"It's only when you have lost everything that you are free to do anything."
-Tyler Durdren, Fight Club

E-mail: [email protected]

Nothing much can be said about Michael Grey's mortal life, save that he was very unhappy: a bored and broken college student, he soon found himself sinking into alcohol and drugs to relieve the tedium of his life.

There was one thing he excelled at, however: lying. Through cunning and subterfuge, he managed to harangue money and favours out of those who gave him that which he did not return: trust. However, in the end, true to the Karmic cycle, he ended up abandoned by ex-lovers, friends, parents, and tutors. Alone, he began the final descent towards self-destruction.

Elizabeth Ketton was a Malkavian childer on her first solitary hunt that evening. When she saw the drunken Michael head, alone, into an alley, she must have presumed he would have been an easy prey. As Fate would have it, she did not notice the Magnum he was carrying until too late. Moving quietly and furtively behind Michael, she rapidly grappled him and bit into his neck. Through alcohol-dampened senses, Michael's first reaction was to raise the gun at his assailant and fire, point-blank, into her face...

The reaction was almost immediate. Elizabeth, expecting an easy and intoxicating feed, was shocked into frenzy by the sudden pain of half her face being blasted off... when she regained her senses, she found herself dripping in blood, lying on top of Michael's drained and slowly dying body.

Now, an older vampire might have cut her losses and run, after making a token attempt at repairing the Masquerade, but Elizabeth was but a childe on her first solitary hunt, and she panicked. Faced with a dying vessel, she rapidly cut her own wrist and fed Michael her blood, bringing him across to the world of the Undead.

As he slowly, agonisingly died, then was reborn, the pleasure of the vampiric rebirth more intense than anything he had ever experienced, Michael found a new well of emotion awakening deep inside his heart. Lost in a world of new feelings that he could not comprehend, he seemed to have become autistic and unreactive. As his Sire helped him to his feet, he moved quietly, without replying to her questions.

Confused by this unusual Embrace, Elizabeth immediately took Michael to her own sire, Stephen Wreese. She had expected him to be angry. If anything, she gravely underestimated his tantrum. In his haven, surrounded by his ghouls, Stephen began a long, insulting tirade, aimed at his childer. Finally, he ordered his ghouls to kill the unresponsive and unblinking Michael.

It was perhaps the threat of Final Death that finally pierced the bubble in which Michael's mind had been trapped. As the ghouls closed on him, the fury of the First Frenzy finally overcame him, and with a howl that froze blood, set upon his assailants with almost suicidal intensity. As the ghouls were ripped apart, Elizabeth took the opportunity to slink away unseen. Stephen, however, was both shocked and outraged by this display, and with imperious authority, demanded that Michael cease. Unfortunately, Dominate isn't very effective on frenzied Cainites...

When Michael awoke, he lay in the ashes of his Grandsire, his mouth filled with the taste of dark, potent vitae. He was unaware of his crime, nor would he have understood immediately the terrible meaning of the Amaranth had someone explained it to him. However, he was a smart man, and as he eyed the dismembered ghouls he quickly assessed that staying in the house of your victims was not a smart move... he left Stephen Wreese's former haven as rapidly as he could.

The first week without tutoring was almost unsurvivable, but, a quick learner, Michael learnt to adapt. However, without the benefit of a mentor, he became overly brutal and bestial: his Clan weakness, in his case an inability to control his frenzies under stressful circumstances, pushed him to excessive violence constantly, and it was his bloody feeding habits that lead him to first meet the Sabbat, through a pack called the "Blood Celestines". His brutal behaviour and the black veins in his aura, as well as Michael's impeccable lying skills, persuaded them that he was a mass Embrace childer that had managed to survive a crusade, and they gave him a Creation Rite rather than an Allegiance Rite. When the pack moved on to New Bremen, the newly renamed 'Warp' tagged along with them as their newest probationary...

Unlike most Malkavian antitribu, Warp is surprisingly lucid. However, he is ultimately a creature of intense emotion, and his rages often spark into frenzies. He has risen to a position of respect and power in the Sabbat, but it still remains true that a few words, at the right place and the right time, could set off his madness, turning him into a frenzied beast that can only be put down...