Title: Marcus Felsen
Description: Leader of the Amman
Marcus - February 26, 2004 11:24 PM (GMT)
Name: Marcus Atilius Horatius
Given Name: Marcus Felsen
Age: Two thousand, three hundred, and thirty-eight [born 328 BCE]
Apparent Age: Mid-twenties
Gender: Male
Place of Origin: Felsina, Etruria [Bologna, Italy]
Species: Vampire
Coven: Amman
Appearance: Disorganized but dignified, the attire of Marcus is typically of the casual sort. He prefers to dress his finely muscled torso in a faded off-white shirt of cotton, most often worn unbuttoned. Slacks of dark hue are most commonly seen on his legs, and as he does not agree with modern footwear, his feet are typically left bare, weather permitting. With his waves of medium brown, shoulder-length hair, he does nothing, unless they become bothersome while writing and he is forced to tie them back at the nape of his neck. His figure is vaguely boyish but still with the seductive strength of a man, magnified intensely by supernatural appeal. Many a woman have lost their hearts to his seemingly carefree and innocent grey-green eyes, or longed to touch their lips to the alluring pale rose velvet of his own. His height is nothing to become excited over; neither tall nor short, the measure of Marcus's height would fall around five feet, nine inches.
Please note that the majority of the attire described above is for the summerish months; in the winter, he is clothed a little classier, donning shoes nearly always, as well as an expensively tailored frock coat that reaches just above his knees. His shirts are typically done up properly. Also, when indoors, he commonly wears slim sunglasses tinted beige to spare his eyes from bright light. Highly stylish, yet they serve their purpose.
History:
“Industrious, excitable, attached to life; superstitious, mischievous, with a love of luxury; quick and intelligent, but with a tendency to anarchy; wanting to use every means to hand and make their prestige felt, but ready to sacrifice themselves for their own blood; loving their home town without going beyond…. This is the Etruscan; and this is the Italian of all time.” – Alfredo Signoretti
Looking back, it is quite amazing to think that I have lived as long as I have. I should have been dead sometime in my early teens when I first openly defied my father's wishes that I carry on his reputation as a merchant. Antonious Horatius was renowned through-out nearly all of Etruria for his regular dealings with the savage Gauls, and he hated that his only son and eldest child preferred music-making to merchantry, refusing to carry on the family fame. Yet, my father was a patient man, and despite outward frustrations toward me, I knew he would simply attempt to wait me out until my "foolish obsession" ended.
His golden opportunity came some years after my first act of defiance against his wishes for me, when I was twenty-four years of age and still very much the boy that exasperated him so. My two sisters had done more than I in adulthood; Emille, the eldest of the two, was arranged to be married the following spring, while Nesca, the youngest, had been dwelling in her husband's house in Greece since a year past. A fellow merchant had come to dine with us that evening; a man of Egypt interested in bringing Gallic wares to his country. He came to my father in hopes of gaining a guide through the unknown terrain. Now be aware that I was almost immediately suspicious of this Kashta (for that was his name), as it was rare for an aged philosopher of Athens to know our native tongue, let alone an Egyptian who appeared rather young to be the profitable man he claimed.
My loosely rooted unease was dug deeper as I realized that through-out the course of the dinner his gaze was upon me more often than my father. It was during the after-meal entertainment that arrangements were discussed in greater detail. I remember one moment in perfect clarity, as one will often recall life-altering events. I was reclined upon a couch beside Emille, the both of us feigning conversation whilst eavesdropping on Father's discussion. Elle and I were one in the same in many ways, powerful curiosity only being the least of them. Father had just proclaimed that he himself could not be the guide Kashta required, not for the length of time specified. The Egyptian trader was not overly perturbed by this, for he merely nodded before speaking again in a tone too quiet for me or my sister to hear. Suddenly, both men's eyes were upon me-- my father's bright and eager, the Egyptian's amused and triumphant.
My dislike for the man intensified, for at that moment, I was assigned the task of guiding Kashta safely through Gaul, for having accompanied my father on many ventures, I knew the routes and tribes as well as he. Arrangements were made, and we departed the following evening. We were only to travel by night, which would make for very slow going. While we traveled out from Felsina, he talked nearly non-stop, and I listened with half an ear. It was only when he began speaking of past exploits that my interest was caught. He unraveled the world in front of my self-seeing and noble-bred eyes that night, and all of my suspicions and dislike quickly faded, replaced by adoration and respect.
We shared a bed late that night, not an hour before the sun would rise, and while he was not the first man I had known in such a manner, he was the most exotic. His last words to me as I drifted in his arms, warm and content with a horizon of new possibility in my grasp, were that I should not rise until evening. Though I woke in the afternoon rather light-headed and ravenous for food, I abided by his wishes and did not leave the bed. While I awaited the moon's rising, I became aware of a dull pain in my neck, and by touch discovered two puncture wounds there. I meant to ask Kashta of this when he hastened from slumber, but he was so keen to repeat the pleasures of the previous night that I quickly forgot.
It was not until the pain was brought to sharp renewal that I recalled; there was the pain, his lips against my neck, warm and moist, and the sound of swallowing combined with moans. As I listened and felt the world grow distant, I realized I was growing thirsty. As if he had read my mind, I felt the pressure on my throat withdraw, and liquid dripping into my partly open mouth. Blood, his blood, sweet and warm. I drank of him, and became a vampire, as he was, though we had no such singular term for it then.
We moved on later that night. Kashta tried to explain my new nature to me as we traveled, but I was thoroughly enchanted with the music of the night and paid little attention. He was a patient man and allowed me my indulgences once he realized he was being tuned out, and fell into an amused silence while I rambled hopelessly about everything we walked by. Eventually my curiosity changed targets, and I began to press him with questions about his true past.
