A story of tunnels and blood

For those that do not know me, I am Kyrra, a Priestess of Cybele, Galloi and Nosferatu, and I have been awake in these nights for a very long time.

The catacombs beneath Rome were our territory. No one ventured there without our permission, or proper payment. We were feared, and rightfully so. And yet, we were sought out time and again. Secrets trickled down into our stone tunnels to be held, traded, for a price. And our gifts of blood magic were well sought after by the surface dwellers. They knew the Nosferatu, the "scorned and hideous monsters below," reviled us our monstrous forms. But it was the Nosferatu that the newly revered Goddess Cybele had honored with her gifts for their dutiful worship over the years. And irony of ironies, the gift of beauty and attraction, power and manipulation, that Her worship offered was only to be spread through the touch of her Nosferatu priests, we who were generally considered the very antithesis of such prizes.

And such was a pride of our clan. It is why we keep Blood Caldariums in so very many of our Necropoli. The hoarding of the gift of beauty in the clutches of our clawed grasps, demanding proper recompense, payment, and/or groveling of those whom had previously thought themselves so much higher than our own. Let them play their games above, intrigue and betrayal, political backstabbing and solicitous affairs. Here, in our catacombs, we rule, and they knew this when they ventured into our realm begging our help in their quest for power.

We knew better than they, for their own petty games among themselves did not involve us. We stayed below, gathering, hoarding, and when they needed real strength, real information, or real power - who did they come to - the Nosferatu.

There was a time, I remember, when a particular young vampire who thought quite the world of herself, was quite obsessed with obtaining every method of beauty upon her person that she might, so that she may be seen as the most beautiful vampire of all the land. She was hardly alone in this goal, but I had not seen one so singularly-minded as her. She believed her beauty to be her power, and with it she was untouchable.

She had sought out the "gift" of the Galloi, hearing that even amidst our hideousness, we had the ability to grant such beauty as to surpass any other. She was willing to dare the catacombs. With great expense to herself, we traded her this gift, with the understanding that she would not work against our clan with this new found beauty. But, with this gift, she became quite the envy of the court of Rome, as she was indeed the most beautiful in the city. And we watched, knowing all too well that such beauty was only one facet of a cracking diamond. Still others, in their envy and greed, sought such beauty for themselves, wishing to obtain the power that it could give them over others. Such vain attempts at a false power, the Nosferatu could only shake their heads in wonder.

The attacks came suddenly. Waves of mortals and kindred alike flooding the city, killing everything in its path. And we watched as the futile search for beauty left our fellows cut down to dust, the illusion they had wrapped so tightly about themselves doing nothing in the face of real power. We watched, we fought, and we lived, for our power was real and we defended and killed those that threatened us, and remained safe in our catacombs. For we knew that the search of beauty was a search for an illusion that would never be true power.