Know Your Kindred – Dr. Allan Woodstock

Name: Dr. Allan Woodstock
Clan:  Gangrel
Generation:  10th
Embraced:  1916

Dr. Woodstock was a researcher at Cambridge University with a wife and young daughter.  When World War I broke out he was drafted into the armed forces and rushed into a military lab, where he helped refine and develop mustard gas and other chemical weapons.  His commanding officer was unsatisfied with testing the gases on animals, so he ordered Woodstock to test them on some of their own wounded men.  Woodstock’s conscience would not allow him to carry out that order, so he was demoted and sent out with the infantry.  At the Battle of Verdun, Sergeant Woodstock died.

A scavenging Gangrel found him on the filed.  Dr. Woodstock does not remember his sire and wonders what made him stand out from the other soldiers dying on the battlefield.  The Kindred blood filled Woodstock’s broken body and gave him the strength to sink deep into the ground.  When he reemerged, the war was now over, and his wife had remarried, which was probably for the best.

Dr. Woodstock took refuge in his science and over the years focused on the strange magical abilities possessed by vampires.  He’s tried to define Disciplines precisely, mathematically, scientifically.  He has blinded young vampires and Embraced the congenitally blind to compare how they adapt to the Protean Discipline.  He has Embraced and ghouled identical twins and studied their learning speed and skills.  His experiments with human and Kindred subjects has been of much interest to the princes and elders.  As such, Dr. Woodstock has good relations with the Camarilla and the princes.

The subject of his most recently completed experiment is a young Toreador named Anna.  Dr. Woodstock watched her grow from infancy to a beautiful woman and onto a vampire.  He’s spent a king’s ransom keeping her alive.  Her sire wanted to invoke the right of destruction, but Woodstock can not imagine his life without her.

Dr. Woodstock’s appearance has degraded over the years.  His left leg now bends backward at the knee like a hind leg of an animal.  His torso is covered with a patchwork of fur.

– Source:  Clanbook: Gangrel (Revised), pg 97-98