Archangel

The story begins in the Russia of the 1880s. Industrial reform had set the giant on a path to revolution, but even as conditions improved in name, they did not improve in reality. Serfdom was abolished, but poverty remained. Tensions ran high and though the revolt was a good half-century away, the first stirrings of unrest were already evident.

This, however, has no bearing whatsoever on Aleksandr's history, except perhaps that such social unrest stirred unrest, also, in the Kindred of local and neighboring lands, which in turn might have spawned a hideous experiment carried out amidst the jagged peaks that the Tzimisce lorded over. The idea, born of a pack consisting mostly of Kolduns, was to create a sort of mental supersoldier: a pawn at once brilliant and ruthless, with the power to destroy with but a thought. The most brilliant minds of Eastern Europe were rounded up and spirited away for intensive screening. Only the intelligent, strong and ruthless made it out alive. Some would call them lucky. Most would call them cursed.

Nearly two hundred entered the haven of the pack; scarcely two score survived the initial screening. These were then Embraced and buried alive in accordance to Sabbat rituals, and of the forty-odd, less than twenty emerged, shrieking and mindless, from the bowels of the earth. Again were they screened, and this time, six remained: geniuses, all, and monsters, all.

And then the fun really began.

They were taught the basics of Kindred life, but for the most part blinded to all that their overseers deemed they did not need to know. Thus, the Camarilla was nothing more than a distant, terrible threat, and their places in this new life were taught to be simple: to think, and to serve, and to kill. Nothing more. Years passed, and not one of them ever saw the sky again. After the first six years, they had mostly forgotten about it and resigned themselves to a fate that seemed better by the day. And all the while they learned, and learned, driving into their minds all the material that a first-rate education in their day could provide. In addition to that, their skewed views of the Kindred continued to develop, as well as their skills at the Thaumaturgy path they were meant to master. They were to become machines--mindless creatures of raw knowledge and mindpower whose physical bodies atrophied to all but useless burdens, and did no more than serve. And they were content as such.

All but one. Aleksandr Nikolaievich Serov stood and learned with the rest of them, but ideas of his own brewed beneath the ideas forced upon him. By far the youngest of them all--a child chess prodigy just into his twelveth year at his Embrace--he was also the brightest hope. If his will had been so indomitable that he had clawed his way up from the earth before he had ever reached maturity, what more would he be capable of at his prime? He would be their greatest weapon -

- except Aleksandr's plans differed.

As the strength of his mind and the store of his knowledge grew, he formulated an escape. He watched as the security grew lax, and the pack grew careless. The mind-machines were never expected to rebel, and indeed, most of them never did. In his ninth year as a Cainite, Aleksandr lashed out without warning, silently crushing the skulls and the hearts of his brothers-in-Embrace as the sun neared the eastern horizon and they settled into their beds for the day. The rest of the pack was already asleep, and posed little trouble.

In the space of an hour, Aleksandr destroyed his entire pack. He spent a last day in the haven that he had never left in nearly a decade, and then slipped out into the night and vanished.

The local leadership, particularly the Tzimisce, knew what had happened, of course. It was quickly swept under the carpet--an embarrassing experiment failed because of the experimenters' own carelessness. The Tzimisce, however, never forget. They watched him as the days turned to weeks to months to years--they watched in growing interest (and perhaps even pride) as their errant pawn somehow eked out a living for himself and even gained the acknowledgment of his peers.

They watched, also, as he chose his Path--the one closest to death, and farthest from emotion--and followed that path all over the world. Somewhere along the way he picked up a flock of ghouls to serve as his protectors, guarding his form as he slept, hunting his prey for him in the night. Somewhere along the way, he expanded his otherwise one-sided knowledge to include some degrees of Dominate, and rudimentary Vicissitude, the trademark of his Clan.

Over a hundred years after his strange Embrace, Aleksandr came into Charleston. He gained a fifth ghoul, a (so conveniently) widowed woman who provides him with his haven and his resources, and settled for the time being in the city. Meanwhile, in the course of the hundred years, technology has made astounding leaps and, in the recent years, begun to develop artificial intelligence which could well replace the tactical brilliance Aleksandr was originally meant to possess. Now that it was no longer necessary to combine intelligence with psychokinetic powers--a likely devastating mix, as they had seen earlier--Alek could, therefore, be reduced to a mere weapon of the mind who had no mind of his own: a machine that could be commanded to kill with a glance.

The Tzimisce were beginning to see vast potential in Aleksandr again, and this time, there will be no failures.