Squire was an NPC I played in a game where I (reluctantly) served as a Narrator. The ST had this manic goal to 'punish' the players for not playing CAmerilla vampires right, and was bringing in the Sabbat to massacre them all. I didn't think this was fair and decided (with the help of the other Narrators) to give the players a chance to win over the Sabbat. Enter Squire, a Ventrue Antitribu neonate and sole survivor of a pack sent to scout the area.
Later, I and two of my friends decided to join a game out of the area, and I wanted to re-explore Squire as I thought she was a deep character that I hadn't had a chance to know before. As such, I modified her history so it fit with one of my friend's characters.
She never should have left the reservation that night. Maria Tso from the Little Mountain family should have stayed in her parents’ small house and studied, but of course she went to the city and of course she got trashed at the club. It should have been, that she’d have caught the bus back out to ‘res’ country and staggered home to sleep late into the next morning. She never should have been lying unconscious on the packed-dirt floor of a basement deep in the slums of the city, beaten bloody. But, she was.
Grip and Fang, the two Gangrel Antitribu, were busy bringing the rest of the bodies down from the van parked outside. About twenty-five limp forms were piled on one side of the cellar, some twitching or moaning in their stupor, but none awake or aware. Tidus, Brutal, and Father John were off in the north corner discussing something softly while Jumper-Max, Brutal’s childe, dug the creation-pit. The only light came from a sickly, naked bulb set into the old ceiling, so none were paying much attention to Vassar as he slowly inspected each new catch. The tall man knelt and pushed aside the heavy limbs, searching through the pile like it was the bargain bin at a thrift store.
“Stop pawin’ at them,” Jumper-Max growled as he hefted another shovel-worth of dirt back towards the wall.
“Silence, wretch,” Vassar barked lowly, and went back to his grisly search.
“Lookin’ for a cutie? I didn’t notice no alter boys this time, heh.”
The Ventrue Antitribu glared in his direction and hauled one of the bodies from the knot. Some leftover blood ran down over Maria’s lips as Vassar suddenly lifted her and propped her against the wall.
“Vassar! What are you doing?” Father John spat.
“I want this one, it’s perfect,” he replied, not even looking at the three in the corner.
“Hands off. I want that one for our mole.”
Vassar turned suddenly, his long blonde hair flying behind him. “Brutal said I got first pick this time, and this is the one I choose.”
Tidus, his eyes unreadable behind his small glasses, took a step closer to the priest. “I agree with John. She’s young and visibly pleasing. A girl like her would never be suspected. Do not ruin her in the rite. Give her to John.”
Almost impercieveably, Vassar’s hands drifted towards the long-sword he wore under his trenchcoat. “This one is going to survive. It is my right to do as I please with it.”
Father John’s dark eyes narrowed. “Waste as many as you want on your baseless obsession, just not that one.”
The air in the cellar was silent as Jumper-Max leaned on his shovel and Grip and Fang crouched by the door, waiting to see what would happen. Only Brutal was removed from the scene; he sat on a rotting crate in the corner, studying a street-map.
“Is that a challenge?” Both met each other’s steely gaze and for a moment, nothing moved.
“To challenge him on this is to challenge me,” Brutal said evenly, not even looking up from his map, “let him have her, John. Tidus can make you something pretty later.”
The Lasombra pursed his lips, but said nothing. He returned to the corner as the conversation picked up where it had left off. With all the bodies brought in, Grip and Fang amused themselves by carving tattoos on them with their talons and Jumper-Max started digging again. Against the far wall, Vassar turned his attention to the unconscious Maria.
Her long black hair had been tussled by the ordeal and the first thing he did was to chop at it with his dagger until it was a rough pageboy cut and her locks lay at her feet. Fluidly, he ripped the tiny gold studs from her earlobes and tossed them over his shoulder into the pit. Opening her shirt, he carved a cross on the flat of her chest then rubbed a handful of the dirt into the gashes until they were dark.
“Tidus!” he shouted suddenly, and the Tzimice looked up. “Take care of these,” and he motioned to her chest.
He wrinkled his brow slightly in response, but after a glance from Brutal, walked over to the far wall. Tidus put his hands into her chest, molding and smoothing away her visible womanhood.
“Why don’t you just use a boy and save me the trouble?” he asked, but with his flat affect it sounded more like a statement as he crossed the cellar to Brutal’s corner.
“I choose this one,” Vassar whispered, mostly for his own benefit.
Grabbing Maria by the shoulders, he hung the back of her shirt from the rusty stub of a pipe protruding from the crumbling concrete of the wall. Out of a small pocket in the trenchcoat came the weathered punch-dagger. The words of the three in the corner became a soft lull in the background and Grip crept closer to the scene at the far wall. Vassar opened Maria’s flawless mouth. The dagger went in. Her tongue came out. The girl choked as her own blood flowed down her throat and she swallowed reflexively. Copious amounts of the thick liquor ran down her chin and soaked her chest.
