Looks like there are a few groups playing around in New Orleans. It's a really cool city to play with. From the touristy areas to the not-so-great areas, there's a lot of material there. There's another thread about someone asking for ideas here - http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,21006.0.html.

1. Katrina - the destruction is still evident now, especially in the poverty-stricken areas. Even near the French Quarter, one of the primary tourist attractions, you can still see the marks from where the rescue people went through and marked the houses. It's kind of chilling to go down there and see it.
2. Poverty and people on the streets. Street performers used to be everywhere, but the last few times I've been down there, there aren't many. You can see people setting out their hats for a few coins or dollars, doing a variety of magic tricks, emulations, and so forth.
3. The total culture clashes. For instance, right in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, you have an area populated by artists, fortune tellers, tarot readers/palm readers, and merchants. The city has this reputation for being all about voodoo and vampires and so forth, but there's a strong Catholic presence as well. (Indeed, voodoo has some curious connections with Christianity, especially in Louisiana, as a result of the slave trade.)
4. Rich history you can play on - hauntings, war stories, voodoo priestesses, slavery. (One of the storylines I ran dealt with ghosts, and I was SO hoping one of the PCs would open their Sight in the LaLaurie Mansion. Sigh, he knew better.)
5. Corruption. Though in reality, most cities have their own issues of corruption, New Orleans (and Louisiana in general) has its own little quirks throughout history. It's fairly easy to play off of corruption here.
6. Crime. It's easy to visualize crime here, and it's just as easy to ignore it if you so choose because of the diversity of the city.
7. The French Quarter. This is one of the primary tourist attractions. It features Bourbon Street (fantastic place for White Court vampires!), several quaint shops with all sorts of focuses, warehouses nearby for shady deals, ghost/witchcraft & voodoo/vampire tours, active nightlife, etc.

Necromancers are easy to use here as well. An interesting point is that many of the cemeteries feature mausoleums, as the city is below sea level and there are nasty little stories about the necessity of above-ground burial methods. (There's a scene in the movie Double Jeopardy where she goes into the cemeteries - ignore their horrid accents, though; honestly, most people in New Orleans have an accent that's closer akin to New York/Brooklyn than the deep-South drawl that's really more associated with northern Louisiana and Georgia.) I'd even say that the taint of necromancy would be hard to track down, as it would be so rampant - from wannabe teens who somehow manage to stumble across some remnants of it to the real deal. But that's my thought.

Faces could be politicians trying to clean up and recover the city, white court vampires, black court vampires drawn there by the allure of the already-mentioned Anne Rice novels, in-the-know police officers and priests, and so on. Perhaps even reporters, prominent business folk, and so on.

Hope that helps.

One of my wizards was about to go into a combat situation with the rest of the group, including a werewolf and the leader of the werewolf in the city. They're all bantering and getting ready, and the wizard calls them "part time puppies." Then follows the insult right after the combat with "you tell sled dogs to go by telling them to 'mush.' What do you say to make bloodhounds go sniffing?" The wizard is sure that the teeth marks will heal in time.

He has about as many people skills as Harry Dresden. (Actually, maybe less. Which is truly frightening, when you think about it...)

My players mostly want to be difficult, I think, sometimes.

Two of them have valid reasons to not want to be part of the White Council; the third, I think, just wanted to be different but it didn't work out so well.

I believe, too, that the example of a certain female wizard associated with Harry Dresden who does not want the White Council to notice her serves as a sort of example. I'm not sure. We're working it out to see how it goes, but I think that at least one of them is seeing the merits of joining. Another is now getting a Warden paycheck on top of everything else, so you know. Money talks.

In the game I'm running, a couple of my players are playing wizards. Two of them started out as wizards hiding the extent of their skill for various reasons. Unfortunately, one of them got himself into a situation where it became clear he was wizard caliber - and then sold the other out for laughing at his misfortune. Neither are lawbreakers; they just didn't want to be a part of the Council. The setting I'm using allowed this for a time, but no longer. They both took wizard templates, so they understood I'd get them when I could.

At any rate, I've coerced them both into being wizards of the Council. However, they're both fighting me every step of the way, trying to find loopholes and ways out of it. Harry makes it pretty clear in the books that Council caliber wizards must belong to the Council, but he doesn't quite say (as far as I remember) what happens if you refuse. It's possible I missed this in the book, and if so, I'll feel rather silly, but the books are at home and i don't seem to remember. If you refuse, is that an automatic date with a sword? Or is it simply that you have no choice and they do what they must to convince you of your responsibilities?

Anyone in the Gulfport, MS area looking for a group or more players? We might be willing to do some travel, depending on the group or distance (within reason, obviously).

Thanks for the input. We'll probably go with lore or empathy, and I'll risk it. Discipline will be a higher skill for me, so I should be able to extricate myself if it comes up.