Anargyros Ansel
- Detroit -D- Sabbat -D- Malkavian Antitribu
Sobriquet: Preacher Man (Sabbat slang)/ Reverend (Anargyros preferred title) / The First Bishop -- Both an honorific and sore spot with the other bishops.
Appearance: Anargyros appears to be a aging black man in his fifties. His elegant features and aura of personal grace make him a figure of authority whether he is wearing sweats for game of street basketball or his formal robes. The Embrace has left him pale compared to his mortal coloration, unless he has fed recently, his skin is a chocolate-gray and his eyes are a kind of burnt gold. He stands six feet tall and probably weighs something like 170 pounds.
Behavior:
History: Anargyros Ansel was born on a sugar plantation in the Parish of St.John the Baptist, some twenty-five miles outside of New Orleans in Louisiana in 1755. His parents, Christianized and educated slaves, were brought to Louisiana from the Haiti by their French masters in the 1720s. From an early age, Anargyros experienced fits that preceded visions and conversations with angels and saints, so much so that Catholics from nearby parishes and plantations would walk many miles to speak to him or watch him enter one of his divine fits. As such, over time, he became quite famous and something of a living saint to the slaves of the sugar plantations located all along the German Coast.
In January of 1811, Anargyros participated in the largest slave uprising in the history of North America. The uprising likely due to similar uprisings at the time in Haiti, led a band of rebels to burn several sugar plantations and march on New Orleans. Anargyros served these rebellious slaves as their spiritual advisor. Sadly, the uprising only lasted a few days after which the escaped slaves were captured, interrogated, tortured and then executed.
Like his fellows Anargyros would have met this same grisly fate, but for the appearance of a nocturnal apparition in the form of a pale priest named Lazarus. The nocturnal priest claimed that god had heard Anargyros' prayers and communicated to him in dreams that he must provide Anargyros with a escape from his bondage. Anargyros upon hearing of what was to become of him, refused, preferring to die rather than become one of the Children of Caine. His protests fell upon deaf ears as Lazarus saw this dark deed as God's will and Embraced Anargyros regardless.
For obvious reasons, relations between sire and childe remained rocky for decades. Despite this, Anargyros remained at his sire's side for nearly fourty years. But, the growth of the Abolitionist movement swept the American South, and at this time visions from God ignited in Anargyros the drive to split with his sire and make his way north along the Underground Railroad. That same year, 1849, Anargyros met Harriet Tubman, a black woman with whom he shared much. They shared a brief, bittersweet relationship which ended when she discovered Anargyros' Cainite nature. Despite this, they remained friends and allies up to Harriet's death in 1913. Anargyros' travels and adventures as a conductor of the railroad took as far north as Detroit where he finally settled with the permission of the then prince, Lamothe Bardigues. Second Baptist Church of Detroit became Anargyros' station and he conducted countless slaves to freedom across the border in Canada. His vampiric disciplines aided him in avoiding slave-catchers and at hiding his charges.
During the American Civil War he continued his efforts to lead slaves to freedom from the American south, but he also aided the northern forces of the Union. Although a pacifist in general, when riled to righteous anger, his wrath often took biblical proportions after which he would retreat into isolation to commune with God or the angels. After the war and the Emancipation Proclamation, Anargyros turned his efforts towards Negro suffrage. Compared to his previous battles he found this far more difficult than freeing slaves or battling the vampires of the American south. The late 1860s and early saw many of Anargyros' efforts come to fruition with the passing of the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. But racism and injustice seemed to dog his heels and all too often he would lapse into Sampson-like rages which sometimes claimed innocent lives. In 1914, Anargyros was forced to abandon his haven at Second Baptist Church of Detroit as rising faith made sleeping there impossible.
In the 1920s a stranger named Yitzhak, came to see him. Yitzhak was a Jewish rabbi who had been Embraced in Montreal by the Sabbat. His coven the Shepherds of Caine had heard of Anargyros and sought to bring him into the fold. At first he resisted the temptation to talk to the Sabbat rabbi, but each year Yitzhak would return and make the same offer. Finally in 1929, on the cusp of the Great Depression, Anargyros surrendered to his curiosity and spoke at length with the rabbi. Yitzhak revealed that in the Sabbat everyone was free and that religion held a sacred place in Sabbat doctrine. It wasn't until the start of the Second World War that Anargyros made the pilgrimage to Montreal and converted to the Sabbat path of Redemption.
Returning to Detroit in the early 1950s, Anargyros had two new goals, spread the Path of Redemption and prepare Detroit for the coming Sabbat invasion. The fall of Camarilla of Detroit took nearly twenty years to engineer and it culminated in the 1967 Detroit riot. The 1967 riot created the chaos necessary for the Sabbat to enter the city secretly. As the nation was captivated by racial violence, the Camarilla of Detroit battled for their unlives and lost. A handful of Camarilla capitulated, but it was Anargyros who convinced Lamothe Bardigues that the Camarilla cause was lost and to embrace the Sabbat. One of Anargyros' proudest moments was officiating at Lamothe's creation rites and he has served the Sabbat ever since as the Archbishop's primary advisor, his first bishop.
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