From Know Your Kindred
Know Your Kindred – Enkidu, The Noah
Name: Enkidu
Clan: Gangrel
Generation: 4th
Embraced: 2200 B.C.
Enkidu is on the Camarilla’s Red List for killing many Kindred over the years. The Camarilla does not consider Enkidu anything more than a wild animal, otherwise he would rank higher on the list. But the one the Gangrel call “the Noah” is not a wild beast, he is the caregiver to many strange and exotic animals living within him.
Enkidu was entrusted with this task by Gangrel herself, who had been storing inside her flesh the Typhonic Beast – a malicious creature created by the Egyptian god Set. The Antediluvian had been storing it and other rare creatures in her body and now they would be given to Enkidu’s care.
After a century of training, the Antediluvian passed the creatures onto Enkidu. But the Typhonic Beast is evil and Enkidu had a difficult time keeping the animal tamed within his huge bulk. The Typhonic Beast uses Auspex at all times to call out to Set’s followers. It wasn’t long before the Setties came looking for their pet. The Gangrel’s home city of Ur was destroyed and Enkidu has been wandering the Earth ever since.
Enkidu kills humans and vampires without remorse. He uses their blood to feed the ghouled creatures inside him. But he keeps the Typhonic Beast starved, in order to keep it weak and manageable. Enkidu has learned that he must keep a hold on his humanity if he is to keep the Typhonic Beast contained. As such, a part of Enkidu’s mind has splintered off into a female form called Sabrina. He can transform himself into this form to maintain a mental grasp on human concepts. While in his Sabrina form, he goes into the cities and searches for any Setties in the area. Then he’ll come back later in his Enkidu form to hunt them down.
In life Enkidu hated his own race, who he saw as greedy and arrogant. He found solace only with animals. That has continued in his unlife. He has compassion for uncivilized creatures and sees civilization as a monstrosity. He detests the noise and pollution they create. He avoids the Werewolves, except for the city-dwelling Glass Walkers.
Enkidu stays just outside of cities, so he has a supply of Kindred blood available to feed his creatures. He often uses zoos as havens, staying near other large animals like elephants and rhinos. Many of his creatures hunt with him during the night and act as guardians during the day. But the Typhonic Beast is kept on a tight leash at all times.
In his bitterness for safeguarding the Typhonic Beast, Enkidu has thought about killing it, but he has compassion for the creature and instead transfers blame to the Setties, believing if they are all destroyed the beast will no longer be corrupt. The Setties consider Enkidu one of their primary objectives. He holds prisoner a creature they believe will lead them to their dark god. Enkidu’s hatred for them has grown to new depths and hunting them became an obsession.
The Gangrel are Enkidu’s biggest political foe. They urged the Camarilla to put Enkidu on the Red List and are now lobbying to move him further up the list. There is a split with the Gangrel elders over Enkidu’s value. Some only seek Enkidu for the vampires he’s killed while others seek the unique creatures locked inside his flesh.
Due to Enkidu’s enhanced Animalism, he is extremely attractive to animals. He can communicate with all animals and can summon all animals near him.
Enkidu is a gigantic creature who takes on a new form every night. His Sabrina form is a young woman with short black hair and disturbing green-blue eyes. She dresses in whatever clothing she can find after emerging as the dominant personality.
– Source: Kindred Most Wanted, pg. 33-38.
Know Your Kindred – Khalid
Name: Khalid
Clan: Nosferatu
Generation: 6th
Embrace: 1191
During the Crusades Khalid lived up to the reputation of the hideous Muslim warrior the Christian Knights so feared. He freely performed cruel deeds in service of his god. A Byzantine Nosferatu named Alexius arrived in the Holy Land and believed embracing the Islamic leaders was the best way to corrupt and weaken the enemy. She was fascinated by Khalid’s extreme cruelty, so he was the first to be Embraced.
