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Thousand Year Old Vampire: Guillaume d'Orléans
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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8848265" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p><strong>Orléans, 1060</strong></p><p></p><p>At last, my father died. Old, blind and deaf. But still my father.</p><p></p><p>Constansia eyed his withered corpse, little bigger than a child's, some devil's mischief clearly occurring to her. Before she can open her blood-red lips to speak, I cut her off.</p><p></p><p>"He will have a Christian burial."</p><p></p><p>My wife reels back as though slapped, eyes blazing with fury.</p><p></p><p>I send for my sister to take my father's body away, both to keep it out of Constansia's reach and so that he may be buried in the church cemetery by day, as he would have preferred.</p><p></p><p>Cateline, in turn, sends her servants. She sits astride a fine horse outside my house, a widow now herself, with white hair. but she is tall and strong, the illnesses of her youth burned away over the years, glaring at the house and me with a murderous hatred. I stand in the doorway, letting her servants pass with our father's body. I want to speak with her, but know that my chance to do that died decades ago.</p><p></p><p>Raum watches her family secretly for me. I know that the two armed men with her are her sons, my nephews, whom I have never met.</p><p></p><p>After they've gone, I go looking for Carnutes. He keeps multiple lairs, all Gallic tombs from the time of the Romans. I finally find him in one, sitting in the dark, dressed in rusted armor, holding a fragile-looking spear in his hand.</p><p></p><p>"Why did you do this to me?" I roar, eschewing greetings. "You have damned me, and for what? For what?"</p><p></p><p>Carnutes says something I don't understand. He sometimes has trouble remembering the French of today and slips into the language of his mortal life.</p><p></p><p>"I could kill you," I growl, looking around the chamber. There are swords here, some that still look serviceable.</p><p></p><p>"Not with that," he rumbles. "My flesh is too hard now and the wound would heal soon enough. I would rise from my grave again in a matter of days."</p><p></p><p>"What a great blessing you have bestowed upon me. My father is dead and in too few years, my sister will as well. I am to do, what, sit with you in tombs until the trumpet sounds?"</p><p></p><p>"You are no Gaul. These tombs? No. Perhaps a grave or tomb in your Christian church."</p><p></p><p>"I do not want this! Why did --"</p><p></p><p>And then Carnutes is up, his spear tip at my breast faster than I can see him move in the gloom.</p><p></p><p>"I could kill you, just as I killed the one who made me, with this same spear." There is no emotion in his voice, as there so often is not. He is a statue from another time who speaks and drinks blood, but shares few emotions or thoughts.</p><p></p><p>"Why did you turn me into a monster like yourself?" I ask it calmly, feeling fear replace anger. I have not been afraid for myself in many long years, as I am stronger and faster than any man in Orléans, strong enough perhaps to kill half a dozen of them without serious injury.</p><p></p><p>"When I killed Aeolius, I was filled with much the same rage you are now. It took me several hundred years to truly understand him."</p><p></p><p>Carnutes withdraws the spear, holds it loosely with both hands at waist height.</p><p></p><p>"We were one of the last free Gauls, even as Rome claimed to have conquered our land. They called us bandits, but we were free. My father was our chieftain and we roamed where we wished, robbing merchants and looting towns and slipping away before the local garrisons could respond. But they eventually caught up to us, having lured us into a trap.</p><p></p><p>"The Romans slaughtered us, getting revenge for years of humiliations and deaths we had heaped upon them. I watched them cut my father to ribbons there in the firelight, unable to help him, knowing it was just moments before my own death.</p><p></p><p>"And then a figure who looked like a Roman god appeared among them, his antique armor gleaming, flinging soldiers aside with his curved shield, lifting others off the ground with his pilum and flinging them into the darkness. And when he was done with them, he fell upon me, the last of my people, and made me a monster like himself.</p><p></p><p>"It was years before we were able to speak with each other, as I did not speak Greek or Latin, or he Gaulish at first. He told me he was the last of his cohort and had followed my tribe for months, seeing in us the camaraderie he had gone so long without."