Tremere (Founder)

Tremere, a Mage and one of the founders of the Order of Hermes, tested many spells to create eternal life, but found them all fatally flawed. Finally, he concluded that the only form of immortality, without severely degrading the use of magic, was vampirism.

After becoming a vampire, he diablerised Saulot in 1133. Saulot manipulated Tremere into diablerising him, his soul still living in Tremere's corpse. That body was infected with Vicissitude and reflected the inner struggle between Tremere's soul and Saulot's becoming a huge white worm and other bizarre shapes until around 1989. Saulot has taken control in 1998, and Tremere's soul took refuge in Etrius body, then in Goratrix and expelled him in a mirror.

Biography
The tall, dark and foreboding Tremere was the vaguely tragic founder of the House and clan that bear his name. Tremere was a central European mage born in the 8th century AD who was known for being cold-blooded, brilliant, and a radical. Inducted into the Order of Hermes during the early Dark Ages, Tremere was ambitious enough to create his own house (the majority of House names are either titles or refer to mages who existed near the founding of the order).

As with other Hermetic mages, he found that the encroaching, if nascent, Consensus was affecting vital Hermetic tools, in particular the longevity potions that allowed him and his peers to live so long. Casting for solutions with his disciples, he eventually settled on a potion using Vampiric blood that would (theoretically) provide all the benefits of vampirism without the side effects.

It half worked. Tremere and his councilors found themselves converted from a respected, Hermetic house into pariahs among the Order of Hermes and the vampires whose blood they had stolen to convert themselves into undead. Furthermore, with no knowledge of vampiric society, the fledgling bloodline found itself with no magical resources - the potion shattered their avatars, leaving them unable to work true magic.

Tremere rallied his students and launched an intensive program of research and rebuilding that shook vampiric society. They developed a blood-fueled imitation of Hermetic theory, the Thaumaturgy discipline, as well as horrors such as Gargoyles to defend the fledgling line. In the meantime, the Tremere searched out additional sources to provide them with social defenses against the vampires who, to a clan, seemed singly intent on exterminating them. Tremere learned about Antediluvians and resolved to create a clan by diablerizing one. He choose the relatively innocuous Saulot.

Again, the plan half worked. Tremere had the blood of an Antediluvian in his veins, as well as the soul (which was fully aware and already expecting the diablerie) of an Antediluvian facing him in spiritual combat. Knocked into torpor for centuries, Tremere was able to surface only briefly to guide the clan, and even then he risked Saulot employing the same tactic to destroy the clan in order to further his own inscrutable goals.

In 1999, Tremere finally lost the war with Saulot, and he fled to the body of his former disciple Goratrix. At that point, along with his clan, he prepared for Gehenna by preparing rituals of a power previously unimagined.

These rituals also half worked. In one of the Gehenna scenarios, Tremere uses a potent ritual channeling all of humanity's true name to defeat the Tzimisce Antediluvian. The ritual backfired and turned what is left of humanity into part of Tzimisce.

Tremere is a case study in hubris; his brilliance led him and his fellows further down the road to damnation every step of the way. A weakness that echoed throughout his clan.

Version Differences

 * In the non-canon Red Death Trilogy, Saulot was killed by Tremere, manipulated by St Germain.

Character Sheet
Tremere Sire: None Demeanor: Varies Generation: 3rd Embrace: 1022 Apparent Age: Varies