Post by Spyder on Sept 17, 2007 20:29:38 GMT -5
Today counts five hundred and ninety-nine winters among the damned. I can scarcely recall my days as a mortal, pieces of childhood memories, studies at the Academy, fencing lessons, and other nigh-meaningless bits of my past.
I see my ancient schemes, my petty plots against Academy rivals, time squandered not considering the length of the game. I remember my aggressive, if cleverly veiled, moves toward the enemy, like a beginning chess player. I was good, but I could have been far better.
I can also recall my first brush with my kindred, those first few encounters with something that, even in my naïve youth, could recognize as a remarkable power, if not a genuine threat. Her name was Fiona, I believe. My eventual connection to this existence. My doomed sire.
The Embrace opened my eyes to a whole new world of machinations, plots and counter-plots centuries in length, subtle beyond anything my mortal mind could have ever comprehended. I was eager to join in this “Dance Macabre”, but difficulties soon followed my rebirth.
My dear Fiona… Though her blood was pure, her heart was not of the kind required by our pedigree. She failed to acknowledge her superiors in requesting my Embrace, an arrogant and prideful gesture true to her personality. And, of course, she paid dearly. I attended her punishment, her execution a mere week after my Embrace. I knew that I would follow soon after if I did not prove my worth. I did as my new Prince requested of me, deftly completing tasks assigned to me as thinly veiled attempts to have me killed without the political wrangling associated with the execution of a sireless bastard such as myself.
My exploits quickly warranted the attention of various factions in this peculiar society. However, they did not expect me to be knowledgeable in the ways of this dance, and I soon found myself bending these factions to my will, and, before long, barely a decade, I was taking my place as Prince of that barony. However, I recognized that to continue to be in this position was a deadly game indeed. A few centuries later, I journeyed to a new home among a flood of Kine immigrants to the New World. I bided my time in a solitary existence, waiting for my kin to construct a new society in this land, and again I was rewarded with results. I now live among the Kindred in the city Jagger, resting in comfort in a tower of steel and glass, closed behind curtained windows in the peak of a materialistic world of Kine.
My unlife has left me with little connection to the world of my mortal being, though my concerns are elsewhere, playing a delicate and deadly game, mixing the blind lives of mortal Kine and the endless existence of the Kindred in a venomous concoction that has claimed the lives of many before me, and, inevitably, my own.
I see my ancient schemes, my petty plots against Academy rivals, time squandered not considering the length of the game. I remember my aggressive, if cleverly veiled, moves toward the enemy, like a beginning chess player. I was good, but I could have been far better.
I can also recall my first brush with my kindred, those first few encounters with something that, even in my naïve youth, could recognize as a remarkable power, if not a genuine threat. Her name was Fiona, I believe. My eventual connection to this existence. My doomed sire.
The Embrace opened my eyes to a whole new world of machinations, plots and counter-plots centuries in length, subtle beyond anything my mortal mind could have ever comprehended. I was eager to join in this “Dance Macabre”, but difficulties soon followed my rebirth.
My dear Fiona… Though her blood was pure, her heart was not of the kind required by our pedigree. She failed to acknowledge her superiors in requesting my Embrace, an arrogant and prideful gesture true to her personality. And, of course, she paid dearly. I attended her punishment, her execution a mere week after my Embrace. I knew that I would follow soon after if I did not prove my worth. I did as my new Prince requested of me, deftly completing tasks assigned to me as thinly veiled attempts to have me killed without the political wrangling associated with the execution of a sireless bastard such as myself.
My exploits quickly warranted the attention of various factions in this peculiar society. However, they did not expect me to be knowledgeable in the ways of this dance, and I soon found myself bending these factions to my will, and, before long, barely a decade, I was taking my place as Prince of that barony. However, I recognized that to continue to be in this position was a deadly game indeed. A few centuries later, I journeyed to a new home among a flood of Kine immigrants to the New World. I bided my time in a solitary existence, waiting for my kin to construct a new society in this land, and again I was rewarded with results. I now live among the Kindred in the city Jagger, resting in comfort in a tower of steel and glass, closed behind curtained windows in the peak of a materialistic world of Kine.
My unlife has left me with little connection to the world of my mortal being, though my concerns are elsewhere, playing a delicate and deadly game, mixing the blind lives of mortal Kine and the endless existence of the Kindred in a venomous concoction that has claimed the lives of many before me, and, inevitably, my own.