Tzimisce Newsletter: July 1999

In Focus with Lambach

Skill Set and Special Ability

Backstory

His Life

The Tzimisce clan loomed over the noble families of medieval Hungary and Romania, casting a long shadow over all their houses. The vampire clan selected many of its neonates from a pool of powerful young aristocrats who were raised specifically to become undead. This ensured them a line of noble-born fledglings, bred to wield power. Unfortunately, it also created a host of spoiled childer with weak genes and weaker wills Ð childer like Lambach Ruthven.

His Death

Though born to privilege and power, Lambach Ruthven never wielded his command with much confidence or courage. A weak, indecisive man, he became a weak, indecisive vampire lord, promoted over far worthier rivals by dint of the accident of his birth. He flourished only by squandering the great reserve of power his ancestors had stored for him.

He lived his life in fear of the inevitable Embrace and tried his best to avoid it. Because he spent so much time dreading the bite, he suffered greatly when his Tzimisce sire drained his blood. The vampiric ritual lasted only three hours, but to Lambach it felt like an eternity of sheer and utter hell. Lambach suffered the torments of the damned and did not come though the ordeal intact. After the excruciating agony subsided, he withdrew into him self and became and anxiety-ridden, desperate, terrified bully.

His Unlife

Lambach lacked the courage and cleverness to rule effectively, but inherited a large power base to administrate and many loyal followers. His Tzimisce leaders demanded that he help fight the Tremere, fend off the rampaging anarchs, and control the ebb and flow of mortal power. He usually did a poor job and seldom measured up to complicated tasks, which often involved toppling princes from their thrones and installing weaker monarchs.

But trouble stirred in the Transylvanian highlands. The anarchs, heady from their success in destroying and committing diablerie upon the Lasombra Antediluvian, attacked the Tzimisce clan in force. The captured many weaker Tzimisces, demanding that they join the anarchs or die. Lambach's sire called all his childer to defend him and escaped, leaving his childer to be slain. Lambach put up a weak fight before the renegades overwhelmed and captured him. Lambach agreed to convert rather than die.

The anarch leader Lugoj broke Lambach's Blood Bond to the Tzimisces, but could not instill courage in him. Still, Lugoj needed Lambach's knowledge to lead his fratricidal band to the hiding place of the Tzimisce founder. Lambach took Lugoj and a mob of anarchs to the ancient cathedral where the Tzimisce Antediluvian slumbered. The Tzimisce guardians put up a great fight, but after a wicked battle, the anarchs won. They dispelled the magical protections and unearthed the ancient vampire from his torpor. Lugoj himself greedily consumed the Antediluvian's blood.

But fear welled up in Lambach when he saw how weak the Antediluvian seemed as if he were no more powerful than a neonate. He studied the Antediluvian's body before it crumbled to dust, and sweated blood when he saw telltale signs of fleshcrafting. Lambach knew well the power of the Tzimisces to mold the mortal clay, enabling them to disguise and disfigure themselves and others. The destroyed vampire was not the Antediluvian, but had been fleshcrafted to look like him.

As the anarchs rejoiced in their triumph, Lambach fearfully studied the carnage in the cathedral. A wave of terror overcame him, for his advanced powers of perception showed him something the other anarchs could not see.

The real anarch leader Lugoj hung behind them, impaled on a massive wooden hook and hidden with a powerful spell of invisibility. So who was the Lugoj who stood rejoicing before them?

In a gut-rending flash, Lambach realized what had happened. The Tzimisce Antediluvian was not dead, but had subdued the anarch leader Lugoj during the fight and taken over his form. The anarchs had killed and drunk the blood of a fleshcrafted lookalike, not the real Antediluvian. The real Antediluvian was standing in their midst, pretending to be the anarch leader.

"Lugoj" just smiled at Lambach, as Lambach stared in horror. "Be a good lad," the Antediluvian warned, as his blazing eyes pierced Lambach to the core. He then announced to the other anarchs:

"Alas, I must now go into torpor like the very one whom I have just destroyed. You will now complete the conquest of the hated Tzimisces. I shall wait for you, On the night of Gehenna, I shall arise and we shall rule the world together! While the other Antediluvians eat their clans, I will join with you, my trusted brethren, and destroy the other Antediluvians! We shall be complete, and we shall prevail! Wait for Gehenna. Plan for Gehenna. On the night of Gehenna, I shall come for you."

Lambach tried to flee the castle ahead of the other anarchs, but they caught him and made sure he stayed in line. He feared telling them that the Antediluvian lived on. He wondered if the Antediluvian would rise up against him or reward him on Gehenna. The frightened Lambach went back to his work controlling mortal affairs of state. Though he now worked for the anarchs and the newly formed Sabbat, he felt the orders from the top were similar to his old orders.

For example, he had to continue promoting the members of the Danesti family in their bid for the Wallachian throne. But upstart rulers gave him a hard time, and by the time Prince Vlad Dracula ascended the throne, Lambach struggled for any influence at all. He supported Dracula's cousins Vladislav II and Dan III in their bits to wrest Dracula's throne from the rightful heir.

Thanks to Lambach's incompetence, Vlad clung to power and even caught one of Lambach's vampiric spies. The Impaler prince kept the neonate spy imprisoned in Castle Dracula and drank his powerful blood to gain inhuman strength.

Lambach's Sabbat leader Lord Tabak punished Lambach for allowing this flagrant violation of vampiric power, and led a group of vampires to depose the impudent prince. But before they reached Castle Dracula, they walked into a trap. A group of Camarilla Justicars ambushed them, capturing Lambach, forcing Tabak into torpor, and destroying the rest.

Before the Justicars could destroy Lambach, however, the mortal prince Dracula attacked, slaying the weakened Justicars. Dracula forced Lambach to turn him into a vampire and then drained the blood of Lambach's defenseless regent Tabak.

Dracula turned Lambach loose, but not before warning his "sire" never to challenge him. Lambach fled and returned to the Tzimisces. He feared they would destroy him if they knew he unleashed a vampire prince upon the world who had the power of his sire Tabak, but was loyal only to himself. So he did not reveal what happened to him, and reported only the Justicar attack. Dracula soon visited the Tzimisces, refusing the describe his parentage.

His Nature

Lambach's every day is filled with fear and regret. He knows the anarchs did not kill their founder as the Lasombra anarchs did. Unfortunately, all the Tzimisce anarchs believe they did. The Tzimisce Antediluvian lives on, waiting patiently for a rapidly approaching Gehenna. But what then? Will the unsuspecting clan fall prey to the wily Antediluvian? Will the ancient vampire reward Lambach's silence? Or will he have a special torture waiting for his treacherous descendant?

Lambach regrets not revealing the corpse of the impaled Lugoj, or at least trying to make the other anarchs see it. He regrets joining the anarchs. He regrets trying to depose Vlad Dracula, a fiasco that ended in Dracula's existence as an independent Tzimisce. He regrets much. He has tried confiding his fears in other anarchs, but they scoff at the through of the Antediluvian's continued existence. So he waits for Gehenna with growing unease and fear.

Excerpt from Children of the Inquisition- by Dan Greenberg

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