Khalid was horrified by his curse and in a rage killed his own men before fleeing into the desert. Starving to death in the wilderness, Khalid was discovered by a reclusive Jewish hermit who pulled the neonate out of the sun’s deadly rays and nursed him back to health. The hermit taught Khalid about the occult and other forms of mysticism. When Khalid left the hermit, he was a new person on a path for peace.
For 600 years Khalid wandered the world and met others like him. He learned about Golconda and the quest to achieve it became his purpose. Over the centuries, Khalid saw the best and worst examples of the Camarilla’s meddling in human affairs. By the end of the 19th century he arrived in Chicago, where rumors said an Inconnu slumbered beneath the city. Allegedly this creature would whisper secrets of Golconda to visitors. Khalid searched in vain for this ancient creature.
Chicago was still rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1871 and Khalid felt compelled to help rebuild the city. He got involved in Kindred politics and became the city’s Primogen. He has a lot of subtle influence among the city’s Kindred. He knows almost everything that goes on in the city. But now Khalid is ready to leave Chicago and continue searching for the deepest of Kindred mysteries.
Khalid has an expert mastery of Obfuscate. He can conceal objects that are important to him (like his haven) even when he’s not present. Unlike most Nosferatu, Khalid does not have their normal horrific appearance, but he still bears the scars from the sun he received his first day as a vampire.
Note: Khalid embraced two Chicago children after seeing the painful lives they lived. Tammy and Peter Walenski
– Source: Clanbook Nosferatu (Revised), pg 98-99. Chicago By Night, pg 95-96.
Know Your Kindred – Ankou
Name: The Ankou
Clan: Malkavian
Generation: Perhaps 5th?
Embraced: Unknown
There are many tales about the being known as Ankou. It is an ancient terror that stalks the night and appears in Malkavians’ dreams as a remorseless, lifeless monster that silently treads country roads with an ox-cart and scythe.
Most reliable visions hint that it is a Methuselah, grandchilde of Malkav and faithful servant of his 4th generation creator.
The Ankou can roam through Lupine territory untouched, through a busy downtown unseen, and even vanish from one place and appear miles away, visible to only it’s victims.
Malkavians vanish from their hunting grounds all the time, but sometimes after a disappearance, the Madness Network vibrates with whispers repeating “Ankou.”
– Source: Clanbook Malkavian (Revised), pg 100
Know Your Kindred – Mistress Fanchon
Name: Mistress Fanchon
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 6th
Embraced: 1223
Mistress Fanchon is one of the founders of the Camarilla – and a master of words. She can win any debate and uses a circular and convoluted debating style, attempting to confuse her opponents with all kinds of verbal trickery. She’d like to control every situation she’s in, usually she succeeds.
Described as a handsome, middle-aged woman with long dark hair and bright green eyes.
– Source Transylvania Chronicles II, pg 97, Giovanni Chronicles I, pg 60
Know Your Kindred – Lord Ephraim Wainwright
Name: Lord Ephraim Wainwright, “Imp”
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1821
Ephraim is a scholar’s scholar. He sees omens and divinations everywhere, which he records in his black journal. In life he was a dwarf, living a life of hardship. But a Tremere named Aidan Lyle felt compassion for him and made him a ghoul.
After a lifetime of servitude, Ephraim proved to be a very bright apprentice and was embraced. He made his home in London, buying an estate and continuing to advance his knowledge of blood magic.
Ephraim has a particular interest in the Daughters of Cacophony and in the magical properties of music. His latest book, Songs of the Eve of Gehenna, has been decried as inflammatory by Camarilla and Tremere elders.
Ephraim knows many, many paths and rituals and will use them without hesitation. It is ill-advised to stand in his way.
– Source: Nights of Prophecy, page 46
Know Your Kindred – Zelios
Name: Zelios
Clan: Nosferatu
Generation: 7th
Embraced: 1020
Zelios is a master mason, an expert in both architecture and the occult science of geomancy.
Zelios can enter a structure and know where it’s weakness is, or where any secret passages or hidden rooms lay, even if the owner does not. Many of the sites he chooses to build on are part of a pattern. Zelios is drawn to locations with intersecting lay lines. Many of the minor improvements he gives to an existing structure are designed to focus on unseen geomatic energies.
