Those Who Wield the Sword

Name: Velya the Vivisector and Elaine Cassidy Clan: Tzimisce Embrace Date: Unknown / 1890 Apparent Age: Mid 40s / 10 years Position: Cardinals of the Lands Beyond Forest.

Background: In Prague, Velya is not merely a name from old Tzimisce tales: he is a shadow cast from the origins of the Sword of Cain into the city's present nights. A legend even among his clan's Fiends, feared by all and respected even by those who have yet to rise from the grave. The ancients called him the Skinner, the Vivisector, and a thousand other names, but even those who cannot rival his age reduce it to a single title: Velya.

Where others see a battlefield between Sects, he sees an old inheritance to reclaim. Ancient clan lands spread around the capital like a ring of scars, and whenever war touches its walls, elders whisper that the Vivisector has fixed his gaze on it again. For many Tzimisce, Prague is not only a contested city: it is another limb of the clan's body, and Velya is the surgeon who decides what is saved and what is amputated.

Vienna's Tremere understand that weight 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 chronicle, each tremor along old borders, each provincial purge, each uprising of fanatics in forgotten towns may carry his signature, though he seldom appears in person.

In tonight's nights, many ask why Velya, who so deeply desires the Tremere's fall and the city's conquest, has not yet moved all his pieces. He hungers to free Prague from its worst enemies and carve secrets from their entrails worthy of his scalpel, yet he only tightens the board and lets others spill first blood. Some believe he awaits the perfect moment to strike Prague and Vienna at once; others claim his own inner demons restrain him. The only certainty is this: while his name is spoken in whispers, Prague has not yet seen its worst night.

If you want to know more about the Vivisector, press here...

Name: Ismael Sartori, "Osciler the Red" Clan: Lasombra Embrace Date: 1941 Apparent Age: Close to 30 Position: currently none.

Background: Ismael was born in Verona, Italy, to a large working-class family. War gave him what birth did not: a uniform, command, and a dizzying rise through military ranks. His ability to hold lines under fire and drive exhausted men through frozen terrain earned him respect, and eventually one of the fronts collapsing into Russia's white hell, where another officer would have found an anonymous death under snow.

There, on a front condemned by cold and impossible logistics, the shadows noticed him. Mikhail Zuorovich chose him amid that announced failure and pulled him from the battlefield to Prague. The Embrace did more than save him from freezing: it taught him military discipline fits all too well with Lasombra's calculated cruelty. Osciler soon learned loyalty is only another chain, and that commanding men or shadows demands the same coldness, knowing which sacrifices are acceptable to win one more night.

Since then, he has remained in Prague, adapting an old officer's reflexes to the slow, low-voiced war of the Kindred. His name is whispered in connection with alley skirmishes, disputed disappearances, and shadows moving like red-smoke columns through old-war ruins. Osciler seeks neither throne nor office; he prefers forgotten fronts where someone still decides who lives, who dies, and who is left to freeze in the dark.

Quote: "I have seen armies kneel before winter. Shadows, by contrast, do not know surrender."

Name: Zamenná Rusena, "The Stone Rose" Clan: Pander Embrace Date: Early 2000s Apparent Age: Early twenties Position: Currently none

Background: Once a Camarilla ghoul: useful, submissive, beaten, mistreated, enslaved, stripped of freedom and dignity. Everything changed during the Nights of White Ash, when her masters threw her, and many other Camarilla servants, as expendable cannon fodder against the Sabbat while they fled the Sword of Cain's assault. But that ghoul did not die; she was captured by a Pack. In exchange for information on Camarilla members and her domitor, they promised eternal life and a second chance in their ranks. She spoke, and the Pack rewarded her as promised... or so she thought.

She was fed upon and then Embraced by the entire Pack, then abandoned in Camarilla territory to meet Final Death at her former masters' hands. No one knows how, but that ghoul not only survived deep in enemy ground, she hunted both Camarilla pursuers and the Pack that made her. What emerged was the scourge of many Cainites: a Pander. After proving merit and new worth to the Sword of Cain, she was admitted as a full member. That is how the former ghoul, now Cainite, earned her name: The Stone Rose.

Now it is time for the Camarilla to repay her stolen years of freedom in blood.

Quote: "They called me a servant, then a traitor, then monster. Let them keep changing name; I will continue charging the same debts."

Name: Barbara "Love Doll" Schneider Clan: Toreador antitribu Embrace Date: Late 19th century (1899) Apparent Age: Mid-twenties Position: Currently none.

Background: Born in Kassel, Germany, into a wealthy family, Barbara grew up among expectations, etiquette, and polished porcelain. She was the kind of young woman who knew when to smile at the right dance and when to keep silent in the wrong conversation, exactly the sort of delicate puppet a Toreador might view as a blank canvas. Her Embrace in 1899 was no accident: someone wanted to ensure that doll learned to move without strings... and cut everyone else's.

After her conversion, she gave herself with fervor to clan war against her enemies, exchanging salons for Sabbat's blood-stained temples. In time she joined a Berlin pack, where her talent for blending beauty, cruelty, and ritual led to training as an apprentice Priest. There she earned the nickname Love Doll, a cruel joke she adopted with a smile, since it let her enter any room underestimated... and leave it in applause or ashes, as required.

Along with the pack "Die Vierteiler" (NdT: The Cutters) was sent to the cold Prague, arriving on the fateful Nights of the White Ash. There, in the sewers and city tunnels, the pack was practically annihilated by the Archons. Love Doll survived by sheer instinct and twisted faith, emerging from the wreckage as one of the few witnesses to that carnage. Afterward she regrouped with other Sabbat survivors, carrying the memory of her former pack like a dress she refuses to discard: stained, but still perfectly fitted.

