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Thousand Year Old Vampire: Guillaume d'Orléans
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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8848315" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p><strong>Las Vegas, 1992</strong></p><p></p><p>Julian and I had the pool area to ourselves.</p><p></p><p>"It's called the Ritual of Pythoness," Julian said, opening up the leather case and spreading its contents out on the poolside table. "We only have a few weeks before it's too cold for it to work until spring."</p><p></p><p>He put out a great stone shaped like an egg, with faded Greek letters etched on it. I picked it up, running my fingers across it.</p><p></p><p>"What is this?"</p><p></p><p>"The Omphalos of Hekate, We will need to get that back soon."</p><p></p><p>Julian put down a sealed ancient clay jar, from which the sound of liquid sloshing could be heard.</p><p></p><p>"Blood of a naiad. Very little of that left in the world."</p><p></p><p>He set out a bundle of laurel branches, a knife of a design far older than either of us, a leather pouch full of clinking coins and a weathered stone tablet inscribed with the letter E with three phrases written in Greek letters written below it. They joined a folded purple cloth he had taken out of his jacket pocket, which had letters or perhaps symbols sewn into it with gold thread.</p><p></p><p>Nearby, the young goat he had brought up in the elevator earlier, to the amusement of guests and the hotel staff, nibbled at one of the small palm trees in the planter boxes around the pool.</p><p></p><p>"I think this should be you," Julian said, surveying all of the implements before looking up at me seriously. "After what happened to you in Sibiu, I think you will be a better vessel for the ritual."</p><p></p><p>I didn't like to think about Sibiu. Too often over the centuries, I would wake up exhausted, with the feeling that I had been doing things for hours while I had slept, although I had never found any evidence that I had actually left my sleeping chambers. Still, I had to admit that Julian was right.</p><p></p><p>Dressed in a white suit that had been in my closet since the mid-1980s, I wore the purple cloth over my face as a veil, pulling it aside to drink most, but not all, of the naiad blood, which tasted like fresh flowing water. I took the tablet and read out the pronouncements on it -- which Julian had taught me phonetically.</p><p></p><p>Julian handed me the sack of coins and then danced and intoned something he said was ancient Greek, beating himself and brushing the concrete around the pool with the branches, which he then sprinkled with naiad blood.</p><p></p><p>When he was finished, I pulled off the veil and we placed the goat before the altar we had made of one fire pit, in which the omphalos blackened. We sprinkled the last of the naiad's blood on the goat, then Julian and I watched it carefully. At last, a shiver ran through it, rippling up from its hooves.</p><p></p><p>"OK, we can continue," Julian said.</p><p></p><p>With a motion too quick for the kid to be aware of it or be afraid, the knife was in Julian's hand and he slit the goat's throat, letting the blood pour into the fire pit. I poured the last of the naiad's blood into a brandy snifter and leaned over the fire pit, gazing at my reflection in the naiad's blood and breathed in the smoke rising from the goat's blood.</p><p></p><p>The fumes overcame me and I felt myself drifting away. I was conscious of my mouth moving and sounds coming out, but it was though it was happening to someone else and I could neither understand the words, nor had any desire to.</p><p></p><p>When I stopped speaking, the goat's corpse was blackened and charred and the horizon was beginning to turn pink.</p><p></p><p>"... back?" I heard Julian say, with a hint of exasperation. "Now are you back?"</p><p></p><p>"I'm back," I said, my voice a dry croak. I would need to visit one of my special refrigerators before going to sleep. I was drained and weak. "What did I say?"</p><p></p><p>"I need to research some things, but I guess we're going on a trip."</p><p></p><p>Schloss Karnstein was nestled in the deep woods above Graz. Although it was historic, it had never become a tourist attraction, because it was privately owned and appeared to be in poor repair. Which was, of course, how the Countess Karnstein wanted it to look. It also meant that no one nearby heard the commotion when we attacked.