2The Embrace

     Mortal superstitions deal at great length with the means by which a 
Vampire may come into existence.  Theses range from the predictably religious 
to the utterly bizarre, and can make an entertaining evening's reading if one 
is so inclined.  But other than entertainment, they shall serve you little 
purpose.

     Firstly, and most commonly, the myth has it that anyone bitten by a 
Vampire will themselves become a Vampire.  Thus, each time a Vampire feeds, 
it creates another of its kind.  One wonders how it is that any mortals are 
left in the world.  Further, a corpse may become a Vampire if it was a suicide,
an oath-breaker, a member of a tainted bloodline, or an evil person.  Again, 
the globe would be peopled with nothing but Vampires - and I ask you this, have
you seen this army of undead?

     Indeed, there are not many Vampires upon this globe.  If fact have it,
there is only one means through which a mortal may become a Vampire.  There is
a grain of truth in the legend.  To become a Vampire, one must lose all one's
mortal blood - but that is only part of the horror.  7Mortui exsanguinati mortui
7veri, 0if nothing further is done; the fang will kill as everlastingly as the
blade of the bullet.

     As mortality stands on the brink of extinction, as the flesh slowly dies,
the Vampire assailant may choose to spare the victim from death or deny 
Heaven's grave, for all is one 7his rebus0.  By replacing the stolen mortal blood
with a little of the Vampire's own, a Progeny is created.  But a single drop of
blood upon the lips of the dying arouses them sufficently to drink from the 
wrist of their Sire.


As one such Vampire wrote:

     How can I express the horror of the Embrace?  The fear and confusion?  The
revulsion and terror?  The Pain.  Even the passing of centuries has not dulled
the memory.

     Understand, that I am no coward.  As a soldier, I endured the privations
of the camp, the perils of battle, the savagery of the victor, of which I plead
guilty to my share, for such was the 3Zeitsmode0.  But even those things I
have witnessed as a prisoner of the Turks could not have prepared me for the 
experience of being hurled into this cursed half-life.

     I was, 7de gratia potestate descriptis0, in a most peaceful state of mind
as my blood was stolen.  As deaths go - and I have seen many kinds - this was 
surely the least distressing.  It was as though my experience were a strange 
and unsettling dream.  Far off in the warm, soft darkness of my failing mind, I
became aware of light; I knew that this was where I must go, and I knew that, 
once I arrived there, all would be well with me.  I began to drift toward it.

     Abruptly the welcoming light was extinguished.  My face felt an impact 
like a musket-ball and as I tried to scream, my mouth filled with liquid fire.  
The vitriol seared my throat and stomach; consciousness returned as though it
would rend me limb from limb.  A thousand fish-hooks tore my flesh in every 
direction.  I prayed for death - anything to stop the pain - but could not even
lapse from consciousness.  7Nec Turcos, nec Inquaesitores 0ever commanded such
torment.  Magnify a thousandfold the sting of vinegar on a cut finger, and 
flood the feeling through every limb and every vein.  Add to this the gnawing, 
starving ache of five days' forced march without food nor water.  Deny sleep, 
swooning or any other surcease from the all-consuming 3dolor.  0But no.  My 
meager wordsmithing can convey nothing of it.

     I knew only that I must drink, and as I did so the pain abated some 
little.  My eyes cleared, and I saw what it was that I drank.

     My first reaction was denial.  This could not possibly be happening.  Even
in the fifteenth century, men of education and breeding scoffed at the super-
stitions of the peasent.  As a child, my nurses had frightened me to sleep with
such stories of the terrible 3vrolok0, but I had outgrown such tales long 
before.  This was a nightmare, a hallucination of some kind.  I tried to focus
on thoughts of meat, fruit, wine - but to no avail.  Blood was all.  Blood was
reality.  All else was discarded.

     I can only be thankful that I was in a remote place.  Had I been made in a
city, with peopl all around, there is no telling what havoc might have ensued.
The Hunger blotted out reason entirely.  Had my own son appeared before me 
then, he would have died to feed the Hunger, for I was utterly enslaved to it.
No opium fiend in a Limehouse or Shanghai den was ever so helplessly, so 
wretchedly dependent.




                                7L E S T A T
                             3PRINCE OF DARKNESS