Zelios first made his mark in the Old World, altering and enhancing the defenses of many European castles. He eventually fled to America, where he has expanded and redesigned the sewer systems of many major cities. His most elaborate creation is the labyrinth of subway and sewer tunnels beneath New York City.
Zelios once tried his hand in politics as a Nosferatu primogen. But that proved to be a very brief and disastrous career move when New York City fell to the Sabbat.
Zelios’s skin looks like it’s made of stone. His face has very angular features. There is no softness in his face.
– Sources: Clanbook Nosferatu (Revised), pg 100, Transylvania by Night, pg 83-84, Transylvania Chronicles I, pg 83, Transylvania Chronicles IV, pg 89
Know Your Kindred – Rafael de Corazon
Name: Rafael de Corazon
Clan: Toreador
Generation: 5th
Embraced: 1182
Many Toreador see Rafael as the symbolic heart of the clan. Though he is not the eldest, most poweful or most talented of the Toreador, he is the most influential. He won their hearts and minds during the Inquisition.
Rafael de Corazon is the author of the 5th Tradition – “Thou shall not reveal thy true nature to those not of the blood.” His passionate speech reached even the most closed minds and prevented the Kindred from launching an all-out-war with the mortals. Instead they covered their tracks and many believe it was Rafael who saved their kind from extinction.
Rafael is exceedingly vain, loathing anything that is more beautiful than himself. As such, he surrounds himself with people of lesser beauty.
He is also a mediocre artist and was not respected by the other Toreador. So he used his power to damage and embarrass them. Since he can not create great art himself, he uses his wealth to sponsor many talented artists.
Rafael hates the anarchs with a passion and wants to destroy them.
In life Rafael was a simple altar boy, resented by the other boys for his beauty. He used his favor with the bishop to lash back as his bullies. This was his first taste of power.
Rafael found little success as a priest, as he lacked the talent and knowledge needed for the job. Passed over again and again for important positions, he began to oversee the creation of mosaics and illustrated manuscripts. Rafael claimed credit for the finest pieces the monks created and threatened anyone who challenged him.
Rafael was embraced by Callisti y Castillo, a mysterious noblewoman the other clergy said was a pagan witch. She was taken by Rafael’s beauty and the illustrations he claimed to have made.
Callisti took him to her lair and embraced him. When she asked him to make more drawings, he tried, but they were mediocre at best and he admitted deceiving her earlier. She almost killed him in anger, but he begged for his unlife, arguing that his lies were a form of great art. This excuse amused Callisti and she spared him.
Eventually Callisti traveled to India and left Rafael to run her affairs while she was away. He wasted no time in exploiting her power, using her authority to propose treaties, form alliances, launch territorial wars and create numerous childer.
– Source: Children of the Inquisition, pg 35
Know Your Kindred – Victoria Ash
Name: Victoria Ash
Clan: Toreador
Generation: 8th
Embraced: 1650
Victoria Ash is a singer, dancer and one-woman spectacle. She had a number-one pop hit on the charts for one week in 1997. The song entitled “The Unique Technique,” was played everywhere – on radio stations, in supermarkets, even on late night TV. But the song vanished as quickly as it appeared. Nonetheless, Victoria had everyone in the world listening to her. It only took her three centuries to get that far.
In life she was the bastard daughter of an alewife. When she was 13, she ran away with a solider who later abandoned her. She then became a prostitute, selling sex to soldiers. But she separated herself from the other women with her beauty, singing voice and the fact she was very good at her work.
Her singing attracted the attention of a vampire and known pimp named Maximilian. He made her his ghoul to preserve her beauty. Within five years she was the campaign concubine for Louis II, Prince de Conde. War and conflict between England and France continued and Maximillian was nearly killed by a rival Toreador guild. Victoria managed to save her sire’s life and they fled to the Netherlands. Once Maximilian recovered from his injuries, thanks to Victoria’s blood, he repaid her by embracing her in 1650.
