The following story has nothing whatever to do with Julius or any of his acquaintances, however I really can't be bothered creating a new account for posting this. I shall be writing more when the mood hits me, with the second post being flashback to the dark ages, when our as yet unnamed protagonist is a mortal apothecary, not a modern day plastic surgeon.

Why are we special? Like all Kindred we are Sired from mortal flesh and transform into the undead, vampires who depend for sustenance on mortal blood. We gain, partly by instinct, partly by learning, powers and abilities which transcend mortal limits. In this way we are no different from our cousins in other clans. We are different because we and we alone understand the truth of things, we are all descended from a God. The true holiness which descends from our father, the God, passing the blood down and down, so that each of his children, even to the thinnest blood holds within them, that spark of Godhood.We are the true angels, each of us a Demigod made holy with those precious drops of divine fluid. It falls to us, the holders of the true faith, to bring our lost cousins into the fold. The avenging Assamite, the insidious Tremere, the overbearing Ventrue. It matters not. It is up to us to take hold over them all and in so doing bring them back to their true Father, he who dwells in the Darkness.

Corruption and from it perfection. Only by understanding what is corrupt can we understand what is perfect. When we bury at sea, we commit a body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, so says the book of Common Prayer. The dead then are corrupt? The undead? The endless possibilities of our immortality allow us to explore this to the ultimate end. They, those who have not embraced the truth of our Lord of Night say we are corrupt, but they fail to understand. It is only from corruption that perfection can be achieved. How can we understand dark without light? Saints without Sinners? We explore what is filth, what is dirt, what is to be found in the gutter of hearts and minds and souls and at the end, we understand what is perfection.

So this is the common mistake. The reason we are at the same time loved and hated. We provide what they want, what they need, when nobody else can help, we are there, for all our brothers and sisters and they love us for it. Yet, they hate us, for our services bring them into our grasp, give us a hold over them, begin them on a path of corruption. We must endure this hatred and yet not fall into prideful ways for their love. Remember what we are to do, we achieve perfection through corruption and the ultimate perfection is the return of a prodigal son to the fold. Be patient. With immortality comes the luxury of time. A tiny nudge, a correctly timed word. Seduce, do not evangelise. Only with subtlety can we achieve those goals with which we are charged.

The more that time passes the more things stay the same. Here in my Harley Street practice, the mistresses of rich men come to be injected with botox venom. How delicious that mortals should choose botulism to keep themselves beautiful. I wonder though, how many of these mistresses come to me, for the morphine I give them to ward against the painful treatment. How many again understand that the lazy euphoria following the treatments is from the vitae I have syphoned from their veins, opiate enriched blood for a special clientele, a product in which I have specialised now for nearly a thousand years... since even before I was shown the truth of my God and given the Holy gift of Immortality...

((::applauds:: Hurrah! Encore!

I was born in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand and Eighty Eight, the illegitimate child of a passing Norman's pleasure upon a Saxon maid who took his fancy. I shall not bore you with tales of my childhood. It requires little imagination to see how the bastard son of a Norman soldier is treated in a Saxon village. It should come then as no surprise that when the call came to fight for the Lord Our God in the Holy Land, I at once acted upon an opportunity to remove myself from a most unpleasant position within the social order of things. This decision, to take control of my own destiny I mark as the single turning point upon which the whole of my life and my unlife have hinged. It would be a conceit to say that I listened to the call of the One True God and piously took up arms against the heathen. More, it would be a lie. I saw the way out of a difficult position and grasped my release with both hands.

Again, I have little to add concerning Pope Urban's capture of the Levant and the subsequent creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Read a history book if you wish. What it is important to know is that there, where the empires of Christendom and Islam met was where I was forged. Here did I learn the important things, how to read, how to write, in Latin, Greek and Arabic. The herbs which make a poultice to heal wounds, the fungus that will give a man visions, or if too much is taken will erase his memory, or destroy his mind utterly. I would not return to my homeland an outcast bastard. In fact I remained for a decade, learning, absorbing all I could.