What he had told me of his world exploits was true, but the timeline they occurred along was much longer. He was one thousand, two hundred, and thirty-one at that time, or so he claimed. Yet despite his age, he could not provide me with an answer as to the origin of our gifts. His sire, however, claimed to have met the creator of our race, a man referred to only as the Father. Kashta admitted that he had always doubted this, insisting that his sire was not entirely of sound mind.
As dawn crept over the stars and my body began to feel terribly sluggish, Kashta instructed me to stop and begin to dig. I had paid attention to him enough to know that this was to offer refuge from the sun’s damaging rays, but I still protested the very notion; we carried enough supplies on the horses to construct a proper shelter. In response, Kashta fell silent again, watching patiently as I grew mentally agitated and physically weak until, at last, I did as he bade me and fell on the soil, scraping a shallow grave with frenzied strokes. He joined me after I collapsed inside, and I was dimly aware of earth falling around us as he moved it with his mind. At best I could only trust that he would not let me perish as daylight stole my consciousness.
When I awoke that evening, I digested these first lessons: I was powerless during the day; there is no shame in sleeping in dirt if it keeps you alive; and I was strong enough to plough through earth without any more strain than was caused by walking through still water. At that point, I began to feel uneasy with the transformation for the first time. What other surprises did my newly reformed body have in store for me? How, exactly, had any of this been achieved? Were the gods to blame?
Kashta pulled me from the grave, interrupting my thoughts, and just as well, for I was beginning to panic. “You must feed,” he stated simply. On cue, I bent double with a sudden, painful spasm all through-out my midsection. “Focus your senses. Find what you need.” I required no further encouragement; at once I was off at a run that the horses would envy, drawn toward the sound of voices and the smell of cook fires.
At first I assumed it was the scent of roasting meat that attracted me, until I paused in the shadows and realized my gaze was quite intent upon the meat of the necks of those who turned the spit. I did not question it; my hunger was ravenous. After several minutes, three corpses lay scattered around the fire, drained of blood. As my common sense returned to me, I fled the scene, appalled at what I had done.
Kashta consoled me when I returned to him, and for the rest of the night reiterated what he had said the previous evening about our lives that I had been too ignorant to pay attention to. I promised him I would do as he asked from then on, and became uncharacteristically chastened and subdued in all my mannerisms until dawn, and was again the following night.
On the fourth night of our travels, I awoke covered in blood-sweat, trembling with a night terror that I had experienced. I had dreamt of the utter destruction of my family and my home, burnt and plundered by a tribe of marauding Gauls. My dear Elle was the only one left alive, but only because she was captured to be traded as a slave. I told Kashta of the terrible dream, and his face fell into a stony expression that disturbed me. He refused to meet my gaze, and would not speak, and I knew then that he had already foreseen this fate, for it was from his mind that I had pulled the nightmare.
A sense of dread and panic overwhelmed me, and I cast the packs off of my horse and drove him at a mad pace back toward Felsina.
When I arrived the next evening, it was to find my horrors made reality. Nothing but ruins and bodies remained. I fell to the ashes and mourned with all my heart, screaming into the unforgiving darkness and causing great storms of debris to whip around me in fierce, empathetic whirlwinds.
When my voice refused to utter one more hoarse note, I got to my feet. My horse had fled long since, but I did not care; revenge drove me away from all I had known and toward those responsible for its devastation.
It did not take me long to find the war party of Gauls. They had made camp only a handful of leagues away. The sound of their celebration grated at my nerves and my sanity. I approached them as calmly as I could, but as I entered the camp they recognized me for one of my people and immediately sounded an alarm. I allowed them to bind my wrists together, and demanded to know what had become of the prisoners taken from Felsina.
Wary, they informed me that they had been traded to another tribe, and I wasted no time in breaking free and hunting them down.
I found the other tribe about an hour away, and after entering the circle of their campfire, repeated my demand of the Boii, the original marauding party.
The men who had by then surrounded me gestured toward a large fire pit in the center of the camp, where a charred skeleton hung, chained to a pole, above the glowing coals. “They were sacrificed to our gods. Brave. Worthy,” the one nearest to me explained in broken Etruscan.
Rage boiled over within me, and the necks of those closest to me were snapped with barely a thought.
I can only remember the ensuing slaughter in fragments of blood and cries for mercy. I am glad of this particular blank in my memory.
When I was finished, the entire camp was slain. Kashta found me there, sitting in front of the fire mound, my inside hollow and my eyes thirsting for water so that more tears could be shed. I hated him, and longed to kill him, but knew that I couldn’t, and so I simply listened to him.
We continued to travel together, only because I had no hope of surviving without him. I could have given up then, and a large part of me craved to give my tormented mind peace, but my soul refused it, and so I lived on with the man that had allowed all I loved to perish.
Two years passed. My hatred for Kashta faded over that time, and we became lovers again, though I never forgave him for what had happened. There was unsteadiness in our relationship; it churned with passion, but it was passion like the sea. It was at once buoyant and supportive, but destructive when the winds blew the wrong way.
I left him when I found him making love to another man in our bed in Greece. I gave him no chance for explanations, and stormed off into the night, headed for my sister Nesca’s home in Athens. That he did not follow me in an attempt to win me back only added to my pain, and I was exhausted in every way possible when I collapsed at Nesca’s door three nights later.
I stayed with Nesca and her family for fifteen years, earning my keep by playing flute in noble households. When I overheard her husband uttering threats against her, claiming that I was unnatural and that I should have died with the rest of our family, I knew that my time there was over. I left a brief note and most of my earnings on the dining table, and walked away from Athens with a heavy heart.
I wandered for many nights with no clear idea of where I was going. I only knew two things for certain: I did not want to return to whatever was left of Etruria, and I did not want to get involved in anything Roman. The fingers of its leader were burying deeper and deeper into the soil all across the Mediterranean with each passing day, and I had no desire to become caught in that grasp.