“Servants should be seen and not heard,” he murmured lovingly at the form hanging on the wall and tossed the bloody mass of tissue into the pit.
“If you’re finished…?”
Vassar turned slowly. The rest of the pack had assembled by the ditch and Jumper-Max had begun to separate the bodies into piles. Fang had the shovel and waited eagerly. Brutal nodded to the priest.
“In the name of the great dark Father, we are gathered on the edge of creation,” Father John intoned, “for His glory we forge the armies that will bring His power and might to the world.”
It began.
Overcome by the bloodrush, Vassar ripped Maria from the wall and sank his fangs into her tender throat, drinking full and deep, not stopping even as he felt her fragile heartbeat flutter and falter. The limp body fell to the floor but the ecstasy made it seem to move in slow motion. Wrist slit, he held his dripping fist over her mouth, jaw slack in the posture of decrepitude. The corpse twitched and writhed, eyes flew open in the desperation of being wrenched so cruelly back and forth across the vortex of death. Vassar, limbs strong with the over-abundance of stolen life, lifted his creation with one hand and held it aloft. The creature’s wild eyes met his.
“Survive,” he roared and threw it into the crypt where the other husks screamed silently and boiled against each other in the primal hell of filth and blood.
Fang shoveled the dirt back in while Grip danced like a cloven-hoof imp about the edge and tossed in handfuls of the stuff. Tidus watched impassionately while the good father’s face flushed crimson as his chanting in high Latin reached a fever pitch. Brutal had slumped to one knee, skin sweating out the juice of the new infants and Jumper-Max used the side of one of the crates to fill in the pit. Abruptly, there was silence in the cellar again. Only a disembodied scuffing paid tribute to the writhing mass below the earth.
The loose grime shifted and rolled and finally a clawed hand shot up out of the ocean of imprisonment. Soon others joined it and as the blind, mad shock troops dug their frenzied way out of the ground, they were easily knocked aside or bashed against the wall into unconsciousness again. When Vassar’s childe reached the surface, still gasping by instinct and the very real sensation of eternal suffocation, he let out a joyous yell and smashed her in the head with the shovel. The new vampire hit the ground and did not move.
When it was over, the warehouse was an exhibition of blood and ripped flesh. The Camerilla scouts were dead and diablorized and the floor was slick and black with the remains of the one-night army. Only one recruit still stood, arms clasped around its belly and shaking. Black hair was plastered to its forehead by the sheer amount of blood that drenched the creature, but a strange fire glowed in its eyes and it remained standing while the pack celebrated.
The neonate was confused and had ceased to think in the rational, higher thought of the human being. Primal hunger had been alleviated for the moment and something shocking had happened, but the reasoning animal behind the fangs was still too disoriented to try and explain what. All that it realized was the towering angel with the shining white hair was coming towards it. Weak, filthy, and exhausted, it fell to its knees.
Vassar, clothes clean and boots polished, stared down at the cowering thing at his feet. He nodded, eyes sickly pleased.
“Finally, a servant that is worthy of me. You have done well, but you made too many mistakes. Come, squire, there is still work for you tonight.”
The man touched the young Ventrue Antitribu lightly on the head. Maria Tso of the Little Mountain family looked up at her new master, and seeing him pleased with her, smiled. Squire stood and followed her sire away from the battlefield.
The old man snapped his fingers and heard Digger stir and come trotting over to shove his nose under the human’s hand. Then, he felt the hot puffs of dog breath and his friend’s soft tongue searching for crumbs on his palm. A smile cracked the man’s ancient face.
“There now, a fellow’d think you’d never been fed, eh?”
He reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out a dog treat, holding it up and whistling. Digger, however, didn’t sit and give his begging bark. Rather, the dog was holding still and growling softly while inching backwards toward his blanket-bed under the stove. There was only one person who could make him do that, and the old man knew who it was.
“It’s been a few years now, hasn’t it, old girl?”
Catherine Mason pushed aside the woven blanket that served as the summer door to the old hogan and stepped inside. The blind man smiled again and stood, but the years were telling in him so he lowered himself back down into the beaten easy-chair. It had been a while since Catherine, Peter Yantsi-Tso’s only surviving sibling had come to visit. She must be getting on in years, poor girl, it must be hard to find someone to drive her up here to see me, he thought.
“I’ve been away from the res for a while,” replied the Gangrel, who sat on an old wooden stool their father had carved, “you getting on all right?”
