Joachim von Neumann
Sobriquet: Maître de l'Elysée (Master of Elysium)
Nomenclature: Joachim von Neumann (Jo-a-keem fun New-e-mun)
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History: Although Joachim von Neumann places a great deal of emphasis on control, as many Ventrue do, he in truth has very little of it. Nothing of his known unlife reveals this, however. Despite the Toreador stranglehold on France, Joachim has managed to survive and flourish in the courts of Paris and Versailles. He has amassed a significant fortune and a prestigious political power-base in the land of the Enlightenment, and he enjoys the status and influence his position brings.
However, his secrets gnaw at him every night. His family, a line of ghouls and retainers for many powerful Ventrue down the years, is overshadowed by many dark promises. In reality, Joachim knows little about those promises; his great-grandfather, who is also his sire, has never seen fit to tell him, and Joachim has not seen him for over three centuries. All that he knows is that his sire, or his grand-sire, or one of his vampiric ancestors made an oath long ago to a very old and very powerful Nosferatu. The boon has passed to him and his entire family, and he only knows a small part of what it entails -- he must protect certain Nosferatu when they ask him in the correct way, and he must safeguard several ancient arcane tomes and tablets. For centuries he was unable to even decipher them, regardless, he is expected to protect them with his unlife.
Two centuries ago, the young son of one of his descendants accidentally lost some of the tomes! Unfortunately, the boy publicly killed a man in his haste to escape familial justice and ended up in the Bastille during the riots. Though he eventually found the boy, the tomes were long gone and he has spent the last three hundred years tracking them down and returning them to the family crypt, so that when his secret masters call for them, he can turn them over as the oath demands. Sadly, there is just one problem, one of the tomes still remains beyond Joachim's grasp and he has no idea how he is ever going to recover it...
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