Know Your Kindred – Toby

Name:  Toby
Clan:  Nosferatu
Generation: 10th
Embraced:  1988

Toby was a crack computer whiz, who prided himself on being able to hack his way into any network.  Toby was too good infact.  His talents attracted the attention of a Nosferatu named Oswald, who contacted Toby online and paid him to perform various illegal tasks.  Toby was unaware of Oswald’s true nature and often did not know whose computer Oswald was paying him to hack into.

It all came to an end when Toby was attacked in his home by the Melanesian Liberation Army, someone Oswald had paid him to hack.   As Toby laid dying on the floor Oswald appeared and Embraced Toby.

The transformation was horrific, but nothing compared to Toby’s new looks.  He was a monster.  He broke all the mirrors in his home and moved his equipment to a warehouse near the open sewer ducts.  He could not stand for anyone to see him now.

The Nosferatu of the city were good to Toby, but Toby felt they only stopped by to feel better about themselves.  There was only one visitor who Toby liked.  He we a Brujah anarch named “Honest Abe” and unlike the others, Toby’s looks did not concern him.  Toby started working for the anarchs in secret, often hacking into government computers for Abe.

Toby is fearful that the local prince will find out, so Toby takes special precautions not to be discovered.  He has used his computer to change the city’s records so his warehouse is untouched.

Toby is a chubby person; fat hangs off him like multiple balloons growing from his flesh.  He cannot wear a shirt and will not get one tailored for fear of letting someone measure him.  His face is a wasteland of acne scars and his pimples ooze continually. He wipes his face with old rags, which he then throws into the sewers, as he is unable to clean them.

– Source:  The Anarch Cookbook, pg 82-83.  DC By Night, pg 63-64.

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 – 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 – 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