Milan

From OSWIKI

Clan:	Mekhet
Covenant:	Circle of the Crone
Status
Clan:	1
City:	0
Covenant:	2
Cult:	The Second Descent
Sire:	Clarice DuPont
Childer:	none
-------------------------------------------
December, 1913
October, 1946
February, 1983
August, 2007
Clarice DuPont, Sire
71 Triumph Spitfire

Character Description

Milan has the look of a man who has lived a hard life and is very thin but fit and athletic. He has dark brown hair that has a overgrown look to it that's styled in a haggard sort of way. His most notable feature is his large nose, which if he didn't have he'd be considered very attractive instead of moderately so. Looks to be of western European descent in his mid 20s with intelligent looking eyes. He typically favors casual suits. (Presence 2, Blood Potency 2, Status: Circle of the Crone 2, Status: Mekhet 1)

Known Character Information

• First introduced to the Kindred of New York City and their Prince in 1920.

• Known to have been involved in city politics both vampiric and otherwise in 1920-the early 1950s, after which he withdrew from city politics for Covenant affairs and was seen very infrequently in the following years.

• In 1964 he was reported to be in torpor through the grapevine and no one sees him in the City for almost two decades.

• Known to be involved in a Cult which is lead by his sire, Clarice DuPont with a half dozen other vampires and mortal members which practices philosophy based on 'the Second Descent' as they call it, which evolved from a much older, established Cult some time during the late-70s with some of the same members including Clarice as well as Milan previous to his torpor.

• In 1983, he was seen arriving in the City to introduce himself to the Prince. He had many interactions and business with other Kindred for a few short years until 1987 and was known to be a full member of the Second Descent Cult. After that he was seen little until 2004 where he began regularly attending formal gatherings. During the time before he kept in contact with some of the older Mekhet and Cults in the city, although very few others outside that.

• In 2004 he began branching out into the city again and made regular visits to important gatherings where he would represent his Sire and her interests as well as his own.

• In 2007 Milan once again returned to the city for introduction to the current Prince, and remained much more visible and active with the changes brought to the Circle of the Crone and formalized domain. He has remained active and making connections with several Kindred throughout the city as well as continuing to represent his Sire in city affairs ever since.

Character Background

Milan was born on the 7th of October, 1890 in Brussels, Belgium. He lived there with a modest family whom both mother and father were part of the socialist movement to promote worker independence against the largely controlling Catholic Church in the largest city in Belgium. They were recreational users of opium and other drugs however he only caught them a few times as a child. They were very outspoken when he was born about the divisional situation between the classes and he was taught in underground schools that were not catholic at the time with new ideas and thoughts. This movement would later last 30 years, although he only saw this from his child's eye and the year of 1899 his family traveled across the ocean by boat to flee the pressures of the local Catholics in their community after they shut down his school and alienated several of their long time friends.

Once in America they landed in New York and immigrated, a relatively easy task due to his fathers engineering background in manufacturing that was sorely needed in the budding industry, they found themselves a home and plenty of work. Milan went to a public school where they were delighted to find relatively little influence of the church and he was successful in his academic endeavors as well as gaining a job as a runner for the New York Herald. By the time he was 18 he was also writing for the paper as a part-time job and was courting one of the daughters of a prominent Constable in New York whom he went to school with. By this time his father was very successful in consulting with several companies in the area and they were considered to be in the 'social elite' at the time where the right parties and the right people were always close at hand from their modest beginnings.

He eventually upon glowing recommendations from both the New York Herald and the Constable whom treated him as family at that point he was accepted into Columbia University. His girlfriend, Melissa, ended up going to Dartmouth University in Hanover where they stayed in touch by letters for the majority of their college careers. At Columbia he studied Communication and English with some dabbling in Politics and was considered one of the strongest fencing protégés of the college at the time, however due to illness was unable to participate in the tournament which would have made a considerable name for himself in the University. The illness was never quite understood by doctors and it seemed to be a condition of the brain in which they had never experienced before that they concluded was "something akin to Epilepsy without being able to be triggered in the normal ways". It was extremely debilitating for several months, causing delusions, audio and visual, which would test his sanity in some cases seeing all manners of strange things whether in bed in the dark or walking to class at inopportune moments. Then as quickly as it had come, the condition vanished.

He graduated in the top 1% of his class although failed to receive the highest honors, he was immediately invited to a position at the New York Herald upon graduation as one of their columnists. In the winter of 1904 several tragedies simultaneously happened to Milan that would change his world forever to an extent he could never have dreamed of having mostly a charmed life. In October, a few days after his birthday while at a party downtown with several of his friends his parents died in a fire which consumed their house while they slept that went unexplained. A letter arrived from Dartmouth the next day where his girlfriend, Melissa, let him know that she had been seeing someone for several months and that they were in love, although he would always be her friend not knowing what had happened. This combination of things drove him off his rocker and he proceeded to binge party for several weeks among younger social elite of New York. He had been given all of his family's assets through will and used it to truly paint the town. One late evening after a binge he found himself awake, dripping in sweat and feeling the icy chill of snow and wind upon himself in a open clearing in what could only be a wooded mountainous region. In his terror he thought his delusions had returned and the drugs still coursing in his system triggered it and screamed, which was answered almost immediately by the shadow from years earlier looking into his eyes again with that pleasant knowing smile and it simply said "You know, you always were mine”.