I continued north for several days, feeding as the opportunity came to me, and sleeping underground. It was with blind luck that I came upon another vampire nearly two weeks out of Greece. He was the first of our kind that I had met outside of Kashta, and because of this he became instantly fascinating to me, though I restrained much of my curiosity. His name was Tieri, and he too was of Etruscan descent. He was older than I, but only by about a decade, and originated from a much more southern region of Etruria, closer to Rome. He had grown sickened of Rome’s influence over the area, and left, vowing to travel as far East as the land allowed in order to avoid Rome’s clutches.
I told him the abbreviated version of my past, and, sympathetic, he asked if I would care to join him on his quest. Having little else to do, and finding his company pleasurable, I agreed, and we set out to see what the world had to offer us.
We ended up traveling North-East, acting as merchants. Our trek took us through what in modern day is known as Macedonia, then through Bulgaria, Romania, and the Ukraine. We dawdled in Russia for a time, and then moved along to the exotic China, where, for the sake of avoiding exposure, we hid from the public eye as much as possible. It was a shame, really, for I would have liked to have explored the foreign country much more thoroughly.
China led us to Thailand. By then, roughly a century had passed, and it seemed we were going no further East unless we purchased a sailing vessel and hired a crew to sail it while we slept during the day. I, for one, was ready to rest for a while, though Tieri was as wary of exposure there as he had been in China. I was at last weary of his company and his paranoia, and ventured out on my own while he sulked by our tiny fire and wondered what to do next.
The night was still fairly young, and as I happened across a village of locals, the majority of them were awake and aware, settled around their own fires and conversing amongst themselves. I settled into the shadows to observe them, listening intently and invading mind after mind to gain understanding of the dialect, hungry for companionship now that I had left Tieri behind.
Several hours passed. I did not care if they thought I was a demon or a ghost; I wanted to speak with them as best I could, and to learn first hand how they lived. As I stepped out of hiding, and approached them, those who were still by the fire seemed to simultaneously freeze, their eyes wide as they looked upon me.
I tensed, preparing for an attack, when an extremely unexpected thing happened. The men and women went to their knees and bowed before me, murmuring “Krishna” in reverent whispers. Confused, I searched their minds, and found images of a pale man with delicately handsome features such as my own. He was a god, and a beloved one at that. Rapidly, I absorbed all of the lore concerning Sri Krishna from them, or at least as much as I could comprehend, and without further hesitation, stepped into his role.
Pretending to be Krishna was not a difficult task. He was a god of love and joy, who happened to have an affinity for playing the flute and seducing women. Though I spent more time blessing cows than I would have liked, the century I spent in Thailand wandering amongst the villages as Krishna was one of the most pleasurable and worry-free of my existence thus far. As for Tieri, he continued south to the islands there, and perished soon after while attempting to cross the ocean. His telepathic cries haunted me for many decades after.
When the itch was in me to travel again, I bade farewell to the Thais, and with a supply of goods to trade, resumed my mantle as a merchant after leaving the country. I backtracked the path that Tieri and I had traveled, and for the second time crossed China without experiencing it as much as I would have liked.
I walked steadily out of Asia and back into Russia, where I spent five centuries roaming the wilds, trading with Slavic tribes, among others, as I came upon them. Over that span of time I became very well adjusted to cold climates, with my travels taking me as far North-West as Finland, Siberia, and Norway. I went as far East as northern Japan, and after thawing my bones there, decided to head back toward the Mediterranean, Rome or no Rome.
By the time I returned to Italy, the Roman Empire had begun to crumble, and left its mangled corpse over the remains of my homeland. As I stood before the bath house that had been built upon the remains of my father’s home, I realized with devastation and shame that I had never properly honored my family’s deaths. No house of the dead had been built for them. Their ashes had been left to be trampled under Roman feet. For all I knew, their spirits wandered the land, moaning and confused. My father and I may not have agreed on all things, but I did respect him, and would never have wished such a fate upon him.
It became clear what I must do: as the sole surviving member of the Horatius line, and to the best of my knowledge, the only breathing full-blooded Etruscan, it was my duty to construct a house of the dead. Not only for my family, but for all of my kinsmen who had perished and were left to rot without proper funeral rites performed.
I traveled to the outskirts of Felsina, now known as Bononia, and with little ceremony, began to dig into the rock. Much of the Italian peninsula is overlain over a type of volcanic rock called tufa, and this was the chosen building material for our funeral houses.
It took roughly fifty years to carve out the vast tomb beneath the ground. The task consumed me, and I only rose to the surface to attack passers-by for nourishment. The stability of my mind during those times was extremely questionable. I only felt guilt, and shame, and an iron will to finish this task, interrupted only by bloodlust and hatred for Rome.
Once I completed the construction of the funeral house, I set out upon the countryside in search of paints. I had dabbled in painting in my mortal years, and had a fair knowledge of what hues I wanted, and what substances would be the most resilient to fading through time. After raiding several store houses, I collected all I needed, and retreated underground to complete my obsession.
Around roughly 600 AD, I was finishing with my project, and growing more feral by the night at the prospect of having nothing else to commit myself to. It was then that the gods at last blessed me with a savior in the form of a Greek woman named Elpis. She and her family had flown from Greece following the invasions of the Avars and Slavs, and had established a small farm not far from my tomb. She was out one evening trailing after a sheep that had broken free from its pen when I ambushed her, taking her to the ground with one powerful motion.
I imagine I was quite a sight by then; covered head to toe with years of caked-on dirt, paint, and dried blood; my hair a tangled mess and my skin gaunt from the strain of solitude and madness. And yet, despite my savage appearance, Elpis did not hesitate to pull back, and slap me.
“Just what do you think you are doing? I have a husband, you know. If you want me to leave him, ask, but I will not be taken in the mud like a common whore,” she stated, voice eerily serene.
I could do nothing but stare at her for several long minutes, mouth partly agape, while she watched me indifferently, awaiting my decision.
