Vladan Kladivo
- True Brujah -x- Dresden -x- Camarilla
Sobriquet: Count.
Appearance: Count Vladan Kladivo appears to be an attractive young man in his late teens. He has a nearly perfect, if bulky adolescent physique. Embraced fairly young, he is without any telltale facial or body hair and his pale unblemished skin, dark eyes and long glossy dark hair make him look like a young male model. He tends to dress in very expensive, but loose fitting clothing that adds to his image as a young male model which he encourages mortals to believe. He rarely carries any obvious weapons, but he moves like the skilled warrior he is and men who appear many years his senior often struggle with their unconscious acceptance of his apparent dominance, while even the most level headed women become romantically conscious of his intense masculinity. One social difficulty that Vladan regularly struggles with is his unconscious ability to seduce other men and the often uncomfortable situations that arise due to his innate magnetism.
Background: In 1618, Vladan was a young Czech aristocrat recently arrived in Dresden to study under the city's finest scholars when the Thirty Years' War broke out. He like the other young men his age immediately chose sides and he was an early casualty of the war, but as he lay dying on the field of battle he was given a second chance by his sire Oliver Zelenka, who saw in him the kind of courage and nobility that would be needed to protect the city of Dresden and its many treasures. Over the next few centuries, as his sire slipped into longer and longer torpors and became increasingly more erratic, Vladan gravitated towards the now archaic Path of Chivalry as a way to deal with the isolation of immortality and the talons of the Beast.
During the summer of 2016, Count Kladivo returned to Dresden with the firm belief that his sire was dead, diablerized by his foul elder sister Countess Klara Wehunt. He saw it as his duty to avenge his sire's death and assume the throne to ensure that Dresden wasn't befouled by the Catholic, diablerist harlot that ruled the "Jewel Box" at that time. With the aid of his cousin Yan Sirkov (Jeremy Sanderson) and the Arpad Ventrue Brian O'Reilly he was able to discover the foul truth of his suspicions and drive-out Klara and her harlot's brood of toadies. Thereafter, with the support of his brother Dalbor, he has assumed the throne of Dresden and has spent the last couple of decades inculcating a few, well vouched for members of the German Kindred into the city to ensure its continuing political alliance with the European Camarilla. The process of integration without the revelation that the Zelenka Brujah aren't a mainstream bloodline of the larger clan of rabble has been extremely difficult for all the descendents of Oliver Zelenka. To cement his position as prince, Vladan has sired his first childe and his recent transformation into both a prince and a sire has taken up nearly all his time.
Personality: Time and the Curse of Caine have conspired to petrify Count Kladivo as he was at the time of his embrace. He knows that the damned Childer of Caine are cursed, but he doesn't believe they have to be evil, though most are ignoble. Relying on his Reformation Era background of puritanical Lutheran beliefs and the archaic, but elegant Path of Chivalry, he has forged himself into the very ideal of the Protestant Knight Errant. While matters of religion have become far less important in mortal Europe, among the Camarilla, whether one is Catholic or Protestant is still a serious issue of contention; a staunch Protestant himself, Vladan has been a consistent supporter of the Peace of Augsburg (1555 A.D.) and allows his vampiric subjects complete autonomy in their choice of faith, provided that they are good Christians. However, he does strongly support Protestant Christianity within his domain and provides incentives to those willing to convert or take up the right ideas of Protestantism.
Current Events: As a strong supporter of Lutheran ideals and as the prince of the city, Vladan interacts with the most influential levels of Dresden's mortal society. While intellectually he understands that Europe as whole has moved towards agnosticism, he emphatically opposes the ideas of atheism and all who support such moral bankruptcy. Due to these factors, Prince Vladan has recently (within the last five years) begun to notice an upswing in atheism and the consequent emergence of agents of sin and temptation within the social framework of the Jewel Box.
Vladan's first instinct was to search for infernalists, as he has found none to date, he has turned his eye towards a possible ingress of the Followers of Set. As that vile cult has never set foot in his beloved city, he has taken every step to find and root them out, all to no avail. His conclusion therefore, is that the Setites must have the help of a banished member of the Zelenka Brujah, however, after due investigation, he has found almost all are accounted for within foreign courts save for his vain younger sister Sara Zuraw and his missing elder brother Vladislav Havelka who was believed to be in torpor, somewhere beneath Berlin.
Quite by chance, Vladan has very recently (within the last year), been contacted by a fellow elder of the blood, one Salomão Machado of Rio de Janeiro who wished for his neonate childe to be educated abroad in the matters of the True Brujah. Thus together, the two elder Elois have conspired to solve their individual problems, thus killing two birds, or serpents with one stone.
