Aleksandar Filipovic
Sobriquet: Skender - Diminutive form of Aleksandar.
Appearance: A rugged looking man with slighting sun darkened skin. His eyes are a pale gray, like the reflection of an overcast sky on a lake surface. His hair is cropped short in imitation of men's hairstyles of the inter-war years and his hair color is salt and pepper from years of hard living. He parts his hair on his right side and often uses men's hair tonics for their smell and the sheen they give his hair. He is clean shaven with a broad nose and cheek-bones. He tends to wear tailored men's business suits, for formal occasions or business casual for nightly outings. He is fond of wearing dark gray fedoras by Borsalino & Co and dark leather jackets popular with British Army officers during the inter-war years.
Background: Aleksandar was born in a nameless village in the isolated mountainous regions of northern Albania. His father Alban Filipovic, was the village butcher and his mother Teuta, the local midwife. Those years have a special, golden quality in Skender's memories. As a child he would awaken at dawn as the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, the house would smell of baking bread and reverberate with his mother's prayers. When he was a little older, his father would take him to the mosque and they would pray together with the other men and he would help his father slaughter beasts according to the standards of dhabiha (prescribed form of ritual slaughter) and later he sold the lahal (lawful or permissible) meat to the villagers and their wives.
When Aleksandar was five years old, the first of his seven brothers and six sisters was born, the boy was called Perparim and Skender was charged with protecting the baby in a solemn ritual that took place in the village mosque. By the time Aleksandar was ten years old, the household was crowded with children and his parents made the difficult decision to move to the capital city, Tirana. The move began the next spring and was extremely difficult as the family had to pack all they owned in a wooden cart drawn by two mules and walk many kilometers to reach the great city.
The family found housing in a former communist run, collective cattle farm turned shanty-town, the Filipovic family lived in a former cattle shed like the rest of the 20,000 residents. There was no electricity, indoor plumbing or sanitation, but Skender didn't care as the city was abuzz with productive activity and commerce which he understood very well. At an early age, he learned his letters and numbers from the village Mullah, as well as the religious precepts and general good conduct. His father set up shop outside their shed and began selling meat, just as he had in the mountain village. Unlike the village, sly children and shiftless women would steal meat, but his father called it charity and forgave the hungry. One day, shortly after their arrival in Bathorë (the shanty-town), armed men came to the 'shop' and threatened his father if he didn't pay them protection. Unused to this rough treatment, Alban refused to bend his knee to the local god-father and was killed as retribution.
After burying his father, it became Aleksandar's duty to provide for his family and he took up his father's knives as a butcher. When the representatives of the local gang appeared to collect their protection money, he sat down with their leader and negotiated a reasonable price for protection and earned the respect of his neighborhood in the process. His brothers cried for vengeance and called him a coward to which he called them to the local mosque to witness his oath to Allah that he would indeed acquire justice for his father's murder. Thus placating his siblings and his mother's grief in one step.
In the intervening years, he would become spokesman for his neighborhood to both the legal and illegal authorities. The local gang was originally a terror to the northern villagers like Aleksandar's family and he was needed to negotiate taxes,tribute and the occasional blood-price for accidental deaths or outright murders. Skender did his best to raise his brothers and sisters correctly, to protect them and provide for them. But his oath of vengeance was not forgotten, as he worked to gain the trust of the local gang and carefully laid his plans.
In the summer of his eighteenth year, the local god-father, a man named Kostandin Debra, a Macedonian, came to his butcher shop to negotiate purchase of enough meat to feed a wedding party. Apparently, the god-father's youngest daughter was getting married and the proud father wanted the meat slaughtered in the traditional way. It took an afternoon of negotiation before Konstandin was happy with the arrangements and left with his men. That evening, Skender and his mother talked late into the night about the properties of certain herbs and their application.
The next day, he bought several calves and fattened them with sweetened oats. On the night before the wedding, he fed them a mixture of herbs prescribed by his mother and then slaughtered the animals in the requisite fashion. When the meat was delivered the next morning, the proud father paid him well for his services and thanked him for the fine looking meat. Aleksandar beamed and toasted the god-father with Turkish coffee and a select verse from the Quran, and departed.
That night, as the smell of barbecued veal spread over the quarter and the sounds of celebrations rang out, Skender and his brother's sharpened their father's knives in preparation. When the sound of celebration began to dim, the Filipovic brother's entered the god-father's house without resistance. Everywhere they looked, they found comatose celebrants including the god-father, his family and many notable locals. Despite his brothers' hotblooded desire to slay all present, he hand chose all the male members of the local gang, age twelve (the age a boy becomes a man) or older and slaughtered them in the dhabiha way. He spared only the women and children of the local clan and hung their men up by their ankles above the wedding party and allowed their blood to pool. Then they took the god-father's wealth for themselves and left the wedding guests to awaken on their own.
The next dawn the neighborhood was shattered by screams of horror as the wedding guests awakened to the bloody scene of retribution. The brother's sent their women-folk to the mountains and hid themselves well as they were now outlaws. But, the authorities didn't bother to investigate the murder of a crime-lord and the brothers Filipovic inherited the neighborhood as their turf. The other gangs showed them due respect for the slaying of their respective enemy and the Vëllazëria were born.
Over the next twenty three years, Aleksandar's Vëllazëria spread throughout Tirana. They fought rival gangs when Skender could not broker a peaceful agreement. When the organization needed more men, the brothers Filipovic called upon their hardy mountain cousins to fill out the ranks. Regardless of how many hands might be needed, those positions were always filled by blood relatives to ensure that honor and obligation were met. It became that policy of the Vëllazëria to act with honor in all obligations, to never shed blood unless absolutely necessary and when retribution was called for, to show those without honor the true meaning of fear. Those marked for death were always killed with knives according to dhabiha standards (this method of slaughtering animals consists of a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck, cutting the jugular veins and carotid arteries of both sides but leaving the spinal cord intact. It must be done with respect and compassion; avoiding as much as possible any pain or discomfort to the animal).
The Vëllazëria disdained the selling of drugs, the proliferation of prostitution and gambling as immoral; rather they took up the four-fold business of assassination, extortion, protection and the sale of illegal armaments as their trade. Other crime families were not immune to their predations and they soon developed a dark and blood reputation even among their own kind. But, to the common people their ways are seen as honorable, if terrifying. While they do sell modern armaments, they prefer not to use them in crowded, public places where bystanders might be accidentally injured. On those rare occasions when 'accidents' have happened, Aleksandar has always paid a generous blood-price to those wronged in the process of wars between the crime-families. Equally, Skender has prohibited the slaying of police and journalists as bad business, and no Vëllazëria will take a contract on a woman or child; such cowardice is the province of the honor-less.
The last four or five years has seen the expansion of the Vëllazëria into neighboring countries and abroad to the capitals of the Mediterranean nations. One such was Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Aleksandar was trying to end an ugly and protracted street war against an elusive cartel. Quite by surprise he found himself as Sabbat canon-fodder and bound by some mystic means to a group of complete strangers. His death doesn't both him as much as his concern for the future of his family and the Vëllazëria. Perparim has inherited the leadership of both, but Skender is not completely convinced that his baby-brother can handle these twin duties and each night he prays for both his blood and business.
Personality: He was comfortable in the criminal empire he was building. He was just getting big enough to start worrying about government agency's. Now a new world has opened up with a completely different "arms race". He plans to be cautious and survive. His pack leaders mysticism and occult focus is something he does not understand but plans to.
Current Events: Like all his pack mates he has been away from his mortal life for a short time, unlike them he has connections and business that he will have to either connect with or lose.
