The Cross and Crescent - Cordoba Winter/Spring 1237

From the journal of Xavier Hugo of Clan Cappadocian; Cordoba, February 1237
My studies continue to be distracted. That is not to say that my time in the abandoned library of the Qabilat Al Mawt has not been both well spent and educational - I have, indeed, learned much. But politics distracts, as it has a way of doing.

We have made a new 'friend', a Muslim Assamite - excuse me, one of the Banu Haqim - named Rashid, apparently sent to help us deal with our Junius problem. He seems both sane and useful thus far, if a little distracted with the sky. He even helped us attack Viktor Nagy, thus taking the first step to joining the blood-drenched insanity that is our little coterie. I almost pity him.

Speaking of Nagy, Gaius has apparently buried him somewhere - I would not be surprised if Gaius acquires some more black marks in his aura soon enough. And he has cunningly lured Giacomo Di Giovanni out of the city for a while, which means that the Table of Solomon should be safe, for a while - until we have dealt with Junius, at least.

Junius, now - there's an insoluble problem. So little is known about him. Alvar knows that this war is built on a personal vendetta, but apparently lacks the power or the inclination to do anything about it. Even the Nosferatu and the Setites are at a loss to provide us with useful information. It would seem our options are quickly becoming severely limited; yet more murder may be the only path. It is distasteful, but a Cappadocian should never be afraid of death - not someone else's, at any rate. I wonder, though, what will happen to him; it does seem a shame to let vitae of such power go to waste.

No! What foolishness am I thinking? Removing a soul from the black road entirely. Still, I do wonder how it would feel, and what would be the effect? It is not the first time I have wondered about the... extent of the consumed soul's destruction. I suppose we shall have to see.

And Khalidah. Khalidah! If not for her, I would be as calm and contained and wise as any elder of the Cappadocian scholars. Every word I say, she dismisses; every problem I point out, she claims I am negative; every idea I voice, she claims I am foolish! And when she brings out my beast, I am the attacker, and when I bring out hers, she is justified! Her devotion to chaos irks me.

I think I shall have hot bath and meditate on a few things.

Xavier Hugo


Letter 7 between Subject Lucita of Aragon and Subject Ambrosio Luis Moncada

Sire, All has gone well, the resources were received and dealt with appropriately. Some concern has been caused but I do believe these will be overcome soon enough. Various redevelopments are occurring here, this will not last long. Once all the resources have been collated here things will inevitably quite down. How long Junius will remain I am not sure. There are murmurings against him.

Lucita of Aragon,

March 3rd 1237

Extract from MS Lyon

The great adversary walked the streets of Cordoba, while stone masons began to work on converting the Mezquita to a Cathedral and House of the Lord once more. In response to this, spurred on by Satan and his demons, did rise up against good god fearing individuals. Many a brother monk and priest lost their lives in those nights. Their bodies found floating in the river and their heads left in the market places for all to see. The barons of the land searched high and low for the perpetrators of this crime, but none were found. In the wilderness outside the city bandits did prowl the woods, causing great harm to travelers and merchants. Knights of the Cid, who were travelling the roads between cities were set upon by them, and did put them to the sword.


Letter 1 between Subject Hanif and Subject Naima

Naima, Great Set! Is this really it? Im not sure how you got hold of this but if its true then the world certainly seems to have a sense of irony. Do many other know of this, assumedly not otherwise Junius would have met with a bloodhunt and final death long ago. Was this from Rasmi, surely she is one of the few who could know of such details. This information will fetch a high price from Gaius and his associates. I suggest we choose careful in candidates, matters will conclude soon enough once this is out. We must play this well.

Hanif
March 10th 1237


Letter 8 between Subject Lucita of Aragon and Subject Ambrosio Luis Moncada

Sire, I am unsure if this matter should concern you but I feel that if business is to continue in this city that such rumours and gossip should not be flippantly ignored. Apparently the fools Xavier Hugo and Gaius Menius Pelagius have unleashed a daemon upon the city. Allegedly it was kept bound beneath the Mezquita, and it deceived them with its Hellish wiles.