</p><p></p><p>"So," I say slowly, unsure how I feel about this revelation, never having heard Aeolius' name before now. "He made you -- you made me -- out of loneliness? You dragged me into the pit with you, so you would not suffer the Devil's torments alone?"</p><p></p><p>"You hate this so much," Carnutes says, tilting his head back, looking down his nose at me, sizing me up. "You do not age. You are stronger, faster than any mortal man. If you take care, you will never die, and will see all the ages of the world. I have seen the hated Roman Empire fall and the birth of a new, free nation in my homeland. Who knows what you will live to see?"</p><p></p><p>"And Aeolius, he did not take care? What is so special about your spear?"</p><p></p><p>Carnutes makes a noise that might almost be a laugh.</p><p></p><p>"If I told you the truth of this spear, you would not believe it, despite being a man who could be killed by soldiers and rise from his tomb in three days yourself. But it can kill one of our kind. But so can beheading. Or fire. Or, as you age, sunlight. Or piercing the heart with a wooden stake. I'm sure there are more things. I do not care to investigate such things. Take this --"</p><p></p><p>Before the next word leaves his mouth, I have the spear, now pointed at his heart.</p><p></p><p>"I shall, thank you. And I will think on what you've said. But I think killing you would be too kind, old man. Better you return to your lonely travels once more. That seems a more fitting punishment than the point of this spear. But if I encounter you in Orléans once more, I will come up with a worse punishment. My wife has many questions about our kind and would be glad of the chance to examine you on her table."</p><p></p><p>Carnutes says nothing, a statue once more, looking at me with emotionless eyes.</p><p></p><p>"Do not test me, Carnutes. Be gone before the sunrise after next."</p><p></p><p>And then I was gone, out into the night, the ancient spear in my hand and my mind spinning with what he had said and the understanding that a monster other than the bloodlust squatted inside my heart and would slowly devour me in time.</p><p></p><p>As I lay down in my bed chamber in the basement of my home, Constansia absent, off sulking somewhere, I realize that I can no longer remember my father's name.</p><p>[spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 11 + 3 - 6 = Prompt 8 (each prompt page has multiple related prompts and, if you return to the same page, are supposed to go down the page and choose the next unused one)</p><p></p><p><em>You gain an advantage over an immortal Character. What do you take from them? What do you learn? Convert a Memory to a Skill; strike out that Memory. Gain a mysterious resource.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Guillaume d'Orléans</strong></p><p></p><p>Skills: </p><p>Literate in French;</p><p>Literate in Latin; </p><p>Bloodthirsty (checked); </p><p>Knows secrets he should not; </p><p>Knows the secrets of killing vampires;</p><p></p><p>Resources:</p><p>a cowhorn inkwell, engraved with a knight;</p><p>a small bronze crucifix;</p><p>the Spear of Aeolius, an ancient Roman spear said to be capable of killing vampires</p><p></p><p>Characters:</p><p>Cateline, my sickly younger sister, my best friend (mortal);</p><p>Carnutes, the center of the Orléans Heresy and a vampire, a melancholy figure often lost in reminiscences of Gaul (immortal);</p><p>Constansia, Guillaume's first wife, a sociopath who believes her husband is an agent of the Devil (mortal);</p><p>Raum, a demon in the shape of raven, summoned by Constansia to serve as Guillaume's familiar (immortal)</p><p></p><p>Marks: My eyes cannot stand bright light and I have to remain in shadows at all times; my touch is fatal to plants</p><p></p><p>Memories (five, up to three Experiences each)</p><p>1. I am Guilliame d'Orléans, son of (redacted), a novice scribe born late in the 10th Century of Our Lord; one of the joys of my youth, gardening, slips away as my touch is now fatal to plants; </p><p>2. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: My father, Onfroi, gifts me an engraved inkwell, which he had to save for months to afford</p><p>3. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: Father Guiscard invites himself into our home, openly lusting after Cateline, which neither my father and I can do anything about; I kill him when I come home to find him raping Cateline, which she watches in mute horror</p><p>4. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other heretics were burned alive, Carnutes fed upon me as I screamed in pitch black darkness; I confront Carnutes about him making me a vampire and he confesses he did it out of loneliness and tells me I will suffer in the same way some day; </p><p>5. