Ward McGovern
- City Gangrel -z- Alex Camille -z- San Francisco -z- New Orleans -z- The Seven: A List of known Vampiric Temporal Doppelgängers
Sobriquet: Mr.McGovern or just plain Ward, he doesn't really like nicknames.
Appearance: Mr.McGovern stands just shy of 6 foot, 2 inches tall. He was originally quite heavy-set, but has thinned-out almost as if he were cursed by a gypsy from a Stephen King novel. Ward no longer has his long lost mortal mullet as it was hacked off by Sebastien who felt long hair didn't suit his pack's latest gimp. His hair was little more than stubble at the time of his Embrace, but has grown back with each of his frenzies, although now it covers most of his body in a thin layer, it is now gray with a black undercoat and striping in certain places. Ward uses a chemical hair-removal agent nightly and shaves his face, but still looks as though he has a full five O'clock shadow. While his face remains mostly human, his eyes have very wide pupils with a thin layer of dark brown iris surrounding a jaundiced looking sclera and he now has permanent fangs that he must work to hide. Unknown to even to his sire, he has grown a three foot long tail that he hides by wearing loose clothing and long-tailed coats. Unless dressing to impress, something he does less and less, he wears the latest in inexpensive street fashions in neutral colors like brown, gray and black. Despite his best efforts he smells faintly of animal musk. He never wears jewelry, though he may have a host of expensive gadgets on his person for a wide variety of circumstances: communications gear, surveillance equipment, counter-surveillance tech, non-lethal weapons, etc.
Behavior: Unknown even to Ward, he has started to take on the personality traits of his Beast, in this case the raccoon. After decades of living on the run or in hiding, Ward sticks to the shadows and moves almost too silently, sometimes scaring mortals and not-so-perceptive neonates. When trying to interact with mortal society, something he practices like a stage actor going through his lines, Ward has become a keen observer of human and vampire nature. As such, he uses his Obfuscate and performance skills to portray what others expect or want to see. When dealing with vampires, he uses cool professionalism as a mask for his true feelings and prefers not to discuss personal issues with his fellow undead. More and more, he lives for his job, as one of the League of the Night's preeminent spies, he is often called upon to enter Camarilla or Sabbat cities anonymously and collect useful data for his superiors within the league. These long-term reconnaissance missions have started to have negative effects on Ward, making him more insular and paranoid. On one of his last missions to study the Sabbat of Detroit, he frenzied during a battle with a particularly perceptive Sabbat scout and has since found himself mesmerized by shiny objects, an obvious derangement with a humorous element.
History: Ward is not a man to expound upon his past to anyone and he actively tries not to think about it, but he is an obsessive diarist, who writes down every detail to be reviewed later. He keeps a growing library of diaries in his San Francisco haven, wherein he details the night-to-night details of his short, but frenetic unlife.
Ward tries not to recall the handful of hellish nights that made up his hazing by the Sabbat before Sebastien, his grand-sire, forced Alex Camille to Embrace him. When he does, recall these events, he is filled with a bestial rage for his grand-sire's blood and were Sebastien Goulet in torpor or unconscious before him, he would without hesitations drink the older City Gangrel dry of both blood and soul. The details of his shovel party, and resurrection from the literal grave have left him with a particular loathing of the Sabbat. But he remembers well how he and his sire escaped Denver when the Camarilla found the temporary haven of the Queens of Mercy pack.
Once beyond the Denver city limits, unlife became one of night-to-night survival, with the ever present fear that Sebastien and the Queens of Mercy were only hours or days behind them. Alex's first move was to teach Ward how to steal a car and I-76 took them all the way to the Nebraska state line. Once there they had to take shelter in a roadside motel, a terrifying experience for both "Coyotes". But somehow, they both survived that first 'day' on the run. By nightfall, Ward had stolen another vehicle and they took I-80 all the way to the state capital, Lincoln. Alex feared that with Sebastien on their trail staying in another motel was too risky and they slept together in a small local graveyard. Between the constant fear of pursuit and close quarters, especially Alex's ability to bring Ward into the soil with him, they quickly became intimate. The next night, they both rose with more than pursuit on their minds, but they left Lincoln shortly after Ward's first true feeding. Once again they switched vehicles, looking for a fast car, they hit I-80, passing through Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa City and Davenport before hitting the outer limits of Chicago a few hours before dawn.
