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Player Handle: Dusk Name: Rakshasa Age: 90 (1926) Place of birth: British India Age of embrace: 28 (1954) Clan: Gangrel Sect: Anarch Species: Vampire Derangements: None Frenzy Marks: Cat like eyes Skills: Archaeology, History, Unarmed combat, Survival Linguistic skills: English, Hindi, Bengali, Sanskrit and a bit of Latin. Feeding preferences: no special preferences Notable weaponry: Rawr!! Disciplines: Protean (?), Fortitude (?), Animalism (?)
Description
Spoiler: click to toggle Rakshasa's real name doesn't matter, not any more. He stands 6 feet tall with broad shoulders and an overall rugged physique. He sports short, un-combed hair and a bushy, disheveled beard. His original skin color has faded and now resembles a shade of pale grey. On top of that his body is covered with numerous faded scars that seem to be inflicted by animal claws: souvenirs from his training days before his embrace. There are a few faded scars on his face too, most of which are hidden behind his beard. Perhaps his most striking feature are his greyish white, cat like eyes which appear slightly luminescent.  His attire resembles that of cheap, second hand clothes bought from a thrift shop; usually an un-ironed shirt paired with jeans or cargo. This often makes people think he's some sort of homeless man. He always wears a pair of tinted glasses, to mask his eyes and a string of wooden prayer beads wrapped around his wrist. Requested/not-approved: His protean war form is a white werewolf like creature that is known in rumors as the elusive Yeti  His flight form is a white owl
Haven
Spoiler: click to toggle Haven't decided yet. Probably some shoddy place like abandoned warehouse or something. He's cant afford anything better.
History The nightmare
Spoiler: click to toggle It was a usual day at the college. The smell of chalk, students and teachers walking across the hallway, warm sun rays coming through the windows. I am the newest addition to the list of faculty, my parents couldn’t be more proud. “Alright class, attention please. I know you are all anxious about the upcoming test next week, so I was thinking we should…” My words were cut short by the sounds of gunfire. Bullets came flying through from nowhere. I ducked and tried to take cover behind the table. Screams filled the air and after a while silence. After about half a minute of dead silence I mustered the courage to stand up. I witnessed in horror as the whole class lay dead before my eyes and as I stood there in shock I felt something warm and wet on my shirt. I stared at my chest to see my own body soaked in blood, yet I felt no pain. I wanted to call for help but it felt as if my voice was stolen. The room suddenly darkened, the warm sun rays were replaced by a chilling wind. Pale ghostly hands emerged from the unearthly darkness and started to drag me into it. As I tried to free myself and scream no words came out and I heard a whisper from behind me “You should be dead too!”
The nightmare jolted me out of my sleep and I found myself in a cave surrounded by the carcasses of numerous animals, their blood drained. Dried blood stained my hands and mouth. Outside the cave I could hear the fierce wind blew across the snow. I got up and walked up to the mouth of the icy cave. Over the horizon the Himalayas stood in all its majestic glory. I pressed my hand against my chest only to feel no heartbeat. “I should go back to sleep” I murmured to myself; but instead reached into the pocket of my jacket to take out a little diary. As my frozen fingers grasped the pencil I slowly wrote down bits and pieces of my life, that I hold dear, should I ever forget the man that I once was.
A childhood of adversity [I have added an easter egg from one of my favorite writers. Props if you can find it]
Spoiler: click to toggle 1926; Calcutta, British occupied India. They say adversity builds character, well I was born into it. The only child of a housemaid who worked for the wife of a local British officer. I never knew my father, who died before I was born. My mother always said that he was a sepoy. Because of her low wages, she could not afford to send me to school, which meant most of my time during the day was spend playing with some of the other kids of the neighborhood. I always looked forward to the time of the evening she came back home. It was evening story time after all.
“Long ago there was a great and powerful warrior. Mighty though he was, he was still a mortal and aging was his greatest fear. That is when he heard of the legend of the elusive golden flower. This was of course no ordinary flower, the flower’s nectar was supposed to grant one eternal youth and immunity to all ailments.”
There was something about the way she told her stories that captivated me. Or perhaps it was that I was deeply interested in fantasy and mythology.
