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A Prologue
This sordid little tale begins like most; with the birth of a little child who would fulfill a prosperous yet unfortunate life. Regina Davis was born to a wealthy Virginian family, in 1906, the year of The Jungle and the San Francisco earthquake. The peculiar patriarch of the Davis clan was the founder of an unforgiving construction company prior to the Civil War. Unlike other sincere companies, Davis Industries specialized in contemptible construction through the use of faulty materials and overextended slave labor; to lessen costs and maximize profit. It was Evacuation Sunday during the bombing of Richmond by the yanks as well as the burning of the city by the retreating rebels that the hazardous truth of the construction came to blazing light. Within days, dozens of mass graves were filled with the terrified victims who huddled in the Davis Industries built structures; they collapsed from the bombings then engulfed by the spreading fires. According to the legend, this is the point where the patriarch and his relatives acquired the Davis Family Curse. As the wronged souls searched for their revenge and finding the Davis family to be their objective.
Life
Regina Davis was the second daughter and fourth child of six. By the age of seven she was an only child as her siblings each fell to terminal disease, fateful accidents or even the bizarre. Regina’s last surviving brother was killed during a stamped of cows while playing near the street. This left the young girl to be prized by her parents. All the presents that would have been given to the phantom children during Christmas went to Regina instead. The education reserved for her brothers was provided for her. Private tutors educated her in the arts, mathematics and language. All this while Regina’s grandfather recanted a verbal history of the family and his founding of Davis Industries. She would visit his office each Friday, the company survived prosecution, for Evacuation Sunday, through the confusion of the war and subsequent failed reconstruction. Although the family’s wealth had declined after that dark period, Regina’s grandfather clawed back to the life style of the incredibly rich and guilty.
More death came of course, striking down Regina’s father. Over his casket the surviving family blamed the curse for his death. The numerous displays mortality drove Regina further into her studies. She would only move out into the lurid twenties society at the urging of her mother. The patriarch of the Davis family took notice of his seventeen year old granddaughter’s pains and arranged for her to work for him during a summer. She excelled at her role, shadowing her grandfather and eventually making decisions as his health began to fail. Regina became the power behind the deathbed speaking in his absence. Through her work, Davis Industries outperformed expectation for the year under Regina’s leadership. It was natural for her to take charge, inherited from her grandfather, manipulate a checkbook, inherited by her mother, and she eventually fell into familial tradition and started producing substandard buildings. When Davis Industries bid and won the contract to build Richmond Stadium the profits skyrocketed. Before construction began Regina entered into the University of Richmond, a private school for the purpose of complementing her economic experience. It was two weeks after classes began that Regina’s mother died by drowning in her gilded tub.
In 1928, the stadium collapsed during a baseball exposition, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Regina was a semester away from graduating. It is said that her grandfather finally gave into his illness after hearing about the slaughter. Although this may have decimated some companies, Regina had over insured the property and their profits yet again surged. And she became the owner of fifty percent of the company in her grandfathers will. This gave her a daily salary of $1,000 a day.
Death: The Memory
That night she was looking herself in the mirror happy with her good work and profits; one thousand dollars a day from her share in Davis Industries. She began to feel cold but could not take her eyes off of her doppelganger. Images flicked within the mirror that changed into scenes. A baseball field covered in blood and maimed bodies. They reached out to her, their faces in a silent shriek. Ghastly hands erupted from the mirror as the souls wronged by the Davis family drew her close. She felt colder, the lights dimmed. Soon there was only darkness.
Death: The Reality
Regina was looking at herself in the mirror when a blurred figure appeared behind her. Before she could scream he had covered her mouth with his hand. All she could do was stare deeply into her attacker’s eyes before he bit into her neck. This is when Richard Donovan, Ventrue philosopher of the sublime and fiery terror embraced Regina Davis. Taking her life then molding her mind to believe that she was damned by angry spirits; thus started Donovan’s experiment into reactions stemming from mysteriously inflicted damnation to better understand Dracula.
Unlife
She woke up three nights later. Her mind completely rewritten by the gaze of her sires eyes. Donavan watched on as she discovered her condition, ran in fear from the sun and coped with her new condition. Regina believed this was yet another condition of her family curse manifested in another form. Her earliest nights were spent under the sway of the beast’s urges; a crash course in the requiem. When the Beast is hungry then feed or the Beast is tired so she would sleep. It took weeks for her to rediscover her misplaced humanity and ensure that it her rational mind prevailed. It was two months before meeting another Kindred and her entrance into politics; and of course all of her interactions with Donovan were erased from her memory.
She searched for answers to her condition, soon after her debut. The Invictus and Carthians had no reasoning only blank stares. The Circle professed her symbolic ties to the Crone and countless Goddesses of old. It was when they began their barbaric rituals that she decided against them. Both the Sanctified and Dragons held Regina’s interest. But the persistent feeling of the two faction’s cult like mentality disturbed her. It was the unaligned she stayed as she pieced her life back together. The Covenants only offered theories and it became apparent, and in true classical liberalist form, that any answers would have to be discovered on her own.
Davis Industries was now under the control of her cousin, and although she was still receiving her portion of the profits, she ghouled him to better extend her control. Money is power and the feeling of helplessness, after her damnation, was replaced by a strong urge for riches. There was one main difference to her style in relation to how the curse had manifested. Now she ran Davis Industries as an honest corporation. They built a memorial to the stadium collapsing tragedy and gave to charities, both involved in the accident and not. In the back of her mind she hoped that by amending her sins would bring back her old life. It seemed to work as the Davis Curse had not struck her down and she continued to give. Davis Industries continued to grow into a national corporation, managing to survive a depression, war and the sixties. The Davis Fund became the Commonwealths largest charitable foundation. During this time Donovan was able to become a mentor to Regina and he continued his manipulations and observations closer to his subject.