In time I would learn that all my study, the wealth of knowledge, the books and herbs and learning with which I returned home were a mere beginning. The apprenticeship, a firm grounding perhaps. The incompleteness of my education obvious now, to those with eyes to see. Christendom fighting Islam? Europeans fighting with Arabs? Utter nonsense. Look beneath and you will find Ventrue and Assamites using their mortal pawns in their never ending Jyhad. Oh my Father, how I give thanks and praise that you have spared us, your chosen ones from such pointless foolishness. No. My true education was shortly to begin.

I set up shop in a Northamptonshire market town. I could tell you which, but a particular sense of place isn't part of this tale. One town much like another, filled with sound and people and animals and filth and stink. Try living with the Arabs for a few years, then come back to Europe. Praise be to the Lord of Night that finally, in these recent years, the mortals of Christendom have learned the value of personal hygiene. I purchased a small shop and began to minister, to those who could afford my fees, such medicine as I had learned.

And what had I learned? I had learned from a harsh childhood and from society in general that people live in a pecking order. At the top is the King. At the bottom are bastard children of invading soldiers. Somewhere in the middle a line is drawn between success and failure, between hardship and prosperity. By gaining power over others, one prospers. By being indebted, one fails. There is no middle ground. The one who says, I will not take advantage over you, for it runs counter to my morals is prey waiting to be hunted by the successful predator. So, I had learned that I should take advantage, use what I can to ensure my place up the ladder, keep my interests safe by the accumulation of favours and in the creation of attachments only I could satisfy. Who else but me knew just exactly how to mix the poppy juice?

What? Don't even try to claim you are at all shocked by the revelation that the pretty white flowers in my herb garden were anything more than opium poppies and that by judicious over prescribing I created a collection of happy little addicts all pleased to give me whatever I desired in return for their next fix. Oh I'm sure in this day and age such a thing would be considered quite ordinary for one such as I, but in the Norman times, opiate addiction was a brand new vice, ripe for exploitation. I gathered money, I gathered secrets, I gathered the occasional fuck. I was after all, only human, with human needs.

I came to the attention of the nobility. My skills were vastly in excess of the common butchers who liked to call themselves doctors. Power, power to heal, power to grease the wheels of nobility itself. After all it was the fashion to marry off young pretty daughters to ugly old men in order to gain political strength. The herbs I could mix would ensure a compliant bride at the altar... in the marriage bed...

Ugly old men, their manhoods hardened half by lust and half by power. Old men, beyond the simple pleasure of young firm flesh, are as much driven by the desire for violation as for procreation. Their orgasm driven by the need to own and possess, drink the cum from my cock like the bitch you are, little girl, for you belong to me now. The sweating, groaning, aching trembling pleasure in despoiling purity and innocence. And once taken, broken in to the saddle, never the same again, never so sweet the second time. Already polluted with their filth, ridden in some unimaginative way, then discarded. Men such as this have complicated desires and even as they penetrate their tiny, frightened brides with their bodies, so they seek to penetrate their minds and break a seal no less virginal than that which bleeds upon white marriage linen.

And some would think me cruel for the facilitation of society's very own especially licensed traffic in human souls: Marriage. That rite which a priest conducts at the instruction of a mortal lord, for political reasons, to institutionalise the rape of girls barely becoming women at the hands of foul old men. I am not cruel, nor evil. Do you think these things do not happen in other places where there is no such apothecary to mix potions? It happens, I assure you, throughout Christendom. Here, unlike most places, there is at least the escape into euphoria that I provide. Here, unlike most places, a Lady can send her maid to collect more of my medicine and in its blissful arms endure another night of conjugal duties, detached from the reality by sweet dreams and insulated from the truth by blurred awareness.

And then, when my own dreams of power were at their zenith, when I believed myself untouchable. When the great and the good beat a path to my door, was my world brought crashing down around me. I was awakened to new possibilities, shown a new world, shown what it is to feel the need like nothing you ever knew, for I was about to taste for the first time of Kindred Blood and become the mortal thrall of my new Goddess. My apprenticeship was over and my education would truly begin.

