Clovis Lavigne

Background

Generation - 4

Contacts - 2

Resources - 3

Influence - 1

Domain - 1

Age - 2

Virtues

Conviction - 2

Instinct - 2

Courage - 3

Humanity - 4
Willpower - 7

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EXTRAS
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Languages

French
English
Arabic
Ancient Egyptian

Merits / Flaws

Dark Secret - Minus 1

Duel Nature - Plus 2

Combination Disciplines

Lifesong

This power allows the Vampire to assess any single statement made by the subject and look for the essensce of that subjects being beneath the words she speaks. The vampire needs to speak no words himself; he simply interprets the statement offered to him.

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BIOGRAPHY
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Clovis has a very interesting story, and he guards it with his unlife. He was born in Lavigne in central France in 1770, the 2nd son of a fairly well to do merchant family. Clovis had no wish to be a merchant, nor did he envisage joining the priesthood as his mother wished, so at the age of sixteen he enlisted in the Kings Army as a junior officer. In 1790 he sided with the republicans and transfered his commission, joining Bonoparts cause. Four years in the Kings Army had given Clovis a very interesting skill set, and Napoleon took an interest, promoting him to Lieutenant-Colonel and tasking him as one of his exploratory officers. 

Clovis was a key member of Napoleon's men, moving forward of the main French force to scout out enemy groups and provide detailed information to be given to Napoleon and his commanding officers at HQ. He often infriltrated enemy territory, disguised as one of the local inhabitants, to get eyes on information and contact spys within the area. He was highly valued by Bonaparte and was active through the first and second Coalition wars. In 1798, Bonoparte tasked Clovis to infiltrate and report the disposition and strength of the British forces stationed in Egypt.

Clovis, pleased to serve the man he had grown to trust and respect, left the camp that night. Donning the look of a local, he crossed into Egypt proper and began to make his way towards the capital. Searching for a place to bed down for the night, he stumbled upon an open tomb. Crossing over the threshhold, he realised the toom had only recently been opened. The air was still stale and dust perforated the air. He advanced down the tunnel, realising that many of the artifacts that must have been sealed inside it had been taken, their positions marked by gaps where no dust had settled.

The British were clearly interested in these tooms but he resoned that they must have already ransacked this one and moved on. Before he could make any further thoughts, he was struck from behind and thrown to the floor. He turned to see what looked like a dried corpse leering down at him, and before he could even make a move to defend himself, the thing had sunk large fangs deep into his neck. He struggled to free himself but to no avail, as he found himself over powered. After what seemed like hours, though it was only a minute or so, the thing released him.

Looking up from the floor, he was shocked to see that the thing now standing before him was a young petit, beautiful women, her skin a dark ebony colour, her eyes yellow in the half light. She said something to him but he did not understand. He replied in French but this seemed to confuse her just as much as her speach had confused him. She studied him for a few moments, smiled and bent down, once again biting into his neck. The pain was excruciating and there was nothing he could do about it. She drank his blood, for that is what she was doing he realised, and he knew he was going to die.

When she drank all she could, she did a strange thing. She dragged a sharp nail across her wrist until blood flowed from the cut she had made and offered it to him. And the she thrust the bleeding cut into his mouth. Without a conscious thought, he begin to drink her blood and a strange sensation stole over him. He felt his heart stop, but he was still alive. And then a ravenous stole over him. The blood from her cut wrist suddenly wasn't enough. He got to his feet and realised he was taller and stronger than this tiny ebony skinned women before him.

Clovis frenzied. Now it was him overpowering her, now it was him feeling his fangs breaking through the gum in his mouth. And with a hunger he had never felt before, he burried his fangs into her neck. Her struggled became weaker and weaker, soon her body hung limp in his hands, but still he drank until no more blood flowed through the wound in the neck. He released her now lifeless body which slumped to the floor and then he past out. In his fevered dreams, something else stirred within him. It was angry and hurt, wailing at its imprisonment.

On waking he realised the thing he had dreamed about was not a dream. Something had taken up residence in his head and it was this that had awoken him. And it was speaking in french, or so he thought. The vampire he had consumed not resided in his mind. Her name was Nehkbet and she was very old. A member of the Vampiric council of Egypt, the tomb he had stumbled upon was hers. He got none of this information from her, but flashes of her own memories that came in waves, crashing on the shore of his psychy and leaving him disorientated. 

