the "civilized" face of vampire society, although they are by no means incapable of savagery and cruelty, especially if they think it might gain them a political advantage. Its founding clans are the Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavians, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue, although the Gangrel have since left the organization to become Independent. The ostensible mission statement of the Camarilla is to keep mortals from discovering the existence of vampires in order to responsibly maintain the world from behind the scenes, although how well they succeed at that, or whether some of them are even trying very hard, is often up for debate.
Members of the Camarilla refer to vampires as "Kindred", regardless of whether those vampires are members or not - which is not surprising, considering that they consider all vampires to be members of the Camarilla. In their view, the Camarilla is the necessary and agreed-upon political template for vampiric society, and anyone who disagrees is not only being unnecessarily difficult, but is literally a traitor to the sect. There are some side benefits of this haughtiness for the other sects (for example, Anarchs and Independents are allowed to live in, interact in, and even sometimes thrive in Camarilla cities as long as they follow the rules, since they are technically counted as members of the Camarilla), but it shouldn't be surprising that many younger vampires don't know if they believe that this is all that benevolent.
Traditions
The Traditions are the Camarilla's most fundamental laws, applicable to all Camarilla Kindred and enforced scrupulously in all Camarilla territories. According to ancient lore, they were handed down by the very first vampire as the incontrovertible laws of the species, although this origin story is considered mere folklore by most, and the elders maintain that they hammered out the Traditions through common sense and compromise millennia ago. Breaking a Tradition always carries extreme consequences in the Camarilla; although a few Kindred might get away with being saddled with negative Status or bloodbound to someone in order to teach them a lesson, most major infractions result in the lawbreaker in question being sentenced to death.
The Masquerade
The Masquerade is the Camarilla's poetic way of describing the rule that no Kindred may ever reveal themselves to humanity or allow humans to discover the existence of vampires. Exactly how a Kindred keeps the Masquerade intact is up to them, and the most common methods are avoiding being in the mortal public eye, using costuming or makeup to more closely approximate a human while in public, never using obvious Disciplines in front of mortals, referring to other Kindred only by nicknames instead of by vampire-specific vocabulary, discouraging mortal belief in vampires wherever possible, and even killing any human who might have accidentally found out too much.
Breaches of the Masquerade are serious, and all Kindred nearby or capable of helping are expected to do so if one occurs, even if they had nothing to do with causing it. Influences in the media are often used to cover up or spin a story so that it doesn't appear to have a supernatural explanation, and even averted breaches of the Masquerade can cause those involved to be punished for their carelessness.
Domain
The Camarilla tries to be civilized about unpleasant things like their bloody feeding habits, and Domain, the concept that a feeding ground can be owned by a local Kindred and that no other Kindred should encroach upon it, is one of the ways they keep everyone less likely to be at one anothers' throats. Not every Kindred has Domain, which must be granted to them by the Prince of a city, but once they do, no other Kindred may feed from mortals within it, and the Kindred who owns the Domain is entitled to seek restitution from the Prince or Primogen of anyone who flouts this rule. A Prince can revoke Domain from someone as a punishment, but doing so is very rare, since it generally leads to more trouble than it's worth.
The Prince of a Camarilla city may consider the entire city their Domain automatically, regardless of whether or not there are lesser Domains within it. Many Princes also designate a communal feeding area (colloquially referred to as The Rack) where any Kindred is explicitly allowed to feed, in order to make sure that those without Domain have somewhere to go, and to ensure that predation doesn't occur in less populated or more visible areas of the city.
Progeny
This Tradition refers to the practice of creating a new vampire from a Kindred's own blood; the resulting new Kindred is referred to as the first one's progeny or childe. Kindred in the Camarilla are forbidden from creating new vampires without approval from the Prince of their Domain, thus keeping the Kindred population from becoming too large and overwhelming the local mortals. Not coincidentally, this also prevents the Prince from having to worry about any of their subjects creating an army that might threaten the city, and also provides a very easy method of controlling how many Kindred of various clans are in the city at any given time.
