Unre

Harbingers of Skulls -x- Clan Cappadocian -x- Cairo

Sobriquet: Keeper of Golgotha.

Appearance: As a Harbinger of Skulls, Unre's face resembles nothing so much as a grinning rictus with glowing eye-spots. She wears a tattered body wrap made from the cured flesh of young virgins. Perhaps the most striking feature Unre displays, however, is her mask. While many Harbingers wear masks to hide their hideous skull-heads, Unre takes the the opposite approach. Her mask, carved from the head of a massive bull, wears a crown of disturbingly small human skulls. Her movements are slow and balletic, suggesting a grim reaper from a baroque play.

Behavior: Unre is turbulent and violent, unless a radical mood swing or fugue state dominates her presence of mind. The Sabbat is merely a tool for directing vengeance upon her enemies, and she treats all of its young members with withering disdain. Even the elders of the sect -- particularly the treacherous Sascha Vykos -- have earned her derision. In Unre's opinion, they have settled into a comfortable hypocrisy, content to while away their nights in petty games. Unre has no hatred so great as that which she harbors for the Biovanni, however. They have robbed her repeatedly over the course of centuries -- first of her grand-sire's lofty goals, most recently of the Sargon Fragment and the Anexhexeton and numerous times in between. All others are puppets in her rancorous play -- of which she has every intention of writing the final act.

History: For centuries, the Harbingers of Skulls seethed in impotent rage, trapped beyond the wall of death. Only the nigrimancies of the Capuchin and Unre, each working from opposite sides of the Shroud, managed to open a portal that allowed the Harbingers to once again join the real of the living.

And what a joining it was.

Enraged by her bloodline's containment beyond the Shroud, Unre had nearly two centuries in which to sink into madness. When she returned, it was as if every ounce of hate and spite the Underworld possessed was visited upon the lands of the living. She had watched the Camarilla stand by in the early nights as a rogue necromancer drained her grandsire of his precious vitae. She had endured three centuries of persecution at the hands of that necromancer's family. She had suffered a final, painful banishment to the realm of the dead and the collapse of the bloodline she once held dear.

But Unre was not once to wallow int he tragedies of the past. Subsisting on the only vitae she could find in the Shadowlands -- that of her fellow trapped Cainites -- Unre learned the potent abilities of death-magic. So prodigious were her abilities that she was able to contact her sire across the veil of death and inform him of the plight of his childer.

At first, Japheth resisted, claiming that the events to which Fate had led the Brood of Ashur should not be reversed. As he dealt more and more with the Giovanni family, however, a great chancre grew in his soul and he began to see that their prominence was a debt the necromancers owed to him. Striking a tenuous agreement with Unre, Japheth agreed to help her perform the ritual that would free them from their unholy entrapment, but only if she agreed to play out the hand he had set. Unre agreed reluctantly, with the fervid hatred burning in her undead veins, and the Harbingers returned.

Since that time, Japheth (among his many guises) has influenced the bloodline to join the Sabbat -- an unpopular decision among the 25 or so remaining Harbingers. To that end, however, they have led the Sword of Caine into believing that they wield immense power, and they have accumulated much clout within the sect.

Until the time is right for their inscrutable, vengeful masterstroke, the Harbingers play the elder's game, guiding the Sabbat toward their own ends in every way they can. Unre herself is a master at the ruse, even going so far as to trap her rival's souls in their own bones or ash-heaps after they have met the Final Death so that she may continue to use them. Fearsome rumors spread through the sect of her prowess, and many Cainites of the Black Hand beseech her favor. Like a witch-woman of medieval nights, she helps them for a fee, even as they deride her once safely out of earshot. Unre finds such double-dealing familiar, however, and she pays no heed to the others' ignorant prattling. After all, once the time is right, she will be mistress over all of them. That is, once she and her sire attain the status of gods....

Fortunately for Unre, she has managed to parlay her extensive necromantic abilities into a web of favors owed by many, many vampires -- Sabbat and otherwise. In her few short years among the Cainites of the Black Hand, she has amassed the level of respect commanded by only the most august prisci and archbishops. Indeed, many of the powerful elders of the Sabbat see her as a potent threat. She seems to have some unknown rivalry with Sascha Vykos as well -- one that stems from the events of years prior -- but none among the Sabbat have been foolhardy enough to question her on the matter. That way lies ruin, certainly.

In the modern nights, Unre makes her haven beneath the swirling sands of Egypt. A vast, sprawling affair, the haven has earned the name Golgotha, as it is festooned with corpses and zombu in various states of decomposition. Unre conducts grim rituals, vivisections and experiments there, in the deepest bowels of what amounts to a personal underground city. Even eldritch Istvan Zantosa finds the place uncomfortable, "littered as it is with the skulls, teeth and less wholesome remains of those who stood against her."

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