For the common woman life was hard, but often happy. You grow up, you fall in love with the boy next door, or perhaps in the next village. Your families are agreeable, you marry, bear children, get old before your time and die satisfied with a life of toil, dirt and hardship. For the noble woman, as has been discussed, life is often less fulfilled. Even if the prison is luxurious and the lifestyle pampered, the noblewoman is, let's be honest, little more than a chattel of her father, sold off to her husband at the politically strategic moment.

Very well, I concede the point. For each tortured soul, sighing over her embroidery, there is another woman who opens her legs willingly as the price to maintain her luxury. Yes and further to that are the ones who actually manage to use their gifts to maintain a level of control over their menfolk.

Enough, I beg you. You would have a serpent speak the whole truth in the first sentence? That is simply not our way, but very well. The truth of the matter is that for every frightened little girl using my drugs to escape the dreadful reality of her existence, there is another woman drugging or poisoning her husband to achieve her own political gains. My pharmacopeia is comprehensive enough to satisfy all requirements and my prices suitably high to buy my discretion along with my skills.

Thus when she walked through the door, my first thought was to the slower poisons, she stalked back and forth, the predator in velvet, confident and assured. I thought myself by now a good enough judge of character to realise that this one held power and had come to me for the means to maintain, perhaps increase that power. It was a time before she spoke, yet somehow I felt no need to fill the silence, watching her walk back and forth, her piercing eyes upon me.

In retrospect I have no doubt those eyes were bewitching me with more than those deeply appraising looks. Presence, domination, these are effective, if crude tools for the manipulation of lesser minds. I am not embarrassed when I say that my will crumbled and that even before she spoke a word, I knew I was going to do whatever she asked of me. This is the way of things between kindred and kine, so as a mortal man, there is no shame in this.

When finally she did speak and I cannot remember the words, if even words were used, it was to open my eyes to the wider truth. The favours I hoarded, the secrets I discovered, impacted on another society, a hidden society and it was time I either joined, or risk destruction. I cannot say I was particularly surprised when her fangs entered my neck, those were superstitious times and the existence of vampires no real shock. What did surprise was the sublime ecstasy of her caress even as the lifeblood pumped from my jugular vein, even disappointment when she stopped short of taking my life. She wasn't there to embrace me, you understand. My membership of her society was to be, at best, as an associate member.

Some of you will have experienced this and understand, but for those who have not, you must understand that a mortal does not naturally choose to drink the blood of another. As kindred we are driven by our hunger, but as a mortal we are held back by revulsion. This is a safety mechanism grown out of our evolution. To take the blood of another person is to risk taking in their diseases. Subconsciously we know this and so resist, yet, when one's will is subsumed in the desires of another, we do as instructed and so did I, yet mortal, drink the offered kindred vitae in turn. It made me feel good, it made me feel powerful. I was now her servant, I would call her Mistress and Goddess even then, let alone two nights later when the bond was complete.

I had shed mortal bonds and was now immortal, for as long as my Goddess would continue to grace me with her life giving blood. Blood which would cost me in ways I could not have predicted as I began to learn a new reality. The truths which lead step by step to the final truth, that there is a God and that his name is Set.

((MORE MAESTRO!!!!

((Well done me old codger. It seems we needed a few years off to purge the fast food tendencies of our prior creativity in order start to work true masterpieces. ))

((here here! I don't know what's going on with you two, but whatever it is, don't change anything.

At this point I need to digress somewhat. I have already spoken of the power of corruption in the pursuit of perfection. Naturally this is not the whole truth. What is? If I simply note all the answers one after another in clear progression then where is the understanding. Only with understanding can all the facts be properly comprehended. I can lead a horse to water, but I cannot make it think.

So here is the truth. We are not the Clan of Corruption, but rather we are the Clan of the Serpent. The snake is wise and clever. It is just the Garden of Eden all over again. The serpent is blamed for the corruption of man. Nonsense, the serpent simply led man into knowledge, forbidden knowledge, the truth of good and evil. Just the same, we, the children of Set are not driven to corrupt, but again to give understanding of knowledge, secrets most in their foolishness would imagine are best left buried. I will speak a plain truth: There is no knowledge which is better left unknown. It is by unearthing and teaching such secrets that we better understand what is good and what is evil. This is our task, our calling, we do not corrupt, we teach. Indeed, that is the truth, or a version of the truth, or a mirror to the truth. Perhaps in time you will understand enough to read between the lines and see beyond the words and into wisdom.

