Velya the vivisectionist and Elaine
Cassidy, cardinals of the land beyond the forest.
Image: Individually, both Velya and Elaine are handsome creatures- the former
well proportioned and neatly dressed, with a mane of flowing silver hair; the
latter a breathtaking Nabokovian nymphet in a fashionable yet conservative
frock. Of course, the fact that the
two vampires are grafted together, Elaine’s leg-stumps to Velya’s spine,
makes the composite being grotesque indeed.
Although Velya does his best to keep his “wife” distracted and
docile, at times the Beast overtakes her; during these fits, Elaine’s perfect
child-like face contorts into a twitching pudding of flesh, and obscenities fly
from her distended mouth.
Background:
He is legend even among the Fiends, and few have seen him or spoken with
him. Along with Lugoj, Voivode of Voidvodes, it was he who freed the
childer from their elders’ sanguinary shackles. His mastery of blood sorcery is rivaled only by the Inner
Council of the Tremere. Sabbat
younglings dub him “The Flayer,” “The Vivisectionist” and a host of
other sobriquets, but the elders among the Sabbat fiends know him simply as
Velya.
A founder of the Sabbat, Velya now serves it as a cardinal, overseeing
the sect’s re-conquest of the Tzimisce Old Country.
As such, he orchestrates ethnic hatreds, channels terrorist purges and
gently rakes the former Iron Curtain into a rubble of broken states and
shattered peoples. Mostly though,
he prepares and implements mighty Koldunic rituals, seeking to tap the spirits
of the ancient land and turn them against the hated Tremere in Vienna.
He has taken such an openly political position only reluctantly, for he
is old and more interested in the ways of Metamorphosis than anything so
ephemeral as the Jyhad. Nonetheless,
he recognizes the necessity of doing what he does, and so her performs his
duties with the meticulous devotion to honor that only an old and malignant
Fiend can display.
Or so Velya would have one believe.
In truth, Velya is in the grip of a terrible and self-inflicted
predicament, one that may soon bring him low where millennia of enemies and
perils have failed to do so. For
Velya’s greatest delight is also his greatest despair.
A century ago, Velya fell in love with and “wed” one Elaine Cassidy,
a 10-year-old Boston socialite. He
watched from afar as Elaine meticulously spidered her way into a dominant
position within her neurotic family by reducing her mother to catatonia,
contriving her sister’s untimely demise and cleverly manipulating her
sensitive elder brother into a madhouse. Velya
was entranced. Aiding little
Elaine’s schemes from a distance, Velya ensured the girl’s inheritance of
the entire Cassidy fortune. The
young and impressionable Elaine, for her part, was quickly taken with the wise
and Mephistophelean vampire noble upon meeting him, and the two monsters joined
in a sanguine union.
Alas, over the centuries Velya had grown so divorced from human cares
that he was unmindful of Elaine’s essential fragility.
While little Elaine was the liveliest monster among her kind, her
10-year-old psyche was scarcely strong enough to cope with the horrors of
nightly unlife among the Sabbat. Insufficiently
determined to learn even the rudiments of the Path of Metamorphosis, Elaine
spiraled out of control and her soul was lost to the Beast in the mid-20th
century. Realizing what had
happened but unwilling to terminate the unlife of his childe and “wife,”
Velya used his arts to graft his beloved to him until such as he could “fix”
her.
Of course, no vampire, once gripped by the Beast, can be “fixed,” not
even by one as clever as Velya. Furthermore,
the linkage has fused together Velya’s and Elaine’s veins and arteries, so
that blood from the one flows into the body of the other.
While this arrangement has the beneficial effect of forever enforcing the
couple’s blood bond, it also allows Elaine’s rampant Beast to goad Velya’s
own.
As such, for the first time in centuries, the Methuselah finds himself
close to losing control. Already,
Velya’s minions have begun to whisper of failed experiments, neglected tasks
and bizarre lapses of personality. Velya’s
hold on himself- and on Elaine- slips by the night.
And if Velya falls, the clan’s reconquest of the Old Country may come
to naught.
Now, a new threat rises out from the west, the mad queen, Luecretia has
somehow returned. Clearly Velya and his peers did a poor job in destroying the
creature and she’s returned to wreak her vengeance against the land.
Luecretia is not like other Tzimisce, Velya and his brethren seek to gain
a better understanding of this world and shape it to their will through
enlightenment and evolution. Luecretia has no interest in progress, no interest in
ascendance. Luecretia cares only
for damnation and thus she must be destroyed once and for all.
So Velya locks down his and Elaine’s beast with iron bands and readies
himself for war.
Roleplaying Hints: As Velya, you are almost too methodical and detached, as you frantically compensate for the madness that washes over you from Elaine’s bloodstream. Indeed, you spend so much time lashing your Beast into obedience that you have neglected the basic tenets of the Path of Metamorphosis, this leading to a downward spiral of spiritual malaise. As Elaine, you spend much of your time in a dreamy and only semi-aware state, kept that way courtesy of Velya’s blood-sorcery. Occasionally, you break free from the spell, though, and during those times you combine the cunning and caprice of a mad child with the shrieking frenzy of an insane Cainite. You are in love with you “husband” but seek only to drag him into a union of bestiality with you.