In secret she had gone in to torpor, sealed away in this tomb. Her unlife as a vampire had been in jeopardy and this had been her final option. He saw many other memories, but the shear volume was so much that he could not properly process them all. Her anger and dispair was monumental, her grief at what she saw as a great tragedy overwhelmed him even more than her memories had, and he felt that it he did not contain this, he would go mad. He began to process and store all the memories he had seen, and then compartmentalised them for later.

Realising what he was doing, she shouted curses at him in a language he realised was not french, but Ancient Egyptian. He pushed her as far back in his mind as he could, until she was just a buzzing sound in his ear. Knowing he could only move by night, he left the tomb and began making his way back to France. The years past and still her grief did not abate. He survived day by day, moving with the night, sleeping by day in whichever dark place he could find. When he became hungry, he would feed on whichever poor local he came across until he was sated. He never killed. That was not his way.

As the years past, he became accustomed to his unlife. He moved from one Vampire community to the next, but didn't stay long. It had taken her many years to finally accept her situation, but Nehkbet had come round to him. They had a standoffish relationship. It would always begin with him coaxing her out of her depression with words in Ancient Egyption. She would scowl at him for using her tong, something he had gained from diabalorising her. He had learnt the term and what it meant from her memories. It seemed she had done it several times before her self induced torpor.

He had learnt from this that it was considered an abominable act and that it left a stain on the vampires aura. Because of this he had shunned contact with other vampires as much as was possible. He did not want to risk one of them discerning his aura. He had learnt from Nekhbet that certain vampires had abilities. These abilities varied dependant on which bloodline they came from. She told Clovis that he was a Setite, and that theirs was a despised bloodline. She grudgingly taught him all about his abilities and the history of the clan. She also allowed him to see more of her memories.

And this was how it would continue, her grudging help and his grudging acceptance. In was in 1900, in Paris, when Nehkbet tried to take control of him. It was the first and last time she would try. He was holed up in an apartment building he'd bought a few months before. He had developed the ability to alter the memories of the humans he came into contact with. He had used this power after feeding, taking the money they had on them and erasing from their memories all knowledge of his presence or the money he had taken. Using this ability he had gathered enough money to aquire the deeds for the room.

Unfortunately he had been lax of late and had not realised until it was took late how low on blood he was. He frenzied and in this instance, Nehkbet struck. But something strange happened. Both found themselves in possession of Clovis' body, each have control of one half. And a strange parody of a fight broke out. Each began to beat the other up, Clovis' body was thrown from one end of the flat to the other, curses flying from his mouth, first Egyption, then Arabic, French and English. They each threatened to stake the other and neither gave in.

After ten minutes, a battered and beaten Clovis stood in the remains of his flat. He was hunched over, bleeding from many wounds. A furious battle seemed to be going on behind his blank looking eyes. Inside his mind they continued their fight, their two consciouses clashing repeatedly again each other. But soon even this became futile as they grew exhusted. Both backed down and for what seemed like hours, they stared across the black abyse that was the mind they inhabited. He looked at her and she glared back at him.

After awhile, Clovis came back to his body and gingerly sat down on the floor. He ached and he was ravenous, but he was still alive, or dead. Whichever was the accepted term for his situation. Into the silence came the sound of his door being knocked. Slowly he rose to his feet and padded over to the door. When he opened it, he was greeted by the shiney green eyes of his downstairs neighbour. She was only young, 20 or so by his reckoning. She had long red hair and curves that any women would die for. And incidentally enough, she was exactly what he needed.

Seeing the blood on his face and his pale features, she bulked a little at first, but she had always harboured a interest in Clovis, he'd gleamed her true feelings from the few times they spoken to each other. He invited her into his room and taking a look around to make sure no one else was around, he closed the door. That night he fed from her, enjoying the taste of her blood and the feel of her body in his hands. And he reasoned that he would keep her for himself. He wiped the memory of his feeding from her mind, but invited her to come back again whenever she wished.

Once she was gone, he lay on his bed and closed his eyes. Once more inside the abyse that was his mind, he found Nekhbet standing before him. He had always gloried in her perfect image. The dark ebony skin, the haunt visage and the yellow eyes. She was beautiful, that was for sure. But she was also a part of his very soul now. And their tussel had made him realise that somethingh had to be done. They spoke long and their conversation took many turns. She admited that she was not stronge enough to take him over but that she was too strong to just fade away.

He admited that he could not make her leave his mind and that they were at an impass. After long hours of talking, they agreed to help each other out. She would no longer covert his body for her own and he would not wish for her destruction. They would share his body and mind and work together to better their now joined existences. As Clovis reasoned, if they could survive over a hundred years together with only one incident such as this, then they could survive a lot more. She agreed and they shook hands. This agreement was to form a symbiosis of sorts. They became one, two halfs of a whole.