“Such a flower could only grow in a particular lake in the Himalayas, paradise on earth, a place said to be free from all sorrow, illness and death. A place blessed by the gods where all animals exist peacefully. So the great warrior set off on a long and arduous journey to find the place”
“Oh, oh and did he find the place?” I asked enthusiastically
“Indeed he did. But he found that even paradise is not free from sorrows. An army of rakshasa (demons) led by their powerful warlord had lay siege to the place. The rakshasa overlord had desecrated the lake where the golden flower grows and now the flower’s nectar had become poison.”
“Well so all he has to do was kill the bad guy and purify the place again”
“Easier said than done, child. He was not the only one to challenge the demon king. He saw the corpses of many great heroes who came before him, tried but failed.”
She continued to describe the journey of the lonesome hero as he conquered each challenge thrown at him and finally was able to slay the demon king.
“And as the warrior purified the lake, he woke up from his meditation. He realized that paradise was his own mind full of sorrows and doubts that held him back. The rakshasa were his own inner demons. And as he conquered them he expunged the poison of fear from his heart and purified his soul.” She poked her finger at my chest, pointing at my heart. “Always remember no matter what challenges you face, never let your inner demons win.”
1934-35; Calcutta, British occupied India. I was 8 when my mother passed away due to malaria. Without her, and without any financial support, I soon found myself on the streets. For a year I lived working as a shoeshine boy and then one fateful day I met Dr. William Delapore, professor of archaeology at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University. William had to come to India for the first time to deliver a lecture at the University of Calcutta. Just so it happened, I had set up shop just outside the university. As William was walking into the campus, one of the street kids bump into him and then started bolting in the opposite direction. Fortunately, I knew that bumping into strangers was the usual habit of pickpockets. I also knew no one would care about some rich Englishman getting pickpocketed. Nearly two centuries of ongoing tyranny and oppression had left a lot of anger in people’s minds. Now, I maybe a poor kid, but I encouraged an honest living. After a bit of chasing after the thief, a boy of about my age, I did manage to retrieve the wallet.
I still remember the smile on his face when I gave him back his wallet. There were a lot of notes in that wallet, but I could feel William was more pleased that a street kid had the heart to give it back. He offered me a quite a bit of money reward, which I did accept. It would be pretty stupid not to given my financial condition. I was still there at my stall when William finished his lecture. I don’t why didn’t chose to just walk away. I helped him, he rewarded me, it was over. Instead he took me out to dinner, talked to me about my life and my dead parents. I don’t know why he chose to take me into his family.
Growing up
Spoiler: click to toggle 1937; Cambridge, England. I have been living with William for two years now. Clean clothes, books, food. I couldn’t believe William is raising me all because I returned him his wallet. Since I was convinced I wasn’t dreaming the only other rational explanation was that William was the best that humanity had to offer. William was widower. His wife Katherine died giving birth to his only son Robert. At that time Rob was in his early twenties who never spent much time at home, instead he spent most of his with his friends and his girlfriend at Cambridge University. He was never upset that his father took in a random orphan from the streets, but we never spoke much. Perhaps because I was still in the process of learning English and because of that or maybe some other reasons we never spent any time together. When the war broke out, Robert decided to join the army in 1940, despite his father’s protests. I can’t blame the man. He lost his wife and he just didn’t want to think of the possibility of losing his only child. Unfortunately, all that William feared did come true when Robert did not return from the war. It was heartbreaking to see a man so broken. It took him a year to get back into normalcy and even then he never did fully recover from the shock. Since then I was pretty much the closest thing to family he had left.
1946; Cambridge, England. I decided to walk in my foster father’s shoes and go into academia. I took archeology in college. I was even bright enough to take ancient linguistics as an additional. To be honest that was the hardest part of my studies. Between a choice of Latin, Aztec and Sanskrit I decided to take up the third. I had never really thought back then that my education would change my life in ways I had never expected. When I graduated, William was so proud and so was. I only wished my mother was alive to see me today. Later, I went on to do a PhD despite the challenges of “occasional” racism and bigotry even within the academic circle.
