Deportment and Dealings of the White Court
Deportment and Dealings of the White Court
Those Usum calls the pari are old, ancient in fact such that their origin has been lost to the turning of the Wheel that grinds history to legend and legend to myth. Man has ever feared the dark, the things that skittered and shuffled beyond the light of the flame, yet among the myriad of horrors that hunted the primeval nights some were lesser and some were greater, some were proud and some were cunning. It was one such lesser thing, a spirit-hunger that first bound its fate to a mortal who walked to light's edge and beyond. House Raith claims it was Aeneas of storied legend when Rome was in ascendant and that in their veins flows the blood of Venus though they do not harken back to Aphrodite Cytherea, but rather from swan winged Turan, whose name still echoes in the English language as tyrant.
Others tell their own tales, the Skavis claim to have ridden down out of the steppes with the Scythians long before Greek or roman set timid foot upon upon the lands untamed, children of Alvasty, the Red Mother all who drove horses and men to ruin, whereas the Malvora claim they were born of the union of Lilith and the Devil Himself, a brood to bedevil mankind
Though vampires of the White Court dwelt in all lands and hunted all peoples it is in Rome and her daughter cities that they became the White Court. Far from the superstitions of the countryside, beneath the notice of warring Hermetics they plied emperors, senators, pontiffs and generals with beauty and grace even as they took their sustenance from the teeming masses of the city grown fat from the plunder of empire. It was there that those who would become House Raith wold learn their most important lesson: There was power in beauty not just of flesh, but marble, there was might unmatched in the poet's pen in shaping the desires of man. They became patrons of the arts, great lovers of culture, to hear them tell it many of the greatest works of the Classical World would never have existed but for them the Aeneid, a true accounting, or true as could be set to words of wars long lost to mortal memory, so claim the elders of the House. If only Virgil's muse had been more careful of his health.
The Middle Ages were not kind to the living vampires of the Old World, asceticism, mortification of the flesh. the withering of cities and the rise of a new White Council concerned with driving back the night and all its denizens might have been the end of all of them, but the ong gulf was bridged, in Florence, in Milan, in Genoa and to the nostalgia of those few elders who endured even in Rome they found heir footing again, but this time the scions of Venus would not wager their fate upon a single crown, not even that of Augustus. Missionaries were dispatched, not of faith but knowledge hard won: how to hide from the eyes of the hunter and make the pray love the sting of your bite. As far east as India they went, some may even have wandered into the Middle Kingdom, though of those the courts in Rome and Constantinople did not hear back. But Where they did hear of the envoys it was with rich profits, new disciplines to manipulate stolen life, new philosophies, new ways of waging war upon their foes.
In this time the families grew and grew again as they travelled and spread to new lands. Old ways to dealing with wicked spirits and witch-folk were little good when the dark ones had learned to wear another skin and grasp the heart in ways unseen. And yet those wise elders who sent out the heralds of the new age sowed the seeds of their personal destruction, they could not adapt to the world that was being born around them day by day. So they fel at the hands of Church Hunters, wizards, the strigoi... at least what is what official histories say. Strange how the survivors of the pre-Fall days are all those vampires who had no interest in playing politics, no inclination to rock the boat.
The present White King is thought to be something of an exception, having been born as the last embers of the Punic Wars guttered out and risen to prominence the chaos of the Fourth Century. 'I lived though the end of the world, so will you boy,' these words he would say to Thomas whenever he would fail to live up to some standard, which he tells you proudly, was often.
Finally the age of mass media, from the printing press to the internet has been a time of almost unimaginable plenty to the White Court as it became easier than ever to leverage the enthralment of one one into directing the gaze and the passions of the many. Yet it has not been all victories for the scions of House Raith, rarely has a blow more profound been dealt to their interests than by Jane Austin in her insistence that true love not only could be found, but should be found. Oh how they tried to quarantine the idea to the nobility, the well-to-do, but as nobility crumbled to little more than a quaint kind of celebrity the notion flourished and took root, making use of those same cultural dispersion mechanisms from silver screen to radio show to television. The lesson a young vampire should take from this, at least according to Isabela is that a strong wind can blow the clods where it wills, but he who tries to hold them in his fist will only hold a fistful of mist.
One storm well steered was against the unliving horrors of the Black Court which had long been not only competitors, but also hunters of the White Court where their territories overlapped.
OOC: So... this turned into a history lesson. Hope you guys enjoy anyway.
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