After returning to England in 1660, Maximillian was killed by his former rivals. Victoria barely managed to escape by stowing away in a ship heading to the New World. She was one of the first Kindred on the continent. She’s spent the last three centuries getting to know America. She enjoys its wealth, selfishness, hypocrisy and honesty in equal measures.
Victoria is extraordinarily beautiful and she knows it. Even male Kindred who have long forgotten the passions of the flesh turn their heads when she enters a room. Victoria has one flaw on her body, a small mark branded on her neck by a Tzimisce named Elford. Victoria tries to avoid looking at it in the mirror and wears hairstyles that cover it from view.
Sadly Victoria’s life came to an end during the nights of Gehenna when a Nosferatu named “Samuel” slit her throat and carved her to pieces in an attempt to frame his mortal enemy, the Gangrel Beckett, for her murder.
Sources: Clanbook: Toreador, pg 93-94. The Final Night, pg 69, 172
Know Your Kindred – Sergei Voshkov
Name: Sergei Voshkov, The Eye of Baba Yaga
Clan: Nosferatu
Generation: 5th
Embrace 1991
Sergei Voshkov was the most brutal and effective spy in the business. A premiere KGB agent with the CIA and MI5 close on his heels. But by the late 1980s the KGB was mothballed by the Gorbachev government and Voshkov went into retirement.
Then one night “The Hag” appeared before him in his study. It was the legendary Baba Yaga, the Mother of Russia. Voshkov expected an agonizing death, but instead she spoke soothing words and offered him the opportunity to command her armies of the night. Despite the horrible cost it would carry, Voshkov gladly accepted.
Voshkov is fanatically loyal to Baba Yaga; he is her eye. He informs her of everything that goes on. His formidable mortal prowess in espionage and warfare, combined with the supernatural powers makes him a deadly opponent.
Voshkov is an extremely ugly old man who is still in good shape. He hides his face behind an upturned collar, dark glasses and a large hat.
Source: Rage Across Russia, pg 96
Know Your Kindred – Gerard Rafin
Name: Gerard Rafin, aka Uncle Smelly
Clan: Nosferatu
Generation: 9th
Embrace: 1899
The Nosferatu called Uncle Smelly is something of a Johnny Appleseed among the Kindred. Using New York as his base of operations, he wanders from city to city and coast to coast, to find the Nosferatu of Canada and America and link them into the SchreckNET.
A French tinkerer who was on the verge of starving among the thronging immigrants on the Lower East Side at the turn of the century, Rafin was instead Embraced and thoroughly Americanized by the Nosferatu of New York.
Rafin grew obsessed with two things: technology and the legends of the Nictuku. It was he who came up with the notion of turning New York into a fortress against the other childer of the Antediluvian, he who kick-started the SchreckNET itself and he who came up with the Uncle Smelly persona as a way to spread the gospel. Now he hits the road for eight months out of the year with a sack full of boards and wires, returning to home base with a batch of new stories he didn’t trust to go out online with and, inevitably, news of new links for the SchreckNET.
Uncle Smelly himself is something of a legend among the Camarilla vampires of North America. Everyone knows who he is and nobody bothers him for two simple reasons: One, he’s reputed far and wide to be harmless; two, he’s kicked the asses of the last half-dozen sheriffs who’ve tried to mess with him. That combination usually ensures Uncle Smelly entrance into any city he pleases, where he can tell stories and dirty jokes, bend the ear of the local prince a bit and coincidentally maintain the system that houses the local SchreckNET node.
Uncle Smelly has ears that are large enough to cast distinct shadows, mismatched with an oddly shrunken head and no chin to speak of. He does have a straggly goatee and a few odd wisps of hair on his head, but the warts outnumber the hairs by about three to one. Rafin likes to affect a “dirty old man” pose, complete with a spattered trench coat and a battered fedora. He even keeps some candy in his pockets for little girls, just to keep up appearances.
Source: A World of Darkness (2nd Ed.), pg 12-13