The Coterie has laid claim to a corridor of West Birmingham that provides it ample feeding ground. This territory stretches from Hockley and the Jewellery Quarter, bordering the city centre itself – out to Smethwick and West Bromwich in the west. For the public transport minded Kindred, a tramline conveniently runs straight through the Coterie’s territory, allowing quick and easy hop-on, hop-off transit to any point of the Domain within half-an-hour.

Their territory includes within its boundaries a population of approximately 100,000 Kine and covers roughly 36sq miles of Urban, Suburban and parkland sprawl. From the heights of modern opulence to the depths of post Financial crash migrant poverty, the Coterie has it all under their claim.

The Jewellery Quarter

The Jewellery Quarter isn’t so much an area of Birmingham as a jumble of old Victorian streets. In terms of sheer weight of diamonds, precious stones, gold and silver there is no greater concentration in the whole of Europe for the design, creation and production of jewellery. 40% of all the jewellery made in the UK comes from these cobblestone streets and old, red brick warehouses. 12,000 gold bullions are assayed in this part of Birmingham every year, the most for any single assay office in the world.

On the edge of the city centre, many tech start-ups, media companies, production houses and design specialists have infested the areas old Victorian workshops. Renovated brickwork and redesigned interiors fill old edifices that still speak to an Industrial past. Dozens of bars litter the area, where the well-heeled, taste makers and trend setters of Birmingham flock to in their droves. Unlike Birmingham’s other night spots, the high cost of drinks and food, and often aggressively progressive Hipster subcultures deter all but the most discerning revellers.

Until two years ago, this area belonged to the self-styled Lord Marlowe of Hockley, a Toreador Elder who had arrived in the area shortly after the Norman Invasion. When he left, following the Beckoning, the Coterie moved into the space and claimed it as part of their Domain.


Places of Interest

• The Rose Villa Tavern -  a 19th Century public house with ornate stained-glass windows and tiling. A popular night spot for cocktails, cheaper drinks and loud music. At the lower price end of the otherwise expensive Jewellery quarter, it’s a known hangout for students and the less affluent residents of the area.
• 1000 Trades – a bar and cultural hub where live music, the arts and pop-up restaurants are based. Popular with wealthy patrons and cultural trend setters the building dates back to the 19th Century. The top floor holds a Meade bar called ‘the Vanguard’, the second floor an arts gallery and performance space and the ground floor houses a bar and restaurant.
• Warstone Road Cemetary – also called Brookfields Cemetery, Church of England Cemetery, or Mint Cemetery (from the adjacent Birmingham Mint), is a cemetery dating from 1847. It is one of two cemeteries in the city's Jewellery Quarter, in Hockley (the other being Key Hill Cemetery). It is no longer open to new burials A major feature is the two tiers of catacombs, whose unhealthy vapours led to the Birmingham Cemeteries Act which required that non-interred coffins should be sealed with lead or pitch.


Hockley & Smethwick

Located out from the Jewellery Quarter is Hockley, the beginning of the suburban sprawl that stretches for miles out into the wider West Midlands. Back to back Victorian houses cram in large families of recently arrived immigrant populations from Eastern Europe, Somalia and South Asia. Sikhs, Muslims, Christians of many denominations and more religions are worshipped here, with churches, gurdwaras, mosques and temples dotting the landscape.

Every street seems to be dotted with take-away restaurants serving everything from kebab to pizza to peri-peri chicken, shops important food from Romania, Slovenia and Poland and further abroad and the ever-present gambling shops. It’s an area with high levels of poverty and crime, but provides fertile hunting grounds for the right kind of predator.

Of particular note is the Birmingham Wolverhampton Canal that runs through this area, under shadow of the tumbledown ruins of old Victorian factories.  These edifices to capitalism and industrial decay provide excellent hiding places, with expansive forgotten cellars and basements hidden behind high walls and wire fencing – perfect for an enterprising Kindred to make a Haven.

Notable points of interest are the West Midlands police headquarters, the Birmingham City Hospital campus and Smethwick Gurdwara, one of the largest of its kind in Europe.


Places of Interest

• Birmingham City Hospital – this is one of four hospitals that covers the city of Birmingham. An older, slightly worn and dilapidated building all of life and death passes through the aging corridors of the building.
• GKN Screw Factory – For most of the 19th and early 20th Century, GKN Screw factory was a towering edifice of industry and progress in the Birmingham area. Over six floors and across three buildings, the former factory is now a place of endless urban legend and mystery.
• Smethwick Gurdwara – A renovated cinema from the 1920s, the Gurdware is the centre of the areas large Sikh population, a soup-kitchen, community hub and health centre wrapped up into one it throbs at the heart of the Smethwick area.


West Bromwich & Sandwell Valley

Lying at the edge of the Coteries’ territory, West Bromwich and Sandwell Valley mark the edge boundaries of the new Baron of Birmingham’s reach. Beyond this point lies the anarchy known as the Wolverhampton and Walsall Wastes, towns that recognise no higher authority than the strongest and most wilful Kindred at the time and that rest at the edge of Lupine territory. The Kindred of the Wastes, whilst neighbours of the Coterie have never yet knowingly broached on the Coteries’ territory and explicitly avoid contact wherever possible.

West Bromwich as an old market town still retains a strong sense of identity, a local football team of moderate success and historic town halls and public buildings built in the high Victorian style. With a large number of still operational factories, the area has high levels of migrant work from eastern Europe and higher levels of in-work poverty. If the Jewellery Quarter is the current height of new money, gentrification and cutting edge technology industries, West Bromwich is the opposite.

At the edge of West Bromwich lies the end of the Coteries territory, with Sandwell valley. Sandwell valley houses the oldest ruins in the Domain, the eroded stones of the old Franciscan priory that gave the park its name. The monastery was closed on the orders of Cardinal Wolsey in 1525 and allowed to tumbledown to ruins. In 1705 the grounds were purchased by the Earl of Dartmouth and turned into landscaped grounds and parks, up until the late 19th Century, when the stately home and grounds became an ‘Asylum for the Deranged’. In 1905, this became the ‘Sandwell Hall for Mentally Defective Boys’, a brutal prison for learning disabled children. Centuries of suffering and dilapidation saturated the place, so much so that the very building collapsed into the landscape.

Official explanations attribute the buildings collapse to ‘subsidence caused by local pit mining’, and nothing now remains in the physical world to tell of the centuries of sorrow. The park is now publicly owned and a beauty spot in the middle of the urban and industrial landscape of the West Midlands.


Places of Interest
• Sandwell Valley Park – A large metropolitan park, the area has large, wild spaces, a gold course, cycle tracks and a large lake for boating. There are also rumours of ghosts haunting its grounds, who can be seen in the farm houses located around the grounds.

• Sandwell College – A new building, the college is usually full of 16-21 year olds, studying for vocational qualifications. Made of steel and glass and shaped like a wave, the building stands out as a burst of modernism in an area that has rarely seen investment or building works of the kind.