“Will you have me?” I asked eventually, my Greek slightly archaic, but understandable. She gave me a scrutinizing look, eyes traveling from my face to whatever else she could see of me from the position she was in.
“Well. You are a mess now, but underneath all of that filth you look to be a handsome man. You are certainly physically fit, and could fight off my husband easily enough were he to come after us. What are your prospects?”
The part of me that was still sane was beginning to find the situation entirely preposterous. There I was, virtually laying on top of a married Greek woman, formerly intent on killing her, but now being considered for her mate. “I…I travel. A lot,” I stammered, backing off of her with confusion.
Her pale blue eyes gleamed as she watched my movements, clearly enticed by the thought of seeing the world.
“Hm. Well. You will have to do,” she decided, and without further warning, tackled me to the ground, lips intent on mine.
I did end up taking her, there in the mud, though not like a common whore; I was too generous a lover for that. I turned her to vampire in the process, and the following evening slew her husband at her bidding. The rest of her family was left alone, their memories altered to think that she and her spouse had been taken by a wild animal while hunting for their lost sheep.
We decided to head South-West, through modern-day France and Spain, and then after using Eplis’s remaining wealth on a small vessel and crew of three to sail it, to Africa.
If we had had a stronger sense of African geography, we might’ve asked the crew to sail around the continent until we encountered a more favorable climate. As it was, when we landed on the coast, the weather still modeled the Mediterranean, and we told them to take the ship for themselves and move on to wherever they wished. After a week or two of traveling south, we realized our mistake, and for two years wandered through desert and savannah, too stubborn to turn back, and feeding on whatever wildlife I could charm to us.
With blind luck, we stumbled upon the rainforests of the continent, and settled ourselves into the jungle, two predators among many.
A couple of centuries slid by, until Elpis finally admitted to being fed up with our primitive way of living and thirsting to return to a more civilized land. Reluctantly, I agreed to this, and began to move us toward the coast, hoping to find locals there that could be persuaded to pilot a vessel for us.
As we neared the ocean, I sensed a familiar presence that made me uneasy. Elpis, sensitive as ever, told me I was imagining things when I confessed to her, and promised that a nice blood orgy would calm me down. Aggravated, I left her alone, making for the coast at a light jog the equivalent of a marathon runner’s sprint.
When the scent of the surf hit my nose, I was almost immediately soothed. I removed my clothing and plunged into the wonderfully warm water, delighting in the feel of it as it washed over my skin. When I finally surfaced, I was struck by the sensation of being watched, and turned abruptly to lock eyes with a figure standing on the beach.
“Marcus.” The figure spoke my name with quiet reverence, and at once I was stung with recognition.
Kashta stood before me, alone and emanating a certain vulnerability that was in no way characteristic of him. Perturbed yet cautious, I approached him, aware of my nudity yet cruelly deciding to use it as a weapon against him, to remind him of what he had so carelessly abandoned over a thousand years ago.
“Where is your Greek lover?” I asked brashly, stopping in front of him, all arrogance and pride.
His dark eyes narrowed. “I could ask the same of you.”
I ignored the jab, and awaited his answer. After a few minutes of tense silence, he broke down and heaved a sigh. “I left him after you left me. I’ve been alone since. Please believe me when I say I’m sorry, Marcus. It was a stupid thing for me to have done. I thought if I shocked you into realizing how much you wanted me and me alone, you would forgive me, for fear of losing me.”
His eyes shone with sincerity, but still I radiated with suspicion and disbelief. Boldly, he closed the short distance between us, and slung his arms around me, resting his head against my shoulder. Again his apparent vulnerability astonished me, so much so that I enclosed him in a reassuring embrace. Something had obviously shifted between us, for in our time apart he had lost some part of himself. He was no longer an independent entity; he had fooled himself into believing that he was nothing without me, and until that night he had kept himself sane by living through me. I was now his master, though no part of me was prepared to take on such responsibility. His obsession was intense, and heart-rending.
We united again, there on the beach, and as I took the dominant role in our relationship, an alarming sense of responsibility settled upon my shoulders. He was mine now, not the other way around, and this knowledge smothered pieces of my being that had thus far prolonged my care-free attitude toward living.
Elpis found us an hour before dawn, and astonishingly, made no snide comment. She knew well enough who Kashta was, and therefore knew not to bother being jealous of our rekindled flame. Or so I assumed.
A week later, we had found an appropriate boat and willing crew to ferry us along the coast and back to Spain. After taking my fill of blood for the road, so to speak, the night we were due to set sail, Elpis intercepted me on my way back to our hut. “He’s in there with someone,” she declared, not quite able to keep the triumphant smirk from her lips. Placing a firm cap on my outrage for the moment, I approached our temporary home and peered in through a slit in the door flap. And indeed, Kashta was there, making urgent love to one of the locals.
I slipped away silently, and told Elpis to ready the crew. We would leave without him.
Though easier on us physically, the trip back to Europe was horrendous for me emotionally. I could feel Kashta constantly probing at the walls around my mind, begging to be let in, but I would not relent. Elpis became frustrated with me, especially as I refused her affections time and time again, until she finally left me alone and satisfied herself with the seamen.
When we finally reached Greece, after detouring around Italy though France and Germany, Elpis found it changed, though the invaders had cleared out long since. We remained there for thirty years, and then moved on again as she became bored with her home town. I could have cared less; my heart was cold and empty those years, that same unrelenting instinct to simply continue living that had kept me alive past the destruction of Felsina the only thing animating my body.
I followed Elpis to England and Ireland, then through Sweden and Finland. We only ever remained long enough to establish ourselves with the locals and live in relative comfort for a handful of years, accumulating wealth as we pleased, none of it gathered honorably, before moving on to a new country. I was miserable through it all, and Elpis threatened to leave me on an almost nightly basis, though she never amassed the courage to actually do it. Often, I wished she would.
