Dramatis Personae

Most of Isaac Abrams’ past is shrouded in mystery. If asked himself, Isaac will give vague answers as to being a ‘child of the revolution’, yet never quite clarifying whether he is referring to the /American/ Revolution. Perhaps it matters little, as regardless of where Isaac came from, whether as a native or immigrant, he has adopted the idea of America with an unwavering conviction. Isaac himself has hinted that he was a failure for the first hundred years of his existence, both as a mortal, and as a vampire. He failed again and again and again, eking out an existence producing bootleg Gilbert & Sullivan plays across the Midwest.

Isaac Abrams didn’t realize his true calling in unlife, until he witnessed an exhibition of one of the first motion pictures in 1907. It changed him overnight – an art form that he could claim for his own and bring it to the pinnacle of glory. Moreover, he saw the possibility of fusing both his art and his Domain – each would build upon the other. He would take what in the early 1900s was still mostly scattered Victorian cottages and orange groves and build an empire. Having been the first vampire on the West Coast to realize this potential, he was the first to act on it by enthralling both movie producers and real estate developers, binding them to his will.

By the time that the 1940s rolled around, Isaac Abrams had made himself a powerful presence in Los Angeles. He was Primogen of the Toreador, although he was often in deep opposition to the Toreador Prince, Don Sebastian (Also known as ‘Don Juan Sebastian’, or Sebastian Juan Dominguez). This is hardly the place to trace the intricate twists and turns that lead to both the Second Anarch Revolt, and to Isaac Abrams’ eventual decision to side with Jeremy MacNeil. In the end, his support was vital to the Revolt’s success. At the same time however, Isaac Abrams was bitterly distrusted by other Anarch luminaries, such as Salvador Garcia, for his refusal to sign the Status Perfectus. In the end, it was Jeremy MacNeil who forced peace between them, and demanded that no vampire be forced by threat of violence to adhere to the Status Perfectus.

Isaac Abrams had other rivals among the Anarch leaders who carved up Los Angeles between them, especially the former Ventrue Primogen, Louis Fortier. Unlike Isaac, Louis Fortier was not shy about adopting the Status Perfectus. Yet for all that, the new Baron of Santa Monica ruled his slice of West Los Angeles like a Prince – a clue as to his later ambitions. Much of their animosity dated back to the 1920s, when Isaac was chiefly responsible for killing the nascent film industry in Santa Monica!

It is something of an open secret in Los Angeles that Isaac Abrams and Nosferatu have often worked closely together. This is owing to the belief by most, that the bulk of the Nosferatu warrens are located underneath Hollywood. Yet it also goes back to peculiarities of both Don Sebastian’s rule (and how it ended) and the subsequent ‘reign’ of Jeremy MacNeil. The Nosferatu remained largely underground throughout the Free States era, during which the Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon was the only one to make serious contingencies for the eventual return of Camarilla rule. It is thought that for much of the post-war period, Isaac Abrams remained a secret channel by which the Nosferatu communicated and collaborated with MacNeil, especially on areas of common interest. This included both repelling the 1965 Sabbat Siege and of purging a Setite Temple in the late 70s that had taken root in Hollywood.

There were other good reasons for both MacNeil (if not many other Anarchs) and the Camarilla to tolerate Isaac Abrams. He had sided against a despotic Prince of his own Clan, proving his revolutionary credentials. In addition, the former Toreador Primogen was responsible for covering up numerous Masquerade breaches with a competence and professionalism that the Anarchs who inherited Los Angeles couldn’t match. This made him an invaluable resource to Jeremy MacNeil. At the same time, there were many a wayward childe of influential Toreadors back east who slipped their Sire’s leash and came west to Hollywood and the Anarch Free States – many of them with stars in their eyes and dreams of using their gifts of Presence to make themselves rich and famous. It was Isaac’s pleasure to collect these errant souls and pack them back to their grateful masters. In this way, Isaac Abrams accumulated a fantastic amount of Influence, not just in Los Angeles, but nationally.

The Baron of Hollywood began to grow disenchanted with the Anarch Free States during the chaos and gang warfare of the 1990s. And yet, despite the beliefs by most Anarchs to this night, there is no evidence that he ever betrayed Jeremy MacNeil. This stands in contrast to Salvador Garcia, who would be responsible for MacNeil’s own assassination at Signal Hill (ostensibly owing to unhappiness at MacNeil’s purported willingness to cooperate with the Camarilla against the Sabbat and Quincunx), or Louis Fortier’s more banal betrayal (in return for being recognized by the Quincunx as Prince of Los Angeles).

Isaac Abrams, along with the Nosferatu, Maximillian Strauss and Sebastian LaCroix (a name which bore an ironic resemblance to the last Camarilla Prince) orchestrated the events by which Louis Fortier was destroyed, the Quincunx were driven out of Los Angeles, and Salvador Garcia chased into exile. In 1999, Isaac Abrams once more took on the role of Toreador Primogen.

His relationship would almost immediately sour with Prince LaCroix, who once in power, revealed himself as little better than Louis Fortier or even his namesake had been. Yet that story is told elsewhere.

This gives a less rosy account of Lightbourne’s true origins. You must check with me before assuming your character is aware of any of the details given below:

* In his own words (as once shared in polite conversation in the Elysiums and Harpy salons of London, Seville and Paris during the Late Renaissance), Lightbourne grew up ‘bare feet on the dusty streets of Timbuktu’ in the waning years of the Mali Empire. At the time that Lightbourne told this story, the vast majority of his listeners did not believe that Timbuktu had ever existed, and the rest believed it to be a fantastical city of scholars where the streets were paved with gold.

