Much to my Chagrin...

I was born in early June 1885, the son of a Ukrainian poet and author. My father came from money, the family trading in gems and such. Like most of the Ukrainian elite, my father was a “Russophile,” having adopted the Russian customs and language, even marrying a daughter of a minor Russian noble.

I was educated in Russian, learning the arts and sciences in a private school in Kiev and Krakow. Like my father, I sought to go into writing, and with several friends from school and my father’s investments I started a newspaper.

Life was wonderful. I had a knack for writing, and no small skill in running a newspaper. I soon became well-off, even rich, in my own right. I owned a small mansion north of Krakow, published the largest Russian newspaper in Galicia, and had a wonderful family. Then it all collapsed.

Austro-Hungary invaded our lands in the early days of what is now called the First World War. Being a “Russophile,” I and my family were arrested and taken to the concentration camp at Talerhof.

What hell it was. When we arrived, there were no barracks. We slept on the ground, in the rain and mud. There was little food or clean water, and we lived in filth. When winter came in 1914, thousands died when disease spread through the camp. My wife and daughters each fell ill and passed away, one by one. I held them all as they died.

The night my youngest girl died was when I first saw them. The creatures who fed upon us, the upyr', the vampires. We heard the stories, but in the horror that was the camp, who wanted to hear that it was even worse?

One saw me looking at him. He approached me slowly, ensuring I was not a threat. He saw my little girl dying in my arms. “Give her to me,” he said in perfect Russian. “I will end her suffering.” I felt the tears rolling down my face as I lifted her towards him. He took her gently, and brought her neck towards his mouth and fangs. She sighed softly as he fed, and then she was gone. He laid her down upon the snow, and disappeared.

I remember little after that. Life in the camp was utter routine. I did nothing, spoke nothing. The guards said I had lost my mind. They were most likely correct.
Then the war was over, and Emperor Charles the 1st of Austria ordered the camp closed after he assumed the throne. I was released. I was lead to the gates and shown to the road. I had been given a train ticket to Kiev, but I never made it. I wandered into the Alps of Styria. I hoped to die there.

I succeeded. Climbing into the hills, one night I came across a group of what appeared to be guerrillas. They challenged me, but I did not speak the language. I ignored them.

One of them moved up to challenge me. He stood before me, saying a phrase in his native German I did not follow, and struck a pose to grapple with me. I walked in a semi circle around him, and kept going. Several of his compatriots laughed.

Shamed, he ran towards me and pushed me down. Then turned and yelled back to the main group. He did not notice as I reached for a rock and smashed his head with it. Although he was knocked back, the damage I inflicted quickly healed itself, and I saw his fangs grow as he yelled out in anger.

Then one cried out. He said something, and then repeated it in Russian for my benefit: “I know that man.”

He approached me and looked into my eyes. For the first time in years I looked into his. He seemed to stare into my soul. “Bohze moi, the suffering.” Then he shifted his head. “Perhaps in death you will be released from this.”

He spoke something to companions, and they seemed to vote amongst themselves. He then turned to me. “They respect your strength against young Johann. They agree with me that you should be made one of us, not left to die in these mountains. We travel to assist our Carthian comrades in Mother Russia. I will explain this to you, and you will have the choice.”

I agreed, and become what I am. The group called themselves “The Workers Army,” in reference to how they saw themselves in Marxist theory. Most were Gangrel, or had learned Protean powers in order to fight as guerillas. The man who saw me in the camp, he was also Gangrel, and he embraced me.

I threw away virtually all of what I was, I hid my background. A rich newspaperman amongst this proletariat undead? I stayed quiet and learned. How to attack and run, how to fight hand to hand. I even learned some of the vampiric speed from a Daeva in our group.

We found ourselves fighting the minions of the Invictus of Mother Russia. It was a new hell, where we eventually found ourselves doing whatever it took not only to survive, but to win. And win we did.

A new order was proclaimed. Only now I realize we made ourselves an even bigger plague upon Russia than the Invictus before us. But we pretended that we had done what was necessary, and we saw the improvements outweighing the tyranny we had created.

But some nights the truth cannot be hidden. Eventually we all see the results of our actions. Stalin himself treated the Ukraine even more viciously than the Austrians. I argued against this, and I was labeled a “counter-revolutionary.” The purges of the Carthians were every bit as hideous as the human counterparts.

I fled to Siberia, the slave labor camps the Carthians thought were a small price to pay for the glorious revolution. In them I came face to face with the horror I had experienced from the other side.

I fed, what else could I do? As a Gangrel I could survive here forever, but the loneliness took its toll and I fell into slumber, at last at the sea which finally stopped my flight from myself.

I awoke to find myself in a new port, Anadyr. The Carthians, and Soviet Union, had fallen. This land was lost to me, as was so much of my past. I embarked to find something new. So it was I made for the New World.

This land was such an incredible place. I explored for months enjoying the country and the small towns along the way. But sometimes one longs for those things he has lost. It was on a boat heading for the city of Seattle I heard two men in discussion.

They were criminals: they spoke of moving drugs from Asia into the city. They were educated, and sounded like men of the KGB. Criminals, but I viewed them with sympathy. They had been part of something greater, and were now reduced to living as they could. Perhaps even more basic, they spoke Russian.

I traveled to Seattle. I met with Carthians of the city. One group in particular caught my interest, the New Flesh. Perhaps it was the cynicism, but they were brutally honest about what they were, and although they had hopes for improvements, they did not set lofty goals they could not achieve.

And what of today? I had traveled further east to the city of Chicago. I will speak in the name of the New Flesh. In these long years I have learned the necessities of Undeath: Keep your ideals, but do not hesitate to act as barbarous as you must. Let your enemies underestimate you. Do not reach for what you cannot obtain, but never release that which you have obtained.