</p><p></p><p>She and Lord Strongmore apparently expected us to set the castle on fire, because moments after a security guard sounded the alarm, pipes began filling the rooms with halon gas. This, in turn, caused the guards' guns to misfire, and Julian and I tore through them like paper.</p><p></p><p>Karnstein and Strongmore eventually barricaded themselves in the countess' panic room.</p><p></p><p>"What are you doing?" the countess snarled at us through closed circuit television. "We paid you for the heart!"</p><p></p><p>"We've changed our mind!" I roared back, trying to block the camera's view of Julian working on the electronic lock behind me.</p><p></p><p>"You weren't doing anything with it," Strongmore whined. "Don't you understand its potential?"</p><p></p><p>"'Potential?' I understand that I'm going to dismember you while you're still alive, you child!"</p><p></p><p>"Be sensible, William," the countess said, changing tacks. "She has eternal life. If we can harness that, we can eliminate our vulnerabilities, prevent memory loss from age. We could conquer this world!"</p><p></p><p>"We already have, you idiots!"</p><p></p><p>"No, openly," she grinned, showing her fangs, looking not in the least bit human, "Think of it: We could create a whole underclass whose only purpose was to serve as our food, and the remaining humans would do anything to seek our favor, so that they and their families would never ..."</p><p></p><p>Julian rammed a stake into her heart before either she or Strongmore knew he had gotten the door unlocked.</p><p></p><p>But true to my word, I kept Strongmore alive and conscious as I dissected him, until finally, his head and most of his torso told us what we wanted to know, which was where the heart was now.</p><p></p><p>We found a field that would get an unobstructed view of the sunrise in a few hours and left what was left of him there.</p><p></p><p>Less than a week later, the southern stars lit the ocean like a million tiny Christmas lights as the boat rocked to and fro. The captain, not naturally one scared of the sea, seemed unnerved to be out so late at night, at these coordinates especially.</p><p></p><p>"You could drop Mt. Everest here," he said, "and you'd have to descend two kilometers before you reached its peak."</p><p></p><p>"Good enough," I said, and tipped the concrete sphere over the side. It dropped into the black water with an unpretentious plop and plummeted 35,000 feet.</p><p></p><p>We were no sooner back to our hotel room in Hagåtña than the front desk forwarded a call to our room.</p><p></p><p>"Were you out there doing what I think you were?" Meresankh's voice crackled on the phone, sounding even further away than a call to Guam would be expected to sound.</p><p></p><p>"I was keeping it out of harm's way. I figure you're the only one on the planet who could easily retrieve something from down there."</p><p></p><p>Meresankh gave an ironic laugh.</p><p></p><p>"That's why I have people keeping their ears open in port. Now there are two of my body parts at the bottom of the trench. Thank you, Mr. French."</p><p></p><p>"You're welcome, Meresankh. I hope you'll come and visit us some time in Las Vegas."</p><p></p><p>"Maybe I will. Maybe I will."</p><p>[spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 65 + 6 - 6 = Prompt 65</p><p></p><p><em>You experience intense regret over a Resource you have given away or lost. Do anything to get it back. Lose two Resources or check two Skills and get back one lost Resource.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Will French</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Skills</strong>: </p><p>Bloodthirsty (checked); </p><p>Knows the secrets of killing vampires (checked);</p><p>I control the beast (checked); </p><p>Skilled merchant (checked); </p><p>Cook Portuguese seafood dishes;</p><p>Knowledge of vampire anatomy (checked); </p><p>I can draw the shadows in around myself, creating supernatural hiding spaces (checked);</p><p>Visionary (checked); </p><p></p><p><strong>Resources</strong>:</p><p>Diary: A leather-bound German-made ledger book</p><p>Allied with the Piagnoni, a 17th century group of Italian vampire hunters</p><p>An English shipping company, based in Southampton</p><p>Joint custody of a gambling empire in Las Vegas and Macau</p><p>10,000 shares of IBM stock</p><p>10,000 shares of General Electric stock</p><p>Meresankh's ever-beating heart</p><p></p><p><strong>Characters</strong>:</p><p>Juião/Julian Black/Junior: a Portuguese orphan turned my servant turned vampire (immortal); </p><p>Meresankh, an ancient Egyptian queen who has lived 3,000 years as of 1472, and whose still-living heart I have in my possession (immortal); </p><p></p><p><strong>Marks</strong>: 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><strong>Memories (five, up to three Experiences each)</strong>:</p><p>1. I am Wilhelm Black: Julian, now a violent enforcer of the Nachtvolk, gifts me an ever-beating heart; Meresankh, the immortal woman whose heart that is, confronts me in Florence, but allows me to keep it in my safe-keeping for now; unknown buyers purchase the heart (hidden inside a bronze Renaissance sculpture) through Julian.