By charlottevtes
Know Your Kindred – Black Wallace
Name: Black Wallace
Clan: Lasombra
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1659
Wallace was the spoiled son of a wealthy British noble. He gained a seat in the House of Lords and got involved in Oliver Cromwell’s crusade against the Anglican Church, where he showed off his savage and sadistic side, leading terror mobs in acts of violence.
It was while Wallace was living in Spain after the Thirty Years War that he was taken by a Lasombra and Embraced. Wallace relished the power his vampiric form gave him and opportunities the Sabbat presented to him.
At first his low standing in the clan was a big concern for Wallace, but he soon learned that he could gain power quickly by revealing trechery within the sect rather than by fighting the Camarilla.
After successfully getting a Gangrel antitribu to confess to treason, Wallace’s status rose and in 1780 he became a Sabbat Inquisitor, where he is known for being the most impassioned and feared of his kind. Even his fellow Inquisitors hesitate to challenge his authority.
Wallace has brown eyes and jet black hair. He instructs his ghouls to trim his beard and mustache to match his favorite portrait. His teeth are quite bad by 20th-century standards, so when he extends his fangs they come out a bit askew
– Source: Children of the Night, pg 18-19.
Know Your Kindred – Theo Bell
Name: Theo Bell
Clan: Brujah
Generation: 9th
Embrace: 1857
Theo Bell is part of the Camarilla’s first line of defense in a time of crisis. As an archon, Bell has won the Inner Cirlce’s personal accolades no fewer than seven times, an unprecedented feat in the sect’s history. Bell was instrumental in the Camarilla’s reconquest of New York City as well as uncovering and killing the Sabbat spy, Marcus Vitel. Sabbat vampires walk warily when Bell is near and the Anarchs of a hundred cities curse the name of “Killa-B.”
Bell was born into slavery, working in the cotton fields of Mississippi. He escaped from the plantation and fled to Ohio. He joined the Underground Railroad and made many trips into the deep South freeing slaves and earning the scorn of the plantation owners.
After a failed mission, Bell laid wounded in the woods. He noticed a man standing over him. The man dodged Bell’s lunge and locked him in an inescapable grip. His name was Don Cerro, and he had been keeping track of Bell’s exploits for years. Impressed, he offered Bell the chance to become something more. Bell agreed to his bargain.
During the following years and through the American Civil War, Bell learned under Cerro about the gifts of his kind. The two toured Europe, where Bell was exposed to an entirely new nocturnal world. There were very few black Kindred in the Camarilla and Bell earned much notoriety because of his race. But the decadence and debauchery of Europe’s Elysiums disgusted Bell and reminded him of his old slave master’s parties.
Cerro and Bell were as close as father and son. As Cerro’s star rose in Camarilla politics, Bell was carried up along with him. When the Inner Circle made Cerro the Brujah Justicar, Bell become his archon. Bell performed his duties to the letter and by the 1990s he was the most respected – and feared archon in the United States. Bell didn’t entirely love the Camarilla, but they served his purpose. Also he hated the Anarchs and believed the Sabbat was a danger to the world.
But in the Final Nights of Gehenna, Bell rebelled against the Camarilla. Bell learned the elders were capturing neonate vampires and using them as food to stave off the mysterious blood withering. He could not bring himself to aid them in their mission and so he went renegade – going city to city and freeing all captured vampires. Bell brought his fight directly to the head of the Camarilla, Hardestadt. The weakened elder was unable to defend himself and he met final death from Bell’s twelve-gauge shotgun.
Bell is tall, dark and handsome. Scars across his back and shoulders are the only legacies of his slave days. A New York Yankees baseball cap, reflective police-style sunglasses and a Dragonsbreath-loaded shotgun are Bell’s trademarks.
– Sources: Children of the Night, pg 51-52. Clanbook: Brujah (Revised), pg 96-97. Gehenna: The Final Night, pg 328.
