Velya the Vivisector and Elaine Cassidy
Cardinals of the Lands Beyond

Background: A legend even among the Fiends, few have seen him and fewer still have spoken with him. Together with Lugoj, Voivode of Voivodes, he was among those who freed the childer from the Ancients' bloody shackles. His command of blood magic rivals even that of the Tremere Inner Circle. Younger Sabbat call him "the Flayer," "the Vivisector," and many other names, but the oldest Fiends of the Sword of Cain know him simply as Velya.
As one of Sabbat's founders, Velya now serves as Cardinal, overseeing the reconquest of the old Tzimisce lands. In that role, he orchestrates ethnic hatred, channels terrorist purges, and grinds away the old Iron Curtain until it is no more than a heap of shattered states and broken towns. Above all, he prepares and executes potent Koldunic rites meant to awaken the spirits of the ancient land and turn them against the hated Tremere of nearby Vienna. Velya has accepted this openly political role with reluctance, being far more interested in the paths of Metamorphosis than in anything as ephemeral as Jyhad. Yet he recognizes the necessity of his work, and carries out his obligations with the meticulous devotion only an ancient, malignant Fiend can display.
Or so Velya wants you to believe.

Where others see a battlefield between sects, he sees in Prague an old inheritance waiting to be reclaimed. The ancient clan lands spread like a ring of scars around the capital, and whenever war touches its walls, elders whisper that the Vivisector has fixed his gaze on it again. For many Tzimisce, Prague is not merely a disputed city: it is another piece of the clan's body, and Velya is the surgeon who decides what is saved and what is amputated.

The Tremere of Vienna know that weight all too well. For centuries they have learned to fear Velya's name as much as that of any member of their own Inner Circle: beyond the fallen Iron Curtain stands a Cardinal willing to awaken the earth itself and hurl it against their Chantry. In Prague's recent history, every tremor along the old borders, every provincial purge, and every uprising of fanatics in forgotten towns may bear his signature, though he rarely appears in person.

Before the Nights of White Ash, his influence was felt as a constant pressure in the background: Sabbat packs appearing and disappearing according to patterns no Camarilla elder fully understood, rural cults suddenly speaking of "the true flesh," and mutilated ghouls found on the city's outskirts like surgical warnings left at Prague's doorstep. The fear became so great that not only Vassily and Carlak, but princes across the country, forbade his name from being spoken in open council, knowing that even rumors of his presence were enough to spread panic among the ancillae. For many, Velya was the troubling explanation behind aberrant experiments discovered in anonymous basements and small communities erased from the map leaving nothing but scars in the earth. That proved a blessing to the antitribu brotherhoods and packs besieging the city, unknowingly sheltered by Velya's own masquerade.

After the Nights of White Ash, the city learned that the physical absence of a Methuselah does not mean his withdrawal. Entire cells of the Sabbat Inquisition claimed to have received orders encoded in Velya's clinical style, instructing them which neighborhoods should be abandoned, which havens should be sacrificed, and which enemies should be preserved "for future study." For some Prague Cainites, it was as if a surgeon had decided to let an infection spread only so far, observing with interest the way the city decayed before deciding which parts were worth rebuilding.

Yet sometimes there are other explanations. The truth is that the Vivisector is trapped in a terrible predicament of his own making, one that may soon lead him where millennia of enemies and dangers have failed. Velya's greatest delight is also his greatest misfortune.

A century ago, the Tzimisce fell in love and "married" one Elaine Cassidy, a ten-year-old girl from Boston high society. From a distance he watched Elaine methodically carve out a dominant place in her neurotic family, reducing her mother to catatonia, arranging her sister's premature death, and manipulating her extraordinarily sensitive brother until he was committed to an asylum. Velya was enchanted and, supporting the girl's schemes from afar, saw to it that she inherited the entire Cassidy fortune. For her part, the very young and impressionable Elaine was immediately drawn to the noble, Mephistophelean vampire as soon as she met him, and the two monsters were joined in a marriage of blood.

