Break Your Chains

Name: Anezka, Princess of Nightmares Clan: Ravnos Embrace Date: Beginning of the 19th century. Apparent Age: Early twenties. Position: Currently none.

Background: Born into a prosperous Hungarian noble family, no wealth could cure the congenital illness diagnosed in their daughter. Over the years, that same affliction made her as beautiful as she was fragile, like a crystal rose. That beauty stole the heart of Andrei, a thief from a Transylvanian Rom family: the Tsurara. Both families, noble and common, opposed the lovers' union. Grief fed the voracious disease consuming the young princess, and Andrei could no longer endure the torture of watching his love fade. He chose to free her forever, granting her his finest gift: the Embrace.

Lovers in life and in death, they fled far from both families, Hungarian and Rom alike. The Rom marked them forever as marhime: outcasts among outcasts.
Years passed, and the lovers parted in the night. Each chose a different road, and our Princess ended in Prague, where she slept long beneath its cold streets. The Week of Nightmares tore her from that lethargy amid screams of madness. The voices of agony and panic from her people ripped through her mind; the torture and genocide committed by the rest of the Kindred against her clan would not be forgotten. The laws that condemned her love now condemned her lineage. She would not allow them to steal the only thing she had left.

Those laws had turned her existence into an unbearable prison. Now free and unbound, with her clan liberated, she would teach all Kindred the path of freedom: free from Sects, offices, and chains.

Quote: "The chains that condemned my love now lie broken under White Ash... who will be next in waking up from your nightmare?"

Name: Ivan Strakovitch Clan: Malkavian Sire: Garces Embrace Date: Mid-18th century. Apparent Age: Thirty-something. Position: Currently none.

Background: Ivan was born in late 17th-century Russia. Like many others, his life was destined for poverty and humility, were it not for a single lapse: a courtier who, through circumstance, had done a favor to a great man, or at least a powerful one in that place and time, Rasputin, the mad monk. Ivan's father felt little affection for his bastard son; his decision to place the boy under Rasputin's tutelage was entirely self-serving. In the end, a well-positioned and grateful son, even a bastard, is always a form of insurance. So Ivan came of age in Rasputin's shadow, and remained there into his third decade. Yet lapses marked his birth, his placement, and eventually his fall. He learned more than his tutor intended. The least "scholastic" part of his education came from the servants he came from and never forgot. Every ounce of his rogue inheritance led him to try deceiving Rasputin, inevitably ending in trouble that forced him to flee the court. Uselessly, of course, had chance not intervened in Malkavian form.

Since then, he is known to have moved through both the Sword of Cain and the Camarilla, exploiting each as needed to secure a style of unlife. He had to, because the past kept hunting him. For a long while, peace endured and, as he himself would say, it looked like a happy ending. But his life, his world, was no tale. There were no happy endings, nor tragic ones, because there was no ending at all. He had managed to outwit his past. He returned to Russia. He survived with a small mafia empire, a double empire in the eyes of mortals and Kindred alike. He was master of his fate. Then one night, his past appeared.

That is why he is now in Prague: an entire road to carve ahead, and God willing, without looking back.

Quote: "Don't you dare judge me... you do what you can to survive... and surviving means living above others... right?"