Esperanza Lucifer

Esperanza Lucifer is one of the most renowned Kindred on the globe. Feared as the Devil of the Deep, the name belongs to a Lasombra who was a famous pirate in the struggle against the Camarilla and whose name and identity is inherited from sire to childe.

The First Esperanza
According to legend, Esperanza was was the daughter of a Spanish naval commander who fought the mostly French and English buccaneers who patrolled the waters off the coast of Hispaniola. Others claim that she was actually a prostitute, brought to the island of Tortuga by the French to sate the rampant lusts of the local pirates. A few voices say she was both: a lord’s daughter captured and forced into prostitution by her captors. Esperanza fell in love with a veteran captain employed by the Dutch West India Company, one Hendrick Jacobszoon, a rather rougharound-the-edges fellow who adopted the surname Lucifer to enhance his image among friend and foe alike. How the affair began is the unclear, but in 1627 the two were together when Hendrick’s ship had a fateful encounter with a pair of Spanish ships sailing from Honduras. The fighting was fierce and Hendrick was injured by a bullet in the action. Ignoring pain, he fought as if possessed, winning the day as well as an untold fortune in guilders. He was unable to enjoy the spoils, however. After he died, Esperanza feared the thought of being left alone with the bloodthirsty crew. In a fit of cpurage and desperation, she came out and declared herself Captain. The first who laughed and treid to grab her was executed and afterwards, the rest of the crew was way more cooperative.

Word of Captain Lucifer’s “mutiny” was widespread, especially in Tortuga and among those seafarers who frequented that infamous port city. She became one of the most wanted pirates when the Spanish recaptured the town in 1654, yet she proved exceptionally capable of evading capture. in a stormy night, she and her ship received a visitor: A Lasombra of great age - some claim a Methuselah from the brood of Lasombra himself, even - rose from the depths of the churning sea, inexorably drawn to the charismatic pirate captain. After it had slaked its thirst amongst her crew, it introduced itself to Esperanza in a nearly civil manner. The incalculable power of its presence and the unbelievable words it spoke left Esperanza incapable of responding. When she finally did, the legend says she agreed to become like her visitor only so long as she was permitted to keep her ship and crew, which had apparently become her life’s purpose. The Lasombra gave its word that she would be able to do as she pleased, then it unleashed the forces of the ocean’s blackest depths and she drowned in the darkness of its Embrace.

In 1666, Esperanzas ship reappeared, seemingly hunting the antitribu of her Clan. Yet other stories attribute more mercenary acts to Esperanza, including the smuggling of the Lasombra antitribu Methuselah Aludian Thex to the New World. As the stories of Esperanza’s adventures grew even in her own time, the Camarilla made some effort to put an end to her business, more to protect their financial interests than the Lasombra fugitives she hounded. It is said that Esperanza pulled merely a dozen warships under the waves, with the use of tentacles summoned from pure darkness.

While the great age of piracy finally ended in the mid-1700s, the name of Esperanza Lucifer proved far more durable. Rather than fade away into the shadows, the Devil’s Darling continued to make her presence felt in ways that her fellow Kindred could not ignore. In 1802, she surrendered to the call of the deep. While her pack performed the Blood Feast on the deck of her flagship, courtesy of a helpless merchant ship that had appeared on the horizon, she summoned from the abyss the same unholy monster that her sire had learned to command, an entity of shadow and evil from elsewhere. Trying to understand why her sire had embraced her, she had decided to join him in the lightless depths of the ocean.

The Second Esperanza
She came to the decision that before embarking on her journey she would Embrace a childe and bestow upon her progeny the identity and legacy she had spent centuries building. Just as the War of 1812 ignited, Esperanza found her replacement. Like herself, Mary was barely more than a girl when she received a visitor in the black of night. She learned quickly under her mentor’s tutelage, and when the Devil’s Darling appeared off the coast and word spread that she was seeking a crew, the Damned perked up as readily as the kine. The original Esperanza remained close to her progeny, claiming to be her fledgeling and protecting her until the call of the waves grew too strong and she vanished. For the next two centuries, Esperanza Lucifer led her band of marauding Sabbat in an inchoate, yet effective crusade on many Camarilla domains. In truth, there was nothing random or unplanned in what they did. While most packmates were unaware of it, Esperanza and those closest to her had actually been very precise in deciding what the pack would and would not do. The destruction of the arrogant Camarilla Kindred was surely a worthwhile goal, but this inner circle had another, more overriding aim: a transition from nomadic unlife to that of a founded pack in order to earn enough money and wealth to rival those of the Camarilla to combat them with their own weapons.

As the 20th century became the 21st, Esperanza, like her sire before her, became aware of a bizarre homeward urge, a calling from her blood to that of her predecessor and her grandsire. In an increasingly complex world that whispered of the Final Nights on the winds, she decided that she too would step out of the limelight and seek the patron of her bloodline. For the past few years, she has actively sought her own replacement, the next Captain Esperanza Lucifer, to pass on the legacy she feels she has no right to let wither. Soon, a new Esperanza Lucifer will lead modern pirates against the Kindred of the Camarilla and write new legends for the Devil of the Deeps.