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.