The three tragedies were more than he could take and from the simple words from this beings mouth caused him to lose his grip on himself and whatever transpired next he could never remember. Once he finally came to his senses he was one of the undead and this once shadowy figure was in fact a pale feral yet beautiful woman with raven black hair in animal fur that was masterfully put together with a branch from a tree skewered through her right shoulder at a very nasty proximity to her heart. He had dried blood all over his chest from a wound at his neck with fingernail-like claws at eye level and she on top of him. She simply said again, what later he would know as what she always did - "Now that, was unexpected, lover. Sleep.".

The woman whom embraced him he came to know as Clarice, who took care of him. He learned from her for several years and she took great pains to repairing in her own way the fractured mind that was left after the ordeal which healed over time although had changed significantly with her guidance for better or worse. They stayed in a cabin built into a hillside in the forests of New York State where at first she told him tales of myth and legend to keep him comfortable as his first love did, and eventually moved into telling him about the world he didn't know - that of vampires, and shifters and the Crone. She told him he was always hers, marked from when he got off the boat from Belgium all those years ago to be included in the covenant. He also found that his girlfriend, Melissa had been taken similarly by a member of the covenant out where she stayed, which was the boyfriend. During this time he was inducted as an official member of the Cult which was loosely based on aspects of the Underworld and participated as part of their Chorus. They ventured to New York City and he was introduced to the Prince of the time in 1920.

Over the next few decades he grew in power and prestige and eventually began exploring the mysteries of Cruac with another member of the covenant, his old girlfriend from his mortal days which had recently joined their cult at Milan’s encouragement. During this time he also became a fully fledged Acolyte within the Cult and specialized in divination and ocular ability with significant mental prowess. The experience of the embrace and viniculum shattered their affections for each other as they once were but they grew inseparable as vampires in their quest for power and lore. One evening in the fall equinox of 1964 they were attempting a new Cruac ritual to submit to his sire and the Cult in an attempt to find a way to use a spirit to warn them of danger to their domain and themselves. During the experimentation something went very wrong and what they were attempting to summon did not come. Something else, however, did pay attention and was extremely offended to say the least but more importantly powerful enough that neither of them had any hope against it in the initial challenge.

The experience lasted for seemingly an eternity for Milan as he recalls it as the spirit broke into his mind where it attempted to fracture it once again sensing weakness, and the assumption is the same happened to Melissa and continues. Both were found in torpor with no known way to contact them using sorcery or disciplines. No one could find any method of rousing them and he was kept safe by his sire, and Melissa was similarly kept by her own sire and has not woken. During this time in torpor Milan cannot recall much of what happened, although one thing was very clear to him while in torpor he was fighting for his sanity and his soul for a very long time with whatever had come from the result of the ritual and had eventually been defeated or he passed the challenge in their contest.

His sire believes that fortune and fate smile on him and the gods that govern such things to have been reborn so many times, as she calls it. She reintroduced him into her cult which had matured and changed into highly aligned to the Second Descent. Many of the cult were long time members grew with it and he was given a greater position in the cult. Which she wishes him to continue to grow to become her right hand in cult affairs, and returned to being her spokesman in City affairs. He rose from torpor in 1983 in which he was once again re-introduced to the reigning Prince whom remembered him well however considered him re-entering the city and was given a clean slate to start from by the Prince but no status. His covenant members especially revered him due to his experiences which some believed (including his Sire) that they had successfully contacted a God or Deity or stranger older being and survived.

He still understands little of what happened although he discusses it frequently with his sire to piece together more of the experience and entity, his last memories upon waking was drinking from a stream after swallowing he awoke, following some recent parallels made by his sire he's been studying ideology of the Second Descent and has aligned himself with this thinking. Although the failure which laid Melissa into oblivion, caused him to no longer be trusted to practice or learn more of the sorcery of Cruac and was banned from practicing it for two decades by his sire whom lead the Cult since his Embrace.

He never lost status within the cult largely due to the respect of his sire as well as his interactions on a city level that many of them were not suited for. He certainly earned some additional fame for his sorcerous experimentation gone awry which bore unexpected mysteries. In 2007 his Sire invited Milan to a cult rite in which they lifted his punishment against the use of Cruac and once again allowed him to continue his journey into the mysteries of their blood magic even though they suspected he was continuing education on a mundane level regarding it, which indeed he was. He has also taken more into the guidance of its cult members as a mentor and into the mysteries often with emphasis on the Second Descent's philosophies. He has become more prominent cult figure learning a great deal more about the Second Descent from his sire whom hopes he will continue to take on a more significant role. No one outside of the Crone was ever aware of what happened so many years ago and many of them would see it far differently than the Crone. With encouragement from his sire, he now looks to the City politics once more as well as becoming a beacon for the Cult which he has firmly made great strides in doing so.