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| − | ;[[Lasombra Antitribu]] -L- [[Leeds]] -L- [[The Seven: A List of known Vampiric Temporal Doppelgängers]] | + | ;[[Lasombra Antitribu]] -L- [[The Seven: A List of known Vampiric Temporal Doppelgängers]] -L- [[Blake's Diary]] |
| − | Watch your tongue or have it cut from your head<br>
| + | ''Hello darkness, my old friend''<br> |
| − | Save your life by keeping whispers unsaid<br>
| + | ''I've come to talk with you again''<br> |
| − | Children roam the streets now orphans of war<br>
| + | ''Because a vision softly creeping''<br> |
| − | Bodies hanging in the streets to adore<br>
| + | ''Left its seeds while I was sleeping''<br> |
| | + | ''And the vision that was planted in my brain''<br> |
| | + | ''Still remains''<br> |
| | + | ''Within the sound of silence''<br> |
| | + | -- The Sound of Silence -- Simon & Garfunkel (1964) |
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| − | Royal flames will carve the path in chaos<br>
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| − | Bringing daylight to the night<br>
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| − | Death is riding in the town with armor<br>
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| − | Because thail take all your rights<br>
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| − | Hail to the king, hail to the one<br>
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| − | Kneel to the crown, stand in the sun<br>
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| − | Hail to the king (hail, hail, hail, the king)<br>
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| − | Blood is spilled while holding keys to the throne<br>
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| − | Born again, but it's too late to atone<br>
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| − | No mercy from the edge of the blade<br>
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| − | Thail'll escape and learn the price to be paid<br>
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| − | Let the water throw it's shades of red now<br>
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| − | Arrows black out all the light<br>
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| − | Death is rotting in the town with armor<br>
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| − | Thail've come to grant you your rights<br>
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| − | Hail to the king, hail to the one<br>
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| − | Kneel to the crown, stand in the sun<br>
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| − | Hail to the king (hail, hail, hail, the king)<br>
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| − | There's a taste of fear (hail, hail, hail)<br>
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| − | When the henchmen call (hail, hail, hail)<br>
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| − | Iron fist to tame them (hail, hail, hail)<br>
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| − | Iron fist to claim it all (hail, hail, hail)<br>
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| − |
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| − | Hail to the king, hail to the one<br>
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| − | Kneel to the crown, stand in the sun<br>
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| − |
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| − | Hail to the king, hail to the one<br>
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| − | Kneel to the crown, stand in the sun<br>
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| − | Hail to the king (hail, hail, hail)<br>
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| − |
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| − | -- Hail to the King, '''Avenged Sevenfold'''
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| − | <br>
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| − | <br>
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| − | [[File:Lasombra Blake.jpg]]
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| − | <br>
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| − | <br>
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| | == Quote == | | == Quote == |
| | ''Every life is a riddle. The answer to mine is knowledge, born of darkness. It wasn't always so. In the beginning, I still had questions. In the beginning, my mystery still remained.'' -- '''The Order''' (2003) | | ''Every life is a riddle. The answer to mine is knowledge, born of darkness. It wasn't always so. In the beginning, I still had questions. In the beginning, my mystery still remained.'' -- '''The Order''' (2003) |
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| | == History == | | == History == |
| − | === Mortalitas Mea ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.<br>
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.</span>
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> When I was fourteen, my entire family moved to southern 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.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> 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.