That first day in Chicago they once again slept together entombed in the earth of the Elmhurst cemetery outside of Joliet, Illinois. When they rose that evening, they quickly fed at a local biker bar. This turned out to be both a mistake and stroke of good fortune for they quickly crossed claws with the Wolf Pack of Chicago. Despite this, Alex's gift for diplomacy ended the hostilities and gave Ward enough time to tell their story to the Gangrel biker archons. By working together, they convinced Anthius and thus, Tyrus to trust them enough to guarantee a safe escort into Chicago proper and a introduction to Inyanga, the ancient Gangrel primogen of the Chicago area. After a grueling interrogation by Inyanga, she pronounced them to be no threat to Chicago and released them to take up residency in the city. While this did give them a respite from their travels, it guaranteed the interest of the Kindred. After being used by several prominent power players in the city, Rosa Hernandez took pity on them and took them under her wing for several months. They finally settled on the south side of Chicago, in the neighborhood north of the University of Chicago and east of Washington park. The area was of no particular interest to the Kindred and they were quickly forgotten.
For a couple of years, they knew peace and despite Ward's obvious heterosexuality, they became lovers. Alex evolved into a true sire, showing Ward the ins and outs of being Cainites, ahhemm...Kindred. Ward supported Alex's desire to rejoin the human race and regularly encouraged him to try new human experiences. They made local acquaintances among the Kindred of Chicago and became fast friends with Rosa Hernandez and her circle of vampire associates. Even though they seemed to have escaped the Sabbat and reinvented themselves, they were still wary. But they couldn't have known that there was succubus in the Museum of Science and Industry or they would never have wandered there in the small hours of the night. They were enslaved by Gulfora before they knew what happened, but within a few nights Alex was somehow able to break her sexual hold on him and escape. When he finally returned, months later with a coterie of allies, all female, they had to forcibly subdue Ward to free him from the succubus' insidious influence. Several times in the following months, Ward tried to return to his one true love, it was years before he stopped pining for her and the dreams of her never stopped. But the fracas at the museum didn't go unnoticed and the following year the Sabbat came for them. They barely escaped Sebastien's trap, injured and hungry, they fled Chicago in early 2001.
They fled due south for several days, from Chicago to Indianapolis, then on to Lousiville, Nashville, Birmingham and finally New Orleans. They never stayed in one city for more than a few nights, usually on the outskirts and fed where they could. They lived on stolen cash and acquired new vehicles nightly. While Ward never could master Alex's gift of shared entombment, they once again rekindled their romance. They rested in New Orleans for a month, staying for Mardi Gras and then moving due west through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and finally to California.
In Los Angeles, they once again reinvented themselves as anarchs, taking up residence in Santa Ana, as the allies of the Caitiff Baroness Amethyst. The city of Lost Angels was an entirely new experience for them both, allowing Alex to freely explore his human homosexual nature and providing Ward with a stable if violent setting in which to overcome his demonic obsessions and finally accept immortality. Together they explored Los Angeles many entertainments and formed friendships with a number of anarch vampires and a few choice mortals. For a decade or so, they became fixtures in L.A. and as such were unprepared for the next round of barony bush wars. As they owed Amethyst, they automatically backed her and when violence ensued, they shed their share of blood. When it was all said and done, many mortals and not a few Kindred were dead. Guilt ridden, Alex forever after chose the life of a pacifist, something that made staying in the Anarch Free State impossible. So in 2015 they packed up their belongings and moved north to San Francisco.
