As I'll be trading off Storytelling duties with others in our group, I will need a player character of my own. I've got two ideas, the first I'm calling the "blank slate", the second is the "fish out of water." You'll see why they have those titles in a moment.
Concept #1
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Do you know what it is like to be completely alone? No, I suppose not. Few others do. Let me tell you my story. I was born the middle child to a blue colar family in a blue colar Pennsylvania town. Football town, a place where everything revolves around those games. I was a sickly child, not strong, not quick. In that society, worthless. My parents doted on my kid sister and demanded everything of my older brother, but largely ignored me. They hardly noticed that I never lost my baby teeth the way other kids do. No, mine got knocked out by the bullies on the playground. They never cared about the bruises. "It'll toughen him up." my father would say and that ended all discussion of the matter.
And so it was through grade school, and even into middle school. But then I found where my dad kept his .357 Magnum. I smuggled it to school one day, tucked in my belt. I felt on top of the world as I marched up to Tommy Morris' desk in homeroom. He was the team's star running back, going to play for Penn State and then the NFL one day. He was also the biggest bully in school. "What the fuck do you want?" he snarled at me. I pulled the gun and watched him piss himself. Then I pulled the trigger. Twice.
It was the same day the space shuttle blew up. But in my town, no one remembers it as the day the Challenger exploded. No, it was the day "that kid shot Tommy Morris." They don't even remember my name, just his.
The next two years were a blur. Arrested for murder. My folks were run out of town. Tried as an adult. Guilty. Twenty-five to life. Frackville Prison. And there I was, a lamb among the wolves, in a maximum security penitentary, all at the tender age of 14.
That was...well, there aren't words for it. I did my best to keep my head down. Wasn't too hard. At first, I wasn't an asset or a threat to the other inmates. Occasionally, one would come to me for "conjugal relief." That was unpleasant to put it mildly, but those stopped after a while. I spent most of my days in the library or the gym, learning all the stuff I was missing in school and packing on the muscle, because what else was there to do?
My actual adult years were different. Now, the other prisoners wanted a piece of me, either as an ally in their futile games of power, or to take me down a notch. But I kept out of it, stayed neutral, behaved myself, and the years past. Then word came that the system was broke, and they were letting as many people go as they could. Parole hearing became a joke and my required 25 years were up.
A few commendations for good behavior and they rubber-stamped me right out the door. But where I was going to go? My family was long gone and no one in my home town wanted to remember me. A fellow prisoner, Jimmy, was released the same day, having served his debt to society for armed robbery. He was from Philly and suggested we go there.
It wasn't easy finding work at first, but the clubs and bars down on South Street always needed some muscle. I got a job as a bouncer. The proprietor barely looked 20, but she gave me a chance, decent hours, decent pay, and didn't seem to care about my record. Hell, she even said it something of an asset in that line of work. Made me scary, she told me.
I worked there for about a year, was starting to take classes at Temple. It was a decent life. But I was still alone and really didn't know how I was going to fix that. My classmates at Temple were kids, and no one gets friendly with the bouncer at a bar. Well, no one but her.
Her name was Marissa, and apparently she found me handsome or something. I had no idea how to respond to that. I had missed all those formative social years. Never went to homecoming to the prom. Never fooled around and had one-night-stands in college. My only sexual experience was being bottomed in Cell 17 by a man named Bubba. But she didn't seem to mind that. Even said my "innocence" was endearing. I fell for her so hard and she for me.
One night, after I got off work, we snuck into the alley behind the club. She was going to show me how it was done. I just gotten my pants down when something struck from behind and everything went black. When I awoke, I was alone and felt strange. I could hear things I'd never heard before, smell things too, like a whole new world had opened up to me. And I found Marissa, what was left of her, in a nearby dumpster. I ran.
I soon found out I couldn't abide the sunlight. And that food no longer satisfied my hungers. Blood was all I wanted. I'd become something monstrous. I might have self-destructed within a week had my boss not found me. The secret of her odd youth now made sense. She was like me, a vampire.
Rebecca took me in, said that since I was abandoned by my sire, that she would take me in and teach me the ways of the kindred. Soon, I will meet the "Prince" and become fully introduced into their society. Good. Maybe I'll meet the one who made me this way. Maybe I'll meet the one who killed the only person who ever loved me. And then I'll do to him what I did to Tommy Morris.
Clan: Gangrel or Nosferatu
Stats: Physical primary. Weak social.
Skills: Physical primary. Weak knowledge.
Disciplines: Physical only. Nothing esoteric or supernatural.
Concept #2
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They don't tell you in the history books about how cold it really was at Valley Forge. How miserable the conditions. Well, some of the historians do, but with 200 years detachment, it never comes across quite as brutal as it should. No pay. Little to no food. Bitter cold and snow. Murmurs of mutiny every day and Washington, the great saint of our nation, become more brutal and more monstrous to keep the army together.
I grew sick of seeing men be shot for nothing more than a desire for hearth and home. I fled into the night, past sentries who had frozen to death at their posts. I figured I had nothing left to lose. I would either die like them at Valley Forge, be shot for desertion, or shot by the British as a spy, but maybe I might slip between all those horrid fates and see my home again.
The British however did catch. Although not really the British, their Hessian mercenaries. Since I knew a bit of German, I was able to convince them that I knew a bit of Washington's plans. I didn't know much, but I bargained what I did know for a chance at life. When the spring came and the Hessians repelled Washington's first advance, the British credited me with the victory. General Monroe wanted to see me, to thank me personally.
General Thomas Monroe was not what I expected. You know him now as the great ancient of our city, but this was long ago, before his encounter with the 13th disciple and conversion to fanaticism. During the Revolution, he was a Royalist, determined to keep America in English hands and Philadelphia out of Carthian hands. He was more successful with the latter, but not entirely. The throne went to another. Another that I, now a vampire, served with fidelity and loyalty. Not that it mattered.
Monroe was not keen to forgive my betrayal. By the 1890s, he'd manuevered his allies in such a way to leave me vulnerable, ripe for his revenge. A well-planned false accusation and Prince Baird called a blood hunt to destroy me. I fled to Montgomery County, dug a hole in a field, and went to sleep within it.
The builders who disturbed my slumber a hundred years later did not live long to regret their mistake. I awoke to a brand new world. Prince Baird dead, Monroe is stripped of most of his power and soon to enter torpor himself, and the city is now in the hands of a young Carthian Prince named Michael Allens. I understand little of this modern world, but I am certain that I remember enough to teach this young Prince a thing or two. School's in session.
Clan: Mekhet
Stats: Mental high. Social weak
Skills: ?
Disciplines: Obfuscate
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