Know Your Kindred – Troglodytia
Name: Troglodytia
Clan: Cappadocian
Generation: Possibly 5th
Embraced: Unknown
There is little information available to prove it, but all logic would conclude the Samedi bloodline is somehow connected to the former Clan of Death – the Cappadocians. The former clan’s weakness was that its members resembled corpses, a disfigurement that is more pronounced in the Samedi, as they resemble putrid, rotting corpses.
The Cappadocian discipline of Mortis and the Samedi discipline of Thanatosis are very similar to each other, dealing with the study and exploitation of death. On top of that, many Samedi possess Necromancy. If the Samedi truly did evolve from the Cappadocian line, from whom did they descend? Were the Giovanni involved?
Upon her Embrace Troglodytia was cursed with a horrible appearance that seem to fall on many new Cappadocians of the time. Her face showed advanced decomposition. Her disgusting appearance made her unapproachable and drew mean-spirited insults from her peers. But through it all Troglodytia wore her condition as a badge of matrydom and was determined to rise above it all.
She took up company with a group of Nosferatu, but her mastery of Obfuscate is not advanced enough to hide her appearance. But true to her martyr self, she has made the best of her lot, becoming a mercenary, acting as a broker for the Cappadocians and Giovanni, procuring dead bodies for experimentation, odd herbs and alchemical ingredients, as well as strange artifacts that come to her attention. She has become a veritable black market all by herself.
Trogldytia is content to work for any benefits and promises she can gather. Who knows what will come of the favors she gains?
– Source: Clanbook: Cappadocian, pg 64-68.
Know Your Kindred – Hukros
Name: Hukros
Clan: Gangrel
Generation: 4th
Embrace: Unknown
It was Hukros who developed the Path of Lilith 1,200 years ago in Africa. While exploring ruins and collecting artifacts of vampire lore, he encountered a cult of mortals who knew the secrets of the Kindred and guarded a collection of ancient writings known as the Cycle of Lilith.
Hukros and his minions attempted to steal the writings, but were defeated by the cult’s demons. Hukros managed to escape and told others of his experiences. Soon curious Kindred joined him and sought the writings in other places.
Followers of the Path of Lilith (aka Lilins) believe all supernatural beings (werewolves, mages, vampires, etc.) were born of Lilith. They believe Lilith was the first vampire, not Caine. The Lilins have their own secret libraries, said to contain ancient artifacts of vampire lore that link Lilith to the Kindred, including writings that claim during the time of the First City Caine was Lilith’s lover and king by her decree. Lilins also believe to fully explore all their vampiric disciplines.
Other Kindred think them fools and debate between the followers of Lilith and Caine grew so heated that neither side is willing to share their discoveries with the other side, instead hoarding the information amongst themselves.
Source: Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, pg 65.
Know Your Kindred – Demdemeh
Name: Demdemeh
Clan: Tzimisce
Generation: 4th
Embraced: Unknown
Little is known about the African Tzimisce (or eggun). They prefer to keep to themselves and are ashamed of their non-African counterparts.
Demdemeh was a warrior discovered by the Tzimisce Antediluvian along the African coast. As the first African it had ever met, Demdemeh confused and puzzled the ancient vampire. The Antediluvian tried to inflict every injury and harm he could to Demdemeh, but the warrior did not flinch and remained calm throughout.
Finally Tzimisce turned Demdemeh inside out, with his organs on the outside and his eyes looking into his head. When Tzimisce asked him what he thought of the view, Demdemeh calmly replied it was nothing special, as all wise men are able to look into themselves. Impressed with his strong mind, Demdemeh was Embraced and left to wonder the jungle. Demdemeh walked across the continent and gathered many followers until he had one of the largest tribes.
To further aid his rule of north Africa, Demdemeh ghouled marshland crocodiles and baboons as his servants. He built the great city of Khamissa to humble the Egyptians.
Over the years Demdemeh no longer hungered for blood, but now feasted on banquets of flesh and became strange and alien to his own people. A row of gills covered his face like a grill, and he no longer had eyes, nose or a mouth. Only his childer understood the whispered, incoherent sentences that he spoke.
