Vampire.
Unaligned Nosferatu.

Background
Once upon a time, there was a man named Jack. Jack was good man, he attended mass regularly, and he had a lovely wife named Althea. She was a little bit of a hippie, liked the long hair and bare feet and the like, but she stayed away from the drug scene, which was good for Jack since he worked as a beat cop in a small town. Since his police duties were light, he also volunteered with the church to work with underprivileged children - he was like a big brother to them. Literally. Jack was huge.

Jack and Althea used to live in an apartment in the city, but when they found out that they were going to have a baby, they decided to move to a house. What luck that they found one for sale for a huge bargain in the same town in which Jack worked! It was a large house, two stories, a little run-down, but they would have time to fix it up before the baby got there. Life was good for Jack.

One night, within the first week of living there, Jack had to carry some boxes down to the basement for storage. While there, he met the house's original occupant - a Nosferatu named Elizabeth Laughlin whose skin crawled constantly. She had been watching the family, you see, and was jealous of their happiness and love; she was especially jealous of Althea, who was as beautiful as Elizabeth was in life (perhaps more so). To spite Althea, she Embraced Jack.

Elizabeth taught Jack about the Kindred need for blood, but he was horrified at the monster he had become. He looked nothing like his formal self - his skin was an ashen gray, he couldn't stand up straight anymore, and his eyes glowed a feral yellow. There was no way he could pass for human anymore. Elizabeth also taught him about the Masquerade, and so Jack spent the better part of a week hiding in the warrens deep under his yard that were accessed through a secret door in the basement.

Meanwhile, police were searching for Jack, to no avail. Althea was stricken with grief; the only thing that kept her going was the hope that Jack might yet be found.

Elizabeth hadn't told Jack about torpor or frenzy, and so Jack sought to starve himself to death. Perhaps knowing this, perhaps waiting to see how Jack would handle his new unlife, Elizabeth stayed well away from him, deeper in the warrens.

One night, Jack could feel it - he had run dry, and so death was surely upon him. His only wish was to see Althea one last time, just to say goodbye. Upon seeing his wife, six months pregnant and full of life, the Beast within him reared its ugly head and attacked.

When Jack woke up, Althea was dead.

Surely she would wake up, just like he did. Surely they could be together forever.

She didn't wake up.

Jack went to his Sire for information and guidance - as much as he hated Elizabeth, she was the only vampire he knew.

She mocked him for his ignorance, and told him to dump the body. Let the wolves have it, she said.

The Beast raged, but Jack held it back this time. He would wait, and watch, and plan his revenge.

He let the wolves devour his beloved, for it was necessary for the Masquerade. He drained the wolves, and then he and Althea were together. He waited, and grew stronger, and had his revenge five years later, when he beat Elizabeth into torpor and then drank of her. But there something else there, other than Vitae; something with more power. This was Elizabeth's soul, and he drank that as well.

Jack would have met the sunrise after that, were it not for two arrivals. The first was his grandsire, Geoffrey, who Jack had never met before because he never left the house and Geoffrey lived in the city. Geoffrey could feel what had happened to Elizabeth because of the blood ties, and he came to investigate; it turned out that he and Jack had a lot in common - they both were police in life, and they were both horrified at first at what they had become. "Don't worry," said Geoffrey as he left, "it gets better."

While Jack was contemplating this, Althea manifested briefly before his eyes. She didn't speak, but he could see the love and gratitude in her eyes. He could also see how her neck was ripped open and a blood-trail down her white shirt - his doing. Jack felt a great surge of guilt and remorse, and he knew that he couldn't die until he had sufficiently atoned for his sins.

The disappearance of the family, however, made the house into a legend amongst the kids. They constantly dared each other to stay in the "murder house", and there were always looky-loos around. Jack knew that if he wanted to stay safe, he would have to do something.

Jack had felt the power that Kindred blood has when he drained his Sire. To see what would happen, he fed some of it to a rat. Nothing much happened, so the next night he tried it again, this time willing something to happen. The rat became clingy, and it could chew through the wall like it was nothing. Jack knew something had happened, so he asked Geoffrey about it. And so Geoffrey explained about the Vinculum, thralls, and ghouls. Jack did a decent job at keeping hidden, having developed some powers of Obfuscate, and Nightmare kept the nosiest people away, but he could see the potential in having an eternal daytime liason.

One night, some years later, a young priest showed up to cleanse the house of the wicked spirits that had inhabited it (so the townsfolk thought of it). Jack went to scare him, but rather than running like the rest, the priest passed out. Jack took this time to feed the man some of his blood, and went back into hiding. When the priest woke up, he didn't know what had happened; he assumed the taste of blood in his mouth was a result of passing out - maybe he had bitten his tongue. The priest, young Brendan Callahan, went back to the church to pray and prepare himself to try it again the next night.

This time, however, instead of scaring him, Jack presented himself to the priest. Callahan faltered, stuttered, and eventually asked, "What are you?"

Jack told his story and explained what he needed the priest for - namely, someone to keep the townsfolk calm and away from his house. Callahan agreed that this was a worthy cause, and acquiesced to drinking Jack's blood.

Forty-one years after the tragic deaths of Jack and Althea Baker, they're still around. Jack still sleeps in the basement, feeding on animals (though Geoffrey has said that that will inevitably change); Father Callahan still warns people away from the old Baker house; and Althea has stuck by her man as a ghost.

Notes

• My version of Jack was born in Oregon in 1938 and Embraced in 1966. He diablerized Elizabeth in 1971, and ghouled Callahan in 1976.
• Jack doesn't leave the house much (like, at all), so he's uninvolved in the city's politics. Geoffrey drags him to Elysium gatherings once in a while, so he's not completely ignorant of the covenants.
  
• The Lancea Sanctum is repellent to him, because he sees it as a Kindred perversion of religion, but he might be willing to give the Ordo Dracul a try if he hears about the Coil that would let him feed on animals no matter how potent his blood gets.
• Jack is an anchor for Althea.
• He has two derangements after killing Althea - a phobia of crowds (he thinks that if he's around a bunch of people, he'll frenzy again), and an obsession with Althea's things (everything has to be in the right spot - it's what she would've wanted).
• Appearance: He usually wears a friar's robe (an old Halloween costume of his), which helps to conceal his mass; he is usually hunched over (which also helps to conceal how large he is), and the hood is always up. The most that Kindred see of Jack is gray, claw-like hands and his glowing yellow eyes.

Character Sheet
See the thread, below.

Uploaded By: Sheer