Lucita of Aragon
March 14th 1237

Letter 2 between Subject Alvar and Ferdinand of Navarre

I hope this missive finds you well. Further correspondence should be arriving with you shortly, dispatched by Cainites here in the city, Gaius Menius Pelagius, Xavier Hugo and Osias. Be sure to keep these documents safe, you will understand immediately upon reading them why they are of grave importance and a delicate nature. If news should reach you about my fate, if is an unhappy one, then I trust you and your brethren to decide wisely upon the matter, and take a course of action that is appropriate and just.

Alvar
Prince of Cordoba
March 17th 1237


Proclamation 7 by Subject Alvar

Be it known that the Cainite known as Junius, of Clan Ventrue is hereby condemned for his crimes to final death, he is blood hunted immediately. All who assist him or aid him will meet a similar fate. Thus is the fate of all traitors and apostates. Junius knowingly and willingly aided the conquest of this city some D years ago when the infidel first came to these lands. He betrayed his brethren and his fellow Christians and cursed them the foul fate of Diablerie. For this, he shall perish. Nobody escapes their past. Punishment, divine in its accordance, will be meted out eventually to all sinners, in accordance with His will.

Alvar
Prince of Cordoba
March 20th 1237


Extract from the Corespondence of Gaius Menas Pelagius

Most Esteemed Sire,
As previously reported the project in Cordova is going well. While as previously mentioned I have had to take measures to store our books in safe locations due to the previous assaults on the abbey, I have managed to acquire and have immediately set about copying the books that the Order requested, currently I am helping the Cappadocian Xavier Hugo guard the library after the unfortunate deaths of the previous attendants and this has given me unprecedented access to this repository of knowledge. While it of course does not even come close to rivalling the Library of the Forgotten, I have discovered many accounts that will be of interest to yourself and others within the order. While this access will only be temporary I believe, as Jacim will eventually return from his business outside the city, I will do my best to acquire copies of any other books that yourself and the Elders should wish to add to our vast collections and will do my best to add anything I discover to our collection here in Cordova.
Of interest is the manner in which the inhabitants of the library perished, Xavier Hugo discovered the entirety of the library staff some twelve individuals and a Cappadocian dead in their seats, entirely still and seemingly half way through their duties, drained of blood without a fang mark except in the case of Rafi who had been seemingly diablerised. The individual we discovered later in the library was not the Tremere as we suspected, but an Assamite with pitch black skin, grey hair and entirely white eyes who ignored us despite our attempts to communicate with him, he searched throughout the library until eventually he found a tome in which a certain passage was written. He read this passage, scrunched it up, and then left. All the while entirely silent. I have included this passage within my missive for yourself and the Elders to analyse.
There is another matter of import that should interest the Elders, the Tremere have recently lost their foothold within the city with the disappearance of Victor Nage, given the current turmoil and Prince Alvars need for support, especially from a politically distant faction such as ourselves and the lack of a Tremere chantry or strong hold, I suggest that the Obertus should immediately capitalise on the matter. I understand the difficulties of travel for our kin, and I am willing to acquire permission from Alvar and yourselves to embrace should it be necessary, however I urge that we take advantage of this opportunity to create a stronghold of our clan within Europe and increase our power.
While my faith remains strong as ever my Sire, despite the repeated assaults from my companions on our practices and religion, you will be proud to know that despite the regretful necessity of violence on several occasions I have not fallen to sin or vice for quite some time despite the attempts of the Setite to lead me into sin or heresy. While I find these assaults taxing as always, I have managed to remain strong, reminded of my previous failings. However the matter that troubles me is the necessities to which I have gone, as you know I do not relish killing, even if it is an inevitability of our state, but as I mentioned some months hence the deaths of gods chosen inquisitors by my hand has troubled me. I feel that my grip upon my humanity and the struggle with the beast within is slipping, and I am troubled, should I be combating the servants of God out of my selfish need to survive? Is my continued existence part of the divine plan. I have contemplated this issue and have yet to come up with a conclusive answer, and I know that this necessity may arrive again. I have began considering a shift to another philosophical road, of course, I will need to spend many months in contemplation of this shift, and I will when I return to the Obertus stronghold in some years hence discuss the matter with yourself and others within the clan.
God Bless,
Your Childer,
Gaius Menas Pelagius of the Obertus