The bloody expedition
Spoiler: click to toggle Year 1953, Jelep La, Tibet. Immediately after my PhD, I have joined a small scientific expedition to the Himalayas. Last year the British govt. obtained rocks on the black market that depicted perfectly preserved cave paintings that possibly date back to 5000 BC. Allegedly the source of these rocks were from a recently exposed glacier, following an earthquake, deep in the Himalayas. As expected, majority of the academic circle simply labelled them as an elaborate forgery; but there were a few of us who believed that this wild tale might just be real. There was no way those rocks were forged. Why even bother to sell them in the black market if they were fake all along. While no government institutes would not bother with such wild goose chases, fortunately for us, we received a very wealthy donation from a source that was kept anonymous to everyone except the team leader. Dr. David Booth. Despite knowing it may turn out be a wild goose chase; I felt compelled by the promise of adventure. I knew William would not like this sort of shadow expedition and I didn’t want to get into an argument with him. I am old enough to take my own decisions in life. So I placed a letter on his desk and left without a word.
We were a group of six people, including myself and Booth. The others were our geologist Dr. Jonathan Walsh; Dr. James Andersen the team doctor; Rudy, a graduate student in Dr. Booth’s lab and Pasang a Sherpa mountaineer and survivalist. We took the road by food beyond the Kharta glacier hoping to reach the site before sunset. Unfortunately, we did not pay enough attention to the weather, which was getting progressively worse and soon we found ourselves in the middle of a raging blizzard. We tried to set up camp but it was near impossible to set up tent under such wind velocity. Desperately making our way through the storm we managed to make out a cave in the distance. As I made my way into the cave I was glad I survived that monster of a storm, now all we have to do is wait till the storm passes away My respite was brief however as we found Rudy missing. All of a sudden the color of our faces began to fade when we realized what might have happened to the poor fellow. Discord and arguments broke out, some blaming Booth for bringing his student with him. Amidst this blame game I could not help but feel a rising sense of dread since the moment I stepped into this ominous cave. I decided to shrug it off for the time being. Pasang kept murmuring about something in his native tongue. After everyone got tired of arguing we decided to put some tents and lay out the sleeping bags, for it looked like the storm is not passing any time soon. Tomorrow we had decided to go looking for John or his corpse. We were woken in the middle of the night by the scream of one of the expedition members. We all woke up to find that Walsh was gone. We found his tent and sleeping bag drenched in blood and the blood trailed off deeper into the cave. At first I thought it was some kind of wild animal that has attacked him, but what kind of animal would live here so high in the mountains and under such harsh climate. Pasang started his murmuring again, the fear was palpable in his voice. “Quiet you! Last thing you want is to be loud and make whatever is in there more aggressive.” Booth chided Pasang in a hushed tone.
We followed the blood trail to find what was left of Walsh. What I saw before me was his mangled and dismembered corpse. There were giant claw wounds across his torso, his guts spilling out. I felt like I was going to throw up. The disappearance and assumed death of John was one thing but this is sickening on a whole different level.
Pasang started speaking again, this time loudly and in broken English “This..this place is cursed. Cuu..ursed! No animal can do this, no animal like that lives here. I am not staying here. I’ll take my chances outside in the storm.” Saying this he started running back towards the entrance of the cave. Soon he faded into the darkness and all we could hear were his footsteps against the cold icy floor. Suddenly the sound of his footsteps were replaced by his shriek. What I saw next made the blood in my veins freeze solid. We saw Pasang’s corpse being dragged into the shadows and two red, demonic eyes were staring right at us. It appeared that the beast hiding in the shadows was feeding on him. I was too scared to even move. Booth pulled out a revolver and fired two rounds at the red, glowing eyes.