So, to discourse about addiction. If this is something you have not experienced, then I recommend it wholeheartedly. Of course, in our state beyond the bounds of mortal life, a good binding addiction is harder to gain than simple vices like injecting heroin or smoking crack, but there are ways. Take pleasure in your vice and indulge it, to the nth degree, wallow in it, play with it. Treat it like your lover. Whatever you use, obtain far too much of it and make sure always that whatever it is, that special something, is always easily within reach. Make it an integral part of your life. This will be a learning experience for you.

Addiction then is like being on a higher plane. Those who have never experienced it simply cannot comprehend what a driving influence it is. When one has one's drug, nothing really matters, one functions within a degree of social and operational normality. When one does not, no other drive can give such an ultimate level of singleminded purpose as to get the next fix. Such purity of thought, body and mind in motion as one unified creature is unmatched by any other process. The pain of withdrawal burns away all other concerns, all other considerations. There is little that a truly, deeply addicted soul will not do to maintain their supply. This is the important lesson to take away from addiction. Such singleminded purpose is perfectly possible with proper discipline. If you can practice such discipline without the drive of addiction, then you can apply it in other, more productive areas and the lesson will be complete.

Of course, the pain of withdrawal is something one must also experience, in all its horrendousness. The purging of toxins from the body as each cell cries out in individual pain for the substance upon which it has become dependant. Until one has experienced the true and complete revelation that one will surely die without one's next indulgence and has found instead that the pain does subside and life returns; until then one cannot see past a moment's suffering, to a greater end that such suffering may bring.

And so you wonder why I pause in my narrative to discuss these concepts? That much should be obvious. Every ghoul we create is addicted almost at the first drop of our supernatural blood. No drug is more efficacious in the high it renders unto mortal flesh. Real, magical powers are created within the host, in long term users often equal to our own. We, who are children of a god impart our divine grace to kine and so raise them above the herd. In doing so we open their eyes to a new world, a greater world with a greater truth. Should we then take that divine grace from them by witholding our gifts, their lives are reduced to nothing. One cannot experience godliness and then survive once again as merest mortal.

With this in mind, I turn to my own time as a ghoul, my own first taste of godliness and my own particular experience with addiction.

((SoC lives again, p'raps? Superb, Stef! Nice to see you haven't lost your touch :)

It is a fascinating property of kindred vitae that it can create a bond, the blood bond. Drink three times on three occasions and you will be held in thrall to the donor vampire. Uniquely amongst all our wide and varied talents this is universal. Weak blooded childe cannot dominate their elders with disciplines, yet those of the weakest blood can still bond those who own the strongest. The blood bond makes us all strangely equals, as any one of us is susceptible to ensnarement by any of our undead siblings.

For mortals of course, no such equality exists. The blood of a mortal contains no such supernatural powers to command the love and loyalty of another, yet mortals are still susceptible to bonding and this is how it is with all ghouls. We who have already received the divine gift of immortality receive nothing in return for thralldom. Mortals, on the other hand receive great blessings. Mortal service as a ghoul is in many ways its own reward. Remember this, when you are leading mortals to the first stages of enlightenment. The blood of the vampire imparts to a mortal many gifts.

And so, even as the first drops of kindred vitae passed my lips the rewards for my service were beginning. I would not age, I gained supernatural strength and of course that feeling, that delicious, awe inspiring feeling as the divine power ran through my veins, better than any other pleasure, better than any other drug, better than the most powerful of orgasm.

Thus is the state of a ghoul, locked in from two directions to complete obedience to their masters. Not only does the blood bond compel them to a state akin to love, but the desire for another drink of vitae drives them. No matter how stable a ghoul may appear, no matter how reasonable their words or actions, always remember that they are driven emotionally and physically to please their master or mistress. The need to do so is, quite literally, in their blood and the ultimate addiction to which any mortal can aspire.