And this is how it has been ever since. Ninety two years later and Clovis and Nehkbet continue to work together. They are like a fueding couple, her sometimes dark and brooding temperament clouding Clovis' otherwise upbeat thoughts. But their union has made things interesting. In the 92 years since their first fight, Clovis has frenzied only 3 times. And each time, Nehkbet takes over, riding the waves of frenzied hunger, protecting their shared body and Clovis himself. She seeks out an easy target and feeds but can only maintain control while Clovis is unconscious. As soon as he wakes, she returns control to him.

In the 1920's, Clovis opened a successful bar called 'Lavigne' which in English translates as 'The Vinyard'. It was his idea to make a go of being a businessman. His days as a soldier were over. He had, like most Vampires, avoided the first world war and its atrocites. The bar was an instant hit, especially for the Vampire fraternity, who flocked to its late night rooms. It was there that they could find humans willing to be fed on or embrased. A safe haven for young vampires who were still getting used to their new unlife.

For nearly twenty years, Clovis enjoyed a relaxed life, running the bar by night and entrusting its daytime hours to his ghouled staff. No one ever questioned why the owner never appeared in the day. And if they made a nuisance of themselves, Clovis would make sure they forgot their questions. A vampire that would visit him regularly was none other than the Red haired women who knocked on his door all those years before. She was his childer and her name was Annette. But his perfect little world was shattered with start of the Second World War.

He would soon find that he would need to become the solider he had left behind. Pulled into a secret war, he and other vampires tasked with liberating France from the clutches of the German Vampires flooding into the country. It was bloody and bitter and many died. Annette was one of them. Staked and diabolarised. And Clovis could only watch. The anger was two fold. Nekhbet had become fond of Aurelie. She had been their childer afterall. His pain was hers. And it became a counter point to the whole occupation. Clovis murdered indiscrimately. I didn't matter, alive or dead. He made them pay.

If they wore the uniform of a German, then they were fair game. A dark rumour began to circulate. Of a nameless monsters that prayed on German soldiers. The French resistance used it to their advantage. They were unaware of the Vampires and their war. They hadn't a clue that the nightmare that was circulating was true. That there was a nameless monster running amoke in the streets of Paris. And his name was Clovis Lavigne. He and Nekhbet were demons in the night and no one saw them coming. Even when the war ended, it wasn't enough for Clovis. Peace would not come.

He had to constantly fight the urge to kill. The war had left its mark on him as sure as Nekhbet's turning him into an Vampire had. Every noise, every sudden movement had him turning ready to kill. Nekhbet was of a similar position. Their moods often merged into one in these times and the dreams at night were terrible on both. Clovis reopened Lavigne two years after the war had ended. Many Vampires had died over the course of the war and equally many had been created. Created as fodder for the war that had been fought.

Of those that had survived, few had stayed in the place that held so many horrid memories. But those that stayed needed somewhere they could go. Somewhere they could be safe in a city still recovering from the war. Clovis reluctantly reopened Lavigne for these downtrodden souls. Nekhbet didn't comment. She did not care either way. From 1947 to 1980, Clovis ran the Lavigne, but he never made another Childer, though he was asked on several occasions by young, impressionable women. He politely refused. It was then that he received some interesting news.

He had never found out who the Vampire was that had diabolarised poor Annette. He had tried to find him on the night of her death but the Vampire had avoided his clutches. It was then, at the beginning of Thatchers time as Prime Minister of Great Britain, that Clovis heard a rumour. A vampire who had been quite high in the German secret police had recently moved to London. And it was around this time that a spate of grizzly deaths had occurred, all vampires, all diabolarised. Whats more, each had been left with some sort of calling card. And it was this that peaked his interest.

It was a playing card, a jack of Clubs, with a german swastica crudley drawn ontop. And a similar card had been left on the body of dear Annette. With this information, and at the urgings of Nekhbet, Clovis left Paris. The Lavigne would continue on under  Ghouled management. In good hands. A cash cow that he would continue to make a profit from. But his destination was the United Kingdom. To find the killer of his Annette. To avenge her death and lay his demons to rest. 36 years after Clovis Left Paris, In Birmingham, a old club was purchased by an unknown businessman. 

'Under new Management'

Read the sign on the door. A week later the clubs name was changed.

'The Vinyard
Opening Soon'