Chapter 1 -- My Mortal Life -- B.E.Z
First of all, since my embrace I have used many aliases to protect my mortal family until the eventuality of their natural and collective deaths. I was born in Phoenix, Arizona to a middle class American family of artisans and educators in 1969. I grew up in rural Georgia, about 70 miles north-west of Savannah, in the care of my maternal grand-parents.
When I was nine, I moved with my mother, a registered nurse to Denver, Colorado to become a family. The next five years were particularly hard on me as my mother often worked long hours and rarely had time to raise me. Mostly I grew up on the eastern plains and spent much of my time alone, exploring the extensive and wide open properties that surrounded my home.
When I was fourteen, my entire family moved to Colorado, to a little town just outside of Colorado Springs. I spent my first couple of years of high school there and then moved to an equally small town on the Western Slope of Colorado, where I finished high school. Despite rating extremely high in personal I.Q., I wasn't a very good student and could only afford to go to a local college with financial assistance.
I went to school for three years at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado. At that time, the school had just managed to qualify as a state college and had only a few thousand students. Until college, I had been socially stunted and began to rapidly evolve.
I initially majored in Business and minored in international studies; as I had decided I wanted to enter the American Foreign Service. Though that idea remained my goal for all three years of study, I did change my major to history in my second year.
My downfall, at least scholastically was the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons which opened up many new friends and also distracted me from my studies. By the middle of my fourth year, I couldn't maintain the grades necessary to continue my education and went to work. Initially, I took a manufacturing job at my family's insistence and after seeing several industrial accidents, I moved back to Denver.
I had friends in Denver that I had made in college and I stayed with them while looking for work. Eventually I found a decently paying job and moved out on my own. By my mid twenties, I was ensconced in a mainstream job, not a career, but I had found a full measure of independence. Once again it was Dungeons & Dragons that brought me into contact with a new group of friends and also led me inevitably to undeath.