Peter huffed. “I’m fine, you know that. Got Digger here to keep me company and Cheryl and Danu come up every evening to make sure I’ve eaten dinner and haven’t burned the place down or anything.” He chuckled. “It’s you I’m worried about, always traipsing around the countryside.”
“I can take care of myself,” she snapped, then instantly regretted it. “I’ve got some strength in me yet, Petey. I just want to make sure you’re happy and healthy, is all.”
“Couldn’t be better. You know me, I always find something to do.”
The silence then stretched unnaturally, and Peter raised an eyebrow. “Catherine? There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”
“You’re imagining things, little brother.”
He shrugged and changed the topic. “Have you heard? No, I guess not, being off the res for a while...Danu told me that Reg’s daughter, Maria, went missing a few months ago.”
Mason’s brow furrowed. “Reg from Bitter Water or Little Mountain?”
“Little Mountain. Your great-niece, actually, now that I think about it. Reg’s father was Tanyè, remember?”
“Yes,” she answered because her brother couldn’t hear a nod. She’d been present at the birth of her older brother’s son, Tanyè, but that had been so many years ago. “Are the tribal police making the investigation, or the feds?”
Peter unwrapped a mint and popped it into his mouth. “Neither. The police said she disappeared in the city, so it’s their jurisdiction. They’ve found nothing, but it’s no secret they don’t care much ‘bout some Navajo kid vanishing in the big city. It’s too bad. Danu told me she was all set up for a full scholarship at the state university.”
They continued talking for a few more hours and Mason left before dawn, as she usually did. Peter reached for his cane and rose, turning off the electric lights and dousing the fire. On his way to the back bedroom, he ran a hand over the mantle and picked up the small wad of cash his sister had left him. Grinning and sighing, he placed it in the drawer full of the same. Really, Catherine shouldn’t worry about him so much, and with her getting on in years, she should keep the money for herself. That is, he reminded himself, if she would even ever admit to leaving it. The old man turned off the light, on for Cheryl and Danu’s convenience, and padded off to bed.
Grip and Fang looked up suddenly as a floorboard creaked. When they saw Squire standing in the doorway they glared and returned to their poker game. She crept further into one of the back rooms of the pack’s haven, but a low growl halted her.
“Outta here, dicklick. Go chase yer master’s ass,” Grip snarled.
The neonate stared at him for a moment then took a hesitant step forward. Fang bared his fangs and made to spring at her, but Jumper-Max grabbed her from behind and hauled her out of the room.
“Behave yerselves! Kill this one and Vassar’ll make us all sorry.”
Averting their eyes from the dominant gaze of the leader’s childe, they went back to considering their chips. Squire just watched them, eyes eventually unfocusing as it became apparent that she was staring off into nothing.
“Hey, kid, I could use some help re-boarding these windows back here,” the Brujah Antitribu said forcefully, breaking her trance. Squire nodded eagerly and followed him into the larger back room where the window-covering had rotted and begun to fall in. As Jumper-Max ripped the wood and metal from the window-frames, she tossed the debris in the corner and laid out the new boards by size.
For a while, he worked in silence while Squire handed him nails and held the boards steady. Ultimately, however, Jumper-Max found himself watching her sit and stare. He remembered the night they found her drunkenly stumbling down the street in the wrong part of the city. Pretty little native girl with a nice body and soft lips; cute top and skirt and a keychain with a plastic, sparkly blue heart on it that said LIL’ PRINCESS. There were two different worlds, though, and now she was a part of theirs. She now wore the same filthy rags they all did and celebrated the Valderie with the fervor of the most devoted member of the sect. She’d been cleansed of her disgusting human weakness and brought into the glory of the power of the Sabbat. Why wasn’t she happy?
“Squire?”
Looking up at the sound of her name, she waited to be told what to do. Jumper-Max felt a sudden pang hit him and put down his hammer. He saw the way Vassar treated his servant, but then, she was just a neonate and how else would she become as strong as the rest of them? Still, there was a warm part of him, deep inside, that wanted to embrace her and not let go until dawn. He shook his head and touched his fangs to clear his mind. It was just the thoughts of a human male that made him feel that, he told himself, there was no room in him now for compassion or mercy because such things would make him weak and targets for the sect’s enemies.
Still, her skin looked soft and he found his fingertips brushing her cheek. Squire seemed confused but didn’t shy from his touch. Growing braver, he wiped a trace of soot from below her eye and his palm caressed her face.
“Traitor!”
They both started and whirled to see Vassar standing in the doorway, sword drawn and point leveled at Jumper-Max’s throat.
“Take your filthy hands off my servant or I will cut them off myself!”
He narrowed his eyes and stepped back from Squire. “I’ll do what you say, but don’t think for a second that you can hurt a hair on my head. You’re a good fighter and Brutal puts up with your obsession, but if you killed me he’d have no problem offing you for it. Don’t forget that.”