Kindred who break the Tradition of Progeny have usually signed a death warrant for their new childe; most often, the illicit childe is destroyed since they should never have existed in the first place, and their sire usually faces hefty punishment as well, including negative Status, loss of Domain, major Boons owed to the Prince, or even death.
The Accounting
Together with the Tradition of Progeny, the Tradition of Accounting also affects a Kindred's childer, in this case those legitimate ones that a Prince has approved the creation of. All childer are considered "unreleased" when they are first created, which means that they are the sole responsibility of their sire; anything they do reflects directly upon their creator, so if they acquit themselves well, their sire may enjoy some additional prestige, and if they make mistakes, their sire must bear the consequences. This Tradition is designed to ensure that Kindred don't create new vampires that will be detrimental to the city or the Camarilla as a whole, and that they ensure that their new progeny don't endanger anyone or anything that the Prince considers important.
There is no official amount of time that a childe must remain under their sire's protection before being released, but most Kindred keep their childer unreleased for anywhere from sixth months to a year, ensuring that they know the ins and outs of Camarilla society before officially declaring before the Prince's court that they have been released on their own recognizance. Some of the oldest and most aristocratic elders in the Camarilla keep their childer even longer, and those Kindred who are released only after decades of due diligence can truly say that they enter Kindred society better prepared for its rigors than any mortal ever could be.
Elysium
Elysium is a sacred, and somewhat cross-sect, convention in the Camarilla. A Prince may designate areas within their city as Elysia; once they have done so, these areas become neutral ground. No violence of any kind - neither against living things or against inanimate objects - is allowed at any time, nor are any Disciplines or magical powers allowed to be used while on Elysium grounds. This makes Elysium the only truly "safe" zone for any kind of direct Kindred dealings, allowing even members of the Sabbat to attend civil conversations if they so choose, and as a result most court proceedings are held on Elysium grounds. Of course, many Kindred try to bend Elysium rules anyway if they think they can get away with it, but penalties for doing so are stiff, and the stricter the Prince, the more dangerous it is to contravene their order of neutrality.
Hospitality
The Tradition of Hospitality requires all Camarilla Kindred to nominally respect and put up with one anothers' presence in official domain areas, putting a damper on the instinctive Kindred drive to become violently territorial. All Kindred who enter any Camarilla city are required to officially present themselves to the Prince, the better to make sure that the city's administration knows the distribution of clans in the area at all times; the Prince is not required to give approval for a given vampire to remain in their territory, and may occasionally refuse and order the interloper to leave. This is uncommon, since Camarilla cities pride themselves on including all Kindred, but known criminals and Tradition-breakers may be denied entry if a Prince believes they will be a disruptive influence.
Destruction
Although mortal and Kindred societies are often morally at odds, they agree on one thing: murder is illegal. No Kindred in a Camarilla city is allowed to kill any other, although no rule (other than the invisible constraints of Status and vengeance) prevents them from assaulting, torturing, or otherwise hurting one another. Unreleased progeny are an exception to this rule; since they technically do not have an existence outside of their sire, said sire may put them down at any time before release if they prove to be a disappointment. Other than that, any Kindred who commits murder against a fellow is likely to be immediately bloodhunted by the Prince if they fail to conceal their deed.
Bloodhunts are also exceptions: the Prince may call such a hunt in order to give all Kindred in the city special dispensation to kill a specific Kindred or group of Kindred, usually as a punishment for something those targets did to displease them. Criminals are subjected to the bloodhunt in retaliation for doing something heinous enough to warrant death, usually something along the lines of breaking a Tradition or personally injuring or insulting the Prince themself.
Status
A Kindred's Status represents their overall standing in the Camarilla, and must be granted to them by an outside agent, usually a Harpy, a Prince, or someone of even higher office within the sect. Status dictates who can talk to whom and in what manner, and in a very real way, those with more Status are directly considered more important than those with less. The Camarilla maintains that this system rewards the deserving and ensures that those who haven't earned any consideration don't get to affect affairs as much as those who have, but in practice, Status often has more to do with age, bloodline, and personal favors than it does with actually earning anything.