Extract from the Memoirs of Xavier Hugo, Clan Cappadocian.

That was the end of the excitement in Cordoba. I stayed for almost two years afterwards, of course, availing myself of the Cappadocian libraries. I spent many enjoyable evenings with Nahmanides, and with Osaiis, and even with our new companion Rashid, discussing matters of religion, philosophy, and mathematics. I even read my way through the complete Al-Tasrif, and penned myself a copy.

Inevitably, however, I grew nostalgic for my town house in Carcassone. In the Summer of 1239, I began to set my affairs in order: I officially resigned my control over the Feifdom, citing the great work of my clan calling me away, and left it in the hands of Gaius and Osaiis; I turned over control of the Businessman's Guild to a bright young wool merchant named Thomas; and I sold the bathhouse for a tidy profit (then again, I had paid nothing for it). I felt, I suppose, that I had exhausted the possibilities of that city; Rafi was always the more welcoming of my clan within the city, and although Jakeem granted me access to the libraries, he did not seem particularly willing to talk. In the Autumn of 1239, I returned to that place I had come to think of as my home.

My town house in Carcassone had been taken over by paupers when I returned, but they were easy to remove; one or two of the healthier specimens I even adopted into my small retinue, for many of my feeding vessels were growing older, and the old do not always survive when one feeds on them. By mid-winter, I was again well established and my studies - with Irenie's guidance, as ever - began in earnest.

I performed a number of experiments in the following years - what one of the slow, torpid elders would consider a veritable flurry of activity. The Al-Tasrif had been a genuine education in the arts of medicine and physiology, and I spent many interesting evenings pouring over the remains of the recently dead, documenting the form and structure of the body and the mechanics of the processes of decay. If I had had any reservations about dealing with dead flesh before, I lost them on those long evenings.

Another of my favoured experiments grew out of a time of self-contemplation. I had enjoyed the long, hot baths of Cordoba, and so I had a single bath built into the basement of my house in Carcassone - it gave Gilliam something to do, if nothing else. It was finished by the end of spring in 1240, and I spent some evenings simply soaking and reading, calling occasionally for more hot water. During one of these times I fell to self-reflection, and began to think how my fear of death - of the end of my life and the inevitable damnation that would follow - had affected the decisions I had made through my years as one of the Cainites. From these thoughts, I concocted an experiment.

I located a man - a perfectly ordinary, unmarried man, neither saintly nor overly sinful. I resolved to kill him: one year and one night hence from the beginning of the experiment, I would plunge a knife up into the base of his skull, killing him instantly. It was... a distasteful thought, to kill a man in cold blood, for no other reason than my own curiosity. But Irenie, once she had heard the nature of my idea, was quite energetically insistent that I see it through - more for the value of learning to control my emotional reactions than for any value of the findings themselves, I think. Dolphus was not much better. Had I not but recently (and notice, already, that three years had become 'recently' to me) made a terrible mistake by letting my heart rule my head, I might have backed down, abandoned my train of thought. But ever was I pig-headed.

And so I came to perform my experiment. The man I chose was named David, and he was a common labourer - a digger and filler of holes in the street, a sweeper, a carrier, whatever was needed by the rulership of the town. He was not a evil man: he knew pride and envy, was perhaps overfond of his drink, but he attended church and was always compassionate towards his fellow man, giving money to the poor when he could afford it. And here is the heart of the experiment: using the sorcery of my Clan, I visited on him a vision of his own death at my hands.

