John Dee
- Tremere -T- London -VAL- London - Pax Britannica
Sobriquet: The Doctor, the Master, or 007.
Appearance: Doctor Dee is of medium height, with a wiry build, dark silver hair and dark brown eyes. The Doctor wears his hair slightly longer than collar length, and normally has a neatly trimmed Van-Dyke. The previous traits combined with modern clothing, makes him look more like an aging hippie professor than a Tudor gentleman. In public, he is accustomed to wear modern men's clothing in dark colors, with numerous pockets, like: cardigans, trench coats, and recently hooded crows. He often wears a variety of jewelry, which is almost exclusively occult in nature and usually enchanted. And more often than not, he is usually seen with an ornate iron-wood walking-stick, deeply engraved with runes and sigils, that accompanies him to gala Elysium events and long wilderness hikes equally.
Background: One of the foremost scholars of his day, Doctor John Dee was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, alchemist, and many things besides. There were few areas of human knowledge which did not draw him, and the science of his time made no distinction between the occult and mundane sciences. Queen Elizabeth I consulted him as an astrologer, and used his services in other matters of state. The mystical formula 007, by which he signed some of his secret dispatches, would later become the trademark - much to the good doctor's amusement - of another hunter after secrets.
Like most of the scholars of his time, John Dee maintained a voluminous correspondence with like minds all over Europe. He was a member of several societies dedicated to preserving arcane and forbidden knowledge, and keeping this knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. He had traveled widely in Europe, and an invitation to visit Vienna in 1607 appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary. Once in Vienna, the Dee was shown a world of knowledge and power which he had never even suspected, and willingly accepted the invitation to become part of it.
Returning to London, it was a simple matter to stage his own death and make the necessary arrangements for his new existence. His contacts and societies provided resources and assistance, and were sufficiently accustomed to mystery and ritual that no questions were asked. The Tremere Clan was among lean times, as he had been told in Vienna, and great care was needed to avoid the Tremere's enemies and rebuild. In time, Dee was able to groom a number of initiates for the Embrace, and form a strong Tremere Chantry in London.
The organization of the London Chantry, and its steady growth, drew the attention of Prince Mithras, who made it known that he had always disliked the Tremere's attachment to a group of foreign Elders, and demanded that Dee and his followers renounce all allegiance to Vienna. Negotiations were constantly hampered by the Prince's insistence on being the sole authority, and offers of compromise were consistently spurned. Finally, government authorized witch-finders began to harass the Tremere and their mortal allies, and the London Chantry was forced into hiding.
Since that time, a virtual state of war has existed between the Ventrue and the Tremere of London, and much of it has spilled over into the other fiefs of the British Isles. Puritan witch hunts were countered with plots to undermine and destroy the system of government on which the Prince based his power; religious differences were used to draw mortals into the conflict, and among the effects of the struggle on the Canaille were civil war, fire and the attempted destruction of Parliament. After a century of violence, with the Masquerade constantly at risk, Dee received instructions from Vienna to withdraw from the conflict. Certain pawns were sacrificed, and the Ventrue were allowed to believe that the Tremere had been destroyed.
Over the following two centuries, the Tremere quietly regained their former strength, and laid their plans. Subtly influencing the fringes of science, they began to foster the popular spiritualism of the Victorian era. This movement was so widespread, and yet so bereft of apparent significance, that the Ventrue dismissed it as a mortal fad and overlooked it for a time; however, when societies of and secret orders began to form once more, they became alarmed. There was such a profusion of orders, societies and individual mystics by the turn of the 20th century that the Ventrue knew not were to look for the hand of the Tremere; so many were fronts, blinds and pure coincidences that Mithras found himself chasing shadows, always too late or in the wrong places.
To take direct action against such a large proportion of the mortal population would surely destroy the Masquerade, and the Prince still stung from the peremptory orders to desist which he had received a century earlier. Instead, he determined to fight fire with fire, and fostered a group of his own, using the Malkavian Clan as puppets. His idea was to let a Malkavian sponsored secret order grow up, and become so wild and unpleasant that the kine would be appalled by it and the whole of the spiritualist and occultist movements would be stamped out, leaving the genuine Tremere activities exposed.
Driven underground once more, the Tremere of London planned and waited, Mithras' disappearance since World War I has left both sides confused and unsure; after waiting for two decades, a few tentative steps were taken to use another popular movement as cover, but he Flower Children were sabotaged by angry Malkavians, who now hated the Tremere and Ventrue clans equally. Similar events were taking place throughout Europe and North America. This plan was abandoned, and the Tremere began to subvert the police force - one of the main Ventrue tools - through their control of the Freemasons. This too, was discovered and stopped. Until the present, the two sides merely watched each other, shored up their defenses and awaited the next struggle.
Personality: The Master's time is precious to him, so he rarely squanders it upon the ignorant or stupid and more often than not, he is inclined to ignore those who do not impress him intellectually. He speaks the Queen's English with a faint Elizabethan accent, possesses a nearly encyclopaedic vocabulary which is usually saturated with arcane terminology and occult phrases offered up in a wide variety of both living and dead languages. Clearly, from his perspective, anyone who is worth conversing with with surely comprehend what he is say and how he is saying it.
First meetings with the Master are usually long, thoughtful silences in which he speaks little and observes the individual in an almost theatrical way. Before he speaks, it is his habit to take a few moments, and think deeply to find the ideal and precise turn of phrase to convey his meaning and as he does so, he often steeples his fingers in front of his face and lets his eyes become a touch unfocused. When he is prepared to speak, he has considered every argument, from every angle with the utmost thoroughness.
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