Finally, while in India, she declared that we would go to China. The temptation was enough to create a small crack in my self-loathing shell, and so we went to the Orient, and remained there for nearly four hundred years. I was in love with the land, and the culture; something about it warmed my soul and brought back my lust for life. Elpis, however, had the opposite reaction, finding the bustle of the cities all together too gaudy for her tastes. Yet she remained, if only because I seemed happy, and that alone made life easier for her.
We ended up exploring as much of Asia as we could, and found it easier to do so now that the rest of Europe had caught up with us, and the sight of white men was not so alarming to the Eastern peoples. After another two hundred and seventy years of this, Elpis declared she would stand for no more, and demanded that we return to Europe.
We ended up residing in France, in a town nearly corrupt with vampires. I had noticed in our long travels that more and more of our kind had come into existence, and heard from several of them that they had started to organize themselves into groups, or covens, a century or so past. This concept intrigued Elpis, and she badgered me until I agreed to seek out one of these covens with her, now that we had settled somewhere.
It did not take long for us to uncover one, after uttering several telepathic calls. They called themselves the Ishak, and once they had been convinced that we were not spies from another coven, readily welcomed us into their lair. I knew Elpis was enthralled with these vampires: they did not hide their nature, but embraced it, preaching superiority above mortals. They indulged themselves in all matters of earthly pleasures without restraint, but maintained their individual dignity and pride in everything else. Some were capable of feats that neither one of us could perform, such as changing into mist.
My nature would not allow me to trust them, though I might have joined them a thousand years ago, and so I sat in the shadows while Elpis enjoyed herself. Eventually, I admitted to myself that she was happier here, and left her with her new family without as much as a good-bye. I knew she would not mourn my abandoning her.
I returned to our home which, I supposed, was now only mine. While I lay on my bed, empty and alone, I wondered what to do next. I had seen the world, or as much of it as I cared to. One of my immortal companions was dead, and the other two would not be rejoining me. There was the option of creating a new companion, but the very thought added to my weariness. I did not desire to take the risk of fashioning another Elpis.
Just as I was considering a more mundane route, such as acquiring a dog, there was a knock at my door. Curious but wary, I scanned the entrance for the mind of my visitor, only to be met with so strong a resistance it nearly physically knocked me off my feet. “Who is out there?” I demanded in French, realizing belatedly that I had absolutely nothing in my home to ward off another vampire. I had naively assumed we would never encounter one who would pose a real threat to me.
There was no verbal response, only the sound of the lock on the door being released and the muffled scraping of the wood as it opened. I had only the impression of an Asian vampire looking upon me disdainfully before he sent a wave of pain into my mind that exploded into a million golden fragments behind my eyes, soon to quickly be replaced by suffocating blackness.
When I returned to consciousness, I was instantly afraid. The emotion had become foreign to me, and it took great strength of will not to curl into a fetal position once I realized I was not physically restrained in any way. All around me were vampires. I lay on a long table in a dark hall lit with flickering torches. The faces of those surrounding me were unreadable, their minds closed firmly against mine. I could hear the trickling of water nearby, perhaps from a fountain or a pond. Beyond that, my senses told me very little.
The Asian vampire who had so effectively immobilized me came into my line of sight, his eyes seeming to glitter with gold dust. “You are in the hall of the Council and the Father. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not attempt to escape. You will not attempt to harm any one of us, for you will realize that to do so is to invite your own death. Do you understand?” His voice, softly accented French, seemed to become a tangible thing, wrapping around my mind and my spirit, squeezing slowly and deliberately, waiting for my response.
“That is enough, Lei Shen.”
The voice came from the back of the hall, and while under the influence of the Chinese vampire, I could not even attempt to turn my head to view the speaker. All that I could derive was that his French carried an accent unlike anything I had ever heard. It was guttural and sluggish, as if his tongue had difficulty shaping itself to the delicate syllables of the language.
I felt a flare of resistance from Lei Shen, connected as our minds were, before he withdrew and my body and thoughts became my own again. Immediately I sat up and turned to face the being seated on an eroded stone throne at the back of the room.
He was small in stature, but not in features. He appeared human, yet there was something unrefined and animal about him. His hair was black and shaggy, his eyes almond-shaped and dark brown. His attire was simply made; a long brown cotton robe accented with what I guessed to be rabbit fur around his shoulders and waist. For all his unimpressive exterior, what lay inside him was something else entirely. Power radiated from him with unrestrained heat, pulsating with primitive rhythm.
‘He is the oldest of us all; the last of the original vampires to live beyond a natural life span. By our best guesses, he is over thirty thousand years of age.’
The voice in my mind came from one of the females gathered around me, her jade eyes flicking between me and the ancient on the throne. ‘You may approach him. It is trying for him to speak verbally. I will translate for him until such time as he chooses to directly address you.’
Reluctantly, I slid off of the table and walked toward the throne. Each step brought me closer into his radius of fire and strength, until at five paces away my mind was nearly scorching with it. The woman vampire had followed me, and stood a step ahead of me, her back to him. “Our Father has a proposition for you, Marcus Atilius Horatius,” she stated aloud. “He has watched you since Kashta turned you. He has felt your ferocity, and your insatiable will to not only survive, but to live. He wishes for you to take over the Amman coven. Do you know of it?”
I fought the urge to fidget with my discomfort. “I do, in passing. They were the original coven, and are now almost extinct, due to their attempt at controlling all of the others.”
The translator nodded her head slightly. “Close, but not entirely true. The Amman fell from grace because they showed no discretion with regard to who could join them. Many of their number were mere fledglings, and most of those who weren’t left the coven in disgust of their power-hungry fellows. The existing leader is a decadent man who should have been usurped many years ago, but was left to rule and destroy all of the coven’s creditability as a result.
“Now, only a handful remains, and if they are to be saved, a new leader must be elected.”
“Why save them at all?” I asked, flinching immediately after as Lei Shen sent a threatening thought my way for speaking out of turn.