For the following four seasons, I watched him constantly. Day and night, Marco Tiepolo and Fabio watched over him, observing his actions wherever he went, and reporting back in great detail. I even followed him myself whenever I could, shadowing him as a monk, a businessman, a fellow labourer. What would a man, given firm and certain knowledge of the time and nature of his death, do?

What he would do, as it turns out, is forget. He panicked for perhaps a week; he prayed and confessed and worked to shine his immortal soul for a month; and thereafter, he forgot. He returned to his habits, until the end.

It was Christmas of 1241, approximately a month before his time of death, when he again seemed to remember. Once again, he played the saint; he attended church, he worked for the poor and diseased. But he did nothing world-changing. He tried to polish his soul in preparation for Heaven, but had no consideration for others - only himself. I have performed the same experiment a number of times over the years, and I have found that the kine's knowledge that they are eventually to die gives most of them a certain philosophical distance from the fact - they learn to concentrate on the life at hand. It is only immortals, I have found, who worry about death constantly.

I almost did not kill him. But Irenie insisted - she baited me, in fact. Thus I learned to let my heard rule my heart, not the other way around.

I performed numerous other experiments in that time, most notably the Deathly Vigil - that is, observing a subjects mind as their life gutters and fades out. I highly recommend this experience; it is not particularly unpleasant, and it grants a great insight into the nature of the passage into death. One can also tell a lot about a man by what he chooses to fill his mind with in his final minutes. I first performed this experiment on an old man dying of simple age in the Hospital. He had a long life, and his last thoughts were of his wife and siblings - all dead years ago - and how he would see them soon.

And so, life moved on. It was during this period that I began to walk another of what we Cainites call 'Roads,' the paths of philosophy and ethics that differ - sometimes quite radically - from the simple morality of the Kine. Before I had walked the Via Humanitas, the road of humanity, and attempted to emulate mortal kind. But that was no longer appropriate. I was approaching my ninth decade of life - far beyond what most men lived in those days, and certainly far longer than a simple, common labourer from Jerusalem. Now I walked the Via Ossium - the Road of Bones - and sought to fully understand the nature of death, in the nature of my Clan's great work.

I yet had one hurdle to clear, however. Although my passions had cooled, and the hot fire of anger and indignation had given way to the cold understanding of ages, I still had refused to face my only remaining demon: faith. I had hated God for my undeserved curse, and although I still distrusted Him and thought Him unjust, I could no longer let my emotions restrain my understanding. After some discussion with my closest Cappadocian companions - for Irenie and Dolphus had become as mentors to be, the mentors and teachers that Gregorius never had - I chose a new destination: Cyprus, where there were a number of Greek Orthodox monasteries under the control of our Clan, where I could study holy texts under the tutelage of masters.

It was 1249. As soon as the weather permitted travel, I set off. And I was not at all surprised, when I arrived, to find those to which I seemed bound by fate - Kahlidah and Gaius, Osaiis and Rashid - were there ahead of me.

Fragment of a letter discovered in Alexandria Archive 57 between Subject Khalidah and Subject Gaius Menius Pelagius.Dear Gaius
The Blood Hunt has been lifted from us, but I strongly warn you: do not return to Constantinople.
It is not as you recall. You will not find it as you remember, and it is disconcerting to be in so alien a place. Trust no one who tries to contact you from there, it is a poisoned chalice.
I’m still angry with you.
Khalidah