* At some point in the first decade of the 16th century (around 1510 or such), he was sold while still a young boy into captivity. There was a thriving market for young, educated slave boys who would be sent over a long and perilous, overland journey across the Sahara to the Mediterranean-kissed shores of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. There, they would be put to work in the households of newly wealthy pirate lords whose legacy would be burned into history as that of the Barbary Corsairs. Many of these raiders competed with each other for honors, bribes and beydoms from the Ottoman Empire, who exercised a suzerainty over the area for several centuries.

* Lightbourne’s first master was a Turkish-born privateer and admiral named Ahmed Kemaleddin, although known to European posterity as ‘Camalicchio’. His first master died at sea in 1511, whereupon Lightbourne was inherited by Ahmed’s paternal nephew, Ahmed Muhiddin Piri. It is from his second master that Lightbourne learned the arts of navigation, geography and cartography, and by his dedicated service, made himself second to none in his master’s household. He followed his master on many expeditions and into several wars, including the 1516 -> 1517 Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the 1522 Siege of Rhodes. He was awarded a ‘chelengk’ (a decorated feather worn in the turban to indicate bravery) from the hand of Suleiman the Magnificent for his valor in slaying a gigantic German sergeant of the Knights Hospitaller in personal combat.

* In 1523, Lightbourne was given command of his own galley, presumably to embark upon his career as a privateer in service to a still greater lord. He had the misfortune on his first voyage to be nearly wrecked in a storm, and then attacked by a Genoese galleass. He was left for dead among the wreckage.

* He was miraculously rescued by Sir John Sommers, a famous Londoner and leading member of the Honorable Company of Merchant Adventurers. Sommers appears to have believed him yet a slave rather than a captain (in truth, he was both), since the penalty in those waters in that time was death for most any captured Turk or Muslim. Sir John would eventually ‘leadeth him from heathenry unto Christ, saving his imm’rtl soul’ not long after.

* The newly christened ‘Jonathan’ would proceed to serve Sir John Sommers with extreme competence and diligence for many years. He seems to have very quickly made himself an invaluable member of the company. His fearlessness, navigation skills, literacy and intimate knowledge of the North African and Levantine worlds would have made him irreplaceable. He saved his comparatively meager wages from serving Sir John on various voyages to invest in his own side trades. A handful of spice in Outremer could fetch a pouch of gold in 16th century London or Antwerp.

* ‘Jonathan’ first came to London during the reign of Henry VIII. He would return to it over the next several decades of merchant voyages through the subsequent reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and finally Elizabeth I. By the dawn of the Elizabethan Era in 1562, Jonathan (who first appears as ‘Jonathan Lightbourne’ in this time period), was probably around sixty, himself. There are references to him in certain rare journals or society bills from that era as the ‘Old Moor’, who often seemed to entertain the elites of London with his flawless English and seemingly endless anecdotes of a life of adventure…even as they envied him his vast wealth. Perhaps the only reason that Lightbourne’s name was not blackened in memory or forgotten entirely, was that he had no known family, having never taken a wife or sired any progeny. His will (when he ‘officially’ died in the 1580s) left every taler, florin, crown, ducat he had ever made to the widows and orphans of London. It also prevented an unseemly fight for his fortune, which might have revealed other details.

* It is known now that at some point in the 1560s, Jonathan Lightbourne was Embraced by the Duchess of Amber, who along with the Duke of Amber, were childer of the Prince of London, the legendary Ventrue of the 4th Generation known as Mithras. As ancient as Mithras was, his childer were methuselah themselves, playing in the shadows of the English aristocracy where they had given way to indulgence and depravity. They needed a man like Lightbourne to manage their affairs, and to save them more time for their preferred pleasures of hunting unwanted fledglings, anarchs and Caitiffs for sport. It was Lightbourne’s responsibility to cover up these depredations.

* Jonathan Lightbourne would serve the Duke and Duchess of Amber with the same diligence that he had served every master before them. After half a century or so, he was sent to represent the Amber’s economic interests in the New World entrepot of Seville during a stretch of the 17th century. It was there at Jonathan Lightbourne encountered the Toreador known as Violeta Altamirana of Seville for the first time. They seemed to have nothing in common on the surface, such as that their friendship was an object of amusement to the local Harpies (one particularly faded old creature might recall something along the lines of ‘The Old Moor and the Young Whore’ as one of the kinder sobriquets from that era). However, they seem to have worked well together and found the most rarest of all undead commodities: True friendship of the most complete soul deep and intellectual variety. They seem to have often kept each other’s company up until the War of the Spanish Succession (somewhere around ~1700).

* Violeta Altamirana’s perambulations during most of the 18th and 19th centuries are fairly easily tracked. She shows up time and again as a Harpy, Primogen or Keeper across Italy and France. Jonathan Lightbourne’s sojourns become harder to track, although there is evidence of him being involved in the founding of Hamilton in Bermuda, and having been with Wellington in India.

* There is virtually nothing known of Lightbourne’s activities in the 19th-20th centuries, except that he took his definitive first childe, known as ‘Theodosia’ in the early 1800s. He Embraced at least one other, an African-American soldier known as ‘Lewis Price’ in Paris, 1918. It is thought that much of Lightbourne’s time during this era was spent in matters involving the Ventrue’s interest in the East India Trading Company, and the ‘Great Game’, whereby Clan Ventrue sought to expand and hold onto its ill-gotten wealth and power in South Asia in the teeth of other supernaturals who sought to expel them (and who eventually did).

* By the 1980s, Lightbourne’s interest seems to have returned to America. He Embraced Bastian Fox not long after the latter made his fortune by coding a suite of financial enterprise software that Wall Street was practically built on for decades.

* In 2016, Violeta Altamirana finally achieved her ambition of becoming Prince of a major city.