Positive Status
Positive Status indicates how well a Kindred is received in society; the more Status they have, the more respect they will have in the eyes of their peers. The most common Status traits are Acknowledged, which indicates that a Prince has officially granted a Kindred leave to remain in the city and participate in Camarilla culture there, and Recognized, which indicates that a Prince has granted permission to stay, but not to affect the city's politics (usually because the Kindred in question is an Anarch or Independent). There are many other positive Status traits available to Kindred, and they usually describe a laudable and civilized quality in the vampire who bears them (Esteemed, for example, or Influential).
The average Kindred usually has only the one Status trait given to them by the Prince; most Kindred must work hard to earn the notice of the Harpies in order to gain any more fame in their city.
Negative Status
Negative Status, on the other hand, represents undesirable qualities that a Kindred is being publicly humiliated for displaying. It subtracts from a Kindred's total Status instead of adding it, so a vampire with the Acknowledged Status but also a negative Status trait such as Foolish has a net total Status of zero. Negative Status is usually given out by the Harpies, who judge whether a Kindred's behavior reflects poorly on their clan or the Camarilla as a whole, and can only be gotten rid of by either working diligently to change their minds or by fleeing to another city far enough away that no one has yet heard of the misdemeanors that caused it.
Negative Status traits are usually linked to a particular failure or disaster that a vampire might have been involved in; for example, a vampire might be saddled with the Status Reckless if they were caught using Disciplines where mortals might have seen them, or Pathetic if they had a public breakdown in front of those of much higher Status than themself.
Prestation
Prestation refers to the system of favors and exchange of aid that the Kindred of the Camarilla perform in order to maintain allies and ensure the worth of their help to anyone who might ask for it. Anyone who performs a favor for someone else is entitled to ask for a Boon in exchange, which is an official promise to repay a favor of similar difficulty in the future. The Harpies keep track of Boons so that Kindred can't weasel out of them by claiming to forget them or arguing that they never existed.
There are four levels of Boons: Trivial Boons, which represent small, easily-repaid conveniences (such as covering for someone about to make a social gaffe or providing tickets to a play), Minor Boons, which represent small but significant favors (such as loaning a favorite retainer to someone for a drink or providing a reasonable financial loan), Major Boons, which represent large and important favors (such as rescuing someone's friend from being tortured or using influence to help someone accomplish a gigantic and lucrative corporate merger), and Life Boons, which are generally only given out in return for saving a life and which can be traded back in for any request, up to and including asking the ower of the Boon to commit suicide.
In addition to making sure that various Kindred are compensated for their efforts and therefore have a reason to bother helping others in the first place, prestation also ensures that vampires may go out of their way to help one another once in a while, particularly if they might otherwise die or be incapacitated. The Kindred aren't normally particularly altruistic, but no one who owes a Boon can deliver on it if they're dead, imprisoned, or demoted to far lesser Status, so those to whom Boons are owed have a vested interested in ensuring that that those still in their debt survive long enough for them to collect.
Organization & Enforcement
For the most part, the Kindred of the Camarilla know next to nothing about the higher structure and political workings of their sect; for the vast majority of non-elder vampires, each city's Prince and their court is the be-all and end-all of political maneuverings, with nothing else worth worrying about. Of course, they're mostly right. They don't have the power to be concerned with the doings of their betters, but the older and older the generations become, the more they know and can even influence the power structure of the Camarilla.
The Inner Circle
The Inner Circle is the ultimate authority of the Camarilla... but no one except its members really knows very much about it. A small council of elders that meets only once every twelve years, it debates and makes decisions about any major happenings within the sect or possible major shifts in power, and passes down instructions to the Justicars, who ensure that their will is done throughout Camarilla territories. No one knows exactly who the members of the Circle are, since they prefer to remain anonymous and avoid any assassination attempts from would-be usurpers, but each clan has a single representative to speak and cast their vote.