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| − | === My first Death ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Unknown to my and my friends, two opposed societies of vampires were waging a secret war in the night-time streets of Denver in late 1996 through the Spring of 1997. I and my friends were casualties of this shadow war; I was captured by a faction known as the Sabbat and taken to Fairmount Cemetery for that sect's creation rites. Though I was drained nearly to death by the Sabbat, it was a vampire elder of the opposing sect, the Camarilla that embraced me.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''[[Don Alonzo De Vargas]]''' was an elder Lasombra Antitribu who was embraced during the early years of the Spanish Reconquest. He had journeyed to the the New World with Hernán Cortés and later settled in the northern territories of New Spain. He had watched Denver grow up around him and refused to let it fall into the hands of Sabbat scum. Don Alonzo and his get had trailed a Sabbat pack to the graveyard for their creation rites and ambushed them as they were creating canon-fodder. To this night, Don Alonzo has never explained why he embraced me while I lay dying; but I am no less grateful for his gift.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">I was give an intense and rigorous education in the traditions of the undead, on my bloodline's illustrious history, swordplay, etiquette and my place in the world. Apparently, my embrace had created some kind of political difficulty with the prince of the Denver and I was declared a bastard and sent away. I left Denver with only a letter of introduction, a small stipend and a sword. I was told to make my way as a mercenary and my first job was to travel to Milan and aid its traitor Prince Giangaleazzo in riding his city of the Sabbat.
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| − | === Mission to Milan ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">I was only six months under the shadow, when I found myself on the night-time streets of a foreign city, fighting a secret war against vampiric terrorists and trusting my life to other vampiric mercenaries. Though I adjusted, it was not an easy time for me. The Sabbat was fully driven from the City of Milan by the end of 1997 and I found myself face to face with '''[[Giangaleazzo - Prince of Milan]]'''. I was the only other Lasombra Antitribu in the city at the time and even if I were Don Alonzo's bastard childe, by the prince's reckoning, I was still of purer blood and better breeding than all the rest of the swine who had come to butcher the Sabbat. As such, Giangaleazzo granted me the dual rights of hunting and making my haven in Milan.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">As a young Lasombra Antitribu, I learned a great deal about the Magisters of earlier centuries as I often sat long hours into the night listening with rapt attention as Giangaleazzo would speak of the Italian Renaissance and his own youth. In our few months together, the traitor prince and formed a unique and surprising friendship. I was loath to take my next assignment, but Giangaleazzo urged me to explore, as he had failed to do and find whatever adventures might be waiting for me in the wider world.
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| − | === Toledo and the War of Shadows ===
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| − | span style="color:#4B0082;">My next assignment was to serve as a Camarilla irregular in Toledo against the 1998 Sabbat siege from Madrid. It was here that I first met the archons of the Tremere Justicar Anastasz Di Zagreb. I was better prepared for the struggle in Toledo, but still nearly died against the Lasombra forces sent to take the city. My knack for making friends served me well again as I made an unexpectedly good impression on both the Nosferatu and Tremere of Toledo. It was also in Toledo that I began to understand the value that each of the clans brought to the fight against the Sabbat. As payment for my services, I asked for nothing more than the right to create a haven and feed in Toledo, the elders of the small Spanish city granted my request without question.
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| − | === New York and the Camarilla Reconquista ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">The Tremere Archon in Toledo, '''[[Randall Carley]]''' offered to take me with him to New York as the Camarilla was making its big push to remove the Sabbat from the Big Apple once and for all. During the 1999 Camarilla takeover of New York, I fought beside a wide variety of European neonates and ancilla making a name for themselves.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Once again the Tremere provided aid that greatly aided in the battle against the enemy, when they lent a Gargoyle named '''[[Verbruch]]''' for the assault on the Sabbat communal haven. I noticed throughout the early stages of the assault that Verbruch seemed to possess abilities that would be very useful to me, if they could be learned. After the fall of the Sabbat's communal haven, I sought out Verbruch and made the Gargoyle's acquaintance, though it would be months before I could convince the Rock-head to teach me the discipline called Visceratika. In return, the Gargoyle sought to learn the secrets of Obtenebration and I was only too happy to oblige.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Though the Battle of Manhattan was over in only a few nights, it took months to root the Sabbat out of the other boroughs. Emboldened by my previous experiences, I asked for a small domain in which to haven and exclusive feeding rights to that territory. To my surprise the request was granted. Despite my successes, I didn't want to stay in New York and leased the domain to a fellow Lasombra Antitribu, '''[[Dino Cerutti]]''' who did want to make his haven in the Big Apple.
