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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.

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.

I feel remiss in not noting the differences between what I was used to at home in Greece in comparison to the hovel I now reside it. Imagine yourself in my homeland, invited to a party with many of the cities elite. Politicians, businessmen, and those who have made a name for themselves as commanders of men on the battlefield.

Imagine...

The cool night’s air swirls deliciously around your upturned face as you open the window of your carriage to let the night in. Dressed in your most elegant evening attire, you know you look stunning... certainly good enough to mingle with the elite haute ton you travel to see.

Your driver announces your impending arrival, and you open your eyes to glance out the opened window, getting your first glimpse of the long drive, paved in sea shells. Lined on either side of the lane, enormous torches blaze forth their golden light, beckoning you enter into a world of decadence.

The soft crunch of the lane beneath the wheels does nothing to overlay the sounds of music and laughter echoed in the distance, and you find yourself tense, anticipation building with each roll forward.

Your cart makes a sweeping right turn, moving into a circular drive and your eyes take in the large gushing fountain set in the middle ground the lane curves about. Dark lion like figures spout sparkling clear water into awaiting pools several layers high. The moon catches the sparkling liquid, creating a beam effect for the crowning Acheron crest on top.

Just as you take your gaze from the dazzling fountain, your breath swells deep in your lungs as the manse in its enormity springs to a sudden life before you. The rose colored marble stairs seem to sweep out towards the rows of awaiting limos, people spilling over them as they walk and mingle their way into the manor.

Finally it is your carriage's turn to be attended by the valets, their uniforms immaculate in scarlet and gold, as they open the door of your carriage. They step automatically to each side of carriage doors, flanking you to aid in your descent as a majordomo presents himself in an equally impressive uniform. "This way if you please..." he motions to you.

You follow your bedazzled eyes into the multi-storied home and find the opulence of the outside is no match for what greets you within. Brilliant in stark white, the Italian marble gleams with a ferocious light almost its own... it is everywhere with no relief from the beautiful purity.

A stairway, raising up to the domed, stain glass ceiling, five stories high, branching to the left and right on separate cat walk like balconies, stops your forward motion. To your right the grande ballrooms giant double doors are spread wide, the steps down flanked by two servants waiting to announce your presence to all.

As your name rings clear and through the room, heads turn for a brief glimpse of you, and you find yourself suddenly not alone as the patriarch of the Acheron walks to your side with a brazen stroll only the immensely powerful can achieve.

The stately, handsome man stops and offers you his hand, his smile a bare line though pleasant, his eyes are what captivate you. They seem to dance with an iridescence so otherworldly you find yourself staring. Shaking off the eerie feeling of hypnotic sensations pooling through your mind, you smile in return not realizing you have just been read and measured by your host.

He steps back as if beckoning you into the lively crowd, the music takes on an exotic beat native to the Mediterranean, the smell of the signature Acheron flowers bloom around you, and you hear what could be your final greeting as the same person you were when you came into this den...

"Welcome to my home, pleasures of all types abound...perhaps even for one such as me..."

He smiles once more as his dark eyes seem to slide down the curves of your neck, before rising to look once more into your widened orbs. His smile turns inward as if he debates something, before he is gone... leaving you to wonder just what it takes to 'pleasure' this hypnotic man...and what did he mean by 'one such as me'.

Ah yes... my home. Where everything one could wish was available and even the most jaded and hedonistic of elitists could find wonderment. My current situation is much less ideal. New Orleans is not Athens and this plantation style house, though the epitome of culture and affluence here is a far cry from the sprawling gardens of my family's manse. Worse, now it is a place of death. All the memories locked away in here bring nothing but pain when I ponder the events leading up to the demise of those closest to me.

We had fled Greece under duress, an unseen threat looming behind us and we were more than aware of the sense of impending doom hanging over us. Hyper-aware one could say. Callista grew more worried as time passed and even Barnabas seemed ill at ease. The feeding was easy. That part of what Barnabas had found out was true. Death was attributed to all sorts of things from animal attacks to new illnesses spread by immigrants. We had no problem in finding appropriate vessels at a moment's notice.