“They are necessary. We of this gathering, the Council, have no desire to involve ourselves directly with the vampires world-wide. We are not interested enough in the survival of our race as a whole to handle all of the petty feuds that erupt on an almost nightly basis. That is the responsibility of the Amman.”
I fell silent, turning this new information over in my mind. I could feel the eyes of the so-called Father on me constantly, weighing my thoughts and my reactions. The woman spoke up again. “You are wondering why he has chosen you.” I nodded. “As I have already said, you enjoy life, even when you think it has betrayed you. The leader of the Amman needs to be someone who will not easily break away from his duties in the face of trouble, personal or otherwise. You have not crawled into the earth for centuries, waiting for the problems of the world to solve themselves. You are loyal to your kinsmen. You already possess many strong psychic gifts, and while mostly self-taught in their uses, are able to wield them efficiently. You have done what was necessary to sever your ties to your virtually useless sire.”
“He has also sired what has ultimately become an Ishak coven member,” Lei Shen snapped. “His lack of care with raising and training her has resulted in yet another common enemy to us. He clearly is not responsible enough for this task--” The air in the room suddenly thickened, becoming harder to breathe for those of us who still had functioning lungs, and effectively cutting the Chinese vampire off.
“You may leave the hall, Quan Lei Shen,” the Father said softly, eyes boring into the younger vampire until he relented and left the room.
The air cleared, and the Father once again looked to me. “It is important that it be you. I have seen it. Do not refuse this. You will not live without it.”
I was uncertain as to whether I should take the statement as a threat, or as simple honesty of a possible future I was unable to glimpse. Either way, I had no real reason to object their offer. They were right; I had no attachments to anything or anyone in the world, not anymore. If I took this opportunity, I could give my life real purpose again.
Sensing my acceptance, the Father gestured me forward. The female translator backed away to rejoin the others with such haste that I privately worried about what was about to happen.
The discomfort I had experienced from afar from the heat the ancient exuded was nothing compared to what I felt as I knelt down before him. He may as well have been fashioned of lava; my eyes watered and my skin broke out into thick blood-sweat as he leaned toward me.
“I will remake you,” he stated, brushing my hair aside with one searing hand to bare my neck.
My heart pounded frantically as he bared his fangs, two sets of them, something I had not encountered before. As he pierced my skin, I felt as if I had been lanced all the way through to the floor, and screamed in agony. His unbreakable hold on my shoulders was all that kept me upright as he drew my blood into him. He did not drink greedily, though I wished he would, so as to end my suffering all the faster. Instead, he took slow, deliberate swallows, draining my veins a mouthful at a time.
My heart had stopped by the time he was finished. My soul clung to my body by a mere thread, and I could not see or hear, taste or touch. By some cruel miracle, I was still conscious in the hollow shell my body had become, but only to my own withering thoughts.
Just as I was beginning to give up and accept that this was my fate, that I had done some great wrong that I was being punished for, I began to feel again. Fire scorched the back of my throat, and along my neck as fingers forced it down the otherwise unyielding passage. Slowly, spark by molten spark, my limbs and senses came alive again. The Father was bent over my still body, dribbling his blood into my mouth from a slit in his wrist. It was red, for all I had expected it to be glowing orange.
“Feed,” he stated. I needed no further encouragement. I climbed from my knees onto shaking legs, and onto his lap as he leaned back to allow it. I buried my fangs deep into his neck, drinking desperately of his blood; of my blood that he had stolen from me, and converted into something more.
I fed until my veins felt they would burst or combust. When I fell back, the translator was there to catch me, and another male knelt before the father to replenish him for all I had taken.
The woman brought me to a chamber just outside of the hall, unlocked the door, and helped me to the bed, for my limbs shook so badly I could not stand or walk on my own. “You will need to rest for many nights while the changes take effect. You will experience some discomfort, but it will pass.” With that, she closed the door, and left me.
This proved to be the greatest understatement of my life. For thirteen nights, I thrashed in that cell, trapped in a prison of fire, fury, and above all else, power, which ate at my blood, my tissues, and my mind. I could not even find respite during the daylight hours, for the agony proved too strong for even the sun’s influence on me.
Finally, before dawn that thirteenth night, I blacked out on the stone floor, and slept.
The following evening, I did not wake without pain as I had hoped. It was not the burning pain that had tormented me, but a different sort: the torture of thousands of voices pressing in on one’s mind, all at once. I had experienced something similar before, but not at such magnitude; at most, I was adept at blocking out twenty mind-voices, not the harrowing tide that assaulted me then.
At my cries, the translator ran to me and knelt next to me on the floor, taking my head in her lap and stroking my sweat and blood-soaked hair soothingly. Slowly, she closed off the invading voices for me, forming a protective cocoon around my mind. “Soon, you will be able to do this for yourself. Lei Shen will teach you.”
“Why not you?” I asked, grasping her wrist as she sought to move away from me, and opening my eyes to gaze up at her, pleading for her not to leave me alone just then.
“Lei Shen is much more adept with the mental arts than I am. He was sired by a fourth level ancient,” she replied, accepting my need for what it was—one of terrified innocence—and continuing to play with my tangled hair.
“Fourth level? What does this mean?”
“A vampire sired by one sired, who was in turn sired, by one sired by an original vampire.”
I blinked, and she laughed softly.
“He is a fifth generation vampire. We’ll leave it at that.”
“Why does he seem to resent me?”
She hesitated, biting her lower lip in a gesture of concern. “For many reasons, I suspect. Jealousy, first and foremost. He spent centuries upon centuries underground, and now considers them wasted, though it seemed necessary for him at the time. You, however, began exploring the world at the first sign of immortality, and did not stop. You were also able to immortalize your lovers; his wife, Jia, died as a mortal, as did his two daughters. He has not loved another since, or so he claims.”
Hastily, she glanced to the door, and then back again. “I have said too much. Come. There is much for you to learn.”
