Velya the Vivisectionist and Elaine Cassidy

Velya, The Vivisectionist, is an elder of the Sabbat and a Tzimisce of exceptional power and enlightenment in the Path of Metamorphosis. He was one of the main leaders of the Tzimisce branch of the Anarch Revolt and the Sabbat's mightiest koldun.

Biography[]

“

And Velya was, indeed, perfect. He wore white, a long dalmatic that shimmered with subtle embroidery at neck and hems over equally snowy hose, his impeccably groomed hair falling to his waist in silver ringlets, his face a mask of hawk-like patrician elegance.

”

Once known as Velya the Flayer, he and Myca Vykos were the chief conspirators of Lugoj Blood-Breaker in the formative years of the Anarch Revolt. Together they broke their blood bonds using Kupala's sacred fire-flower, established the Vaulderie, and (supposedly) destroyed the Tzimisce Antediluvian.

As a founding member of the Sabbat he serves his sect as the Cardinal of the Tzimisce Old Country, the Land Beyond the Forest: Transylvania. He is tasked with either claiming the territory of the hoary old Tzimisce voivodes that he once rose up against or else enticing them into joining the Sabbat.

His mastery of Vicissitude is so strong that he was able to take his childe Elaine Cassidy and merge himself with her, so that her leg-stumps are bound to his back. Velya looks like a forty-year-old silver-haired Russian man with a ten-year-old silver-haired Bostonian girl emerging from his back.

Velya met Elaine in Boston in the 1890s, where she had systematically destroyed her family. Enthralled by both her appearance and her evil, Velya Embraced her, delighted with his new childe. While his new "bride" had managed to finish off her family with ease, the horrors of the Sabbat were too much for her childish intellect to cope with, and Elaine was lost to the Beast. Elaine had become a Wight. In desperation, he used Vicissitude to fuse her body with his, in an attempt to "fix" her. But no Cainite, even as one as clever as Velya, can rescue another from the throes of the Beast.

Velya, bound to her as he is, cannot bear the thought of separation and spends a vast amount of his mental resources keeping Elaine sedated. This has caused him to fall from the Path of Metamorphosis as he fends off constant psychic assault from Elaine's howling Beast. It is only a matter of time before he also succumbs.

Character Sheet[]