A blood curdling roar filled the cave and what I saw next was not meant for mortal eyes. A monster unlike anything I have seen charged at us. The beast resembled something like a cross between a man and a wolf or something similar. The monster was covered in thick white fur. Its hands and legs were most peculiar, each having five digits and they all had ended in thick, curved, razor sharp claws. Its visage was a twisted amalgamation of human and lupine features. Its numerous fangs dripping with blood. Its eyes were like the pits of Tartarus itself. It felt as if the monsters from grandma’s tales had come out to devour us. As it charged at us, Booth and me somehow dodged out of the way but the beast used its momentum and sharp claws to literally rip Andersen’s upper head clean off his shoulders. Only his jaw was left hanging from his neck as blood splattered on the snow. I wanted to scream but I could not. All I could do is ready myself to dodge if the demon tiger charged again. It was then that the beast started speaking in some strange tongue. At first I could not register what he was saying but then I understood he was talking in Sanskrit
“You dare trespass on my land! Thieves! You will find no treasures, only death”
Booth emptied his revolver on the animal but the bullets seemed to simply bounce off of him and in a blink of an eye the animal rushed at him and tore his throat. I watched in my horror as the beast held Booth in its arms and started drinking its blood. It stared at me with a look that seemed to say I’m next. I wasn’t sure what to do but in my desperation I talked to it in the tongue it spoke. “Listen, listen! I am not a thief. Ju..st, Just explorers. Please, please don’t kill me”
The look of doom on the beast’s face was replaced by a look of curiosity as it dropped Booth’s bloodless corpse on the floor. “You speak my tongue?!” I could sense a hint of confusion and curiosity in its voice. It seemed to just stand there not charging at me. I knew this was it. I gathered whatever courage I had in me, got up and bolted towards the cave entrance. I was surprised that the beast did not give chase but it did not matter. I kept running and running aimlessly in the blizzard till I could no more. I was having difficulty breathing in this weather and altitude but I kept moving. I could sense the beast was out there hidden in the blizzard. Instead of chasing it was stalking me, like the exhausted prey that I was. Suddenly I tripped over something. As I tried to get on my feet I noticed it was Jonathan’s frozen corpse. At this point I had no sense of direction anymore and my vision was limited by the blizzard. Then from behind me I heard footsteps on the snow and I looked back, the shape of a bipedal tiger emerged and swiped at me with its paw. I blacked out.
I woke up to find myself back at the cave, my hands and feet tied. I saw a large, muscular and feral looking Tibetan man before me with unkempt white hair, beard and eyebrows. The color of his hair suggested that he must be old but his physique was that of a 30-year-old athletic man. He spoke to me in Sanskrit with a booming voice, like the demon tiger. “Good you are alive. It would have been disappointing if you died so quickly.”
“You? You and the monster, you are the same aren’t you? You killed my group”
“Monster? By your logic all humans are monsters. Yes, I fed on your friends and they made a very sumptuous meal. But then you eat meat of lesser animals too do you not? Now answer me worm, how do you know my tongue? Did you come to steal?”
I was terrified enough to almost piss my pants “Steal? No no, we are scholars and explorers. I know you speak in Sanskrit. I have studied the language in school”
“If you lie to me, I’ll feed you your own tongue.” He paused for a moment. “It has been a long, long while since I had the pleasure of indulging in speech. So should I kill you for intruding into my home or should I keep you around as my pet?” The monster gave a wolfish grin “Or perhaps you will prove to me more than that, much more. We will see.”
Prisoner
Spoiler: click to toggle Year 1954; Himalayas, Tibet. Since the day that I met that monster I had been his prisoner. He had introduced himself to me as “Migoi” or more popularly known as “Yeti” by locals who have seen him. This man or monster or whatever it is. I have noticed that it cannot stand the sun. I have tried to run away during daylight. But he always tracks me down after sunset. Where will I go, there is only snow for miles ahead. I am surviving on rations we packed during the trek up. Occasionally my captor brings in fresh kills, deer, buffalo. He is a savage that drinks only blood and leaves the meat to me. After repeated attempts at escape, he forced me to drink some of his blood. I don’t know what happened after that but all my fears and desire to escape have been quelled. I feel stronger, more alive and the cold barely even affects me anymore. I later learned that by drinking his blood I have become his ghoul, bound to him and now there is no escape for me as I have now become addicted to his vitae.
As time went one he explained more. He revealed that he was an outcast monk who was exiled over a 100 years go by his monastery for his heretical beliefs and his particular condition. What was explained to me that night were things beyond reason or logic. I would have passed them off the ravings of a lunatic or fantasy stories had I not seen proof with my own eyes. White tiger explained, that he was a vampire. One that has inherited the gifts of Ennoia. Gifts? More like curse. He was an immortal that thrives in the night and feed off the blood of the living. His powers and abilities are beyond that of any human. Not only that, he guards an ancient thangka (painting on scroll) and a few scrolls that tell the story of the orgin of the Gangrel, which is what he claims to be. Since that day I had spent many night reading and deciphering the history of this curse. One night he offered me this power, perhaps because he sought a protégé or perhaps he enjoyed taking someone else down the same path he did.