I spent a decade under their tutorage, fine-tuning my skills and my strengths. Primarily my lessons were for my mental abilities, but there was physical training to be done as well. I had not touched a sword since I was a boy, nor had I ever participated in any sort of refined hand-to-hand combat. I was taught both, and then some, and mastered my body as well as my mind.
Through-out it all, the covens fought world-wide, more and more of the remaining Amman perishing while I forced myself to be patient and wait until the Council agreed I was ready to take over.
Finally, in 1680, they set me free.
My first act was to exterminate the existing Amman coven leader, Henri Tasse. He was barely over a millennia old, and I met little resistance from his followers as I entered the coven. I had expected to find a tyrant who would fight me tooth and claw to maintain his leadership. What I found instead was a tired vampire who had simply tried to take on more than he could handle. He asked for a swift end to his existence, and I granted it, beheading him and burning the corpse.
Word of my take-over swept through the vampiric community much faster than I had anticipated. By the end of that week, nearly a hundred vampires had rejoined the coven to support me.
Together, we marched around the world, cleansing it of the vampires whose existence was an insult to life itself, and an extreme hazard to every vampire. The vampires that we killed were those who headed massacres, killing mortals indiscriminately and barbarically, simply because they could. Most of these belonged to the Terefah coven, though a few Ishak who sought to defend the Terefah were slain as well.
Upon our return to France, I called a temporary truce among the covens, and met with the other four leaders to sign a pact. No vampire under the age of a thousand would henceforth be permitted to join the Amman, spare a fledgling sired by one of us. Each coven would also be paid a substantial amount of money in whatever currency they pleased. Satisfied, the leaders signed, and peace prevailed, for a while.
I continued to travel the world during that time, visiting the different sects of my coven. I did try to find the Council and the Father again to tell them of my success in person, but upon returning to the dwelling I had been trained in, I found it abandoned. I knew there was little point in seeking them out; if they had wanted me to find them, they would have made their location known.
In 1734, I received a disturbing letter from the leader of the Nephim. Several of his people had reported overhearing members of the Ishak discussing a rebellion that was being planned by their new leader, appointed only a fortnight before. It seemed they not only sought to start another coven war, but to hold it in the public eye, irreversibly exposing us all to mortals. He insisted that we stop them by any means necessary, and I couldn’t help but agree.
I met with him and the leader of the Enashe, and together we plotted the demise of the Ishak. The leader of the Terefah was invited, but predictably, did not attend. On the eve of October 31st, our three covens converged on the abode of the Ishak leader, armed with torches and crosses. We slaughtered many before their leader was able to arrive, and I was astonished when I found her.
It was Elpis. She did not look at all surprised to see me. In fact, her conniving smile suggested that she was thrilled that I had come in person.
“Come to clean up after yourself at last, Marcus?”
“I did not know you would be here, Elpis. This can all stop if you swear not to carry out your plan,” I said cautiously. Something inside her mind had shifted over the brink and into madness. She had never been particularly stable, not even the first day I met and turned her, but living under the influence of the Ishak seemed to have shattered her sense of reason entirely.
“My, you have matured since we parted. Disappointing, yet amusing. Well, go on then. Kill me. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”
“No, I came to stop this--”
“And it will not be stopped unless you kill me. So do it!” she screamed, lunging at me.
There was no hope for her. Time slowed as she traveled toward me from across the room. I turned my eyes to the ground, and did not watch as her head caved in upon itself, scalp shattering and piercing into her brain, blood gushing through the cracks.
Her body landed at my feet with a wet thud. Her eyes sat as shriveled raisins in the sockets, yet they twitched as she tried to use them to look at me. ‘All cleaned up. Feel better?’ she whispered telepathically, and then, she died.
Shortly after, the Terefah emerged from tunnels below ground, and harbored what remained of the Ishak into them. I let them go.
I spent the following decades submerged in my duties, until I was called to the New World in 1814. More specifically, a city in Canada named Demaitre. The current leader of the Nephim had opened a church there the year before, which had attracted the attention of the Ishak and Terefah. The result was a small-scale coven war occurring between them, one that I decided to settle in person.
It took a decade, the full strength of the Amman, the death of the Nephim leader, and the disbanding of that entire coven, but the fight was stopped. Tension remained, and I called a meeting of all five coven leaders a week after the truce was recognized. Coven laws were established, and an agreement was made to hold annual meetings among the leaders to prevent another war. As a result, all of the coven leaders, myself included, took up residence in Demaitre.
The years passed in relative peace. The coven leaders became very adept at controlling their members, and public mishaps did not happen with near the frequency that they had previously maintained. Unfortunately, I was relatively slack with the discipline I practiced with my people. I expected them to be capable of controlling themselves, and this error in judgment lead to the creation of one who should have never been a vampire.
I was on my way to Westminstral Park to view the progress of what would be the new Amman coven house. At the time, we resided separately all across the city in whatever dwellings we could find.
As I entered the park, I became aware of the presence of one of my coven, and of the scent of fresh blood. Immediately suspicious, I hurried to the location, and found Katia, technically the fledgling of one of the Amman and not a true member herself, though she was over two centuries old, walking away from a group of bushes.
Catching the smug smile on her lips, I physically stopped her, seizing her upper arms in vice grips. “What have you done?”
“What it is in my nature to do.”
I glanced to the side, and spotted the body of a young boy, sprawled in death. Anger overwhelmed me, and I hit Katia with enough force to snap her neck. Before she could repair it, I wrought her head from her shoulders, and set both pieces of her corpse ablaze, vowing to deal with her sire later.
Delicately, I added the small body to the fire, and as I prepared to add one last blast to incinerate both, became aware of a faint life struggling in the bushes.
I parted them to find a young man, drained to the brink. I had a decision to make, but I did not have the time to fully weigh the options. I knelt and pulled him from the bushes, cradling him in my arms. His name was Colum; the boy was his brother. For the moment, that was all I needed to know. I called his name softly, and told him not to be afraid. I punctured my wrist, and bade him to drink.