The new prince of San Francisco, Sara Anne Winder, demanded a blood oath in return for the right to domain in her city. Given their previous experiences, they talked it over between them and finally accepted her offer. She was never wiser to their seeming resistance to the effects of her blood, a leftover benefit of the Sabbat vinculum. They settled in the Castro, one of the first gay neighborhoods in America. They found a haven worthy of the name and settle into a new unlife. New names, and whole new histories, new lies told the same old way, always get the story straight was the rule. After a year of comfortable settling in, they decided to open a vampire club called "Dracula's Daughter". They located the club at the north-west corner of 17th and Dolores St. The club wasn't an automatic success, but over time, it began to attract the night-creatures of San Francisco. A couple more years saw Ward and Alex recovering their investment with the hopes of getting ahead. San Francisco is eclectic in the extreme and the club had a wide array of supernatural patrons: Kindred, werewolves, Mages, the Kithain and with the Asian Invasion, the Kuei-jin. One year turned into five, which stretched into ten and then fifteen. By 2030, Dracula's Daughter was a regular meeting place for denizens of the dark world and as its owners, Ward and Alex developed a reputation for acceptance and secrecy. Not that there weren't occasional supernatural disagreements, even one or two outright brawls, but a pair of City Gangrel can end most disagreements...fast. There were good times and bad, eventually Alex realized that he was still a carrier of the AIDs virus and Ward struggled with his phobia of female supernaturals, especially demons. They adapted to the times, kept up with the familiar trends and watched mortal friends grow old before their eyes.
All relationships hit rough spots, especially vampiric love-affairs, that was when Ward and Alex started to drift apart. Each had his particular interests and friends, they talked less and less, eventually reaching a stage where they just cohabited. That was when Alex met Jessenia Cabello, a scruffy survivor of the streets, drug addiction, prostitution and an abusive past. When Ward finally noticed that something was up, he was terrified that Alex was leaving him for someone else, which was partially true. But it wasn't so simple, after following Alex, who spent months watching Jessenia, Ward began to understand what drew his sire to the dirty street urchin. To Alex, Jess as they both came to call her, was just like Alex had been when the Sabbat found him. She was a deeply scarred, sexually confused, young woman who thought that she was gay because she had been abused by men her entire life. So naturally, she gravitated to those she felt safe with, lesbians, who accepted her into their sisterhood. But the truth was, when Jess sold herself to wealthy women, they abused her just as much and she turned first to alcohol and then to a variety of drugs looking for release from a seemingly failed life. It was clear that Alex still had issues he wanted to explore and parts of himself to heal, and his way of doing that was to help another individual in a similar situation and that was Jess. And so, slowly, Ward and Alex drifted back together as they began to watch over Jess, trying to protect her from the worst elements of the Castro. But Jess, still a child even in her late teens, had decided to quit life altogether, slowly self-destructing one step at a time.
One night, Jessenia overdosed on heroin and they found her less than an hour before she would have died. Alex made an emotional decision when he Embraced her. Initially, Ward tried to stop him, pointing out that they could lose everything that they had built over the last fifteen years, but in the end Alex couldn't be dissuaded. In the end, Ward realized it was inevitable and perhaps a necessary step along Alex's path to humanity. But this revelation didn't blind him to the reality that the prince wouldn't be amused when she eventually found out about Jess. For that very reason, he decided to get ahead of the forest fire and try to defuse the situation before it exploded in Alex's face. Once Jess was clean enough to face the truth, they both sat her down and explained the what had happened. Jessenia's introduction to immortality was a difficult nativity and when it couldn't be hidden anymore, he convinced Alex to accompany him to see the prince. Unknown to either Alex or Ward, the city was slipping over the edge of chaos, into civil war. Thus the meeting with Sara Winder could have gone far worse. The admission itself could have been a death sentence, but turned into a negotiation as it became apparent how badly the prince needed capable soldiers. So, when the negotiations hit a low point, Ward offered up his undying services to the prince in return for sparing his sire and his new sister.
