Archived-Batavia

Give me your Kings Let me squeeze them in my hands Your puny Princes The so-called "leaders" of your land I'll eat them whole before I'm done

General Information

Silver Mask, by Lost Sin on DeviantArt

Sire: Godric Volmark.

Bloodline: Unknown.

Titles: Alder Senator Batavia, Lady Volmark, Alpha Childe of Godric Volmark, Viscountess of the Undercity. Within the Court of Canberra, she holds the position Duchess of the Sublands.

Nickname: The Queen of Spiders (sometimes abbreviated to 'The Spider Queen' by particularly lazy Neonates).

Coteries/Societies: House Volmark, The Trivium.

Notable Traits: Everyone who saw her at the police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. - Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan. Batavia, far from the hideousness associated so often with her Clan, appears as a woman of striking attractiveness, with finely-sculpted features and delicately-turned limbs. It's appalling. Her beauty is a blasphemy; the elegance of that countenance, the grace of that form juxtaposed with the eerie mask that covers the left half of her face is chilling in contrast - far more disturbing than any obvious deformity is the creeping paranoia of what horrors the mask conceals. The cowled head is bald, lending an additionally alien element to the divided visage, and she moves slowly. She reacts slowly. And in her eyes is a suffocating abyss, of the passage of centuries, or the crushing depths of an ocean trench.

Information Known by Kindred Society

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons of Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them. — Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

Senator Batavia, Lady Volmark, Heir Apparent of House Volmark, first and ostensibly most beautiful creation of Godric Volmark, known to the Gangrel who call themselves Valdyr as Stellanslayer, arrived in Canberra before Canberra was Canberra, and made her haven in the vast network of caves beneath the country plain that would eventually become the capital. When Kaida of the Ordo Dracul arrived in the fledgeling City, Batavia had already been there for some decades. Knowing of the Elder horror incumbent in the territory she wished to develop, the young Dragon approached Batavia with deference, acknowledged her tenure and asked her blessing to establish a Court. Batavia, appeased by the Ancilla's manners, granted her permission, under the condition that the City was founded upon laws and principles that ran parallel to Invictus convention, and cautioning the Dragon, "Keep the noise down, don't overtax the herd, and I'm not one for ambiguous portents - you'll know you've displeased me if the rats start to panic." In payment for this accommodation, Kaida declared the Duchy of the Sublands, and publicly acknowledged Batavia's ultimate authority within this region. Popular rumour runs that some sort of blood tithe was also paid, from the Prince of the City above to the mistress of the darkness below. Her catacombs are implicitly open to all Nosferatu, and to other Invictus by invitation. In the City's history and prehistory, her grip on domain within the chambers beneath the earth has been unshaken.

Not much is known of Batavia's mortal life, only that she is highborn, and of Dutch extraction, though she dwelled for much of her unlife in Castle Volmark in Germany, with her Sire, and his eventual other childer, and their own broods. She was sent alone to Australia in the early 1800s, being already a Kindred of not inconsiderable vintage, with the express mission of establishing an Invictus foothold in the fledgeling nation, and she traveled the country, over the years, advising Princes and would-be Princes on how best to be Princes - regardless of Covenant, those who had not been Invictus would rule much like they were, and in a manner that benefited the Unconquered, when she was done. She was particularly instrumental in the foundation and consolidation of the Court of Victoria, based in the capital, Melbourne. The current Praxis of Canberra is held by a known student of hers, as is that of Brisbane. Where she could not be, and where no student is yet present, she has sent her many childer to continue her work, like limbs reaching out from her point on the map; lines of latitude marked, "Here be monsters." Her protégés are known by a mask motif, visible somewhere on their person, her vassals wear an emerald detail, and her childer - called the Bataviae - are marked by a silver guilder, displayed on the chest.

Before most Elders were born, Batavia's vitae was already old in her dead veins. The centuries passed, and the many torpors she has endured, tell chillingly on her night-to-night demeanour - tell of a creature so aged and unanchored from mortality that it no longer even remembers what Humanity looked like, to affect it. She is distant, and alien, and slowed by her years; inclined to looking, unseeing, right through Kindred who are too young for her cold, ponderous mind to have caught up with the fact of their existence yet - but her attention, when it focuses, is seldom anything other than carnivorous and predatory.

