Rebekah (Ventrue)

Rebekah is a 5th generation Ventrue, and Monitor of Chicago. She diablerized her own sire a long time ago.

Rebekah bears the classical beauty of a Renaissance  painting  or  Roman  sculpture. While  not  exactly “gorgeous”  in  a  modern  context,  the  combination  of  her mystical, vampiric allure and divine bearing make her tremendously attractive. Her wavy black hair frames a pair of green eyes, and her skin has the tone (and feel) of fine marble. She dresses to fit into the crowd by adopting modern fashions and shedding them almost before they change. She is remarkably adept at portraying the mannerisms of young vampires — which other vampires more than two millennia in age have difficulty doing.

Biography
As a street urchin of illegitimate parentage in first-century Judea, Rebekah spent her childhood in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, a strife-ridden time and place where one  misstep  could  prove  fatal. She  was  rescued  from  the streets and forced into the life of a servant-girl attending a lesser patrician. As were so many of her ancestry and station, she was regularly beaten and made victim to her master’s unwholesome  desires,  and  soon  she  learned  to  hate  the aristocracy and all they represented.

Other  dissidents,  noting  her  discontent,  her  strategic position as adjutant to a city official, and the uses to which she might be put, took the adolescent Rebekah into their confidence. Zealots, they came to be called in those early days — rebels who would not submit to the Roman idol-worshippers, their pagan practices or their avarice-borne taxpayer census.

These insurgents, led by Judas of Galilee, maintained normal-seeming lives as subservient elements of the citizenry while spearheading civil disobedience, information networks, and even covert acts of upheaval behind the scenes. Rebekah soon acclimated to this notion of a double life by collecting missives  and  snippets  of  overheard  conversation  from  her master’s  chambers and  redistributing  them  among  her newfound brethren.

But it was not enough. The servant-girl longed to do more,  to  be  more,  to  strike  a  genuine  blow  against  these invaders who would gorge themselves while others endured want. Her stubborn fervor and seemingly limitless determination  ultimately  put  her  in  contact  with  a  circle  of like-minded extremists. These sicarii — “dagger-men,” political  assassins  so  radical  that  not  even  the  Zealots  would associate with them — gladly welcomed a female recruit into their midst. Rebekah’s master was found shortly thereafter with a blade buried in his throat, and his former servant left behind  the  life  she  had  known  for  an  exhilarating  dual existence along the razor’s edge.

At length, her involvement with the sicarii came to an end — her last target, an elder of the Roman court, made her continued  stay  in  Jerusalem  too  dangerous. Rebekah  fled south from the city and there sought refuge at the estate of an anonymous benefactor, a retired statesman and sympathizer to her cause.…

And there Elihu the Monitor (then going by the name of Elias Andronicus) of Clan Ventrue taught her that other arenas existed wherein the battle against injustice and oppression might be fought. Rebekah’s activities and whereabouts faded somewhat from Cainite view at this time; she was never one to maintain close ties with her clanmates, and her sire bade her accompany  him  from  a  Palestine  that was  no  longer  safe.

They became lovers, traveling the continent for centuries, sampling  what  pleasures  the Mediterranean  and  adjacent territories had to offer until fate and ill fortune trapped them in the wrong time and place: Barcelona, staging ground for the Spanish Inquisition. Rebekah and Elihu quickly found themselves little better than prisoners, besieged on all sides by  race-based  persecution  and  rapidly  tightening  nets  of witch-hunters.

Their rescue came in the form of Rafael de Corazon, Renaissance craftsman and father of the august body history would later call the Camarilla. The Toreador offered them membership  in  his  fledgling  order  in  exchange  for  their withdrawal from the mortal world. Although Rebekah wanted to refuse his offer and challenge what she perceived as de Corazon’s cowardice, Elihu unhesitatingly pledged their cooperation and support. The particulars following this first and fatal disagreement between sire and childe are not publicly known, but Rebekah left the city of Barcelona alone and unfettered. The elder Ventrue was never heard from again.

Again she wandered the globe, perhaps haunted by the ramifications of what she had done, perhaps seeking something more than the parasitic existence she had been leading for millennia. Her travels took her to the eastern Cathayan shores,  lands  Elihu  had  always  sought  to  visit. Like  many others of the Inconnu, whose ranks she would later join, she chased the redemption of Golconda there for a time. One rumor has Rebekah allegedly subsisting for months at a time without feeding, a residual benefit of her experiments with such  ascetic’s  practices  as  ritual  starvation.

Atop  Mount Ararat, she was approached by an ancient unlike any she had previously  encountered  —  a  Cainite,  countless  millennia old, who claimed to be Rafael’s sire. The Methuselah told her of others like herself, powerful elder vampires who wished only  the  blessing  of  solitude  with  which  to  while  away eternity. Rebekah joined the ranks of the Inconnu the next evening.

For  nearly  two  centuries  since  joining  the  enigmatic Inconnu, the Ventrue Methuselah has served as Monitor of Chicago. Lodin’s  fall  has  thrown  the  city  into  a  state  of continuous flux, and her observations are needed now more than ever. But Rebekah herself has not proven immune to this upheaval — the rise of the anarch presence has rekindled primal, irresistible urges in her, brought old memories to the surface and inspired her to cross the line between watching and acting. Already she has met with the insurgents left in Maldavis’ wake (what many of these dissidents do not realize is  that  Maldavis  herself  was  more  often  than  not  a  lens Rebekah used to spy upon and guide the anarchs for years). It is only a matter of time before she marshals their number to some — any — end.

Character Sheet
Rebekah, Monitor of Chicago Sire: Elias Andronicus (Elihu) Nature: Rebel Demeanor: Thrill-Seeker Generation: 5th Embrace: 12 Apparent Age: Mid 20′s Physical: Strength 5, Dexterity 6, Stamina 5 Social: Charisma 5, Manipulation 6, Appearance 5 Mental: Perception 7, Intelligence 6, Wits 8 Talents: Alertness 6, Athletics 4, Brawl 4, Dodge 5, Empathy 4, Leadership 3, Subterfuge 5 Skills: Animal Ken 3, Drive 1, Etiquette 2, Melee 4, Performance 3, Ride 3, Stealth 5, Survival 2, Vamp 3 Knowledges: Academics 1, Area Knowledge (Chicago) 7, Computer 1, Finance 1, Investigation 5, Linguistics 8, Medicine 4, Occult 5, Politics 4 Disciplines: Animalism 2, Auspex 6, Celerity 2, Dominate 6, Fortitude 4, Obfuscate 5, Potence 3, Presence 5, Protean 5, Thaumaturgy 4 Thaumaturgical Paths: Path of Blood 4, Green Path 2 Backgrounds: Contacts 5, Resources 4, Retainers 2 Virtues: Conscience 4, Self-Control 5, Courage 3 Morality: Humanity 6 Willpower: 7