Fragment of a letter discovered in Alexandria Archive 57 belonging Subject Khalidah.
Words almost fail me. It has taken me a few days to gather the fortitude to write this, almost as if writing it will make it more real.
Jules Talbot is dead
There, I have said it. But still I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. My heart is broken by the grief of losing someone whom I did not realise was so close to me. I feel lost without the one who first told me to just take what I want and damn the consequences that others levy at me. He was not as his Sire was, a voice of reason and learning, but rather the barely heard whisper in my ear, challenging my perceptions of normality and acceptability, and holding my hand as we flaunted convention together. Our time together was brief, but profound. I have always been perplexed by the paradox of having to defy authority except that of my clan, which is why I came to Constantinople to begin with. I always associated this place with freedom, spiritual development and learning, and yet now, it seems to me to be a prison of the past.
I came back to repair the damaged friendship between myself and Talbot, destroyed 30 years ago by an arrow from my bow to his chest. At least now I know why I could not find him in France when I looked. I am haunted by a sad kind of nostalgia here, and by what might have been had I returned earlier to confront him and made amends. I had hoped to appeal to him separately from his Sire (as I can understand why he would not wish to speak to me whilst influence by his creator)but I can see now how he too was unknowingly caught in Serrasine’s web.
He has changed; those that have been embraced are not worthy of the gift of Set, pawns used to consolidate his powerbase now that the Queen of Cities is a festering corpse. The Decadents are no longer about rebelling against the tyranny of the Hierophants upon the rest of the clan, but about launching an attack upon Europe. Serrasine has sold out in the most base, heinous of ways, and where he once inspired awe and wonderment in me, now instead invokes horror and disgust. How far he has fallen in the time I have known him. He has gone quite mad in the wake of the Crusade, and cannot be allowed to remain in a position of authority, a role he should have rejected as soon as it was thrust upon him, if he truly believes in the work of his Sire and, ultimately, our God.
Everyone here has been tainted by his poison, swayed by his hypnotic words into obeying his will. Rather than enlightening those people whom have been lulled by his words for the greater propagation of Set’s divine message of personal freedom, he instead uses them for his own ends, betraying not only his Sire’s memory (ignoring any of his reasons for commiting diablerie against his Creator) but the beliefs of our clan by perverting Set’s message for his own ends. Such actions are unforgiveable, and yet our clan has potentially been reunited upon a betrayal of its most fundamental values.
Talbot’s soul was reclaimed by his Sire upon the charges of Infernalism, offered as a sacrifice to prove that the European members of my clan were not spreading demon-worship. No evidence except the word of his Sire has been offered which, though I owe him a debt of enlightenment, cannot be trusted. If my feelings are correct, then not only has Serrasine commited the sin of diablerie against both his Childer and his Sire, but also broken the most sacred of our clans’ oaths – that one does not work against other Followers of Set. Jules was, as I was, completely convinced of Serrasines’ integrity; to have offered his own childer, someone whom he was supposed to love and cherish as if he truly was of his flesh (rather than just his blood) to appease the Hierophants is nothing short of blasphemy against Set’s words. For though many things separate the two parts of my clan, there is still a certain number of fundamental similarities – including the silently acknowledged agreement not to work against each other. Using a childer in such a vulgar, crass way makes us no better than the rest of the cainites that we so proudly distinguish ourselves from.
It was only luck, I believe, that ensured that it was not I who was offered as the ‘guilty’ sacrifice to the clan - despite his protestations to the contrary, I am not worthless. I have not lost my potential – I am merely pursuing my own course, and like the Hierophants in Egypt, he is displeased with my rebellion. Of all people, he should respect this need to disobey the hierarchy. Though as we can see from his actions, he is not precisely the most reliable of Setites – and certainly is not to be relied upon or trusted with anything.
This betrayal of his hurts like nothing I have ever felt before. That I couldn’t say goodbye, or even make amends to Talbot before he …died makes me sick to my stomach (something I haven’t felt for a number of decades). The time we spent together, the words we spoke, my memories of him will be meticulously recorded so I will never forget that once I was happy in Constantinople, that I didn’t fear Serrasine or have a sworn promise to kill him. I have never feared anyone as I fear him, and the pull he has upon me.
This has put a lot in perspective for me. It is time to return to Jerusalem and face my fate. I will not regret anything else, least of all, Lucius.
.