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: I rescue a dark-haired girl from attack and Constansia pledges herself to me, believing me to be a servant of Satan, and we soon wed; Constansia conducts her Satanic rituals and summons a demon, Raum, to serve me in the form of a raven;</p><p>[/spoiler]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 8848265, member: 11760"] [B]Orléans, 1060[/B] At last, my father died. Old, blind and deaf. But still my father. Constansia eyed his withered corpse, little bigger than a child's, some devil's mischief clearly occurring to her. Before she can open her blood-red lips to speak, I cut her off. "He will have a Christian burial." My wife reels back as though slapped, eyes blazing with fury. I send for my sister to take my father's body away, both to keep it out of Constansia's reach and so that he may be buried in the church cemetery by day, as he would have preferred. Cateline, in turn, sends her servants. She sits astride a fine horse outside my house, a widow now herself, with white hair. but she is tall and strong, the illnesses of her youth burned away over the years, glaring at the house and me with a murderous hatred. I stand in the doorway, letting her servants pass with our father's body. I want to speak with her, but know that my chance to do that died decades ago. Raum watches her family secretly for me. I know that the two armed men with her are her sons, my nephews, whom I have never met. After they've gone, I go looking for Carnutes. He keeps multiple lairs, all Gallic tombs from the time of the Romans. I finally find him in one, sitting in the dark, dressed in rusted armor, holding a fragile-looking spear in his hand. "Why did you do this to me?" I roar, eschewing greetings. "You have damned me, and for what? For what?" Carnutes says something I don't understand. He sometimes has trouble remembering the French of today and slips into the language of his mortal life. "I could kill you," I growl, looking around the chamber. There are swords here, some that still look serviceable. "Not with that," he rumbles. "My flesh is too hard now and the wound would heal soon enough. I would rise from my grave again in a matter of days." "What a great blessing you have bestowed upon me. My father is dead and in too few years, my sister will as well. I am to do, what, sit with you in tombs until the trumpet sounds?" "You are no Gaul. These tombs? No. Perhaps a grave or tomb in your Christian church." "I do not want this! Why did --" And then Carnutes is up, his spear tip at my breast faster than I can see him move in the gloom. "I could kill you, just as I killed the one who made me, with this same spear." There is no emotion in his voice, as there so often is not. He is a statue from another time who speaks and drinks blood, but shares few emotions or thoughts. "Why did you turn me into a monster like yourself?" I ask it calmly, feeling fear replace anger. I have not been afraid for myself in many long years, as I am stronger and faster than any man in Orléans, strong enough perhaps to kill half a dozen of them without serious injury. "When I killed Aeolius, I was filled with much the same rage you are now. It took me several hundred years to truly understand him." Carnutes withdraws the spear, holds it loosely with both hands at waist height. "We were one of the last free Gauls, even as Rome claimed to have conquered our land. They called us bandits, but we were free. My father was our chieftain and we roamed where we wished, robbing merchants and looting towns and slipping away before the local garrisons could respond. But they eventually caught up to us, having lured us into a trap. "The Romans slaughtered us, getting revenge for years of humiliations and deaths we had heaped upon them. I watched them cut my father to ribbons there in the firelight, unable to help him, knowing it was just moments before my own death. "And then a figure who looked like a Roman god appeared among them, his antique armor gleaming, flinging soldiers aside with his curved shield, lifting others off the ground with his pilum and flinging them into the darkness. And when he was done with them, he fell upon me, the last of my people, and made me a monster like himself. "It was years before we were able to speak with each other, as I did not speak Greek or Latin, or he Gaulish at first. He told me he was the last of his cohort and had followed my tribe for months, seeing in us the camaraderie he had gone so long without." "So," I say slowly, unsure how I feel about