From SuspireWiki

Sometimes, fucking up is the best thing you can do.

Somehow, it makes everything come into focus.

Lineage

• Mister Ulysses Jameson, Speaker
  • Gerald Huff, Carthian Movement
    • Madam Penelope, Librettist and Speaker
      • Mister Blaine Hunter

The Young (and Dangerous) Years: 1961 - 1983

Blaine was the embrace of a particularly acerbic Daeva by the name of Penelope. She was an involved member of the city, and often was considered a possibility for a Harpy if ever such one was appointed officially by the court. She never was asked, mainly because Clarence Whitaker believed himself to be sufficient in his Speaking abilities and did not require the usage of someone else.

During the Daeva control of the city, there were multitudes of social scurmishes between Carthian Succubi and Invictus Succubi, Invictus versus Invictus and well, just about anyone else who wanted to get involved in the dogfight over social superiority was welcome. Penelope herself wasn't completely involved in the clan politicking, and instead had a small rivalry in-covenant with Randall Marks, a Soldier in the Invictus. The feud was never more than a snarky one until Blaine was ghouled, and that's when it grew to ridiculous proportions (according to outsiders).

Marks (a known Toreador) and Penelope (a Courtier) had already had their share of disagreements just based on the small-time rivalry between the two bloodlines. With the stealing of Blaine, an individual who was going to be a retainer to Marks to handle various society-influencing due to his station and local as a bartender at the Scarlet Mansion. While the Invictus in general stayed out of the feud, it only got worse as Penelope took every chance she could to humiliate Blaine to rub salt in the already bitter wound left from her property steal. Blaine, of course, knew nothing of the situation and probably still doesn't know the entire situation now.

When Blaine was requested to be embraced, Marks demanded that Whitaker decline the request. As individuals whom are demanded from are apt to do, Whitaker purposely agreed to the request, if not to prove a point that he wouldn't react to demands from his underlings. As one would expect, this only fueled the fire more.

Blaine was fairly abused (by mortal standards, not really by Kindred standards) during his tenure as a ghoul and then as a fledgling, but either because of the bond or some other way, he never actually seemed to mind. He said on more than one occasion that he "probably deserved it" and tended to avoid the subject himself. Blaine himself was always on the outskirts of the social affairs of the city, and tended to speak at inopportune moments. It was quite obvious that he didn't have the polishing that his sire did, or at least just hadn't been taught it. Such acts of inopportune comments were often met with swift corporal punishment from his sire - who everyone in the city (but Blaine) had figured out that she only embraced him to piss off Marks, her budding rival.

In the late 60's (1968 to be exact), Penelope finally placed the straw that broke the Mr. Soldier's back. She invaded into the Midtown domain wherein Marks had been known to be attempting to gain as a domain for himself. Upon gaining substantial hold there, she began an influence war with the other Invictus, and on two separate occasions nearly caused him to frenzy openly in Elysium. This was becoming a serious feud, and the other members of the Invictus were starting to get involved to try and diffuse the situation.

It all came to a head at an Invictus meeting wherein Penelope decided to use the disparaging my directed at Marks and he drew arms against the insult. She had pressed the Toreador too far, and the other Invictus had seen it coming for years. Unsurprisingly, the Monomancy happened. While Blaine watched, Penelope was all but rent apart by the infuriated Soldier.

At the breaking of the bond, Blaine was taken aback, and retreated for months in seclusion to deal with the abrupt change - and people suspected to try and get his priorities in line.

When Blaine returned to the visible Kindred eye in 1969, it was with the release of someone who'd been cooped up too long and was finally set loose upon the world. He was a sight to be sure, and an eyesore for the majority of the Invictus. He openly fornicated (or at least sucked face when he knew someone was watching) with Unaligned, Carthians and Acolytes alike. He shunned any sort of relationship with the Sanctified and notably spit in the face of one of the Sanctified membership for getting involved in a tiff he had started between a pair of Carthians and himself over... well... a liaison.