“For this long I have guarded this knowledge with me. But you can read and understand my history, the history of my kind. To be honest I expected that when..IF I ever pass down my blood to someone else, it would be someone more worthy, but you’ll do I guess. So I offer you immortality and the gifts of Ennoia. I offer you once chance to accept this dark blessing. You will learn the ways of the gangrel. You will have a body of iron, command over animals and the earth. With time perhaps you will learn to shape your body as that of the beast within or perhaps the morning mist, if you so desire. Now bow before me and call me master”
I do not know why I accepted his offer. Was it lust for eternal life or was it fear that he would kill me if I refused. Whatever the reason may be I surrendered my soul that night to darkness. That night I died and I was reborn bearing the mark of Caine. I felt the power coursing through my veins, it was overwhelming.
Damnation
Spoiler: click to toggle I no longer remember how many years have passed since that fateful night. All I know is that I am now the childer of the Migoi and I have nowhere else to go. I spent most of my time studying the ancient scrolls. Other times, I trained with my sire to harness the beast within. “Focus! To walk the path that I walk, you must first master the discipline of Fortitude.”
A bone crushing kick comes and hits me in the ribs, followed by an elbow to my jaw that felt like it will rip my jaw clean off. “One of the three gifts we possess is to become as resilient as iron. When you push the world, neonate, the world pushes you back just as hard so you must become as tough as the mountain itself. Master this discipline and you will become nearly invincible against the mundane.” As the days and months went by my body began to harden itself. At first it took active focus, now it’s almost as if my body reacts on its own to incoming blows. Punches, kicks even claws. As a result of this my skin has started to lose color. It has become pale grey.
Next came the discipline of Protean. “The most powerful weapon at our disposal is the discipline of Protean. It is our most sacred gift, never teach it to any other vampire. By channeling your inner beast, you may shape your own body in its image.” My first development of in Protean manifested during my first hunt. As I saw my prey, a mountain goat, my hunger and my need to hunt fueled the disciple as my eyes turned red. I could see my prey even in the darkness of the night. As I chased it down, I discovered my fingers had grown claws., almost 3 inch in length, curved, black and razor sharp.
It took many years, perhaps half a decade, before I had learned to meld with the earth. After all these years of failing, Migoi left me one night near the foothills to hunt. I thought it would be one of the usual hunting nights that have done countless times. What I did not realize was that dawn was approaching soon. As I saw the red hues over the horizon, I panicked. I had nowhere to hide and my Migoi was nowhere to be seen. I thought this was it, I was going to burn to ash. In a last desperate attempt, I buried myself under the slow and lay on my back. I could feel the warmth of the sun refracting though the snow. The mere warmth felt like a searing heat about to peel my hide off. Yet as I lay there calm even in the face of imminent death, I felt I was sinking. At first I thought it was simply the snow and ice melting underneath me. But in a moment I realized I could not move my arms anymore, I had literally fused with the earth and before the sun burnt me to a toast I sank deep into the earth. Since that day I was able to fuse with soft ground surfaces at will, as long as I stayed calm and pretended to fall asleep. Although it was much easier, surprisingly, the more tired I was or if I had sustained injury. It was as if my body was reacting on its own.
Despite my slow and steady advancement in Protean, I was never able to draw out the inner beast. “The white beast” was Migoi’s specialty. Despite teaching me much, he never revealed how he was able to take on that form. “The beast form is merely a reflection of your own inner beast, your inner rage. No one can draw it out but yourself.” After nearly a decade of intense meditation and training, I was able to take on the form of a white owl. Perhaps that was the shape of my inner beast. Owls are after all known to be symbols of knowledge and wisdom. What better to represent a scholar, and to make the deal sweeter, I could fly!
The white beast
Spoiler: click to toggle As the years passed by, I felt my humanity slowly fading away. The curse of undeath is taking its toll on both my body and my mind. I feed on blood, everything else I try to eat tastes like ash and the sun has become the bane of my existence. Time flies yet I remain constant. I felt that I learned all that I could from my sire and now after all these years, I once again felt like a prisoner. I long to go back home. But how can I even show my face to my family. White tiger would not let me leave.