this revelation, never having heard Aeolius' name before now. "He made you -- you made me -- out of loneliness? You dragged me into the pit with you, so you would not suffer the Devil's torments alone?" "You hate this so much," Carnutes says, tilting his head back, looking down his nose at me, sizing me up. "You do not age. You are stronger, faster than any mortal man. If you take care, you will never die, and will see all the ages of the world. I have seen the hated Roman Empire fall and the birth of a new, free nation in my homeland. Who knows what you will live to see?" "And Aeolius, he did not take care? What is so special about your spear?" Carnutes makes a noise that might almost be a laugh. "If I told you the truth of this spear, you would not believe it, despite being a man who could be killed by soldiers and rise from his tomb in three days yourself. But it can kill one of our kind. But so can beheading. Or fire. Or, as you age, sunlight. Or piercing the heart with a wooden stake. I'm sure there are more things. I do not care to investigate such things. Take this --" Before the next word leaves his mouth, I have the spear, now pointed at his heart. "I shall, thank you. And I will think on what you've said. But I think killing you would be too kind, old man. Better you return to your lonely travels once more. That seems a more fitting punishment than the point of this spear. But if I encounter you in Orléans once more, I will come up with a worse punishment. My wife has many questions about our kind and would be glad of the chance to examine you on her table." Carnutes says nothing, a statue once more, looking at me with emotionless eyes. "Do not test me, Carnutes. Be gone before the sunrise after next." And then I was gone, out into the night, the ancient spear in my hand and my mind spinning with what he had said and the understanding that a monster other than the bloodlust squatted inside my heart and would slowly devour me in time. As I lay down in my bed chamber in the basement of my home, Constansia absent, off sulking somewhere, I realize that I can no longer remember my father's name. [spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 11 + 3 - 6 = Prompt 8 (each prompt page has multiple related prompts and, if you return to the same page, are supposed to go down the page and choose the next unused one) [I]You gain an advantage over an immortal Character. What do you take from them? What do you learn? Convert a Memory to a Skill; strike out that Memory. Gain a mysterious resource.[/I] [B]Guillaume d'Orléans[/B] Skills: Literate in French; Literate in Latin; Bloodthirsty (checked); Knows secrets he should not; Knows the secrets of killing vampires; Resources: a cowhorn inkwell, engraved with a knight; a small bronze crucifix; the Spear of Aeolius, an ancient Roman spear said to be capable of killing vampires Characters: Cateline, my sickly younger sister, my best friend (mortal); Carnutes, the center of the Orléans Heresy and a vampire, a melancholy figure often lost in reminiscences of Gaul (immortal); Constansia, Guillaume's first wife, a sociopath who believes her husband is an agent of the Devil (mortal); Raum, a demon in the shape of raven, summoned by Constansia to serve as Guillaume's familiar (immortal) Marks: My eyes cannot stand bright light and I have to remain in shadows at all times; my touch is fatal to plants Memories (five, up to three Experiences each) 1. I am Guilliame d'Orléans, son of (redacted), a novice scribe born late in the 10th Century of Our Lord; one of the joys of my youth, gardening, slips away as my touch is now fatal to plants; 2. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: My father, Onfroi, gifts me an engraved inkwell, which he had to save for months to afford 3. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: Father Guiscard invites himself into our home, openly lusting after Cateline, which neither my father and I can do anything about; I kill him when I come home to find him raping Cateline, which she watches in mute horror 4. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other heretics were burned alive, Carnutes fed upon me as I screamed in pitch black darkness; I confront Carnutes about him making me a vampire and he confesses he did it out of loneliness and tells me I will suffer in the same way some day; 5. I am Guilliame d'Orléans: I rescue a dark-haired girl from attack and Constansia pledges herself to me, believing me to be a servant of Satan, and we soon wed; Constansia conducts her Satanic rituals and summons a demon, Raum, to serve me in the form of a raven; [/spoiler] [/QUOTE]
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