Jestlon Tirioni -- Prelude and Background

Jestlon Tirioni -- Prelude and Background

Henry Messing was a hard worker, a devoted husband, and the father of three beautiful little girls. He owned a modest home in a small Pennsylvanian town, raised his children to know religion, and often volunteered himself for neighborhood services. When the United States was drawn into the second World War after Pearl Harbor, Henry was called back into active duty to serve in France. After a few weeks of watching the men under his command die in combat, his hope of returning home safely was quickly diminishing, and he began suffering severe bouts of depression.
When his decision-making capabilities began failing him, he sought council from the medical staff. A young nurse by the name of Catherine Porter took a liking to the man, and often tended to him. After years of not seeing his wife, save for a picture he carried in his pocket, Henry began an affair with the beautiful young woman, and both were quickly swept into the romanticism of love in times of war. After she was found to be pregnant, she returned to her home in New York City.
For the next year, the two stayed in touch through letters, even after Henry was wounded by shrapnel and discharged from the Service. Unfortunately, maintaining the affair proved troublesome, and after Henry�s wife of six years discovered the letters he had received, he shot himself through the temple, rather than face the guilt and scandal of his actions. Messing�s wife wrote to Catherine of his death, explaining that she did not hold her responsible. Catherine, however, did, and soon after she too took her own life. Love in times of war.
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Facey, as he often referred to himself, along with a myriad of other names, was sometimes a man of distinguished character, full of pride and giving a great impression of wealth, or proper breeding at the very least. Other times he was a drunken vagrant, roaming aimlessly down lamp-lit streets, liquor bottle in hand, scrounging for valuables near sewer drains. Ask the right debutante, and she might regal you with tales of the most splendid evenings spent watching the moon cast shimmering reflections through broad, oak tree leaves onto the lake, whilst she and her gentleman caller debated Dickenson, Moore, or Baudelaire. Take a walk in the right cemetery and you might find a man in soil-ridden rags knee-deep in a random grave, well on his way to a hidden stash of cash buried in a casket. In either account, the man in question may just be the shapeless Facey Face-face. Although, surely, he�d be using some other name...
In one such example, Jackson Bennet (or Facey, as only a distinguished few knew him to be) swore allegiance to Petain�s France in 1942, working with a small cabal of German loyalists whom kidnaped, interrogated and assassinated persons they believed could become problematic to Germany�s sovereignty over French politics, with hopeful eyes towards a German version of the Roman Empire. Jackson worked primarily in securing funds for the groups misdeeds, through any means necessary. When the Allies entered France in 1944 and Petain fled the country, Jackson�s cabal disbanded for fear of capture. Facey soon after assumed a new identity and opened a safe-house for Allied troops to rest comfortably in.
______________________________________________________________________________ Two weeks after D-Day Normandy, Henry Messing�s mind began to crumble. Leading his platoon through the french countryside, he had to consciously urge himself to stay standing, to keep calm, to continue thinking by the force of his stubborn will alone. After another week of fighting, his will just wasn�t enough. He managed to keep himself glued together until regrouping with other Allied troops outside Paris. Here, a french loyalist had began running a safe-haven and makeshift hospital for Allied troops. The proprietor, one Preston Milligan, claimed to be a former surgeon and was often found collecting medical supplies (morphine, bandages, blood bags...) in the late hours of the night.
One such evening, Milligan overheard a conversation between an aging officer and the Army medical staff. The officer reported claims of depression and delusional thoughts, the occasional hallucination of his youngest daughter standing atop a given hill as he passed by, his wife�s face on the head of every dead woman he saw. The medics offered that these were understandable side-effects of the stress his responsibilities over his men placed on him, and advised that he rest easy while he could, before the fighting resumed.
Milligan was instantly intrigued as the officer had listed his symptoms, and took it upon himself to seek out aid for the poor officer. He recruited an attractive young nurse to do the job, sending her to visit the officer after implanting deepest sympathies within her impressionable mind. Under the cover of night, Henry Messing and Catherine Porter began their affair, and in the shadows, Preston Milligan watched his plan unfold.
After the nurse was sent home in pregnancy, Milligan kept a close watch over Messing, until orchestrating the wounds that would send Henry back to his loving wife and children. Facey soon after abandoned his �Preston� alias and made his way to the United States. After a couple months of surveillance and careful planning, a simple home invasion led to Henry Messing�s wofe discovering her husband�s affair, and shortly thereafter, Henry Messing�s and Catherine Porter�s tragic suicides. All Facey had to do now was sit back and watch to see if his labors would prove to be fruitful or a sad waste of his efforts.
______________________________________________________________________________ Trenton James Porter was born in April without a father, his mothered put a knife to her wrist in July, and he ended up in the care of his grandmother until she died in December. Some would say poor little Trenton was off to a rough start. He spent his childhood in a state-operated facility for orphans, and grew up watching child after child leave to join new families.
Trenton was never anyone�s first choice for a foster child. He did as little as he could to attract attention to himself, unusually quiet with a tendency to keep himself isolated from the general population. When he was around other children, he never got along well and usually ended up bullied or beat-up.
He took his solace in literature- as soon as he learned to read and write, that was all he did. By the time he was ten years old, he had lived in a thousand different imagined lands, each one more fantastical than the next. Reality was cold and distant, and Trenton spent as little time as possible in the �real world.�
He excelled in his studies and participated in many extra-curricular endeavors, but never managed to fully except the thought of living and breathing the world everyone else experienced. After finishing high school, he fled the orphanage with money he had saved up over the years, but found supporting himself more difficult than he imagined. He managed a place to live for a short time by offering his rent months in advance, but with no provisions for the long term, it wasn�t long before he found himself on the streets of New York.
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Facey smiled down over the shiftless mass that lay at his feet unmoving- unliving- undead. Trenton lay sprawled on his back, in a larger than himself, leaking his lifeblood to stain the water. Facey feet planted firmly in the puddle, and he could see his own visage staring up at him- or was he staring up at it?- with drops of rain-water casting ringlets to distort the reflection.
He had watched through the windows of the orphanage, through the windows in Trenton�s mind, and watched as the young boy grew into the prideless specimen before him now. He had watched intently as Trenton was left to his own devices, and became more detached from the rest of the world, as the rest of the world became more detached from itself....
He had lingered in the shadows as the boy-turned-young man struggled to forge his own path in life, as he failed and resorted to criminal pursuits in order to survive. He had done his part to help along the way- Trenton might find a roll of hundred-dollar bills here, food mistakenly left behind there, a seemingly abandoned apartment in just the right place, where he might stay out of the rain for a night or two. Facey had also aided Trenton in his illegitimate deeds- a pursuit after a burglary might suddenly halt as the pursuers are persuaded otherwise, or an item crucial to the situation found strategically placed.
Yes, Facey had done his part into ensure Trenton�s survival, and he still would- but now it was time for Trenton to return the favor.
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Jestlon spent the next decades learning to deal with �the inhuman condition,� as Facey had called. He was instructed to change his name, taught the rules of vampiric society, shown how to manifest the powers of �Malkav�s blood.� Facey even explained his family history, something his caretaker�s had always shied away from. He had rarely gained more than �Your parents are no longer with us.� whenever he bothered to ask, but Facey somehow knew it all, even the details.
Of course, Facey had neglected to mention that he was responsible for Henry and Catherine�s suicides, responsible that the two had even met, that he was responsible for Trenton�s entire life, right up until he died and Jestlon was born.
Facey explained that Jestlon�s mortal family were victim�s of circumstance, that their mind�s were ill-equipped to deal with the situations fate placed them in- and so was he, and so was his immortal lineage, as well. Facey informed him that the images Jestlon saw, the voices he heard in his head, the things he felt whenever he fed himself on the blood of the living was just a matter of his inability to digest the gravity of the situation. Facey taught him to deal with it; even, to some extent, to control it as if it were just another aspect of the blood. Because of Facey, Jestlon finally learned how to adapt, how to live- and it only took dying to do it.
After his embrace and tutelage, Jestlon sought out his place in the Kindred world, under his sire�s advice. As Facey chose no sides nor sect, neither did Jestlon, but he didn�t make his choice lightly. Wanting to know where either sect stood beforehand, he traveled through different cities, some belonging to the Camarilla, others to the Sabbat. In each, he would carefully survey the vampire population, selecting his mark and buying off information once he was comfortable with the source. He would then move on to another city, repeating the process and trading off old information for new, and so on and so forth. He even almost pulled a stint with the Sabbat, but escaped before he could be bound by the vaulderie.
Jestlon�s true pastime, however, is to search out those of his own line, and to offer them the assistance Facey provided him. He�s not adverse to helping out other vampires, or people, at that, but everyone knows that nothing in this world is ever free, and he does not take boons lightly- whether he owes someone, or something is owed to him. Jestlon still awaits the day when Facey will ask him to return the favors he had granted.
The two vampires do not see one another often, generally coming into contact every couple of years on their own, or possibly a bit more often as clan gatherings come to pass. When they do speak, Facey asks what it is Jestlon has learned in the past interim, Jestlon asks the same, the two share their tales and then are off on their separate paths once more, possibly even pulling pranks along the way.