She keeps company - unsettlingly close company - with the two enterprising Neonates who, in 1960, awoke her from the torpor into which injuries taken in the first World War had caused her to fall. They might have never been seen again, but for some reason that remains a mystery unknown to all but the three of them, not only did the two upstarts survive the success of their attempt to revive the terrible Alder, but have profited from it greatly - the young Lord, Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius, and Shadow, Raymond Vauxhall, must have done some very fast talking, for they gained themselves a powerful patron in the horror they awakened, and the peculiar trinity has been all but inseparable since.

She is an unsettling meld of uncanny grace, regal bearing, and a following aura of wrongness so profound she might have served as muse to Lovecraft himself. There is a sense, when one looks upon Batavia, that what one sees is not human, but rather a humanoid abomination. Even her rare interest is expressed with the cold sensuality of a reptile. Though, as with every horror in this world, there are those perverse souls to whom this proves compelling, rather than repellent. Perhaps it is this phenomenon that explains the singular...attentiveness of the young Ventrue and Mekhet to their queenly, nightmarish Alder.

She is a devoted adherent to the Longinian faith, and, veiled to show her piety, attends every service within easy travel.

Timeline

• 1635: Embraced by Godric Volmark, and taken to Germany. Made his Seneschal in all functions.
• 1645: Abducted by Vilrec Langlifr, head of the enemy House, Valdyr. Ransomed back to her Sire after an extended captivity.
• 1646: Volmark/Valdyr tensions escalate, in a number of border skirmishes and simple grudge conflicts.
• 1685: First brother, Ulrich, is Embraced.
• 1700: Battle of Holstein. After a lengthy and bitter conflict, the Valdyr look set to take the field. Vilrec and Batavia clash in personal combat. Vilrec nearly destroys Batavia, but is prevented by the timely intervention of Godric. Flees the field, taking his forces with him. Both sides withdraw temporarily from open hostilities, to lick their wounds. Batavia sinks gratefully into voluntary Torpor, to escape the pain of her injuries.
• 1705: Wakes from Torpor; adopts the mask she will come to be known for.
• 1710: Embraces Algol, in Sicily.
• 1720: Second brother, Lothar, is Embraced. He will assume battlefield command of the Volmark forces, while Batavia retires to a tactical role as General.
• 1720 - 1769: Batavia continues to serve as her Sire's second in all things, and to direct the war against the Valdyr with cool, focused interest, in sharp contrast to Lothar's fire-and-brimstone fervour in his captaincy.
• 1770: Reports arrive from England of one James Cook having charted the Eastern coast of Australia, and having made recommendation of colonisation at Botany Bay. Godric takes an interest.
• 1772: An expedition led by Louis Aleno de St Alouarn claims the Western coast of Australia for the French crown. Batavia takes an interest. There is no follow-through from the French, however.
• 1776: King Gustav III of Sweden announces plans to establish a colony along the Swan River, to which Batavia pays keen attention, however the Swedes, like the French, fail to act on their boasts.
• 1785: In vengeance for Vilrec's murder of his childe, Lothar wages a brutal campaign of attrition across Finland, depleting the Valdyr vassals and family.
• 1788: A penal fleet sails from England for Sydney Cove, in New South Wales. Godric and Batavia wait, and watch closely, as the great Southern continent slowly acquires civilisation.
• 1800: Lothar's fury is finally spent, and he returns with their forces to Castle Volmark in the Rhineland. Entire swathes of Valdyr family members and associates lie murdered behind him, and their territories burn in his wake.
• 1801 - 1810: Torpor.
• 1820: The Volmark lure Vilrec into an a trap, where they hold his two childer; Batavia guards Stellan, the elder and most favoured, and Lothar is set over Berengaria Lange, the fledgeling. He is siezed, restrained and made to choose between them - he chooses Stellan to live, and Berengaria to die; Batavia tears out Stellan's heart. Berengaria is freed, and Vilrec himself put into torpor.