</p><p>2. I am Guglielmo Nero: After Florentine banks collapse during the 100 Years War, I move my banking operations from Cologne to Florence; poisoned by Averardo de' Medici, I wake up in Florence 100 years later, the Itzigs dead, my banking empire dismantled in my absence; setting myself up in Florence, I come to own and operate out of a fencing school.</p><p>3. I am Guglielmo Nero: I awake in the rubble of my Florentine fencing school, war having destroyed the building; I traveled the Ottoman Empire, searching for the origins of vampires before being sent to Cyprus on a mysterious errand, and there I erected a magical structure atop Mt. Olympus; I ally with an Italian vampire hunter to kill Averardo de' Medici, the vampire ruler of Florence.</p><p>4. I am William French: Fleeing a vampire war in Europe, I run a shipping business ferrying colonists from England to the New World, preying upon them during our voyages; we discover that a pair of European vampires are behind the purchase of Meresankh's heart and attack their Austrian castle and take it back, before dropping the heart into the Challenger Deep; </p><p>5. I am Will French: After centuries apart, Julian finds me in Las Vegas, where I am now a casino magnate and we merge our Las Vegas and Macau gaming empires; </p><p></p><p><strong>Diary (four memories, up to three Experiences each)</strong></p><p>1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other (DAMAGED) 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; Carnutes possessed Raum and led the Archbishop of Tours' men to try and killed me -- but I used the Spear of Aeolius and killed Raum and Carnutes instead.</p><p>2: 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>3: I am le Passeur or "the Frenchman": The Portuguese (DAMAGED) Juião helps me after I am burned by sunlight, unafraid of my supernatural nature, and I take him in as my servant; Juião teaches me to cook with the seafood I catch underwater; at his urging, I prey on (DAMAGED) as I tend to them.</p><p>4: 1: I am Wilhelm Black: Brought into the society of the Nachtvolk of Cologne, I watched their leader slowly dismember a vampire, leaving him alive for hours, just in agony; with the help of the mortal Itzig family, I become a rich merchant, with investments across Europe.</p><p>[/spoiler]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 8848315, member: 11760"] [B]Las Vegas, 1992[/B] Julian and I had the pool area to ourselves. "It's called the Ritual of Pythoness," Julian said, opening up the leather case and spreading its contents out on the poolside table. "We only have a few weeks before it's too cold for it to work until spring." He put out a great stone shaped like an egg, with faded Greek letters etched on it. I picked it up, running my fingers across it. "What is this?" "The Omphalos of Hekate, We will need to get that back soon." Julian put down a sealed ancient clay jar, from which the sound of liquid sloshing could be heard. "Blood of a naiad. Very little of that left in the world." He set out a bundle of laurel branches, a knife of a design far older than either of us, a leather pouch full of clinking coins and a weathered stone tablet inscribed with the letter E with three phrases written in Greek letters written below it. They joined a folded purple cloth he had taken out of his jacket pocket, which had letters or perhaps symbols sewn into it with gold thread. Nearby, the young goat he had brought up in the elevator earlier, to the amusement of guests and the hotel staff, nibbled at one of the small palm trees in the planter boxes around the pool. "I think this should be you," Julian said, surveying all of the implements before looking up at me seriously. "After what happened to you in Sibiu, I think you will be a better vessel for the ritual." I didn't like to think about Sibiu. Too often over the centuries, I would wake up exhausted, with the feeling that I had been doing things for hours while I had slept, although I had never found any evidence that I had actually left my sleeping chambers. Still, I had to admit