The Invictus either thought he was a complete idiot, or had lost his goddamn mind, but for the most part, all of them just ignored him. It wasn't until he became a disruptive presence at their meetings did they begin to very seriously consider punishment for the Daeva neonate running wild basically unchecked. A few of the Succubi from the Invictus attempted to reign in the degenerate childe but he refused to cooperate with their initial mostly-gentle overtures.

Not long after one of the Mekhet had brought up his suspicion for the quickened blood thickening of Blaine's (they had originally feared he might have created Diablerie, but this was proven to be false on many accounts - individuals who cared just attributed it to Blaine's hyper-activity causing the blood to thicken) the Invictus decided to break the little brat down socially or kill him for being such a damn nuisance. After three well-placed verbal spats in which Blaine was thoroughly thrashed (and displayed literal wounding from such affairs), Blaine backed off of his rebellion.

He was a quiet member of the Invictus after that, which led the elders of the covenant to suspect that he had learned his damn lesson. He occasionally had tiffs with the Carthians still, but mostly it was just superfluous and catty arguing over some of the things Blaine had done in the recent past.

When the Carthians took control of the city in '83, Blaine disappeared. Mostly, he wasn't a missed individual, mainly because after his rebellion, he had kept to himself and was generally a non-offensive member of the Invictus (though occasionally, he still lashed out with some nasty quirks, mainly directed at a couple of Carthians - though it wasn't covenant based). No one questioned his disappearance, since there were much more major things occurring than to wonder about the fate of some particularly unknown neonate.

History: Through Blaine's Eyes

Atlanta was always a good town for me. The growing state was a nice place for us to eek out a living if we moved down from one of the poorer states like I did. Personally, I was born in Kentucky. Yeah, when you think of Kentucky you can’t even get past the end of the word before you’re thinking “Kin-tuck-ee”? It’s not a joke that there’s a lot of... country individuals there... but that definitely wasn’t the life for me.

Instead I came down to Atlanta and worked as a bartender for awhile. Not a really glorious job, regardless of what people tell you, but it had it’s perks. Pretty much endless entertainment over the weekends, but during the week, you’re mostly wiping up whiskey and tears – so it kind of evened itself out to be a fair job.

Taking the bartending job is what got me killed though. I don’t know why, other than my off-nights, where I pretended to have all the money those people thought I had (while secretly wondering how long I could put myself into debt before the government would come and get me). I was one of those lucky guys not to get their date called for Vietnam, so in the essence of being a good sport, I had beers and drinks nightly for those brave soldiers.

Yeah, that’s the excuse I gave. You know, during that time period, it was the way to get the girls. Say you were against the whole damn thing, but that you were pretty broken up about it and you had all kinds of girls wanting to smoke some pot and make you feel better.

Anyway, so I guess that’s what drew Penelope to me. She wanted to knock me down a peg? I don’t know, never really asked truth be told, I just assume. I remember a lot of beatings though; I personally think she enjoyed it. But never, ever was it enough that I’d just not want to do anything anymore. She would always stop just before that point. She was a Speaker with the Invictus, hot as the sun too. I was a retainer before the embrace, just long enough to be trained and bound, but not to get blood addicted.

She embraced me once she’d (as I figured out later) molded me how she wanted me to be. I can approve of the tactic now that I understand why and how she did it. I mean, the Invictus would have eaten me alive in my raw state, and I’d seen way too many childer get embraced and then flunk out – so to speak - when I was still a ghoul, no less.

I thought about the Carthians for awhile, but then I got over it. They couldn’t really offer me anything I couldn’t get with the Invictus, they were just less... stuffy about it. Maybe stuffy isn’t the right word. But anyway, they were way too pro-black for me there, and I just didn’t feel maligned enough in the Invictus to take the chance they’d just shuffle me off to the side while they did their Black Panther thing.