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| − | === A Yankee Magister in Queen Anne's Court ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Through contacts made during the extensive cleanup, it was suggested to me that if I wanted to advance my career, I might take some time out to polish my social skills in the "night society"
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| − | of London. '''[[Qadir Al-Asmai]]''', the Toreador Sheriff of New York had spent a decade in London after emigrating from India and offered to introduce me to a fellow Lasombra Antitribu who might be able to help a neonate new to London.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''[[Stephen Lenoir]]''', the self-appointed tour-guide to London, was not what I expected, but then, nothing in London was remotely what it seemed to be. Stephen refused to discuss his personal history, other than to say he had been resident in London for centuries. Apparently Lenoir was a Welshman who lived the in capital and often acted as a local guide to those new to London. Stephen quickly found me a place to stay and introduced me to the new Prince of London, '''[[Lady Anne Bowesley]]'''. Lady Anne obviously wasn't pleased to have another Lasombra Antitribu in her city, but with several letters of recommendation, she could not turn me away without criticism from the harpies - so she welcomed a neonate magister to London with the minimum effort necessary to her station.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Stephen made arrangements for me to be invited to the most critical salons in the city and suggested that I act as a bodyguard rather than as an enforcer - it wasn't as if London lacked men-at-arms as it possessed two Sheriffs and one of Europe's most dangerous scourges. For three years the "Yankee" Lasombra Antitribu hired himself out as a bodyguard to those who were referred to him by Lenoir. Usually, neonates or newcomers or both who might need protection while doing business in London.
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| − | === Courier and Courtier of Shadows ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">By 2004, I had made enough connections and learned enough languages to take up the business of courier to and from the numerous nocturnal courts of Europe. And for seven more years, I traveled Europe for business and pleasure. In 2011, the Tremere Justicar Anastasz Di Zagreb was re-elected and was casting about for skilled and relatively unknown neonates to act as Archons in his personal crusade to purify the Camarilla. Though initially I hesitated, the work was too intriguing and the potential payoff too lucrative to refuse.
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| − | === To Protect and Serve the Camarilla ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">For the last five years, I have been on backup duty to the real archons, but recently I has been deemed worthy and given a real assignment to act as a mole in South-Eastern Europe because Anastasz believes that the Camarilla periphery may be chalk full of Sabbat sympathizers, anarchist, terrorists and a variety of other threats to the Ivory Tower.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">As assigned, the mission is largely a fact finding tour, with only one caveat - that I not interfere with the current mission of observation and investigation already ongoing in Sofia on behalf of the Inner Council of the Camarilla. In all other respects, I have wide latitude in my investigations of the Bulgarian Camarilla.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Bulgaria has shown significant activity over the last twenty years, with the defection of '''[[Emil na Pes]]''' a long time Nosferatu elder ally of the former Brujah Council, who rose to become the Camarilla prince of Sofia in 1997. The 2002 appearance of '''[[Dylan Bruce]]''' the Anathema in Sofia and the Tremere Trophy on him being acquired by a Ventrue neonate resident - Jan Sirkov. The 2006 Sabbat Siege that was ended in record time by the combined efforts of the visiting Viennese Ventrue delegation and the city's disparate leadership. Later that same year, the overt involvement of the Ventrue Justicar '''[[Lucinde]]''' in the ouster of the Nosferatu prince and the appointment of a Ventrue ancilla as his replacement. The 2007 appointment of a resident Archon, first '''[[Lithrac]]''', one of '''[[Cock Robin]]''''s most trusted agents and a few months later, '''[[Ilyana Ravidovich]]''', the Ventrue Justicar's prized strategic analyst - both officially assigned as observers for the Inner Council. The unofficial 2008 expulsion of one of the Camarilla's rare Tzimisce members from the seat of Primogen and the mysterious events surrounding that elder's exodus from Sofia later that year. And most recently, the 2011 resurrection of several entorpored Sofia residents and the unusual behavior of the young Ventrue prince have all combined to form a pattern of interest for '''[[Anastasz Di Zagreb]]''' in the inner workings of Bulgarian Camarilla.
