Chris, The Player of Ambrose Acheron wrote:OOC knowledge only unless your character has found the jounal on the grid. This is ~not~ the diary of the vampire known in Harper Rock as Ambrose Acheron. Not really. This is the diary of the ~real~ Ambrose Acheron. For details refer to the Acheron Bloodline page on the wiki located here.
Thirteenth Day, August 1782
To try to tell you all that has happened in my life would encompass more time than you have in this lifetime. I will summarize some key points.I was born Ambrose Acheron but have had many other names throughout the years. As I write this the year is Seventeen hundred and eighty-two. I reside in New Orleans, and I write this because very simply I am to die soon... I believe this because my wife and lover, Callista Angelopoulos told me that she and all she loved were doomed within a decade. It has been two years since her and my best friend, Barnabas were killed. I have very little time left...
Mortality was but a brief flash... 28 years... ha! A mere flicker in time. I have not been human since the year of our Lord, 1154. My mortality was brought to a crashing halt with a curse ministered in an alley while I was walking home one night. A curse that has kept me alive, if one may refer to the undead state as such, for over five hundred years. Never again to walk in the light, or so I thought, and never again to see the world in anything but dark hues of blue, grey and black. The colors of night.
When it began, as I told you I was mortal. The son of a prominent business man in Rome. He made his money on the perfumes and colognes which so often passed for bathing in that period. Quite well off, our home had three stories and was of course, very ornate. My mother was a gentle woman by all accounts and her passing destroyed my father in such a way that I cannot explain.
I didn't know it at the time, I only saw it later in his mind, but my father was not a great lover of women. He rarely took enjoyment in the act which produces the lowliest peasants and the greatest kings alike. The few times a year he would go to my mothers bed were strictly for her enjoyment, for we Italians do not have the misconceptions of so many other cultures. The belief that only the man can enjoy the most loving and carnal of acts is a foolish one. Nevertheless he loved her, and on one autumn night, after the last of the harvests for that year had been reaped, the night was fairly crackling with energy, my father made love to her, and I was conceived.
For twenty eight years I lived believing I would inherit my fathers business when he grew old and toothless and set aside such earthly dealings, and in some way I have, but I could never have imagined how it would come to fruition.
I had no mother growing up. She passed out of this world only moments after I came screaming into it. And since this is a turning point in my history, I shall expound on this part of the tale.
I, to this day believe I remember my birth. On a warm summer night in Athens, Greece in 1126, I remember the pain coursing into my head from an alien light. Pain and an inexplicable sense of loss and helplessness. The hands that held my newborn form were soft still, but the signs of aging were there, even at my tender age this was startling. A course reminder of mortality and the fate which by all rights, should have awaited me. Seeking to drown out the thundering torrent of agony I joined it in noise-making, trying to stave off the frightening and overwhelming rush of foreign sensations tearing through my newborn frame. But how can one force away their very birth?
Ah, if I had known then what I do now I may have tried to move my tiny frame still within my mothers womb to choke the life out of myself with the very cord which nurtured me... for due to a tiny incision placed on my mothers flesh moments before my appearance, paid for by my families business rivals, the Angelopoulos. I slid from her along with her lifeblood. I killed my mother with my birth.
So I thought for twenty eight years of my life. Until one night my world was shattered, and a new one thrust upon me by a dark stranger whose name I know not to this very day.
He was large, tall and built like the statues the Greeks erected in honor of their gods. His eyes were what caught my attention though. They were almost white, but there was a vague hint of blue within. They looked almost like the eyes of a blind man, yet when they turned my way I knew they saw me clearly, and that they saw through me and into my soul.
That night I became a vampire.
That night I learned what had happened to my mother.
That night I sinned for the first time.
My actions the night after I became one of the unliving were brutal and terrible. Thinking back upon that night is unpleasant even for me and I will not dwell on them in this entry.
I went to the midwife's house almost as soon as the day turned to dusk. I knocked on the door, and she, thinking perhaps it was a business call, bid me enter.
Stepping into the house I could see she lived alone, and kept her abode immaculate. The floors were all swept and attention to detail was notable everywhere. When she saw me her face paled. I believe to this day she knew who I was and knew that hell had arisen to claim her.
Although Barnabas Nikas was the first mortal I ever turned and let survive, he was the second vampire I created. Callista wasn't born unto darkness for another full five hundred years. But back to my little friend... The midwife was almost dead by dawn, and I was far from through with her. I dragged her from the house about an hour prior to the rising of the sun and took her to the great mausoleum of my family.
She was found several days later. It took some time for the authorities to figure out exactly who she was.
To let you understand why she was could not be immediately identified I shall tell you the state they found her in that day. Her head was found half a block away from her left leg, skinned to the bone, which of course rested nearby on the flesh of her torso. She had defecated in fear several times over the two nights I kept her, this I placed in her mouth and eye sockets. Her nose, arms and right leg were left next to her spine in the middle of the road.
All in all she was quite untidy the day they found her, much unlike her home had been when she was alive.
