Archived-Batavia

Give me your Kings Let me squeenze 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

Sire: Godric Volmark.

Bloodline: Unknown.

Titles: Alder Senator Batavia, Lady Volmark, Alpha Childe of Godric Volmark, Viscountess of the Undercity.

Coteries/Societies: TBA

Notable Traits: Batavia, far from the hideousness associated so often with her Clan, appears as a woman of striking attractiveness, tall and erect with the full-lipped, fine-boned beauty of a Hollywood starlet. It's appalling. The elegance of those features, 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 veiled head is bald, lending an additionally unsettling 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." 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, 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, it rarely 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.

The obvious affection which is evident between the Alder Haunt and her two young protégés, frankly, creeps everybody else the Hell out.

Lineage

Great Grand-sire:

Grandsire: Zarkov Justinius.

Sire: Godric Volmark.

Known Childer: Algol, Rafiq Gytrash, 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

Pending data transfer from dead wiki.

Quotes About

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

Tybalt on Batavia

Pending data transfer from dead wiki.

Soundtrack

• A Rose For The Dead by Theatre Of Tragedy - Godric Volmark
• When You Come Back Down by Nickel Creek - Lothar
• Whataya Want From Me by Adam Lambert and P!nk - Charles Volmark
• Who Wants To Live Forever by Breaking Benjamin - House Volmark
• Change (In The House Of Flies) by Deftones - Vilrec Langlifr
• I Can't Decide by Scissor Sisters - Berengaria Lange
• Beauty And The Beast by David Bowie - the Valdyr
• Past The Point Of No Return, by Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, from the Phantom Of The Opera Soundtrack - Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius and Raymond Vauxhall
  • Devour by Disturbed - Tiberius Harkonus Augustus Marcellarius
• A Million Ways by OK Go - Raymond Vauxhall

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.

Inspirations

• 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 as Alexander.
• 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]]