This was indeed an entirely different world. Though some of the upper echelon of society is quite genteel there is a pervasive feeling of danger and a certain ruggedness among the citizenry that you won't find in my beautiful country. The women here are different too. Many of them are from far away places. Callista outshone them all of course, her beauty incomparable especially when placed against such low-bred company.

We had run a business very successfully back in Athens and here we found that line of work far less appreciated. The population smaller and the majority of them simple laborers struggling to put hand to mouth let alone purchase fragrances. We have, as many others have here, instead turned to farming and real estate to regain a portion of the monetary expenditure of our travels. There is no money coming from abroad as our Manse was destroyed, our fields burned and our contact with former business partners sporadic and time-consuming. Poor Barnabas had set up a law firm but most of his business comes from simply notarizing land deeds and transfers.

So very different... yet we thrived briefly. All too briefly.

To understand what caused Callista and Barnabas' demise one must know of Hannibal. Not the infamous conqueror who crossed the Alps, but the vampire who was bred since birth to kill and was empowered to do so by none other than Callista herself.

Even as a human Hannibal was a force to be reckoned with. He had political connections in several factions and families and was not afraid to dirty his hands.

It is rumored that the prize fighter fell out of grace with his human family at a relatively young age and lived on the streets, learning the martial arts of wrestling, pugilism and how to utilize a variety of improvised weaponry. He survived his time on the streets and ended up becoming a local legend among the criminal underworld as being a vicious enforcer willing to do anything to succeed. It also earned Callista's attention.

After her own turning, she went to him in the night as he slept, watching his battle scarred body from the shadows of the room. He slept peacefully, his mind on pleasurable thoughts in the depth of his dreams. She was enchanted with the gladiator's mind, the combat finesse, and the sheer number of battles he had survived.

She was a lone wanderer at the time, still furiously avoiding me while at the same time watching my every move from the shadows.

Whether or not it was loneliness she turned him for, or the thought of Hannibal and myself battling that made up her mind that night, it was the last time Hannibal saw the sun. She started him on one the path of the undead as he slept. The next day he was bedridden, sick from the loss of blood, and that night she came to him, and offered him the Dark Gift.

He accepted it gladly, his bloody life one that he wished to continue for all time. He stayed at her side, instinctively protective of her, absent only when off to feed or when scouting for Callista the opulent residence of her nemesis, me. The blood lust within Hannibal seemed to grow nightly and his emotions hardened. The only thing that mattered was Callista.

He preferred to feed from fighters, from brawlers in taverns to the soldiers of clans, his prey is the strong. He believed that with each feeding he inherits the battle knowledge of his victim, and therefore becomes stronger. This is of course, not true, but Calllista allowed him to believe this, even fed into it as it kept him aggressive and in practice.

Though a brutal concoction of monster, his Latin blood did tell making him quite addicted to the fairer sex. He viewed his masculine lusts in much the same light as his hunger, appeasing it whenever the mood struck, often meshing the two together. If a woman is lucky or unlucky enough to capture his attention and hold it, her last pleasure would more than overwhelm anything she had known up until then. It was this that would lead to our downfall. A rash of brutal murders followed in his wake and along with it came humans who wanted answers for lovers, wives, daughters, mothers and sisters left eviscerated or exsanguiinated and obviously raped.

When she told him we had reconciled he was furious with her. He attacked her briefly, injuring her (at the time she told Barnabas and I it was a rogue vampire) and fled into the night heart-broken and vowing to return and reap vengeance upon me. In the darkness, Hannibal dwelt, his rage festering into a putrid and venomous hatred, a natural born killer with lethal intent. One that Callista had never spoken of until it was too late. One she knew was coming. One that would destroy everything that mattered in my world. One that will destroy me.

It was Hannibal who had left the note. He had razed my ancestral home to the ground leaving it a burned out husk, he had found out where Callista had gone and he had followed us here. Soon he will come for me. He will finish what he started. I am no fighter. I am a historian and a perfumer, a businessman.

I only hope I am strong enough to drag him to hell with me. I want to avenge my childer.