that Julian was right. Dressed in a white suit that had been in my closet since the mid-1980s, I wore the purple cloth over my face as a veil, pulling it aside to drink most, but not all, of the naiad blood, which tasted like fresh flowing water. I took the tablet and read out the pronouncements on it -- which Julian had taught me phonetically. Julian handed me the sack of coins and then danced and intoned something he said was ancient Greek, beating himself and brushing the concrete around the pool with the branches, which he then sprinkled with naiad blood. When he was finished, I pulled off the veil and we placed the goat before the altar we had made of one fire pit, in which the omphalos blackened. We sprinkled the last of the naiad's blood on the goat, then Julian and I watched it carefully. At last, a shiver ran through it, rippling up from its hooves. "OK, we can continue," Julian said. With a motion too quick for the kid to be aware of it or be afraid, the knife was in Julian's hand and he slit the goat's throat, letting the blood pour into the fire pit. I poured the last of the naiad's blood into a brandy snifter and leaned over the fire pit, gazing at my reflection in the naiad's blood and breathed in the smoke rising from the goat's blood. The fumes overcame me and I felt myself drifting away. I was conscious of my mouth moving and sounds coming out, but it was though it was happening to someone else and I could neither understand the words, nor had any desire to. When I stopped speaking, the goat's corpse was blackened and charred and the horizon was beginning to turn pink. "... back?" I heard Julian say, with a hint of exasperation. "Now are you back?" "I'm back," I said, my voice a dry croak. I would need to visit one of my special refrigerators before going to sleep. I was drained and weak. "What did I say?" "I need to research some things, but I guess we're going on a trip." Schloss Karnstein was nestled in the deep woods above Graz. Although it was historic, it had never become a tourist attraction, because it was privately owned and appeared to be in poor repair. Which was, of course, how the Countess Karnstein wanted it to look. It also meant that no one nearby heard the commotion when we attacked. She and Lord Strongmore apparently expected us to set the castle on fire, because moments after a security guard sounded the alarm, pipes began filling the rooms with halon gas. This, in turn, caused the guards' guns to misfire, and Julian and I tore through them like paper. Karnstein and Strongmore eventually barricaded themselves in the countess' panic room. "What are you doing?" the countess snarled at us through closed circuit television. "We paid you for the heart!" "We've changed our mind!" I roared back, trying to block the camera's view of Julian working on the electronic lock behind me. "You weren't doing anything with it," Strongmore whined. "Don't you understand its potential?" "'Potential?' I understand that I'm going to dismember you while you're still alive, you child!" "Be sensible, William," the countess said, changing tacks. "She has eternal life. If we can harness that, we can eliminate our vulnerabilities, prevent memory loss from age. We could conquer this world!" "We already have, you idiots!" "No, openly," she grinned, showing her fangs, looking not in the least bit human, "Think of it: We could create a whole underclass whose only purpose was to serve as our food, and the remaining humans would do anything to seek our favor, so that they and their families would never ..." Julian rammed a stake into her heart before either she or Strongmore knew he had gotten the door unlocked. But true to my word, I kept Strongmore alive and conscious as I dissected him, until finally, his head and most of his torso told us what we wanted to know, which was where the heart was now. We found a field that would get an unobstructed view of the sunrise in a few hours and left what was left of him there. Less than a week later, the southern stars lit the ocean like a million tiny Christmas lights as the boat rocked to and fro. The captain, not naturally one scared of the sea, seemed unnerved to be out so late at night, at these coordinates especially. "You could drop Mt. Everest here," he said, "and you'd have to descend two kilometers before you reached its peak." "Good enough," I said, and tipped the concrete sphere over the side. It dropped into the black water with an unpretentious plop and plummeted 35,000 feet. We were no sooner back to our hotel room in Hagåtña than the front desk forwarded a call to our