She returns, and bargains for his release with the life of her first childe, when she will eventually Embrace.

• 1835: Godric dispatches his eldest childe to the fledgeling Australian nation, with instructions to take it "for the Invictus, and for Volmark!" Upon arriving, she finds there is already a Kindred powerbase founded in New South Wales, and so settles in the newly-founded City of Melbourne in Victoria, and begins establishing herself there.
• 1836 - 1850: She fosters the development of a local Kindred Court, and mentors closely to its first Prince.
• 1851: Gold deposits discovered in Ballarat, leading to the Victorian Gold Rush. This draws Batavia's attention, and she follows the hordes of mortals pouring onto the goldfields.
• 1854: Embraces Christopher Merrick.

Under construction.

Lineage

Great Grand-sire: Unknown.

Grandsire: Zarkov Justinius.

Sire: Godric Volmark.

Known Childer: Algol, Christopher Merrick, Charles Volmark, and countless others; she spawns monsters with profane fecundity. Batavia's childer and grandchilder are no mere family, but a tribe - a nation.

Known Grand-childer: Too many to number.

Quotes

Quotes By

"Children! Wretches! Have you any idea of what you've done? For the diversion he has afforded through the vicissitudes of my years, I hold that worthy dearer than all assembled of thy nation. I could create a thousand of thee with barely a thought, but where else am I to find such a foe? That proud and noble Savage deserved better than to die at the claws of thou feeble...remnants, cowardly grouped. As his nature was of legend, so too shall be your pains. Cower now, thou scraps and drabs, and learn what it is to take something from a Volmark."

Batavia in 1870, before brutally destroying a group of her own childer who had hoped to curry favour by reporting that they had destroyed Vilrec Langlifr. The boast was later found to be entirely fabricated.

"Violence is not frightening - not truly. Violence is a release...and a relief. A climax after the tension. The art of terror lies in spinning out that tension, without ever allowing it to over-build into resignation, for as long as possible. See this childe; she knew the risk she was taking by stepping into my territory only after she had already done so, and, like the fly in the web, she prayed to escape unnoticed. I watched her for a week and a half as her paranoia built, as her fear ate her alive, and then allowed her to return home - relieved - only to discover after she arrived back in "safety" that she hadn't, after all, escaped me, but that I had let her go. And now she knows, she knows that I could have reached out and touched her - plucked her like a tender, low-hanging fruit - any time I wanted. And she knows, now, also, that when I come for her, I could be anyone; the old lady on the street who stares a little too long, the petrol station service attendant who gives her a strange look with her change, the pretty patron in the nightclub whom her hunger drives her to invite home...

That knowledge will follow her to the end of her days - haunt her sleep, dog her step when she walks alone, make her pull the curtains tighter in the dark, cold watches of the night. She will never forget me, but will carry me to her grave.

This, childe; this is the essence of terror."

Batavia, instructing Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius on the utility of fear.

"If you eliminate everyone who ever challenges you, my young apprentice, you won't live forever; it will just feel that way."

Batavia, in the '60s, lecturing a studious Tybalt on the value of 'favourite enemies'.

Quotes About

"Let it be known, hence and forever more, that Elder Batavia is the Duchess of the Sublands. Any who enter, do so at your own risk."

Dragon Prince Kaida Pendragon informs her subjects, when she forms the first Court in Canberra, in 1955.

“Think of her as a glacier - cold, hard, inexorable. She moves in increments of decades, grinding mountains to gravel.”

Tybalt, Prince of Cats (and Brisbane).

“The Alder Senator Batavia holds my most enduring favour."

Prince Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Macellarius, shortly after taking Praxis, when asked about the Viscountess.

"I do not discuss my 'sister' with outsiders. This is more for their safety than mine. Do not ask me again."

Raymond Vauxhall, on more than one occasion.

"And that, my brothers and sisters, is the beauty of predestination. Just as God has predestined us as the sinners we are, to serve his almighty purpose, so too does he ordain the judgement of those that would falter from his path that the Dark Prophet has laid out for us. While sometimes it may seem like the unfaithful flaunt their successes and escape, the judgement of God awaits us all. The delay merely adds to the immense satisfaction that can be enjoyed when the sinner is punished..."

