Dracon

Unknown
Alias	-The Dracon -The Dragon -Dracon of Byzantium -The Holy Spirit
Clan	Tzimisce
Generation	4th
Sire	Tzimisce Antediluvian
Childer	Keeper of the Faith Gesu Zdravka

The Dracon was the second childe of the Tzimisce Antediluvian, and its favorite childe. He was well known for his part in forming the Dream of Constantinople, alongside with his lovers Michael and Antonius, as a part of a Trinity that ruled the city.

Not content to transform only his body, he saw himself as an agent for metamorphosis of the world. Through the power of philosophy and passion, he initiated the rise and fall of kingdoms and beliefs.

Biography

“	Truth has no one shape, no one symbol. All eyes see it differently. All tongues speak it differently. Nothing—nothing—exists unchanged forever. Not even we.	”
	— the Dracon

The place that once harbored the mortal man who came to be the Dracon no longer exists in any way that matters. Its villages are buried rubble, its people scattered and lost in the greater sea of humanity, its language forgotten before it could be written, for he was one of the first childer of the Eldest himself, making him many thousands of years old.

It is unknown why the Eldest made the decision to turn him, but it is known that he took it when the Dracon was little more than a child, and that he held to it as the boy grew to manhood. Unlike many of his childer, the Eldest offered him a true choice when the time came: the gift of his blood or the right to live and die as a mortal, a life in which he would not interfere. It is said that the Antediluvian loved him, not as a man loves his lover, but as a father loves his son.

The Dracon regarded himself as the container and preserver of his sire's connection to Humanity, the remnants of his ability to feel and comprehend human emotion. And when the Eldest was slain by Samiel, the Dracon was the vessel for his rebirth, when the Antediluvian reformed himself within his viscera like an embryo. After nine months the Dracon gave birth to a thing only barely human any longer. He cared for [Tzimisce] for a brief period before he visited his broodmate Yorak and gave the infant form of their sire to his care.

The horror of it choked him and he ran from the sight of him and the knowledge of what had become of him, and built himself a home across the deep salt sea where he hoped to escape the pull of him, the desire to return to him. He threw himself into esoteric studies and, then, into the arms of his lovers, in hopes of building something better than he had first given birth to.

He met his lover and companion Michael during one of the Toreador’s journeys to the isle of Cyprus in the second century. They became quickly enraptured with each another. Michael’s passion and perfection were irresistible to the Dracon. In return, the he recognized a source of primal energy in the Tzimisce - that would be needed to build his Dream, and also to fill his heart.

The only one between the pair was Antonius, whose pragmatism and logic cut at the Dracon's heart. The rivalry between them slowly gathered speed over three centuries, and eventually it caused the Dream to grow dysfunctional, as the convulsions tore the city apart when the Dracon tried to destroy what Antonius had stabilized, unleashing plagues and famines against his structures.

In a final attempt to make peace between his lovers, Michael presented them the brothers Gesu and Symeon, who should become the successors and childer to each of them. For a generation, the Dream once again knew peace, but it was not fated to last. The disastrous Embrace of Gesu in 701 against the wishes of his Transylvanian brethren heralded the end of the peace, and the last of the halcyon days of the Triumvirate. Gesu entered a deep Torpor immediately after his Embrace and it seemed uncertain if he would awaken.

The Dracon's rage and subsequent hunt through Transylvania for the Tzimisce that he felt were responsible has become fearful legend among the Carpathian Fiends. After two long years and the destruction of many of his kin, the Dracon finally slew his brother-in-blood, the Ancient known as Triglav, in a battle that literally shook the mountains.

Only the intercession of one of the Dracon’s former students, the late Tzimisce sage Demenaus, convinced the Dracon to leave his vendetta there. Even so, the Carpathian and Draconian Tzimisce have warred intermittently over this feud for centuries. As Gesu arose and embraced Antonius' price, his brother Symeon, the jealousy of the Ventrue had reached its peak.

When Antonius began the Iconoclast Movement to destroy the blood religions of the Akoimetai and the monastic orders that served the Dracon, Michael and the Dracon decided to slay their lover at last. It was only then that the Dracon realized that he had loved Antonius just as intense as Michael and a deep depression hit him.

In 888, he left the city and was not seen ever since. He invested himself in avenging Michael's Dream) in a manner that those who sought to diminish and sully what Michael created end up dead or undone (like Narses). The Dracon have to destroy their legacy as well and he decided to put an end to the Cainite Heresy by possessing the body of his grandchilde and current Archbishop of Nod at the time, Nikita of Sredetz. In this form, he debated the fate of the Dream with Constancia of Erciyes and found himself disagreeing with her.

"Nikita", however, was found just before dawn and staked by an invading force of knights led by the Ventrue Lord Jürgen while he conducted his business in Eastern Europe. After his revenge was complete, the Dracon felt that he had outlasted everything and everyone that he had ever loved, and watched everything that he had tried to create crumble around him. He wanted an ending through that battle, but instead, his torpid body was sent to his great-grandchilde Myca Vykos, who was greatly disturbed by the presence of that staked Cainite, sensing something familiar and powerful within him.

While Myca and his coterie conducted researches on Nikita's past and lineage, the Dracon woke from torpor, removed the stake piercing his heart and somehow freed himself of the spiritual bindings laid by the koldun Ilias cel Frumos (Myca's lover and tutor in the Via Peccati) without raising alarm. When the coterie returned to their at the Obertus monastery outside Brasov, all its inhabitants were gone without a hint and the methuselah soon confronted the coterie. When the Dracon finally showed himself, the Tzimisce Antediluvian possessed Ilias and reunited with his childe.

The Dracon manifested his desire of an ending to his existence, which pleased the necromancer (and honorary member of the coterie) called Markus Musa Giovanni. For his impertinent comments Markus was quickly destroyed by the Eldest possessing the body of Ilias, who finally turned his full attention to his brood. He subdued Myca Vykos and liquefied the Dracon, turning him into a ball of liquid which he swallowed in order to transform it and solidify its essence. Myca was subsequently raped by the Tzimisce Antediluvian to impart him with Dracon's seed and save the existence of one who wished only for death.

In the modern nights, the legacy of the Dracon survives in the form of the Obertus revenants, the Children of the Dracon and the Library of the Forgotten.

References

• Constantinople By Night, p. 18
• Clanbook: Tzimisce Revised