room. "Were you out there doing what I think you were?" Meresankh's voice crackled on the phone, sounding even further away than a call to Guam would be expected to sound. "I was keeping it out of harm's way. I figure you're the only one on the planet who could easily retrieve something from down there." Meresankh gave an ironic laugh. "That's why I have people keeping their ears open in port. Now there are two of my body parts at the bottom of the trench. Thank you, Mr. French." "You're welcome, Meresankh. I hope you'll come and visit us some time in Las Vegas." "Maybe I will. Maybe I will." [spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 65 + 6 - 6 = Prompt 65 [I]You experience intense regret over a Resource you have given away or lost. Do anything to get it back. Lose two Resources or check two Skills and get back one lost Resource.[/I] [B]Will French Skills[/B]: Bloodthirsty (checked); Knows the secrets of killing vampires (checked); I control the beast (checked); Skilled merchant (checked); Cook Portuguese seafood dishes; Knowledge of vampire anatomy (checked); I can draw the shadows in around myself, creating supernatural hiding spaces (checked); Visionary (checked); [B]Resources[/B]: Diary: A leather-bound German-made ledger book Allied with the Piagnoni, a 17th century group of Italian vampire hunters An English shipping company, based in Southampton Joint custody of a gambling empire in Las Vegas and Macau 10,000 shares of IBM stock 10,000 shares of General Electric stock Meresankh's ever-beating heart [B]Characters[/B]: Juião/Julian Black/Junior: a Portuguese orphan turned my servant turned vampire (immortal); Meresankh, an ancient Egyptian queen who has lived 3,000 years as of 1472, and whose still-living heart I have in my possession (immortal); [B]Marks[/B]: My eyes cannot stand bright light and I have to remain in shadows at all times; my touch is fatal to plants; [B]Memories (five, up to three Experiences each)[/B]: 1. I am Wilhelm Black: Julian, now a violent enforcer of the Nachtvolk, gifts me an ever-beating heart; Meresankh, the immortal woman whose heart that is, confronts me in Florence, but allows me to keep it in my safe-keeping for now; unknown buyers purchase the heart (hidden inside a bronze Renaissance sculpture) through Julian. 2. I am Guglielmo Nero: After Florentine banks collapse during the 100 Years War, I move my banking operations from Cologne to Florence; poisoned by Averardo de' Medici, I wake up in Florence 100 years later, the Itzigs dead, my banking empire dismantled in my absence; setting myself up in Florence, I come to own and operate out of a fencing school. 3. I am Guglielmo Nero: I awake in the rubble of my Florentine fencing school, war having destroyed the building; I traveled the Ottoman Empire, searching for the origins of vampires before being sent to Cyprus on a mysterious errand, and there I erected a magical structure atop Mt. Olympus; I ally with an Italian vampire hunter to kill Averardo de' Medici, the vampire ruler of Florence. 4. I am William French: Fleeing a vampire war in Europe, I run a shipping business ferrying colonists from England to the New World, preying upon them during our voyages; we discover that a pair of European vampires are behind the purchase of Meresankh's heart and attack their Austrian castle and take it back, before dropping the heart into the Challenger Deep; 5. I am Will French: After centuries apart, Julian finds me in Las Vegas, where I am now a casino magnate and we merge our Las Vegas and Macau gaming empires; [B]Diary (four memories, up to three Experiences each)[/B] 1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other (DAMAGED) 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; Carnutes possessed Raum and led the Archbishop of Tours' men to try and killed me -- but I used the Spear of Aeolius and killed Raum and Carnutes instead. 2: 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; 3: I am le Passeur or "the Frenchman": The Portuguese (DAMAGED) Juião helps me after I am burned by sunlight, unafraid of my supernatural nature, and I take him in as my servant; Juião teaches me to cook with the seafood I catch underwater; at his urging, I prey on (DAMAGED) as I tend to them. 4: 1: I am Wilhelm Black: Brought into the society of the Nachtvolk of Cologne, I watched their leader slowly dismember a vampire, leaving him alive for hours, just in agony; with the help of the mortal Itzig family, I become a rich merchant, with investments across Europe. [/spoiler] [/QUOTE]
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