Bishop Lupo, delivering a sermon in the Canberra Parish on the ultimate fate of the Apostate.

"I've always wanted to know what makes that one tick, however she takes unapproachable to an art-form....which just makes me more curious."

The Liulfr, while fingering a recent scar.

"If you ask me about her again...

I swear to you, I will tell you everything she's done, everything she represents, and confirm every story you've ever heard - it will leave you begging every Lord you know to help you forget. And that's only what I remember of the past 400 years.

You want the truth about Batavia, go ask her yourself!"

Vilrec Langlifr, when pressed by younger Valdyr.

"Her advice is born from experience, age and the wisdom they bring. Pay the price she asks. It is a sound investment."

Algol, to an (understandably nervous) petitioner.

Soundtrack

Others.

• Fire In The Blood by Emmylou Harris - Godric Volmark
• Grenade by Memphis May Fire - Lothar

Monster by The Almost - his side.

• Away by Breaking Benjamin - Charles Volmark

Second Sebring by Of Mice And Men - his side.

• Mordred's Lullaby by Heather Dale - Christopher Merrick
• You're All My Little Monsters by Lady Gaga - House Volmark

---

• Change (In The House Of Flies) by Deftones - Vilrec Langlifr

Hey, Nightmare, Where Did You Get Them Teeth? by A Skylit Drive - his side.

• Waking The Witch by Kate Bush - Berengaria Lange
• The Tain by The Decemberists - Aksel Vinter
• Kingdom Come by The Civil Wars - Eira
• Beauty And The Beast by David Bowie - the Valdyr

---

• Inside Of You, In Spite Of You by Thoushaltnot - Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius and Raymond Vauxhall
  • Avalanche by Leonard Cohen - Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius
  • A Million Ways by OK Go - Raymond Vauxhall

---

• Hell Above The Water by Curve - Lupo

You're Going Down by Sick Puppies - his side.

Jack And Black Queen by The Homestuck Fan Musicians - both of them.

---

• Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson - Tybalt

Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police - his side.

Self.

• Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd
• Dust In The Wind by Kansas
• Come Little Children by Katethegreat19
• All The Pretty Little Horses by Grant Campbell

Rumours

• It is known in Canberra, and is long accepted, that very occasionally, Kindred disappear. But never anyone with worth to the City. And never anyone with allies. Never anyone relevant. The story, passed only in hushed whispers, runs that it is Batavia who drags them, screaming, into the dark.
• Is the impassive subject of a certain perverse fascination by the lascivious Bishop Lupo.
• Is a figure of legend among the local Aboriginal people.
• Collected a regular blood tithe from the Dragon Prince Kaida for her support of the new Court.
• Has a thing about human children.
• Berengaria Lange is the only Kindred in existence who can really get under her skin.
  • Berengaria Lange is as confused by this as everyone else.

Inspirations

Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a Death? and are there two? Is Death that Woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.

• Life-In-Death from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.
• Western Australia's "Shipwreck Coast".
• Helen Vaughan from Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan.
• Grendel's Mother from Beowulf.
• Ekhidna, from Greek Mythology.
• Lilith, from Hebrew Mythology.
• Ereshkigal, from Mesopotamian Mythology.
• Shub Niggurath, from H.P. Lovecraft's C'thulu Mythos.
• History's Catherine de Medici, specifically as portrayed in Alexandre Dumas' La Reine Margot (and in the movie of the same, by Virna Lisi).
• History's Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, specifically as portrayed by Angelina Jolie in Alexander.
• The titular ship, in Event Horizon. Look at her, Miller. Isn't she beautiful?
• History's Niccolo Macchiavelli.
• The Bene Gesserit, from Frank Herbert's Dune series.
• Every "witch in the tower" advisor ever kept and perversely loved by a monarch of men.

OOC Information

Member Information
Player:	P. Saunders
Number:	Incomplete
Domain:	[[Canberra]]