The prince's acceptance of Ward's offer allowed the trio of City Gangrel to not only remain in San Francisco, but opened a number of valuable doors to the coterie that would have never have opened otherwise. While the next five years saw Jess slowly adapt to her new condition and blossom as a young woman, it plunged Ward into a slowly tightening gyre of casual violence and political intrigue. When war finally broke out, Ward demanded that Alex leave San Francisco and take Jess with him. There were no illusions that this parting would be anything but permanent for the foreseeable future, but that didn't change how necessary this separation was to Jessenia's survival and Alex's continued growth along the road of humanity.
Within a year, Ward was battling a wide variety of foes on the mean streets of San Francisco: Sabbat packs, Camarilla enforcers, Anarch gang-members, werewolves and the Kuei-jin. Alex took Jessenia and emigrated to Paris, France. Somehow, Ward found the time to regularly write to his sire and sister. He began to anticipate each of Alex's new letters, using them to maintain a life-line to sanity, as his sire described the City of Lights. Unfortunately, Ward could say little about the circumstances in San Francisco except to hint at how things were going in general.
The next five years saw Ward's duties expand, as San Francisco had joined the League of the Night, he became a knight to his duchess, Sara Winder. But Ward's specialized skill set couldn't be overlooked and he was given missions that took him far from California. One of those missions recently took him to Quebec City. In 2031 he was given an assignment to ensure that Quebec City, then a Camarilla enclave join the league. During that mission, he came face to face with an old friend from mortality, Jeremy Sanderson. But Jeremy had changed significantly since the last time they saw each other, he had become a very hard man, and a Camarilla alastor. From the beginning, no one was happy with the situation, but Ward put his best foot forward as he tried to aid a Ventrue Alastor battle the invading Sabbat of Toronto. It was an ugly conflict where there was no quarter asked and none given. On very few occasions had Ward so freely indulged his Beast as during the Sabbat siege of Quebec City. A week of bloodshed saw Quebec City the easternmost outpost of the League of the Night, but even with that success tucked under his belt, Ward felt uneasy around Jeremy who seemed to know far too much about him. At that point, Ward was offered a position in Quebec City by none other than Xavier de Calais. The fabled "Son of the Night" needed a deep cover agent to keep a wary eye on the former Camarilla members of Quebec City, to ensure that the league's latest acquisition didn't slip back into the hands of the Ivory Tower. Ward didn't accept immediately, but he reasoned that if he did take this mission, it might bring him closer to the eventuality of reuniting with his sire and sister in Paris. Since that time, he set up surveillance on those members of Quebec's night society most likely to sell out their new sect, as such, he remains a ghost among shadows, watching and waiting.
Recent Events: The night of December 21st, 2032 started normally enough. But by midnight, Ward lay gasping in agony upon the floor of his underground haven in Quebec City, as one of his doppelgangers, Seker-Aamon was being diablerized in Cairo, Egypt. The agony was beyond excruciating, and Ward only wished he could pass out as mortals often do when the pain reaches that level. But as he screamed and flopped on the floor like a fish out of water, his mind fused in a strange way with all his other selves. This group consciousness was far from illuminating, as each of his other selves were suffering in the very same way as Ward and their dying doppelganger, Seker-Aamon. But, despite the nearly mind-numbing pain, there were moments of clarity, the awareness that these other selves weren't figments of a possible derangement, but real versions of himself that had somehow come into being and lived very different lives from his own. This revelation amounted to little more than flashes of memory, snatches of thoughts and a sense of being in numerous locations at once.
But when it was over, his mind drifted in a haze of new, alien memories that had once belonged to his fellow doppelganger, the Follower of Set -- Seker-Aamon. Memories of Egypt, especially Cairo, filtered into his consciousness, bringing with them a number of new abilities and frighteningly, disciplines -- in this case, necromancy. Upon fully recovering, the following night, he sent an encrypted message to Xavier informing him that he was departing Quebec City on a mission of utmost importance. Within hours he had secreted himself within a crate of "experimental earth" in the cargo-hold of a suborbital flight from Quebec City to Cairo, Egypt. When the sun sets on Cairo once again, Seker-Aamon's brother Ward McGovern will rise from the earth to hunt down his killer and begin the journey towards reunification with his other selves.
