Dimitri Zivisti

Malkavian -X-

Eastern European vampire. Known to have diablolized a Indian vampire known as Rama who was 4th generation.

Dimitri was embraced ~650 CE by Cadoc Tatius Donol Sire of Killikillarven

Appearance: Five foot one, 130 lbs., old and thin, with stiff white hair that looks solid and continually hangs over his eyes. His smile stretches across his wrinkled face from ear to ear, and his teeth are all sharp.

Behavior

Dimitri has an obsessive Compulsive disorder regarding all the world as a chess board. They are all so fascinating, these pawns in the master game. How can this new one here be used? Oh, what fun! You find it hard to conceal your gleeful, plotting smile from others, but your mannerisms and body language are unrecognizable to most anyone. Try to find a new way to gesture when you speak, such as picking up imaginary things and moving them. These are totally natural to you, but odd and unnerving to others.

History

It was the year A.D. 828 when Dimitri first discovered the game of chess. He had been travelling the dark jungles of India when the invitation came to him inside his head, a voice speaking, coming from out of the vine-covered temple. The temple was old, buried so long in the jungle detritus that he had not even seen it at first. But he recognized the call from one like himself.

He was wary at first, for who knew how other bloodsuckers would react to another, a stranger, in their territory. But this was an invitation of welcome, a gentle offer of hospitality in a cold and lonely world. He entered the moldy interior and there met Rama, against whom he played his first game of what the Western world later came to know as chess.

Dimitri would return over and over again as the centuries passed to play with Rama. The game was continually changing as it travelled through many mortal hands: first to the Arabs, and with them to Spain, and thus to the Crusaders. He would bring these new rules with him, continually challenging Rama, but ever losing to the greater wisdom and strategy of the ancient Hindu.

Dimitri asked him once how old he was, and Rama smiled and told Dimitri that he had gained the state of Karmic stability and balance before Gautama had ever first left his palace. And that was how he thought of the Curse—as the very peak of Karmic harmony. To never again die and be reborn continually, forever revolving on the mad, chaotic wheel of Illusion.

Dimitri realized that here was one who had attained Golconda, that exalted state of bliss. Dimitri knew that he must have it as well. He asked Rama to teach him, but Rama smiled, shook his head, and told Dimitri that the Russian had far to go before he could accept the Debt he still had to repay.

And Dimitri had never been so angry before. Never before would he have considered the deed he then enacted. Fear and awe had kept it from his mind. But anger peeled all that away, and the next thing Dimitri knew, he was flinging his arms in powerful blows against the ancient and regal Rama. He tore a branch away from one of the thick-limbed trees surrounding the temple and drove it deep into Rama's breast. He then lunged over the revered ancient one and tore his neck open.

The gushing blood drove him even madder as he lapped it up. Power tore through his body, infusing every part of him with strength beyond words. The incredible change was beyond description.

All the while, Rama just stared at him, until his eyes glazed over and became empty, and his body became limp. Dimitri was now as powerful as a Vampire of the Fourth Generation, and it was 1388 A.D. Dimitri had never completely understood his change, since he had heard that feeding on the Vitae of an elder would strengthen one, but not like this.

Confused, he returned to Russia, his Mother Land. Soon, giving up on understanding this mystery, he began to refine his skills at his only true love in unlife: the game of chess.

Over the decades, he would begin to travel to relieve his boredom, extending to wherever he went the offer of a game. His invitations to the best players of Europe attracted the attention of the Camarilla because of their odd stipulations (the game could only be played at night, the room must not be too lit, etc.). Fearing a breach of the Masquerade, several Vampiric leaders began harassing the old Russian.

After more than a century of this torment, he returned to Russia in 1623 A.D. and there fell into deep torpor.

He arose again briefly during Napoleon's era and challenged the great conqueror to a game. It was the first game Dimitri had ever lost since playing Rama. He was furious and baffled. Had the long years of sleep dulled his sense of strategy? No matter—he would ensure that this Napoleon lived to see a strategic defeat yet.

Napoleon failed to take Russia.

Soon after, Dimitri again fell into torpor. It was the tread of German tanks that woke him this time as they rolled over the ancient battlefield where he slept, buried with the bones of many of the soldiers he had spurred on to stay and resist Napoleon.

How dare these tanks try to raze his Mother Land. Their owners would regret it, he swore. Hitler's armies failed to take Russia during World War II, and this time Dimitri was awake for good.

And so glad he was of this modern era. Why, chess was almost the national sport of the Mother Land! But he soon realized that the rules had not changed enough. He needed new innovations.

And thus he created the Game of Live Chess, wherein Kindred and kine were both pawns in the hands of the characters.