The Circle met recently in 2011, when they officially accepted Clan Gangrel's secession from the Camarilla and instructed their Justicars to increase the number of Archons serving them, for reasons known only to them. They will not meet again formally until 2024.
Justicars & Archons
Each clan has a single Justicar, appointed by the Inner Circle, who act as the Circle's enforcers and information-gatherers in the wide world of Kindred affairs. Justicars wield enormous power; they can only be challenged or halted by another Justicar, so they can kill without worrying about repercussions, depose Princes and reorder the power structure of a city, call city-wide or even region-wide courts to settle disputes and legal matters, and seize any territory or resources they decide they need to do their job. Their job being, of course, to destroy any Kindred who threaten the sect by committing its most capital crimes: breaking the Traditions, aiding the Sabbat, or committing Diablerie.
Each Justicar is served by a group of Archons, who are chosen carefully by them to act as their assistants and front-line soldiers. Archons wield less power than Justicars, but they still represent the will of the Inner Circle, and as such are accorded considerable honors and respect wherever they go. Archons are more likely to appear once in a while in any given vampire's life, as they're usually dispatched to handle minor infractions like breaking the rules of Elysium; heaven help the city with a problem important enough that a Justicar has to come handle it in person.
City Offices
The Prince (a gender-neutral title among Kindred) is the sovereign ruler of each city, although how prestigious that position is depends on how large the city in question is and whether or not it happens to be located near anything important to the Kindred (for example, New York is considered an important city because of its history and high Kindred population, but Chicago, while a major metropolis for mortals, is considered something of a backwater by the vampires). The Prince has complete authority, within the restrictions of the Traditions, to make all rules and to run the city as they see fit. The Prince delegates some of their authority and duties to a small group of lesser offices, referred to as the Cabinet:
- The Seneschal is the Prince's right-hand ruler, tasked with handling all the administrative duties of running a city as well as handling any minor political problems that do not merit the Prince's personal attention.
- The Sheriff is the city's defense expert, and is in charge of forming squads and handling any dangers that might present themselves.
- The Keeper of Elysium is in charge of monitoring all Elysia to make sure that no one uses Disciplines or enacts violence on their grounds, and of taking appropriate steps to report and, if necessary, punish any rule-breakers.
- The Harpy is the social monitor of the city, keeping track of all Status, doling out or revoking Status as need be, and carefully categorizing all Boons owed to or by Kindred in order to enforce their repayment.
- The Scourge is the Prince's executioner, typically called into office only if the city is severely threatened by outside dangers. Some Princes maintain a Scourge even in peacetime, and primarily use them to destroy childer created without the Prince's permission or members of any clans that the Prince does not wish to allow to live in their domain.
- The Primogen are the council of elders that advise the Prince; each clan has one Primogen, who functions as the city's clan leader and sits in chambers when city-wide decisions are being made. Many Primogen also maintain a single assistant, called the Whip, who runs their errands and ensures that they receive all information necessary from their clan. Although the Primogen technically serve the Prince, they are the only office with the power to remove them; if the entire Primogen Council votes to revoke a Prince's title, they are removed and the position must be filled by a new ruler.
Princes may also sometimes create custom offices of their own; for example, some eastern European cities retained a position with the title Ambassador for some time, whose job it was to travel to other fiefs and sovereign domains to exchange information and shore up alliances (although, with most such principalities now things of the past, most of these cities have retired the post).
Acquiring one of these offices is usually a combination of political maneuvering, personal favors, and backstabbing the competition, and once a vampire has the job, there's always the matter of keeping it while the next wave of hopefuls tries to do the same thing. Some Kindred consider such shenanigans to be more trouble than they're worth, but others are fierce in their pursuit of a formal position and all the Status and say in city policies that comes with it.