The Ventrue Antitribu’s eyes glowed red and his fangs showed but he lifted his sword and let Jumper-Max leave the room. Sheathing his weapon, he back-handed Squire savagely and she hit the wall, then the floor.
“You worthless harlot! Tonight you’re going to learn about honor…”
They all knew he spent the rest of the night beating and torturing her, but none of them did a thing about it. They also knew her blood was his, and that if it pleased her master, she loved every minute of it.
It was a warm autumn night when Catherine Mason was startled by a body being flung through the front window of her apartment. Crunching over the broken glass she ran outside, but the car was already speeding away into the darkness. She stood there for a moment before going back inside to take stock of the situation.
On her floor lay what looked like a teenage boy, wrists and ankles handcuffed, and with a note pinned to his back:
This is your problem, not ours. Keep your people to your territory or we will have to make it our business.
Mason didn’t have to wonder who had written the note; she had a few…agreements with the local lupines, but failed to see what the young mortal had to do with that. Kneeling down, she felt for the boy’s pulse, and found none. It was then that she noticed a shocking resemblance to the picture that had been up all over the res when she’d visited her brother nearly six months previous. This boy was actually a girl and was actually her great-niece, Maria Tso. Well, was. Forcing a sigh, Mason sat down against the wall and tried to decide what to do first. Had Maria been messing with the lupines, is that why they brought her body there? But why would they kill a mortal? And furthermore, how did they know she was related to Mason?
Then, the corpse shifted and the cuts on its face began to close, and the Gangrel understood everything. She stood and hefted Maria onto the couch. Her eyes opened and flinched and though she strained against the cuffs, she cringed before Mason and said nothing.
“Maria Tso of Little Mountain?” The vampire only stared at her. “Are you all right?” Again, silence. Mason knelt to be on eye-level with the girl, not even aware that stance made her even more intimidating. “Talk to me, tell me what happened.”
Maria shivered and shook her head. Then, she opened her mouth to display the scared stump of what was left of her tongue. Mason’s eyes widened, but she said nothing and walked out of the room returning with a pen and pad of paper which she placed in front of the girl. The neonate stared at them curiously, then looked up at Mason again.
“They’re for writing. You know how to write, right?” Hadn’t Peter mentioned that Maria was up for a scholarship to the university? Surely she could still remember how to write, she thought.
After a moment in consideration, Maria lifted the pen clumsily and managed to write with it:
squire. me.
“You’re called Squire?” She nodded and continued.
bad wolfs. master? leader? father? teacher? brothers? best brother?
“Slow down, slow down. The lupines fought with you, is that right?”
yes.
“Who else was with you? Other vampires?”
all. Master leader father teacher brothers best brother.
Mason forced another sigh and sat down on the couch next to Squire. “Let’s start at the beginning, ok? When were you embraced?”
?????
“When were you made into a vampire?”
?????
“Do you know what Clan you are?”
true ventrue like master.
An unsettling tingle started up in Mason’s stomach but she ignored it. “True Ventrue? What does that mean? Is Master your sire?”
true ventrue under the glory of caine to kneel at his feet and knights in his name. master brought me into the light.
“Did Master tell you about the Traditions and the Camerilla?”
master says camerilla are the enemies…not noble.
She pursed her lips and looked away from Squire. So, Maria Tso had been shovelheaded by the Sabbat, and now her pack had most likely been killed by the lupines with her saved for an example. Mason had three options; take her to the Prince and hope for his mercy on the neonate, turn her loose outside the city and hope for the best, or kill her there and then. She favored the first one; ‘Squire’ was family, well, kind of, and hadn’t she abandoned the people when she’d become the monster she was?
“All right…Squire. Listen to me. You’re going to stay with me for a while, clear?”
Fear ran through the girls eyes and she scribbled furiously. master? best brother? where are the rest?
“Dead. They’re all dead. We’re going to try some reeducation. You’re a smart girl, I’m sure you’ll pick it all up real quick. We’re going to start with the Traditions and probably move onto sign language or something like that.”
A heavy tear of blood ran down her face and soaked into the paper on her lap. master master master…all dead forever…father must be happy now in heaven with the great dark father.
Revulsion twisted Mason’s face and she knocked the paper across the room. “There’s not going to be anymore talk like that! You’re not Sabbat anymore, got it?”
Squire whimpered fearfully and shook in terror, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the blows to fall. Slowly, Mason’s continence softened.
“Look, you might not remember, but you’re of the people, just like me, see?” and she put her arm next to Squire’s so their skin-tones matched, though the neonates was a shade darker; Mason was only a half-breed, after all. “We’ll just take this slow and everything will be all right, ok?”
Squire nodded and Mason began explaining everything.