Jack Arborberg was born in a rural farming town in England in 1678. His path in life was set, with no chance for upward mobility or change of profession. As a teenager, Jack showed some very remarkable- even dangerous- abilities. Although the details are sketchy, many have claimed that Jack could heal injuries, create little animals from dirt, and even make barley grow from his fingertips. While this could perhaps be hearsay, it is known that he became the center of attention in his home town.
Word spread of his miraculous abilities, culminating in a meeting between him and a group of self proclaimed miracle workers who eventually took him as an apprentice. With this semi-conspiratory group, Jack perfected his abilities, actually awakening his full potential and becoming what he described as "a willworker doing the will of Nature itself." Like his mortal life, he distinguished himself from his peers. Many labeled him as dangerous, because his methods were both highly visual (the group was a conspiracy, and held a law similar to the Masquerade) and dangerous to Jack and bystanders. Because of these tendencies, he left the society of willworkers and began to pursue his own studies, studying arcane lore, much of which is considered taboo or too dangerous to one's soul.
If it could ever be said that Jack was mad before his Embrace, it would be this period. He became obsessed with finding all of the secrets of the world, particularly those that are hidden for a reason. Perhaps it was fate that dictated Jack's actions the night he stole into the ancient Italian monastery and took a chronicle of the past, supposedly written by Caine. Perhaps the old woman that followed him to the bridge that Jack had planned to bed under knew what her actions would produce. And perhaps Jack could have kept the old woman from draining him of all his blood and throwing his broken body across the bank. And perhaps she had no reason to Embrace him other than to be cruel... but all of these events transpired regardless.
Jack's first action was clutching the leather-bound book to his chest and burrowing into the mud to keep himself from burning. For years he clutched the book... he never let it leave his person. For a hundred years he avoided his kind, only nominally giving allegiance to the newborn Camarilla and its pretentious Princes. He spent his time seeking out the last vestiges of the broken bloodlines, the Salubri, the Cappadocians, and the legendary Black Hand. Although he never found success in any of these endeavors, he unearthed a massive collection of lore on these subjects, most of it hearsay and misdirection.
As time wore on, Jack began to change. In 1789, he came to the New World and built a mansion in the middle of the New York wilderness, designing the house in such a manner that the manor had an identical copy of itself underneath the ground, upside down. Thus did Jack take the names Duelius Labyrinthium Enigmaticus, as a reference to his predilection for riddles and puzzles. He became more and more obsessed about symmetry and mirrors, as his life continued. Everything he came into contact with had to be perfect in symmetry and form. His personal ghouls slowly began to wither away without vitae that their master withheld. The entire time his Chronicle of Caine never left his breast. In the spring of 1887, his mansion was burned and sacked by unknown foes.
After the destruction of his haven, Jack returned to Europe where he was considered an ancillae. Although he had a massive collection of lore at his disposal, he was unable to communicate it to others in a form other than riddles and ironic pranks. He lived a fairly meager existence, moving between London and Paris. He spent decades in torpor, seeing no one. After remaining in torpor for 12 years, he awoke in 1955 to a radically different world.
If it could ever be said that Jack was sane after his Embrace, it would be this period, for he could control his speech to a degree that he could actually communicate complex thoughts without equivocating or wrapping his words in riddles. What brought about this change, none could say, but even though he was now coherent, his Chronicle of Caine remained with him. His chosen herd during this time were the French bohemians and beatniks, a blossoming scene at the time in Paris. He watched his herd change from mild poets and intellectuals to LSD using hippies and rabid revolutionary socialists. Jack fit into this world perfectly, cultivating his humanity in the face of his beast enough to interact with the youth of the time.
During the late sixties Jack searched for prospective childer, but none had enough symmetry for him to look at for all eternity. Those who had the right physical characteristics were often weak in spirit or mind, which Jack would be loath to immortalize. In 1976, Jack went to his weekly feeding place, a small theater well known for its Theater-of-the-Absurd plays. He saw Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," a bizarre play about two homeless men trapped in a world that repeats itself continuously. In the play a filthy old man leads a small boy- the ironically named Lucky- on a leash. Although the part of Lucky is a male role, it was being played by an up and coming performance artist, Sandra Withers, whose physical appearance lent itself to playing the role. At one point in the play, Lucky is commanded to "think," which involves speaking a longwinded and speedy bit of stream of consciousness philosophy. When Sandra performed this, Jack knew he had found his childe.
The next four years found Jack secretly funding Sandra's performances and allowing her to make all the right connections in the art industry. In 1978, he used his master arts of Dominate to get her a tour of Europe and Japan. When her tour wound down, she arrived in Paris with the title "the next big thing." Although she never knew it, not even to this day, Jack was the reason for her fame.
On a rainy day in December of 1980, Jack stole into the night and waited outside of Sandra's apartment. As she left to replenish her store of amphetamines, Jack took her and drained her of her life in an alleyway.
Following her Embrace, he instructed her on the ways of the Kindred, molded her into a force capable of garnering respect within Kindred society, and forced her to study history. They lived together in France, with Sandra making the occasional night appearances, until 1984 when they moved to Los Angeles. The reason was threefold; Sandra wanted to return to the States, Jack was curious about rumors of cities ruled by autarkis, and a chance to study a mysterious new breed of vampire yet unstudied.
While in Los Angeles, Jack cultivated ties with early Cathayan invaders in order to study them. He spoke very little of them to Sandra, who he tried to protect from their relentless ambition. In 1985, to protect Sandra, he Embraced a nameless mortal in the hopes of using her to protect Sandra. By carefully applying Dominate to the new childe, he caused her to lose all memory, thereby losing any identity. In secret, he told her that he was in actuality a wizard, who had created her like a golem. He placed a small ring on her finger, telling her that it was the ring that animated her, and bestowed upon her the name Ashtasia, "from ash." Although he had planned on also molding Ashtasia into his ideal childe, he did not have the time.
One summer night in 1991, he decided to finally show Sandra the chronicle of her species, The Chronicle of Caine. He removed his book, and for the first time in his undead existence, he let go of it for her to read. Sandra pored through the pages in awe of it... but her study was interrupted.
Minutes after her having completed her reading, a four armed, six eyed Cathayan burst into the house. Jack had made a deal with the Cathayan to give him select bits of knowledge from the Chronicle, however, the Cathayan decided to track the Malkavian to his haven and simply take the Chronicle itself. The Cathayan first stabbed Sandra with a wooden stake. However, he missed her heart... barely. He proceeded to remove Jack's head. Leaving Sandra for the sun, he took the Chronicle and left the house. Luckily, Ashtasia had been out feeding and was not present when the invader destroyed Jack. When she arrived Sandra had fled and Jack was nothing more than a pile of festering bones. Ashtasia set out in search of Sandra. Her efforts only now have come to fruition.
Sandra spent years wandering the US before settling in New Bremen. Jack's legacy lives on as Sandra compulsively searches for Jack's final goal: Golconda. Perhaps Jack's legacy also lives on in the monsters he cheated out of secrets for 400 years... and they might perhaps be hungry for vengeance... and with no clear source to take out their anger, who knows who will be their target...