Eventually the desert winds spread and the African swamplands dried up. Demdemeh retreated from the world, his ghouled creatures vanished into the night, and Khamissa was abandoned by its people.
Today Demdemeh sleeps at the bottom of a lake deep beneath the Ahaggar Mountains. In his absence, his preeminent childe, the witch Sycorax led the remaining eggun south.
– Sources: Clanbook: Tzimisce (Revised) pg 11, 33-34
Know Your Kindred – Virstania & her Gargoyles
Name: Virstania, Mother of Gargoyles
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1111
Virstania was the youngest apprentice in the Tremere order to earn the rank of mage. But because she was so young she was not able to form friendships with the other magi, who saw her more as a curiosity than a colleague. Instead she turned to creating her own companions and made several constructs she kept as pets.
After one of them escaped her lair and caused a stir in the servant girls quarters. Goratrix found the creature and believed Virstania was ripe to aid him in his next project. Virstania was Embraced and after a year of tutoring at Goratrix’s side, she was put to work hatching the first of the Gargoyles. She bathed them in unwavering love and they responded to her as baby chicks to their mother.
When Goratrix was exiled to Paris in 1133, Virstania felt she had lost her only friend. She retreated to a cave near Ceoris and continued her work to perfect the Gargoyle race. As the years passed, Virstania has come to care more for her creations than her fellow Tremere. She hoped to someday make them an independent race of their own, one that both magi and Kindred will fear.
When the Gargoyles finally went rogue, they look Virstania with them to teach them Thaumaturgy and care for their needs.
– Sources: House of Tremere, pg 92-93. Transylvania By Night, pg 135.
Name: Luma, Stone Beauty
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 9th
Manufactured: 1183
Luma is one of the most aggressive Gargoyles, but also one of the most charismatic. Other Gargoyles automatically heed her commands. The males all wish they could copulate with her but are too frightened to approach without permission.
Luma knows more than she lets on. She’s already gotten two younger Gargoyles to enter into a blood oath with her. She cares for her mother Virstania and encouraged her to allow spies to watch some of the Tremere officers should the day come when they would be at war with the clan.
Luma is slender with the serene lovely face of an ancient Greek statue. Her skin glows a faint yellow, an effect only visible in the dark.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 93, 102.
Name: Saxum
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 8th
Manufactured: 1123
Saxum is the dominating leader of Virstania’s gargoyles. He is the oldest surviving Gargoyle. He assists Virstania in her experiments, acts as Gargoyle leader, passing her instructions to the others. He breaks up fights, hands out food and conveys complaints to the Great Mother. His loyalty is to her, not the Tremere.
Saxum is an exemplary specimen of the basic Gargoyle type. His facial features are strongly chiseled. His stone skin is smooth, like marble and his musculature impressive. His wing span is longer than any other, at 10 feet from one tip to the other. He proudly wears a gold-trimmed robe given to him by Virstania.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 102.
Name: Fidus, The ShrunkenBeast
Clan: Gargoyle
Generation: 8th
Manufactured: 1187
Fidus is too weak and deformed to act as a guard, so he never leaves Virstania’s side. Fidus is the smartest Gargoyle, able to read and understand magic. He’s even given Virstania useful magical advice on a few occasions.
At only four feet tall, Fidus has a bowed neck, tiny eyes and small, twisted wings. He drools uncontrollably and speaks with a lisp that others may find comical.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 101-102.
Know Your Kindred – Malgorzata
Name: Malgorzata
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 6th
Embrace: 1097
Malgorzata had a blade for a tongue, giving a verbal lashing to anyone who disagreed or disappointed her or her master Goratrix, whom she was fiercely loyal to.
Malgorzata was the sixth child of Romanian nobles forced into serfdom. Serving as a young field-worker, she was purchased by Goratrix. He sensed great power in the girl and made her his apprentice. Malgorzata became a coarser, less subtle version of her master, emulating and exaggerating his most blatant traits. By the age of 13 she had become a full mage.