So, I stuck with the Invictus. I learned what I needed to know, and essentially got what I needed to get from the system. I was pretty keen on it, since I liked being a social fly and generally being around the in-crowd. Penelope was killed in Monomacy in the late 60’s by a Soldier. It was over some territory dispute, and they refused to settle it like sane people. That’s the first time I encountered the (thus unknown) rivalry between the Courtiers and Toreador. Everyone else knew about it, so really, they were just there to see if the Courtier could pull off an upset. Yeah. Initially, I was pretty upset about it – but then I realized that the bond was gone and hallelujah, I was a free man. I went wild for a little bit, so much so that they actually kicked me out of a couple meetings.

At the time though, being “overly friendly” with the Carthians was just some term I could ignore and it’d go away. Do I have anything against the Carthians? Not really, I still wouldn’t except for that whole thing I’ll get to in a little bit here. They’re alright people – so long as you can understand and come to grips that they’ll spout just as much propaganda and righteous bullshit as anybody else. That being said, they’re tolerable until they get numbers on their side. Then they’re kind of like Ventrue: fucking obnoxious.

But anyway. So, during this period of my rebellion now that I didn’t have the blood bond in check, I ran afoul of some of the other Daeva Invictus. They had this problem with me, and I had half a mind a few times to essentially tell them to get fucked (and did). Sure, now I realize how absolutely childish it really was, but at the time I wasn’t going to put up with it. I wasn’t particularly afraid of any of them, socially, I was just too good at it – or so I thought.

It wasn’t until I got the most severe verbal lashing of my life, and the marked slashes across my body that I realized just how serious not taking care of myself really could be. I straightened up after I realized it wasn’t just a verbal power from one of them, and it was really actually a figment of just being shit-kicked verbally. I took some research out into it with an Ordo and matched up what Penelope was with what I’d become. I let them have some of my blood and cut them a check for a cool ten Gs and was on my way.

It was kind of hard to understand at first, but then the more I read into it, the more I realized why she picked me. I’m not really sure why she actually didn’t bother to tell me, but I figure that she just didn’t want to mention it until I was older and more restrained and nearing the point where I’d be... more likely to assume the traits of her bloodline.

There’s not a whole lot about the Courtiers I don’t know now, but I’ll get to why that is in just a moment. I’ve thought about embracing to continue the line, but it’d be kind of moot until some things change.

Anyway, so we rocket full on into the 80’s and the Carthians who’ve been gaining strength for god-knows-how-long basically punk the shit out of the Invictus. I was one of the Invictus who decided that it was much better to live than to get jumped by a whole fuck-ton of Black Panthers itching to put a righteous foot of fury right up our lily white asses. Call me a coward, but I wasn’t necessarily down with the going out in a blaze of glory.

Problem was, I still had some old beef with a couple of them that stemmed from the wild-period that I had and they used that change of scenery to basically inform me that if I didn’t clear out, they were going to clear me out. Hey, you’d do it too if you were in my position.

So, yeah, I cut my losses and moved out of the city – not far, and I kept tabs on it as best I could from the outside. During the downtime, I got to catch up on a lot of reading that I’d been putting off and actually think about what I was doing with my Danse Macabre. Having sat off in the suburbs for twenty fucking years, bored out of my goddamn mind, I had plenty of time to study some of those books people had been threatening to hit me with for years.

I trained a little and tried to work up some stuff in the meantime, but it was exceptionally hard, being that I was so cut off from everyone else. There was more than a few times I thought about just going back and essentially telling them all to “fucking deal”, but I could never bring myself to do it.

You’d be pretty much amazed what you can do and learn where there’s nothing else to do. You kind of get good at learning things because that’s all you can do while you bide your time, waiting for some kind of a sign to come that you can go back. Hell, I learned how to handle a blade in the time – not as good as most folks, sure, but I’d consider myself pretty competent now. I couldn’t get paid to do it sure, mainly because there’s only so much you can learn from a wooden dummy, but hey – it’s more than I knew before.