“You have learned some, but there much left to learn. Your training is far from complete. You haven’t made any progress in the art of animalism.”
“Whatever I have learned. I have managed to learn mostly though my own meditation and self-understanding. Your words of wisdom never really did much in accelerating the process.”
“And where will you go cursed child. You think a leech and fit inside civilized society? They will cast you out as they have cast me out. There is no place in the world for immortals like us”
“If there is not, then I will carve out my own place in this world but I will spend an eternity in a cave waiting for the end of the world.”
For the first time truly I was not afraid of The White Beast. For the first time I believed I was strong enough to stand up to him; I was no longer bound to him. Migoi challenged me to a duel. IF I prevail, I can leave, those were the conditions.
It was a bloodbath as our claws rend through each other’s flesh. I gave it all I got but he would not yield. Eventually He took the form of the white beast that slaughtered my entire expedition group. Memories kept flooding in, “They did not deserve to die”. I felt the pain subside as rage took over. For the first time I frenzied and in that moment of frenzy, the inner beast took over my undead flesh, twisting every bone, muscle and fiber…in the image of my sire!
It was a duel of monsters. In the end though I was not able to defeat him, even with the form of the white beast, he was stronger and more experienced. He bested me and knocked me unconscious. I woke up to find myself in a cave surrounded by the carcasses of numerous animals, their blood drained. My sire was nowhere to be seen. However, the old mad had left me a note that I have his permission to walk my own path. Whether I chose to embrace my inner beast or cling onto humanity will be my decision alone.
As I finished writing my journal, I saw my reflection on the ice. The frenzy had left a mark on me. My eyes had turned to a luminescent greyish white and the iris resembles that of a cat or a viper. After sunset I stepped out the cave and began my descent. For the first time in a decade, I felt free.
Homecoming
Spoiler: click to toggle 1965; Cambridge, England. I came back to Cambridge to find my own grave beside Robert’s. Me and everyone else in the expedition was presumed dead when we failed to return. A search party was organized but they came back empty handed. I came back home after a decade to find William, an old man on his deathbed. “You, came back. After all these years” William said in a weak voice. “I had lost my wife, my son and I thought I had lost you too. But you came back. How?”
I wish William had died a man before I saw him. For what I did next damned the soul of the very person that raised me. Perhaps out of pity, grief, selfishness or some misguided sense of hope; I embraced William, knowing it would cure him of his ailments and I can at least have one person who cares for me, endure eternity with me. What I did not know was that the embrace froze his age in time. His illness and weakness was gone, but he still resembled and old cripple. I tried to teach him the ways of the immortal but it was not enough to save him. 5 days after his embrace, William killed himself by walking into sunlight. The night before he had frenzied, killing a 22-year-old nurse that took care of him. He could no longer live with the guilt. When I found him, he was a pile of ashes, the lifeless body of the young girl lay beside the bed, her throat torn off. There was a sealed letter lying beside his bed, his final farewell to me, only days after we met. In the letter he called me his son a Delapore and he prayed for my soul. I wanted to cry out in agony, to feel the pain that he felt, of finding your way back to the only person that mattered and then losing him again. Yet, I felt nothing. My heart was still and my eyes were dry. This curse, had left me emotionally hollow. Perhaps I had become a “Rakshasa” like in my mother’s story. I’m sorry mother, the demons have won.
Wanderer
Spoiler: click to toggle I had no reason to stay in England after the incident. The police had labelled it as some kind of brutal murder, although they “never found the culprit.” William’s assets and house was turned into a home for orphaned and underprivileged children; as per his will. As for me, I spent my years as the scholar that I once was. I travelled to different countries, including my home in India, now a free country. I had an eternity to understand the curse and its history, well at least till I die due to some accident or unfortunate consequences. In my travels I learned of the different vampire sects and societies that operate from the shadows; some vie for political power, some fight a shadow war in the name of Jyhad. In early 2016, I received news that the Delapore home was running out of funds. Over the years I had saved up a sum of money. It wasn’t a small fortune but it was enough to but the home some time before they get a rich philanthropist to bail them out. It’s the least I can do and perhaps it will give me some peace.
Edited by Dusk, Friday, 23. December 2016, 13:01.
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