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.