Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.
-Sir James M. Barrie

From the time that I was very young, it was determined that my career would be that of a warrior. My father was one, as was his father and on down through the generations. My training started at an early age, but I was not trained in combat alone. I was trained in every intellectual pursuit that you can imagine, although there was a heavy dose of strategy and tactics involved. My family was high born and it was inevitable that I would attain a high position in the military. And so I worked very hard to please my family so that I could become a son of whom they could be proud.

When I was 15, I was officially inducted into the military with an officer’s commission as was due me according to my social status. But this advantage did not preclude me from being expected to work hard and earn any future promotions in rank. In fact, I made sure to work harder than anyone around me in all ways, and found myself rising quickly. By my twenty-first birthday I well on my way to becoming a Captain, and so I felt myself well deserving of improving my social situation as well. And so I began to consider a wife. I needed one suitable to my social status as well as one whom I felt I could enjoy spending time with. These considerations led my mind almost immediately to a young woman whom was the daughter of a friend of my father’s. And so I set about courting her after attaining her father’s permission to do so. She was a priestess of the goddess Martinique whose talents were great and who was favored by her goddess. And since my own mother had magical powers, I found myself with a great leaning toward such beliefs.

I had courted her for nearly a year when Klenza agreed to become my wife. As the priestess declared us to be as one, I felt myself become complete. She became the center of my life, although I did in no way neglect my other duties. And in just over a year, she had blessed me with a lovely daughter whom we named Ethyl, after my father’s mother. If I believed myself to be complete before, it was when I looked into the face of my infant child that I knew that we were complete as a family. Something inside of me told me that there would be no other children, and while it is the goal of a man to pass on his name and legacy to a son, I was more than happy with the girl that I held in my arms. She was, as expected, raised as her mother was raised and expected to become a follower of Martinique. It was with great pride that I saw her attain great skill and reputation in this area at a young age.

It was when she was almost 18 that she met the bane of my existence, Cristov… the man who would become her husband, even against all of my objections. It was Klenza who convinced me to allow the marriage, even against everything inside me that was screaming against the union. He was completely unsuitable to her in many ways, not the least of which was social status. But Klenza convinced me that Ethyl’s happiness took precedence, and so a marriage was arranged. I must confess to never being satisfied with this, I detested the man and to this day detest him even more than I did then.

It was just a few years after this marriage that saw the end of my natural days. We were in the midst of a war with a neighboring country, and they had employed the dishonorable tactic of sending assassins into the camp at night. My last memory is of feeling something sharp embed in my arm as I drifted off to sleep, and then brief but nearly unbearable pain as the darkness took me. But that was apparently not to be the end of my chance to make a lasting impression, although at this point it was the last on the world that I had called home. Not too long ago both my dear Klenza and I were brought back from the afterlife and changed into Greater Vampires to aid Martinique and attempt to turn our daughter back to the side on which she belonged. The hated Cristov had had a change of heart about his place in things, and had begun to aid the side of good. And he had pulled our Ethyl with him. It was up to us to bring her back to where she belonged. And to add insult to all of this injury, that lowlife who calls himself my daughter’s beloved husband had gone so far as to break his marriage vows and get intimate with another woman. To me, this is totally unacceptable and must be avenged. And the fact that a child came of this union is enough to spur me on to make sure that Cristov’s existence shall be miserable up until the time that it ends. And I do vow that it shall end. But not before he learns a lesson that shall plague him throughout eternity.

The fundamental defect with fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
-Bertrand Russell

To marry unequally is to suffer equally.
-Henri Frederic Amiel