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Mortality

Hattie Riordan the grand matron of the American Riordan clan, came to rest in Boston, Massachusetts as a very young girl after arriving in the country during the late 1820s. She was a woman of staggering beauty and intellect, and rumors abounded as to her involvement with the Irish mafia well after her peaceful passing surrounded by a near hundred of her family, coincidentally near to her own hundredth birthday.

She had countless gentlemen courtiers over the years, and was engaged fifteen times; seven of those engagements, however, came from James' great-great-great grandfather, a man named Matthew MacCann. They were never married, for she refused to change her name to his, and he refused to let her keep hers, a point of contention that served as the battleground upon which they fought the various and sundry conflicts of their tumultuous relationship.

Hattie bore seven children; three certainly by Matthew, two more that may have been his but just as easily could not, and a pair of blond-haired, gray-eyed twins most definitely the offspring of a man Hattie took as a lover in her 40s, when he was but a dashing young man barely out of his teens. Many called Hattie a whore, but none to her face.

Four generations of Riordans knew the matron mother of their family, and while branches would drift as branches always did and conflicts invariably arose, all knew where the heart of their line was kept. Several of her female descendants followed her insistence upon her name and kept their maiden names, all fiery Irish girls -- even the ones whose blood by then was surely tempered by American generic -- who fought tooth and nail to also see that name passed to their children.

James was born the youngest son to parents who were of last generation to know Hattie, during the fragile peace of 1920. The Riordans by then had drawn closer than ever before in the wake of her passing, and children were invariably raised in clusters of similarly aged relatives, the network of relation so dazzlingly complex that it was resolved everyone would just call each other 'cousin' if they weren't of direct blood.

He was an intelligent young man, and was one of the precious few of his generation to be missed for the draft when the second world war came. By 1940, the Riordan clan was all but a matriarchy by sheer majority, and when it was decided for him that he would marry a cousin -- actually a 2nd cousin, thrice removed -- James was suddenly struck by the driving need to see other parts of the country. Tragically, it was a rather last-minute decision, and he was only able to leave a letter with his good-byes before he had a train to catch.

He got as far as Carcosa before his money ran out, and he took up a job first as a sort of bouncer and eventually as a bartender by the autumn of 1942 at a new-but-booming sailor-dominated bar in Ecclesia. It was a rowdy place, and there were a few wildly curious events that happened there, but James was a sturdy young man who knew better than to go prodding his nose into things he didn't actually give a good goddamn about.

One such thing was the world of the supernatural, which had taken a notice of James, and in late April of 1943, he all but woke up to find himself dead.

Requiem

1943

James is more or less certain Vincent didn't embrace him simply as a spur-of-the-moment move, but the man would never talk about why he turned James beyond to say, as he had presented in the original petition for embrace rights, that Vincent had been watching him for some time. What was seen was never revealed.

1945

He was by late 1945 fully indoctrinated in the Sumerian mythos of Vincent and his cult, and was judged to be of appropriate temperament and mind (thanks mostly to the rather vicious and constant instruction of his sire) to "some year soon" achieve ascendancy as a member of the Circle. But on the longest night of the year, he received an awful dream that gripped him in the throes of a nightmare the entire night through. He had visions of massive, endless snakes and the dying of the sun; of endless conflict, of constant death and rebirth. He dreams of an entity that made itself known as the Devourer, and when he awoke, he knew he had found the calling of his soul.

1946

It was around this time he began obsessively searching for every scrap of lore regarding Apophis the Devourer, and collecting such texts in what would become his sprawling personal library. He had a poor head for money, and what money was not spent of the upkeep of his private haven away from his sire was dumped into the pursuit of those books. Public derision followed for his constant shabby appearance, unkempt even for the standards

1948

After too many long years of torment at the hands of his sire and blood-sister, Seraphina, James publicly petitions the reigning Archbishop for Release; it is granted, primarily on the virtue of the humiliation it brings to everyone involved.

1950

His rising from the Chorus took a little bit longer than projected, due mostly in part to his sire's anger that he was rejecting the Sumerian gods for the worship of Apophis; Vincent steered the Circle to believing the worst about him, that he was too unsure in the faith to be granted such a boon. While it was possible he was speaking the truth when he told James this was merely another barb of tribulation to push at his throat, he called it simple petulance he was not obeying his personal tenets, and thus the divide between sire and childe began.

He would come to reconcile the wicked god Enki with his chosen deity, which mended many raised eyebrows among the dominant cult, though he kept his worship in the name of the Devourer.

1953

His obsession with vampiric bloodlines springs from an idle conversation with a Ventrue who discussed the various rarefied lines of the lords' ancestry, which while less than true bloodlines, oft sprung forth with such refinements.

1959

After a particularly blistering dressing-down by a harpy about coming to one of the Elysia "dressed like a particularly vile sewer urchin, Longinus preserve us," he withdraws from kindred society for a time. While most call it tucking his tail between his legs and going to sulk in a corner, instead James redirects the time previously spent socializing and networking to amass a financial holding to support a somewhat less publicly embarrassing persona.

And to buy more and rarer texts, of course. Maybe a bigger haven; it seemed like the ceilings were held up more by the spines of books than the spines of the building...

1966

James' return to the Danse Macabre is marked staggering, bearing obvious wounds only partially concealed under his new look of expensive clothing; he had been encouraged by the Sanctified to attend after missing the previous event. He would attend mass regularly for several decades thereafter.

1978

With his knowledge of bloodlines, James is among the kindred who confirm the Ordo Dracul's findings as to the source of the city's plague. He joins the forces of the Light, and brings his occult knowledge to bear in their efforts.

(Of course, they would fail rather thoroughly, but such things happen.)

1987

The Mages' relocation edict displeases James, primarily because his expansive personal haven was set in one of the newly forbidden areas; he was among the howling voices of outrage at the audacity of the Consillium. After a period of introspection and a few conversations with his fellow Acolytes, he comes to view it as the hammer of tribulation coming upon him for growing complacent with his leisurely, comfortable existence. He elects to setup a haven in the besieged Pappelbon Row at the offer of Merrick and resolves to shake off his dependence on idle comfort.

1988

Knowing full well the possibility of retribution for such "audacity," he begins to amass influence among the occult "underground" of the city. Fully expecting to fail spectacularly, or to perhaps be destroyed for the encroachment into one of the many abandoned sectors of influence of the city, the slow progress he makes in the coming decades is actually quite pleasing.

1992

He intends to embrace a young woman strong of limb and swift of mind, in hopes her strength will be enough to keep her safe from the culling hands of the Sanctified, and that such tribulation upon them both will be enough reason for such an act. He finds however that he cannot successfully embrace her; something had gone wrong, and he knew not why. The girl ends up one of the untold multitudes corpses that litter The Barrens.

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Court mask.

Sample of plants kept in haven.

Example of frescos on haven walls.