Thus is defined the state of grace of the ghoul, the blessing which stems from our own divinity and the curse of servitude. Yet even so, it is no real curse, for the blood bond inspires love and it becomes a blessing to serve those who are beloved to us. Remember then to treat your ghoul servants well, to be worthy of such dedication. This does not mean that you should never cause them to suffer, for there are many useful lessons suffering can bring and part of your duty is education. Remember always, that these are not slaves, but children and students for whom you are responsible. Whatever tasks they perform will be performed in your name, whatever pain they experience, they experience for you.

My own period of servitude included some basic of tasks, many of which would not make sense until years afterwards. I still have the little statue of Set to which I made daily offerings of blood and beer, not knowing why, but it was the first task I was given and of course, the most important. For the more complicated tasks, the position I already enjoyed from my mortal endeavours was the basic qualification for the higher education I was to receive.

I have at some length detailed the bond between a ghoul and his or her master, so shall not dwell overly much upon it, as I give discourse on my own experiences of that intermediate state of being.

Much as I am sure many of you have experienced, my time was split between errand running for my mistress, who of course could not operate in daylight and in training in the secrets of our blood, our faith and our divinity as I was steered in the proper ways to honour our Father. From time to time, tests were administered.

I must tell you that a human cannot withstand any pain. A fascinating series of books I have studied includes a man reciting a litany against fear, in order to withstand a test of pain. Nonsense. At the very heart of every mortal is the animal within. Much like the beast coiled in the heart of all our immortal brothers, there are things which cannot be denied by nature. A human, when given sufficient pain will, inevitably, pass into unconsciousness. This is for the sake of preservation. The body and mind can only take so much and so like a flicked switch, a human turns off, so as to protect itself.

Naturally there are methods to prevent this. A mortal can be kept, almost indefinately, in unbearable and I use the word carefully - unbearable, for in all normal circumstances the mortal would pass into unconsciousness or perhaps even die to escape such pain - so yes, unbearable pain, practically indefinately.

The Gate of Pain as a test is one which must be rarely used and only after much deliberation. One must decide if the test is truly necessary before requring it of any of one's charges. This test perhaps more than any other can break an otherwise promising pupil, often for no good reason. Much like dropping a steel rod into a blast furnace, to see if it comes out intact, one is taking a subject beyond normal tolerances and there must be justification for such action.

I lay manacled to some kind of table, aching in every fibre of my being for lack of the blood of my mistress, denied to me and denied and denied until the fire of withdrawal burned within me like white hot metal and only then the test begins. The crude methods, sharp, blunt, hot, cold. Poisons to run like acid in my veins and chemicals to slowly leach flesh from my body. And, all the while, the knowledge, the terrible terrible knowledge that there would be no relief, my clarity of mind maintained by my torturer so that each new agony might course through me in its own exquisite detail.

And why, might you ask? What reason compelled my mistress to abuse me so?

The more perceptive of you will already have seen how utterly necessary this test was for me. Vital to expand my consciousness and my understanding of what it means to be alive. My mortal life I have given in some detail. I indulged myself, lived a life to use and abuse others. A lifetime of pain and suffering I had to catch up on. To know how it is to be at another's mercy, to be so cruelly used myself. I needed to be stretched, taken beyond the limits of nature. I needed... perspective.

Many who are given to the test of the Gate of Pain do not emerge entirely ... whole. All who pass through the Gate are changed in some way.

How shall I attempt to describe my reaction? When it was done, when the trial was ended and I had survived, with my mind intact, as much as anyone does. When I had passed the test and my mistress took me in her arms and shared her blood with me, holding my trembling battered body as it healed, did I see a tear of blood run down her cheek and I understood.

For here is a great truth of the Children of Set. It is for love that we act as we do. Within the Kindred we are unique in this expression of complete self sacrificing love for our fellows. Do not speak to me of the shallow Toreador and their misplaced lust.

No. The serpent gave mankind knowledge of good and evil out of love, to remove the unjust shackles placed there. So must all our actions be tempered with love. If you act not out of love, then your actions are questionable. Remember it is our duty, our purpose to bring all our brothers and sisters, kindred and kine, back to the Father who dwells in the darkness. What greater act of love can there be, than to reunite such a sadly shattered family.

Love. Love is what drives the Children of Set. God is Love and we are his chosen Children.