Clown "The Primogen Council has already designated those feeding grounds? My sincerest apologies, Lord Seneschal. I don't know what I was thinking." You were never satisfied with being anything less than the best. With class president, the school newspaper, and many, many theatrical roles to worry about, you didn't have time for academics. The low grades didn't matter- it was the attention that gave you a thrill. Contrary to your parents' wishes, you studied theater at a local state school, and even began taking local circus classes. College didn't suit you, though, and you ended up pursuing the only occupation in which you'd consistently excelled- the circus. You didn't have the physical coordination for most acts, but your charisma, cleverness, and sense of timing made you an ideal clown. Despite critical acclaim and a degree of happiness, you often felt that the making people laugh was entirely too easy. One night, a Malkavian who had sensed your ambition gave you the opportunity to put your talents to better use. Intrigued, you accepted. Roleplaying: Now you play a much more challenging role, but you do it with impeccable grace. Much to your sire's delight, you took to the jyhad like a duck to water, and have already made significant progress towards praxis. Your clowning is on a grand and subtle scale- creating illusions for your political rivals, allowing them to think they've won, and playing the "inexperienced Malkavian neonate" to the hilt. You are a refined lady of the Camarilla, whose simple and straightforward politeness stands above the pseudo-European accents of the would-be kindred nobility. You are also consistently underestimated, and your perceived naivete is a subtle but powerful weapon in the social games of politics. Notes: Nobody knows you were a clown as a mortal. It had better damn well stay that way. Nature: Praise-Seeker Demeanor: Bon Vivant Derangement: Paranoia Merit: Prestigious Sire Sleeper "I'm not saying he is important to me, and I'm not saying he's not. That's information, and that you'd have to pay for. Now, why don't you tell me what you know about his location, before I decide to discuss your recent behavior with the Prince." It could have happened to anyone. You and Julia were walking back from the restaurant, a bit tipsy, when an unshaven, middle-aged man in a grimy sweater staggered toward you. What happened next was too painful for you to remember. All you can recall is kneeling by her side, watching the growing dark stain on the ground from where he'd torn open her neck, feeling her rapid pulse slow as her glazed eyes dimmed and died. Then, something hit the back of your head, and everything went black. You are in a hospital bed, in a coma, waiting to awaken. The knife took a slice out of your lung, but you'll survive. Once in a great while, you can hear voices above you. The doctors are discussing your unusual condition, or your mother has come in to look at you and cry. Most of the time, however, you're lost in nightmares. In these dreams, the psycho was a vampire, and so are you. It's always nighttime, and there are always other vampires who want to talk to you. At first you ran from them, but now you've learned their jargon and are beginning to understand their society. One thing is certain in your mind, though. Julia's murderer is still there, somewhere in your dreams, and you have to kill him to wake up. Roleplaying: To any other kindred, you appear as normal as possible. You've been in this coma for years, after all, and have learned to impersonate vampires perfectly. You speak their language. You play their games. But the only thing you really care about is hunting down your "sire", the bastard who killed Julia, and escaping from this nightmare. You will find and kill him by any means, no matter who gets hurt in the process, because it's only a dream. You have to wake up. Notes: When testing against Auspex, remember that your unique perspective on "reality" makes truth a very different concept. Nature: Child Demeanor: Autocrat Derangement: Schizophrenia Flaw: Vengeful Cybermalk "...a freakin' core dump. Some leak in the memory allocation, but the important part was, I got the kludgey piece of crap working. I could hear their freakin' voices, man. Hello? Look, I gotta go, but the you'll read about it in the dead tree. Just don't tell anyone who it was." There are geeks, and then there are geeks. And then there was you. You started on a Commodore 64 before you could ride a bicycle, and it was straight up from there. High school was a breeze- you diverted enough processor time to BS through your humanities classes, without having to skip a beat from your coding. Your college sysop was an anal-retentive control freak, so you fork-bombed his sorry ass and went looking for a real job. You went from guru to guru, perfecting your coding. You'd go phreaking once in a while for cash, but it was beneath your dignity to use your skillz for something so mundane. One late summer night in your Chicago apartment, hyped up on Dew, when the AC went down, you had a tired, sweaty revelation about the nature of thought, information, and communication. It might have been a hallucination, but you swear that you could see directly into the minds of everyone else on the server. Their hopes, dreams, fears- everything. It was just there for a moment, and then you lost it. When you started asking around if anyone else had seen visions about information webs and humankind, you got a lot of shit for being a neo-cyber-hippie. But you also attracted the attention of someone who gave you the opportunity to see a bit more of the big picture. Naturally, you said yes. Roleplaying: You aren't really arrogant, but you are the best. Hacking isn't your calling. You are more interested in networks, cyberculture, and information theory. What you're really looking for is the holy grail which you once glimpsed, the explanation, the biggest mindfuck in creation which will plug your brain straight into everyone else's. The Madness Network is a beginning, but you want to blow the whole thing open and include the entire population of the planet. Notes: I mainly wrote this character because I wanted to see somebody's MMN visions written in C++. Sorry if the jargon isn't correct- I wanted it to sound appropriately geeky, but I'm not a computer person myself. Nature: Visionary Demeanor: Competitor Derangement: Schizophrenia Merit: Ability Aptitude: Computer Ari