Oh, but you remember of course that my fathers business rivals, the Angelopoulos, were the ones that hired her to do the deed? They paid for their crimes, but not in the same way. Oh revenge is a dish that is best served cold. Since winter is the longest of seasons, I decided to make my revenge last...I haunted their family down through the ages, making sure I did nothing to endanger the continuation of the bloodline, for that would be too easy an escape... Ah but I shall get to that in good time. I believe I mentioned Barnabas Nikas?
I met my lawyer quite by accident. I was watching my father’s house as I so often did in the first months of my vampiric existence and out walked an exquisite young gentleman I had never laid eyes on. Reading his thoughts though, I could see he was my cousin from my father's side. The son of my fathers sister.
He looked tired at that moment, and as I watched he walked down the path to the street, coming toward me.
I had believed I was well hidden within the tree I was watching from. I thought the branches would completely cover me. I was of course wrong.
He seemed to sense me that night. Stopping and looking up to the very plant I was hiding in. I heard his thoughts, realized I had been spotted, and as he turned to run back to the house, I leaped. It was a good thirty-foot leap across the road to land in front of him, which of course, was no trouble at all for my fledgling legs. Before he could voice his surprise with a scream or other sound that may have attracted attention I did the only thing I could think of, I hit him.
The young gentleman went down in a heap, and I was left standing in clear view of my father's window with the young man sprawled out on the stone path.
Not knowing why, I scooped the man up in my arms and fled into the night, back to my mausoleum, away from any prying eyes. Quickly I traveled, taking to the rooftops to avoid detection, leaping building to building as you can see in these modern action movies that are so popular among mortals.
Finally, after what seemed an eon, we reached my lair. Stepping into it and closing the heavy marble door, I eyed my guest.
He was stirring slightly now, his eyes fluttering open and trying to adjust to the lack of lighting within the crypt. I could see his pupil's expanding to try and take in as much light as possible. Standing silently I waited for him to recover his composure, watching him stagger to his feet and move panicked to the closest wall.
His eyes desperately sought some source of light to reveal where he had been spirited off to, but alas, it was in vain. The smell of his fear rose in the air and I could not help but smile.
How perfect were his features dear reader! How perfect did the darker shadows fall over his face as his wild eyes tried desperately to scan the room! Ah but I forget that nowadays people have a new perspective of beauty, and the thought that a man can find beauty in the features of one not of the opposite sex is disgusting. Nonetheless suffice it to say that I found him most attractive, and that my friend, is one of the key ingredients to being a vampire... seduction.
I spoke into the darkness then, his eyes moving to the sound of my voice, in them I saw intelligence, and his thoughts were already turned to logic, trying to decipher the lapse in time when he was unconscious, and figuring out what had happened. "Do you not know where you are?" I asked him.
His mind was amazing, for indeed he had already figured out that he was in a crypt, by the vague shapes he could make out in the darkness, and had now puzzled out who I was.
His only visible reaction was a small shake of his head, but the confines of his mind were racing around with possible explanations as to how this could occur, my being alive.
The thought of vampiric powers never passed his mind, but soon enough he learned.
He was too perfect for me to kill, so I simply lunged. His very limited, human night vision allowed him to see me only at the split second before contact, and we toppled wrestling to the floor. My preternatural strength was too much for him, and within seconds I was draining him, more and more and more, ‘til his heartbeat slowed to a low, staggered drumming in my ears, in my veins. I stood then, looking down at him, in the last moments of his life and watched as his eyes started to slip closed.
Instinctively, or perhaps because I had lived through the same attack, I knew what to do next. Slicing open my own wrist with my nails, I pressed the open wound to his gaping mouth allowing my blood to flow freely down into his mouth, force feeding him the coppery liquid.
This is how I met Barnabas Nikas, my cousin, and my second creation.
He fell in line after only a few days of having to be fed, and gibbering like an imbecile. He had decided somewhere in his mind, the logical side of it, that if this is what life had brought him, he would live the experience to the fullest. He became my lawyer, for in his previous life, the mortal one, that is what he was. Handling all of our legal problems, concerns, and eventually becoming my closest confidante. That is, until I met her.
Before I dive into the story of my encounter with Callista in 1610, five hundred years need to be summarized.
Barnabas and myself hunted and fed, killed and saved, lived the high life and slept in desecrated graves, lived many lives as different people, and traveled the known world.
We returned every generation or so to Greece, were I would reap my vengeance upon the Angelopoulos family. I slaughtered their female children, every time offering their souls to my murdered mother as if the blood of those relatives of her murderers could bring her peace.
Always was I careful to leave a male heir though, for I wanted to torment the family for all time.
The Angelopoulos name become symbolic with success and misery.
This pattern continued until I met a young Angelopoulos female who would prove to be my match...in more ways than one.
When I saw her, I immediately thought she was simply a spoiled little brat, like all the rest of her family down through the generations had been. A simple thing to end her life or her good name, spoiling her for any unions from other, prominent families.
I had thought simply to attend the party, draw her away from the mainstream crowd, and do what I do best.
In short, I was going to destroy her like I had so many of her kin.