I took him to my home, and began to teach him our ways. He was a much more adept pupil than Elpis had ever been, and I took great joy from his company. I came to love him, first as a son of sorts, and then as our relationship grew beyond parental intimacy, a lover.
As all good things must, our short years together came to an end. He wanted to see more of the world, and to live as an Amman on his own. I released him, sadly but with pride, and continued on with my life.
In the summer of 2003, I was visited by a ghost. My dear sister, Emille, who I had thought lost millennia ago, found me in Demaitre, now a vampire. Our reunion was deliriously sweet, but horribly brief. She left me without a word of warning two days after her arrival in the city, and for all my great power, I have not been able to find her since. For the sake of my sanity, I try not to think of her, or why she has deserted me once again. (View the RP.)
Colum returned to me in 2004 at a very…inopportune moment. The Ishak had hosted a celebration of sorts, and I had attended it, part for the sake of courtesy, and part to ensure that the festivities did not get out of hand. Unfortunately, I was the one who got out of hand, and Colum arrived just in time to witness my utter destruction of a mortal sacrifice. He confronted me in the coven house the following night, and after cruelly causing me to reevaluate myself, fled into the night.
Of all the beings I did not need to see after he left, the one I wanted around the least arrived at my doorstep. Kashta had also found me, and came to me after sensing my utter emotional devastation.
I resisted him at first, but so broken had I become with Colum’s accusations that I needed comfort from any source I could find. (Read the RP)
I learned later that there was a moment in the summer of 2005 when Colum and I might have reconciled; after he left me, he joined the ranks of the most prestigious vampire-only orchestra in the world (not that there were many to contend with); the Lunar Elegance Orchestra. I had hired the orchestra to play at what has since become an annual gathering of vampires, known only as the Masquerade. In reflection, I do not know how I could have possibly missed his presence at the gathering, especially due to the fact that he had been bold enough to stand out and play a concerto solo. Regrettably, his attendance did go unnoticed, and we both were made to suffer needlessly in the time to follow.
I remained with Kashta for just short of a year after he found me, and then he, too, deserted me, just as Emille had.
I became something of a recluse following this last abandonment, disappearing from the city for weeks at a time in a foolish attempt to leave its many haunting memories behind. Late in the autumn of 2005, I received an offer to become the conductor for the orchestra at the local university at the beginning of the upcoming winter semester. I gladly accepted, and for many months, this has been my only passion and light. Otherwise, my time was chiefly consumed by coven matters; I did not attempt to maintain or create intimate relationships with anyone.
The Masquerade of 2006 shook me out of my primarily impassive funk rather violently. The event was held by Kie-Linque Callaiffe, the newest Ishak leader, and while I did not treasure the thought of attending another Ishak-hosted event, I did arrive on time, and in style. However the spectacle of my arrival was enormously outdone by the entrance of Kie-Linque herself (as well it should have been, I suppose), and her two escorts. On one arm was Enoch, her pet librarian; on the other was Colum, introducing himself by her surname. To say that I was wounded would be a gross understatement.
I spent that evening avoiding Colum and his new mistress, and the months that followed dwelling on how much his noble perceptions of the world must have warped to allow himself to live with the Ishak leader. After all, it was due to my shameful display of barbarism that he had left me, and yet there he was, residing amongst a collection of vampires who prided themselves on such vicious displays.
I moved away from the underground coven house, finding it repressive while in my depressed state, and growing aggravated with the increasing number of vampires wandering into the park and crying for the attention of the Amman over petty matters. I chose instead to dwell in a high-rise apartment building near the city’s centre, finding some measure of peace in the seclusion of living so high above the ebb and flow of the population. A handful of Amman “guards” lingered, rather unnecessarily, around the property throughout the evenings, and yet I still managed to feel pleasantly alone with my thoughts. It was through this isolation that I finally found the courage to reach out to Colum, and demand answers to the questions that had preoccupied me since the Masquerade. (View the RP.)
Since Colum and I reconciled, I find myself renewed. I am able to once again genuinely enjoy my work with the university orchestra, and make a point of returning to the coven house for several nights a week to answer those very same pleas for assistance that had driven me to move elseware. Colum has come to live with me in my spacious loft apartment, though he has not severed ties with Kie-Linque. I do my best not to place any pressure on him to do so; his attachment is fully warranted, as I had learned during our confrontation in October.
Updated events since that last paragraph that I'll write out properly one day...
- Colum ran away from home with no word of warning and made every effort to make sure that Marcus couldn't get in contact with him again
- Colum reappeared a year and some change later; Marcus was understandably upset with him, but let him move in with him again as part of a strict sire/fledgling relationship
- Madness with a deranged vampire named Miskal ensued in late March of 2010; he attacked Marcus at a library function and after stealing some of his blood ran off into the night. The hunt for Miskal continues.
- Marcus was hired on as a proper professor at the university in September of 2010, teaching one class in the evenings in addition to conducting the orchestra
- Marcus began dating a mortal woman named Amber in November of 2010
Talents: In brief, Marcus is skilled with the piano, violin, and flute. He is capable of playing many instruments aside from these, but not as proficiently. He dabbles in artwork, writing fiction and poetry, as well as the occasional musical score. Most of this is for his own entertainment, and he hardly expects to be able to make an unneeded profit from them. As for vampiric traits, he has strong abilities with the mortal psyche -- telekinesis, mind-reading, mesmerism, command --, and often he will read the thoughts of others by accident, for sometimes these abilities have wills of their own. In addition, he has become a talented practitioner of pyrokinesis. Given his age and the circumstances revealed in his history, these abilities have strengthened over the centuries, far beyond the capacity of any vampire his age or even double it, though they can still be limited by a few factors.
His greatest weakness is to sunlight, and during the daylight hours he is completely helpless. 