Her boldness and quick rise won few friends but won the admiration of other apprentices. She begged Goratrix to make her immortal like him, but Goratrix was not allowed to Embrace outside the Council of Seven. Instead he broke a lesser rule and made her a ghoul. For decades she begged him to lobby Tremere to her cause, finally gaining the Embrace a tortuous 75 years later. The long wait made her bitter towards Tremrere and towards Etrius, whom Goratrix blamed for his master’s cautiousness.
A great Tzimisce offensive in 1105 crushed all the Transylvanian chantries outside Ceotis. Needing a weapon to fend off the Tzimisce and their allies, Goratrix with Malgorzata at his elbow began experimenting with human and Kindred anatomy. Malgorzata kept the other Tremere focused on their work by reminding them their lives depended on the project’s success. In 1121, the first of the Gargoyles was unveiled. By 1125 the Tremere had created enough of them to turn them loose. The Gargoyles turned the tide in their war against the Tzimisce.
When internal politics exiled Goratrix to France, Malgorzata stayed behind at her master’s command to undermine Etrius’s rule. While Etrius is away from the Ceotis chantry Malgortzata began disobeying his orders and started her own faction of loyal followers, hoping to one day supplant him.
After Goratrix left the clan and joined the Sabbat, Malgorzata remained his eyes and ears until the 1570s, when Tzimisce anarchs captured her during a raid. Taken prisoner and tortured, she revealed all she knew about Ceotis’s defenses and Tremere’s plans. Goratrix found her several tortured decades later, but left her there to linger.
She spent the next several centuries bound to heated iron bands and twisted into a writhing, mindless thing. In the early 20th century she was discovered by Lucita, Anatole and Beckett. By this point she was a horribly deformed, insane, thirst-crazed Cainite. They did the right thing and after three tries, succeeded in finding her head and cutting it off.
Malgorzata presented an image of cold and commanding beauty. Her eyes were the color of a clear wintry sky. Her brown hair was often decorated with glittering gold jewelry set with gemstones. Within Coreris she wore traditional magician robes. On journeys she dressed like a Hungarian noblewoman.
– Source: House of Tremere, pg 25. 27, 87-88. Transylvania By Night, pg 133.
Know Your Kindred – Natalia
Name: Natalia
Clan: Ravnos
Generation: 8th
Embrace: 1703
Like all Ravnos, Natalia acts completely carefree. She is very good at pick-pocketing and seduction – flirting outrageously with anyone she meets.
She is a slender and sultry beauty with dark eyes and dark hair. On the outside she looks no more than a 17 year-old. She likes to wear clothing that has a wide assortment of colors on display.
She came to Berlin after having dreams about her old lover and friend, Ankla Hotep being lost and locked up in a dark prison cell.
– Source: Berlin by Night, pg 100-101
Know Your Kindred – Ur Shulgi, The Shepherd
Name: Ur-Shulgi, The Shepherd
Clan: Children of Haqim (Assamite)
Generation: 4th
Embrace: “the night when the stones spoke and the skies cried a blood rain”
Ur-Shulgi is the second childe of Haqim and the first of the Assamite magi. He is the most efficient war-mage on the face of the planet. His thought processes are completely incomprehensible to anyone not of his age and power stratum. He is violence given a physical body.
Ur-Shulgi awoke after a millennia of slumber and shattered the Tremere “Blood Curse” with no more than the faintest exertion. Casually shredding a ritual cast by the combined might of the Tremere Inner Circle is a good indicator of what he can accomplish should he choose to go all-out.
Since his return, Ur-Shulgi has made it a point to eliminate the Islamic faith from the clan of Haqim. He sees this “Allah” as a corruption and must either show all those who worship him the error of their ways or exterminate them. He already purged the “false” Master of Alamut after he refused to renounce his Muslim faith. Ur-Shulgi and the older Assamites remember the time before Moses. To them Haqim is their god and the Path of Blood is the only true faith. They see their grandsires as a bunch of “devilish heathens.” The younger Assamites know they can not take on Ur-Shulgi and the elders, so they have made plans to leave the clan and flee to the Western nations.