In one such example, Jackson Bennet (or Facey, as only a distinguished few knew him to be) swore allegiance to Petain�s France in 1942, working with a small cabal of German loyalists whom kidnaped, interrogated and assassinated persons they believed could become problematic to Germany�s sovereignty over French politics, with hopeful eyes towards a German version of the Roman Empire. Jackson worked primarily in securing funds for the groups misdeeds, through any means necessary. When the Allies entered France in 1944 and Petain fled the country, Jackson�s cabal disbanded for fear of capture. Facey soon after assumed a new identity and opened a safe-house for Allied troops to rest comfortably in.

Two weeks after D-Day Normandy, Henry Messing�s mind began to crumble. Leading his platoon through the french countryside, he had to consciously urge himself to stay standing, to keep calm, to continue thinking by the force of his stubborn will alone. After another week of fighting, his will just wasn�t enough. He managed to keep himself glued together until regrouping with other Allied troops outside Paris. Here, a french loyalist had began running a safe-haven and makeshift hospital for Allied troops. The proprietor, one Preston Milligan, claimed to be a former surgeon and was often found collecting medical supplies (morphine, bandages, blood bags...) in the late hours of the night.

One such evening, Milligan overheard a conversation between an aging officer and the Army medical staff. The officer reported claims of depression and delusional thoughts, the occasional hallucination of his youngest daughter standing atop a given hill as he passed by, his wife�s face on the head of every dead woman he saw. The medics offered that these were understandable side-effects of the stress his responsibilities over his men placed on him, and advised that he rest easy while he could, before the fighting resumed.

Milligan was instantly intrigued as the officer had listed his symptoms, and took it upon himself to seek out aid for the poor officer. He recruited an attractive young nurse to do the job, sending her to visit the officer after implanting deepest sympathies within her impressionable mind. Under the cover of night, Henry Messing and Catherine Porter began their affair, and in the shadows, Preston Milligan watched his plan unfold.

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