But alas, as the centuries passed, Velya had become so far removed from human needs that he failed to grasp the child's inherent fragility. Though Elaine could be one of the liveliest monsters of her kind, her ten-year-old psyche was barely capable of facing the horrors of unlife in the Sabbat. Lacking the resolve even to learn the rudiments of the Path of Metamorphosis, the girl spiraled out of control and her soul was lost to the Beast in the mid-20th century. Aware of what had happened, yet unable to part from his little girl and "wife," Velya used his arts to graft his beloved onto himself until the day he might somehow "fix" her.

Of course, no vampire trapped by the Beast can be "fixed," not even by someone as brilliant as the Vivisector. More than that, the union of Velya and Elaine has fused their veins and arteries so that the blood of one flows through the body of the other. Though this arrangement permanently reinforces the Blood Bond between them, it also allows Elaine's unleashed Beast to inflame Velya's own.

Thus, for the first time in centuries, the Methuselah is on the verge of losing control. Velya's servants have already begun to murmur about failed experiments, neglected duties, and strange lapses in personality. His control over himself and over Elaine slips further away with each passing night, and if he falls, the reconquest of the Old Clan Lands may fail with him.

In the present nights, many wonder why, if Velya longs so much for the fall of the Tremere and the conquest of the city, he still has not moved all his pieces. He eagerly watches for the chance to free Prague from its worst enemies and tear from its entrails secrets worthy of his scalpel, yet he limits himself to tightening the board and letting others spill the first blood. There are border domains where Sabbat packs attack with almost clinical precision and then stop abruptly, as if someone were taking notes on each area's resistance before deciding whether it deserves a deeper cut. Some believe he is waiting for the perfect moment to strike Prague and Vienna at once; others believe his own inner demons and Elaine's unleashed Beast are holding him back. The only certainty is that, as long as his name is still spoken in whispers, Prague has not yet seen its worst night.

Image: Individually, both Velya and Elaine are beautiful creatures; he is well proportioned and neatly dressed, with a flowing mane of silver hair; she is a perversely captivating Nabokovian nymphet, dressed in elegant yet conservative clothes. Needless to say, the fact that the two vampires are grafted into one another, with the stumps of Elaine's legs attached to Velya's back, makes the being, as a whole, truly grotesque. Although the Vivisector does everything he can to keep his distracted, docile "wife" under control, there are times when the Beast possesses her, and during those episodes the girl's perfect childish face turns into a spasmodic mass of flesh, and she vomits obscenities from her deformed mouth.

Interpretation Suggestions: As Velya, you are almost too methodical and dispassionate, frantically trying to compensate for the madness flooding you through Elaine's bloodstream. You spend so much time forcing your Beast into obedience that you have neglected the basic principles of the Path of Metamorphosis, which has led you into a downward spiral of spiritual malaise. As Elaine, you spend most of your time in a state of dreaming or semi-consciousness induced by Velya's blood sorcery. Yet from time to time you break the spell, and in those moments you combine the cunning and whim of a maddened child with the chilling frenzy of a deranged Cainite. You love your "husband," but all you truly seek is to drag him into a bestial union with you.

The Traits after the slash "/" belong to Elaine Cassidy.

Clan: Tzimisce
Faction: Sabbat
Sire: Unknown / Velya
Nature: Architect/Pervert
Conduct: Traditionalist/Girl
Generation: 5th/ 6th
Embrace: Unknown/1890s
Apparent Age: Mid-forties / 10 years

Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 7
Social: Charisma 6, Manipulation 6, Appearance 3/7
Mental: Perception 8, Intelligence 8/4, Cunning 6

Talents: Alert 6, Dodge 3, Brawl 3, Subterfuge 5
Skills: Body Alteration 6, Melee 4, Etiquette 5, Subterfuge 5.
Knowledge: Academics 5, Sciences 7, Linguistics (numerous European tongues and several forgotten Old World languages) 6, Occultism 8

Disciplines: Animalism 8, Auspex 8, Domination 5, Fortitude 4, Koldunic Sorcery 8, Presence 5, Vicissitude 7.
Koldunic Paths: Paths of Blood 5, Paths of Fire 5, Paths of the Spirits 5.

Backgrounds: Servants 5, Sabbat Position 5, Resources 5.
Virtues: Conviction 2 (was 5) / Consciousness 0, Instinct 4 / Self-control 0, Courage 2 / 2
Morality: Path of Metamorphosis 4 (formerly 9) / Humanity 0
Willpower: 5 (previously 10)