Instead, as I laid her back on her virgin's bed to make that name a lie, she said something I remember to this day, and saved her from the full extent of my wrath. She told me "Good sir, I have known you but a few hours, but I feel that I could spend eternity with you."
Since she seemed to mean it, I took it upon myself to make it a reality.
I turned her as we made love, never letting her know what I was doing, and it was likely just as well. For all her tenderness in lovemaking, when she awoke the next night to find what I had done, I found that she had her family's temper.
It was over a century until she found it in her heart to speak to me, and to this day I must admit, as powerful a vampire as I had already become, for that century, I was afraid to sleep during the day lest I never wake. I was afraid one day she would tell someone, a hunter, where I slept and I would be finished. Yet in some way, some part of me wanted this, and I believe that was my savior. I think in the end she extracted her own form of revenge.
She allowed me to live.
She watched me through that first fifty years. Every night I sensed her close, sensed her feeding, and thrived from her bloodlust. It seemed to awaken in me a sense of peace to know that she hadn't given up. She was strong much like Barnabas, in the dark arts, hunting as though she had been taught to, although her rage at the whole being torn from her life thing, a petty grievance in my opinion, seemed to grow with each passing night.
She never came close enough for me to read her mind for the first five decades or so. Always was she there, watching me though, staying at a distance, and I could sense the rage within her burning in her. She wanted my blood, and who was I to deny her? No, had she come to me, I would have allowed her to vent her rage upon me, but it was not ‘til much later that she told me she was afraid to try lest it backfired, and left her dead instead of me. Ironic isn't it?
In the last three years of her self imposed isolation she started drawing closer and closer, until I was able to divine her thoughts, and oh how she seethed. The midwife's fate seemed pleasant in comparison to what she was planning for me. I couldn't help but find humor in some of it. She wanted to do some things which by the laws of physics, were anatomically impossible.
Barnabas of course, upon hearing these things from me, took the logical approach to it. He believed I should kill her and even offered to do it himself if I balked at the chore. He seemed to take a personal interest in her much to both my amusement and annoyance, for although I didn't know it then, she was mine. The fact she wanted to kill me was apparent, but there was something else within her. Something that was hidden behind the rage, and being a creature of lust, I am now shocked that I could not fathom it then.
Eventually she came to me, wanting the answers to questions I did not know, for my own master had simply turned me and left me laying in the alley. But Callista...something about her eyes made me question my own existence. And thus we set out to seek the answers together, uneasy travel companions that we were.
Barnabas still advised killing her of course, but by this point it was with less enthusiasm and he was easily ignored.
We hunted together, the three of us, lay together in abandoned buildings in the daytime, and it wasn't long before the distance on the floors of these buildings became smaller and smaller between Callista and myself.
We became lovers, and friends. Barnabas seethed with jealousy. For now he was not my "little fledgling" and the time I spent with him became less during those nights.
Callista and I became wed without ceremony, for how could we enter a church to marry? For some reason she felt a ring and vows were a necessity, and this I provided years later when we were one of the first to be 'wed by the state'. Barnabas himself signed the marriage certificate, with a hesitant hand.
She took my last name, Acheron then, and down through the years we played the parts of lovers, brother and sister, friends, and other relations to fool the mortals around us. For it wouldn't do to live forever as the same person would it? Years passed, wars ravaged our little world time and time again, and all three of us thrived in all of them, laying down the threats to our territories time and again. New countries rose and fell and we went to each to see their ways, and learn. Eventually we heard of a place where we were not outsiders... a new land where all could make their mark.
Barnabas came to me one night in June, 1686 and told me of this new place he had learned of. A place where the preternatural was the natural, and the mortals were next to cattle. I was of course wary of the tale, but how could I doubt a man I had been friends with for almost five hundred years? Add to that the fact that if the sky fell he would state it as bluntly as if he was telling you the temperature in China.
I sent him on ahead and was preparing to wrap up a few details, selling our villa in Athens and of course, acquiring a few gifts for Callista, for it was only a week 'til the anniversary of her return to me. When I received a letter, written in a mortal handwriting for it lacked the subtle detail that we undead pay to our writing, quite threatening actually, claiming that I would meet the author the following night.
I wanted to stay and meet with the one who had claimed feeding instructions would need to be tattooed on my forehead so my fledglings would know how to spoon feed me my bloody meals, but Callista's sense of foreboding deterred me. She had always been more clairvoyant than I, the change to vampire having awakened and heightened her latent psychic side better than mine had, so we set sail that night. We received insurance papers months later, forwarded to our new home an ocean away, stating our villa had been decimated, but by this time, we were at our destination, we had reached the Americas.
What happened upon our arrival? That is a tale for another evening. Daylight is coming and I must rest. Tizoc and his childe, Coahoma have returned from their hunt.. He is quite the interesting fellow, a young Aztec vampire with a penchant for violent reprisal against Spaniards for their slaughter of his people. The first time I met him I thought I would have to destroy him as he nearly confused me as one. I digress. As I stated, perhaps tomorrow evening I shall continue this tale.