The tone changed in Richmond as the unaligned became untouchables in society, during middle of the nineties. It was no longer possible for her to focus on her ever growing business but she had to join a Covenant. It was Donovan who reintroduced the idea of the Ordo Dracul to Regina. Although he was always careful not to taint his experiment, her inclusion in the Dragons would make her easier to watch. She agreed and she became a slave with Donovan as her mentor. The local Sworn were intrigued by her intelligence, story, connections and not least of all her personal wealth. The local chapter house was in need of repair and Regina provided for a complete renovation. The lessons of the Ordo Dracul also spoke to Regina’s sense of being twice cursed. That it is not to be wallowed over, but instead overcome.
Regina had made progress quickly with the ideas of change taught to every slave. She observed the world of stocks, e-companies, evolutionary economics, fads and buying trends. Each changed and many times nightly. She poured over her quotes and correlated them to natural events and random occurrences. She followed a young budding business as it started and watched its grand opening, sales, falters, and bankruptcy. Although her tactics were unorthodox her mentor seemed pleased by her interpretations.
The two Reginas’ emerged before the tone in Richmond went bad. On one hand she was ruthless in business and even society which she viewed with an economist’s eye. Very little was sacred for trade and she campaigned quietly for the Dragons. Then on the other was the giver; attempting in vain to make amends with the money she amassed. Who viewed the Ordo Dracul as a likeminded family and shared her spoils with them. Within a few short years she became one of the largest supporters of the Ordo Dracul, falling just short of her mentor Donovan’s verve for the cause. That is why she was so affected when the Sanctified took praxis in 2001; with the Bishop vocalizing the evils of the heretic Dragons. Unlife became hard for the local chapter under the constant barrage of Santified dogma and spite. During this time, Regina and Donovan became closer, allies in adversity. He worked slowly to corrupt the court and dissolve the support for the Bishop. The Dragons were cornered within society and Regina was caught in the fire.
During one extended siege of the Ordo Dracul by the Sanctified and their allies, Regina spent most of nights in her haven with Donovan. When leaving out into the world was dangerous her mentor decided it was time for her to learn the coil of the blood. She found this practical and was content that her first coil would be tangible. She started with a prolonged period of fasting staying in her haven and refusing to leave. After that she would spend each night constantly channeling her blood into her skills with Resilience leaving her ravaged. She found a correlation between the abilities of the Ventrue and attempting to slow the blood, although the hunger still burned close to the surface. She was able to avoid the consumption of her blood nightly in small bursts. Still she continued as the beast cried out for sustenance. So after a time she decided on yet another unorthodox method. She hired three supermodels to live with her for two weeks. She watched them as they refused to eat the prepared platters and hardy meals. She questioned them, playing the part of a reporter, as to their thoughts on anorexia and how they came to be this way. Then after the two weeks she entered a period of self awareness pushing her body along with continuing fasts and use of resilience. She began to understand the change and continued to force it as she started entering meditations; and achieving chrysalis.
Around this time she formulated all her ideas since her embrace to form her own ideas on transcendence through methodology. She adopted a modern science stance. She decided that she believed that Dracula was indeed cured by God, although not the God of the bible. She felt that the divine is a more abstract idea. One made up on energy and probability. She was cursed after the deaths of hundreds by her own failings and Dracula was damned after the death and mutilation of more. She correlates that it was a combination of time, events, location and other minuscule factors that had come together to form the damnation. Locations as near the ocean, the effects of air pressure, the intangible forces of good or bad deeds. Therefore she believes that if there are events that can force damnation then there are events that can cure or transcend. It is yet another unorthodox belief one that the sworn have scoffed at. Yet, they watched on with mild interest as they had never heard of anyone studying as such and could not disprove it outright.
In the very last moments of 2006, Donovan with the help of Regina and a select few prepared to strike against the Bishop. Neutrality is a luxury. When it is not possible then actions must be taken to force the appearance of neutrality. The Bishop’s agents caught wind of the plan and had a simultaneous strike against the Dragons. Regina was with Donovan when the Hound arrived to torpor the couple. She watched as the battle was fought in front of her. The Hound was rugged and stuck with viciously clawed hands but Donovan stood his ground taking the strikes and using his sword to return in kind. The end result was Donovan falling to torpor and the Hound walking to Regina. She focused her mind and in a moment of pure desperation managed to force him to flee after he locked eyes with her for a single moment. A fleeting moment that would save her and her mentor’s unlives. Regina thought that the Curse of the Davis family might have started to be overcome. And she vowed to continue her work and find a way to remove both curses from her stained soul.
Atlanta Bound
Regina took Donovan’s body and placed it in the trunk of her car. Called her most valued ghoul who was CEO of the modern Davis Industries and ordered him to sell the company and drive during their exodus of the city. They drove South to Atlanta. Where Regina bought a secure home and placed her mentor in the basement. For safe keeping until the night finally he wakes. It has been two weeks since she arrived in Atlanta, and she is only now ready to reenter into undead society. And see the status of the local Ordo Dracul of the city, and join them if they exist in the city at all.
She plans on growing her suffering wealth, where she is still richer then God she has a different scale of wealth then the majority. She will reenter society, still with a besieged mentality, and quietly work for the Ordo Dracul cause. Should there be a large enough chapter, Regina plans on building a Chapterhouse and become Castellian. Overthrowing the current one if necessary. And use this to become one of the sworn. So that she can have a better place to protect her mentor, when he wakes up, and protect the Order from their many enemies.