Quote: "Does it hurt? Do not worry. It is only your life tearing at the seams."

Name: Jared Kirhoff Clan: Nosferatu antitribu Embrace Date: Unknown Apparent Age: Hard to determine Position: Currently none; presumed missing.

Background: From old Mother Russia, Jared served for a time under the Witch of the North, the Crone some superstitious voices still call Baba Yaga. Very little reliable record remains of those years, only rumor fragments, broken stories, and the very real fear in the few Nosferatu who still speak his name. Among Noddist circles of the Sect, people whisper that he once touched secrets tied to the Nictuku nightmare, enough knowledge to make him prey for his own clan... and for something worse than his clan.

Banished, hunted, and hated, Jared abandoned Russia's burrows following, they say, the old routes once traced by Master Zelios beneath Europe. His wandering eventually brought him to Prague, years before the Nights of White Ash, where he traded in information, tunnels, and havens the way only a desperate Nosferatu can. He operated across much of Eastern Europe; even the Black Hand tried to recruit him, and he rejected the offer with enough violence to make clear he preferred his own monsters to anyone else's. His influence on clan networks is notable, but almost absent in formal Sabbat ranks: Jared serves the Sword only when its goals align with his own.

Since the Nights of White Ash, he has vanished. No one knows whether he still hunts for something in the city's depths or whether madness and Beast finally consumed him from within. Some claim his disappearance aligns too closely with rumors of a Sewer Monster that hunts in silence anyone who goes too deep, Camarilla and Sabbat alike. Whether that creature is Jared or one of his first victims, one thing is certain: his maps, tunnels, and knowledge of Prague remain worth their weight in gold... if someone can recover them without drawing his attention.

Quote: "Grr... ehm... mmm... shh..."

Name: Mikhail Szemioth Clan: Tzimisce Embrace Date: 1879 Apparent Age: 35 Position: Count of Samogitia; no formal position in the lineage

Background: The so-called Count Szemioth was just a young man when he was embraced deep in a forest Lithuanian. Lord of the town of Samogitia, he was a man versed in customs and superstitions of his people, and in the language of his people, the Jmude. He was educated in the old Lithuanian nobility and was always an upright man and fair. Until he was accused and persecuted, stripped of everything he owned, when he accused of having left his wife (Iulka) dead in bed, all bloody. In In reality, she had not died, but rather she had begged him to bite her: she wanted to feel the true pleasure of the kiss.

From that moment Panna Iwinska and Miszka They made the perfect couple, she protecting him by day and he by night. But soon, the simple life of hidden lovers was not enough: the rumors grew, the bonfires were prepared and Mijail He understood that, to keep her by his side, he had to give him more than just protection. Thus, the lovers fled away from common humans, who understand nothing, and they entered the path of molded flesh and oaths ancestral of their lineage.

Over time, the Count of Samogitia became a student of the old lands, the spirits and traditions of his people, maintaining a delicate balance between nostalgia for their lost humanity and pride cold of his Tzimisce blood. Prague is not your home, but one of the few places where the Old Europe still remembers to fear the lords of the earth... and those who shape it with their hands.

Quote: "We shall see. No evil lasts a hundred years, nor vrykolak a single stake."

Name: Sir Eduars Clan: Toreador antitribu Embrace Date: 1905 Apparent Age: Around thirty Position: Currently none.

Background: Embraced in Paris by one of the most influential members close to the current Toreador Justicar, Eduars grew up convinced his destiny was to serve one night as Archon. He was taught to love illuminated halls, elegant intrigue, and the Camarilla's cold justice, and for years he believed every word. Transfer to the United States, especially Milwaukee, cracked that faith when he saw how hard it was to keep the mask in domains where dirty war was standard practice.

What should have been a proving ground became a catalog of betrayals, convenient sacrifices, and impossible orders, difficult to justify even for a Toreador accustomed to dressing everything as aesthetics. When he left Milwaukee, he no longer did so as a servant of the Ivory Tower, but as a newcomer to Sabbat ranks. Since then, his loyalty to the Sword of Cain has proven uncomfortably sincere, even for certain Inquisitors.

His return to Europe had one purpose: settle accounts with his past. In Parisian outskirts, he hunted down his former sire and carried out with his own hands the sentence the Camarilla would never have admitted in public. Since that night he has run, almost literally, like a soul chased by devils. The Toreador Justicar He has promised to give his head to the Prince Parisian, and a good part of the clan has taken the reward as a personal matter. In that context, Prague - full of Sabbat, anarchists and independent - is less a refuge than a new canvas where to disappear among others monsters with equally broken stories.

Quote: "They say I betrayed my blood. Truth is simpler: one night I listened to my dead heart and, for the first time, dared obey it."

Name: Vaclav Clan: Serpent of Light Embrace Date: Early 20th century Apparent Age: Thirty-something Position: Currently none

Background: Embraced in Prague by one of the few independent Children of Set before World War I, Vaclav's unlife can be told almost entirely through this city. He learned his clan's arts, but his refusal to devote himself to their main commerce led his sire to reject him, forcing him to seek his own path through Eastern Europe. Over the years, he built hard-earned influence across Hungary and Slovakia, until ten years ago, his sire called him back.

He returned to Prague for local Independent wars, then soon became a direct witness to the Nights of White Ash. Driven by impulses beyond his own understanding, faith, revenge, or pure survival, his aid to the Sword of Cain proved invaluable in locating key temples, though only after he first removed his own master. Since then, the Sect has opened its doors to him, yet many still wonder whether Vaclav serves a cause... or only the serpent whispering in his ear when the city sleeps.

Quote: "Home again... snakes always find their way back to the nest, even if they must shed their skin to do it."