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| − | === The Betrayal of a Backwoods Bulgarian Voivode ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">The decision of where to begin was an easy one, the Tzimisce Baron who was expelled from Sofia in 2008, had according to Nosferatu intelligence taken possession of a small city in central Bulgaria called [[Gabrovo Grad]]. After a year of careful research, I approached the Tremere Regent of Pleven for what data he might have on Baron Marius. That initial discussion resulted in a joint mission to Gabrovo Grad wherein I would approach the Tzimisce Baron as a mercenary for hire shortly before a Tremere invasion; if successful, the invading Tremere would get a chance to gauge the Tzimisce Baron's sorcerous skill and plant an agent close enough to him to discover his political acumen.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">Both the Regent '''[[Lord Ludwig]]''', and I, agreed that for the ploy to be a successful one, the Tremere invasion force would have to remain ignorant of my identity. I had to legitimately fight the Tremere invasion force on behalf of Baron Marius for the ploy to successfully place me inside the Tzimisce's camp.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">The stratagem was far more successful that either the Tremere Regent or I could have imagined, and granted me nearly unlimited access to the Tzimisce stronghold and its defenders. There were only three complications, the first was a thaumaturgically induced blizzard that overwhelmed Gabrovo Province in late December of 2015 through early January of 2016 and that stalled the conflict between the Tremere and Tzimisce, reducing it to a rough stalemate.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">The second complication was an ethical one for myself, Baron Marius Egnatius turned out to be neither an elder or an ancilla, but a neonate, who had been an associate of mine in life.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">The most difficult and mysterious complication was in part responsible for my success, for reasons unknown, everyone who was associated with Benesj Cherno clearly reacted to me as if I really were the dead Tzimisce. I seriously considered posing as Benesj, but ultimately rejected the idea as too complicated and risky, made particularly difficult by the Lasombra heritage of being non-reflective and immune to photographs. The situation clearly had supernatural overtones, which I would have like to consult a mystical expert upon. Unfortunately, I do not dare take this issue to my warlock superiors for fear of being branded a traitor. For the time being, there is little I can do about the doppelganger effect, but when the chance permits, I may try to consult an Abyss Mystic on the issue. To alleviate the problem, I have gone to a Tzimisce flesh-crafter for a different face.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;">With my investigation of the Marius Egnatius complete, I informed the Regent '''[[Lord Ludwig]]''' of the Tzimisce vulnerabilities. But, seemingly before the Tremere of Pleven could take advantage of the Voivode's weakness, the Sabbat swooped in, devastating the city of Gabrovo Grad, and killing all its mortal residents with a potent nerve agent - VX gas. While the current whereabouts and circumstances of Marius Egnatius remain in question, I have come to the conclusion that the Baron may indeed have been a deep cover Sabbat agent and the extinction of Gabrovo the cover for his extraction. Unfortunately, these notions are completely unprovable and are ultimately irrelevant.