Ur-Shulgi looks like a scarred, burnt child god. His skin is obsidian-black with a lattice of scars, bits of bone and sinew protruding beneath the skin. His eyes look like they have either been gouged or burnt away, although he is able to see without hindrance. When he chooses to wear clothes, it’s usually light colored caftans and robes. His voice seems to billow up from the depths of a dry desert well (surprisingly Ur-Shulgi is fluent in any modern language in which he is addressed).
Ur-Shulgi normally remains motionless. If he has to shift position, he does not move so much as flicker from point to point.
– Sources: Chidren of the Night, pg. 89-91. Nights of Prophecy, pg. 10.
Know Your Kindred – Helena
Name: Helena
Clan: Toreador
Generation: 4th (previously 5th)
Embrace: 1233 BC
For a time Helena was the most powerful Kindred in Chicago. Even though she laid in torpor for over 100 years, she controlled the whole city through her mental powers. But throughout her unlife she has been locked in a 1300 year war with her archenemies, the Brujah Menele.
The two Kindred’s history goes back to Carthage, a city where humans and vampires lived in peace and harmony. Carthage was Menele’s utopia until Helena betrayed the city to the Romans. In return Menele summoned a fire storm that destroyed Helena’s city of Pompeii. The two have since chased each other around the world, until they finally met in hand-to-hand combat on a Civil War battlefield in Illinois. They traded thunderous blows and sent each other to torpor.
Their bodies were rescued by their retainers and brought to safety. Although she laid in torpor, Helena was still able to use her Auspex and Dominate to continue her fight against Menele and in the process manipulate others to shape Chicago as she desired.
In 1990, Helena finally awoke from torpor. The psychic warfare continued between she and Menele, until in 2000, Menele used the Daughters of Cacophony to sing a song that sent Helena back to torpor. The spell did not last long and Helena awoke again. Her hatred of Menele and her willingness to pay any cost for even a weak and convoluted form of revenge had her teaming up with the demon-worshiping vampire, Barbaro. Helena aided Barbaro in a dark ritual which sent her through the Abyss and to summon the ancient Baali – Nergal, Prince of Hell.
In exchange for greater power, Helena gave a part of her soul to Nergal. She hoped he would aid her in destroying Menele, but Nergal refused. Instead he gave her the location of Menele’s haven, where she would have to lead any assault herself. Helena was not happy to receive so little after paying so much.
Helena went to Montreal, where she made a deal with the demon Metathiax to obtain the Kaymakli Fragment – an engraved disk with ancient writing about the end of the world.
Despite some set backs, Helena finally found Menele, who had just come out of torpor. After already killing the !Toreador Mercy, a wounded Helena collided and fought violently with Menele. Helena sank her fangs into Menele’s neck and he in turn sank his fangs into her chest. A combination of images and memories flooded between the two old enemies as they consumed each other’s blood. In the flurry, a shocking revelation flashed before both their eyes. The struggle ended and the two engaged in a passionate kiss. The sun began to rise and shine into the room. The two Kindred rolled away from each other to escape the light. Helena grabbed the Fragment and left with a new sense of duty.
Helena now hopes the Kaymakli Fragment will lead to Lilith, the Dark Mother, Adam’s first wife and ex-lover of Lucifer. Helena hopes Lilith will help her find a way to regain her soul.
Most Recently, Helena was last seen on a sail boat near the Red Sea. Upon learning that the Gangrel Warlord Karsh was appointed the Camarilla’s new Imperator, Helena, with the Kaymakli Fragment in her hands, set sail for Zanzibar to visit an “old friend.”
To be continued…
Sources: Chicago By Night, pg 102-103. Nights of Prophecy, pg 37-40. VTES Storyline Tournaments.