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| − | === Winter Solstice of 2042 ===
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> On the Winter Solstice of 2042, Blake experienced a crisis of faith as he was overwhelmed by the dark Typhonist faith of his dying Setite doppelgänger Seker-Aamon. He struggled for a few nights on his own and then sought out his confessor and teacher along the Road of the Abyss, Nystor the Black, at his temple on Sicily. There in the ruins of a Etruscan temple, Blake confessed to being a doppelganger and how he has been changed by Seker-Aamon's death. After hearing the entire story, Nystor helped guide Blake through his crisis of faith, a truly dark night of the soul not unlike an intellectual exorcism wherein the two dark religions were compared. Ultimately, the perfection and unknowable grandeur of the Abyss easily won out against the perverse idolatry of the Typhonian faith. The process took several nights, but Blake once more possessed clarity of mind and was able to grow from the experience, thereby moving closer to the dark truth at the heart of the Road of the Abyss.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> Thereafter, Nystor counseled Blake to journey to Cairo in order to discover precisely what had happened to Seker-Aamon, for whatever this woman had done to the Setite doppelgänger, it most certainly wasn't diablerie. Nystor's reasoning lay in personal experience, diablerie he explained was the vampiric consumption of another Cainite's soul and thus the deepening of the diablerist's own curse by taking on the sins of his or her victim -- a kind of sin-eating and intentional self-damnation. The death of Seker-Aamon seemed to have worked in quite the reverse, releasing his memories, spiritual essence, perhaps even his sins and passing them on to Blake and in all likelihood his fellow doppelgängers.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> If this hypothesis were true, he further reasoned, Blake and his other selves were getting stronger and would continue to grow stronger with each doppelgänger's death. Also, from Blake's description of Seker-Aamon's death, two other things were clear. The first was that all the doppelgängers were intrinsically connected, whether they were aware of it or not and that in some manner, it should be possible to trigger that awareness allowing Blake to keep tabs on his other selves. Furthermore, the woman who was killing the doppelgängers understood what they were, perhaps how they came to be, but not every permutation of their supernatural nature as she had clearly believed she was going to consume Seker-Aamon's soul and be able thereafter to track all the doppelgängers. His final postulation was that the murderess was obviously a knowledgeable occultist, if not a skilled sorceress and that despite her obvious failure to diablerize the Setite doppelgänger, she could in all probability still find a way to track the transmigration of Seker-Aamon's soul to his other doppelgängers.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> This presented three very important questions that couldn't be easily answered, but that must be researched in order to stop the killer before she destroyed all of the doppelgängers. The first question then was: "Who was the killer and why did she want to kill the doppelgängers in the first place?" To answer that question quickly and efficiently, Nystor was willing to undergo the ritual of abyssal communion called ''[[Whispers in the Dark]]'' in order to discover the who and why of these killings, but of course there would be a price that Blake would eventually have to pay.
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| − |
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> The second question was: "How had the doppelgängers come into being in the first place?" To that end, Nystor urged Blake to travel to Cairo in order to find out more about Seker-Aamon and how exactly he had died. While Nystor admitted that it was possible that this move was exactly what the murderess wanted Blake to do, that might not change the necessity of this strategy, because the dead doppelgänger's story held useful information that couldn't be easily acquired elsewhere and despite the likelihood that this action was something the killer had originally wanted, she might not feel the same tonight as diablerizing the doppelgängers didn't seem to work to her benefit. In fact, this miscalculation by the woman who killed Seker-Aamon could have been a fatal error that Blake could use to his advantage, because each of the other doppelgängers, regardless of how many there were, would be drawn to Cairo for the very same reason as Blake himself, in the primal goal of survival at all costs.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> Obviously, the last question was: "How to stop the killer before she figures out how to successfully diablerize the doppelgängers?" This last question would prove the most difficult, to Nystor's way of thinking, but his theory was that the answer would become obvious once the doppelgängers had gathered together to work towards mutual survival and the first two questions had been successfully answered. To hasten the process, Nystor cast a ritual of the Abyss called ''[[Into the Chasm]]'' to teleport Blake and his childe [[Ahmal ibn Rawaid]] directly to Cairo.
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| − | <span style="color:#4B0082;"> Blake and Ahmal walled hand-in-hand into the swirling vortex of supernatural darkness and emerged into the 'Abyss'. They stepped onto what appeared to be a bridge connected to numerous other bridges stretching into infinite night. Ahmal, deeply shaken by the experience tried to pull away from his sire, but as the pair of magisters materialized in the dark, Nystor's warning seemed to carry to them from afar: ''"Speak the name of the place you seek and do not turn loose of one another..."''. Blake refused to release Ahmal's hand and uttered his destination boldly into the light-less air: ''"The Khan al Khalili marketplace of Cairo, Egypt"''. The words were barely spoken when there was the intense sense of suddenly falling from a great height, the darkness split asunder as otherworldly shadows writhed in the faint illumination of a dark hallway of the great marketplace...
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| | * -- '''[[Blake's Statistics]]''' | | * -- '''[[Blake's Statistics]]''' |
