Born in poverty and sickness.
Grown up among violence and death.
He lived through the worst years of humanity...the Dark Ages.
And finally he died in the worst possible way...or so his relatives were told!
But death sometimes is not exactly what it seems.
Sebastian was the latest child of a poor family who lived in the dirty, overcrowded, poor district of Paris at the start of the second millenia.
Their home, a former pigsty, had no windows, no floor and an old rotten blanket was used as a door.
Even the roof had holes and during heavy downpoors water would drip inside making the floor muddy.
They lived, they slept, they cooked and sometimes they would even bathe in that place.
The only water water to them was coming from the nearby polluted river.
That was life in the poor district of Paris back then.
Sickness and death were everywhere around him in his early years.
Diseases were the most common cause of death while murder was the second.
Murder for a loaf of bread or a single copper coin.
Sebastian vowed that his children would not have to live like that, he would either be rich or he would not start a family.
Soon he realised the first part of the vow was almost impossible while a man's urges made the second part very hard to achieve.
At the age of 17 a girl that he had been using to satisfy his urges announced to him that she was pregnant.
Like him the girl was also from a poor family and her only destiny was to become a cheap whore or marry.
Fate decided that she would have to marry.
And so Sebastian would be the lucky father.
Despair hit him but in that difficult hour the hope of a new life gave him the power to rise up again.
He found an abandoned hut at a slightly better spot in the district and found a job at the nearby graveyard, digging new graves and cleaning the old ones.
With the years passing he transformed that hut into a wooden house which even sported a separate bathroom inside.
In the next two decades his family grew bigger giving him four more children.
He considered himself lucky until the plague hit.
First he lost his parents. Older people were the most vulnerable to the plague.
The plague hit the children shortly after.
His last daughter died at the age of three.
All the people were crying for help from the king, from the church or from God himself.
No help came, the poor were left to rot abandoned in the poor distinct.
His wife was the next to suffer and finally die.
He was barely 40 surrounded by the miasma of death with one child dead and three more to care for and no wife.
That was when his sanity started leaving him.
In his despair he found beauty in death.
Death was pure, life was incomplete.
Death was final while life was everchanging.
More and more he would spend his time in the graveyard.
He could swear the dead were speaking to him.
After some time in this state he was actually inviting death to visit him.
And death answered his prayers.
Her name was Lamia.
Once upon a time she was a priestess in ancient Greece.
Her own creator made her because of the devotion she showed to the arts of necromancy.
She as her creator belonged to a clan of vampires infused with the power of necromancy.
For her the revelation of undeath was a heavenly gift. She had aeons now to experiment with the borders of life and death.
One of her trips brought her to Paris.
What could be a better place to study death if not a city where death manifested everywhere each day.
For days she stalked that man walking inside that graveyard talking as if the dead could hear him, even inviting death to come for him.
Finally she decided to grant him his wish, for her death was not the end after all but just the begining of something new and better.
The man hadn't eaten for days so when she attacked he could barely defend himself.
Soon he was lying dying on the ground with his neck torn open by her teeth.
-How does death taste now? she asked him in a cold tone.
-Finally...the man managed to whisper.
-Are you not afraid?
-I am released!
The woman found only truth in the man's voice.
He wanted to die. He had earned his peace.
-NO! You are not going to die that easily. She tore her wrist's vein and let some of her black blood drip in the dying man's mouth.
-I curse you to live a life eternal, damned by God himself until the end of time.
Sebastian would never forget that night even if ten thousand years or more passed.
The next night he awoke inside a crypt. His creator was near coldly smiling.
In front of him lay two diseased bodies of young women waiting for him to satisfy his hunger.
It took him months if not years to realise his new state.
Even his body had changed. Being a member of the necromantic clan his body had changed to resemble that of a dead one.
For a poor educated man with a strong Christianic faith believing in his vampiric state was one of the hardest things he had to do.
But once again he found hope in his new state.
Necromancy could give countless opportunities as he discovered.
This time he vowed he would become the best necromancer the world had ever seen.
After the first century his creator left, the plague had ceased but Sebastian remained in Paris.
He continued his research on the boundaries of death.
He knew vampires were not the only supernatural beings in the world and he knew that there was a world behind our world. A world hidden behind the veil of death. A world for the dead.
Years became decades and decades became centuries but Sebastian was learning and experimenting all this time.
His fame spread among the rest of the damned as one of the best necromancers in existence.
His sire had already fell to the ''great sleep'' under the weight of her age.
Even the prince of Paris granted him boons and favors for services and the poor district of Paris was Sebastian's domain.
Then treachery hit his clan.
The creator of his clan was murdered by one of his own creations who now claimed that he was the ruler of the clan and had started a deadly hunt for anyone who would not accept him as such.
Sebastian was almost 400 years old then.
He was consdiered one of the powerful vampires but Sebastian was never a fighter.
He could fight and win against even the most powerful ghost or wraith but fighting a vampire was a lot different.
Soon that usurper sent for Sebastian. He would either accept this murderer as his ruler or he would die like many others of his clan had.
He tried to contact his creator, Lamia, but she was nowhere to be found.
He had no intention to betray his clan and join the murderer but he did not intend to die either.
In his despair he contacted a member of the mage clan, he promised to teach them his gift of Necromancy in exchange for his protection.
The mage clan gave it no second thought. Centuries now they had been trying to explore death but unlike their magic which was strong, their necromantic powers were weak.
They offered Sebastian a place near a vampire lord of tremendous political and military status in the southern France as his councilor in return for his teachings in the necromantic arts.
That way Sebastian found himself in Vienna at first and after some years on the side of lord Victor, vice king of France and ruler of the southern provinces.
For about half a millenia he stayed there continuing his experiments hiding from the eyes of his would be murderers, offering his arts to his ally and expanding the goals of his patron clan.
What he hadn't achieved in life he had achieved in death.
Lord Victor was not only powerful but he was also rich, one of the richest men on Earth.
At his side Sebastian became rich too.
During the dark years of Inquisition he and Victor became friends rather than mere co-workers.
During all the wars that France endured he and Victor tasted the same wins and defeats.
And they earned the trust of each other, a thing rare between vampires.
Sebastian almost never left Victor's castle's dungeons where he was free to commit his experiments.
But times changed...
Victor was now a known industrialist, a major part of the political and economical scene of France and also Europe.
While the world had changed Sebastian was left behind.
He knew that after this only the ''long sleep'' would follow.
He had to find something knew to give his life meaning.
Rumors had it that his creator was still alive hidden somewhere in Greece.
That was a sign for what this new meaning in his life could be.
He made the arrangements with his patron clan and his friend Victor and soon he was in the city of Thessaloniki where his friend had arranged for the local prince to accept him in his town.
Sebastian did not need much, a small place hidden from prying eyes, preferably near or inside a graveyard.
Prince James out of respect for this vampire's age arranged for him to have just what he had asked for and gave the order that his research not be disturbed.
Sebastian believed that this new ''quest'' had refreshed him and if he was to find his sire many new possibilities would present themselves.
He found way more than he expected though in the city of Thessaloniki.
And most of it came in the company of neonates.
Grown up among violence and death.
He lived through the worst years of humanity...the Dark Ages.
And finally he died in the worst possible way...or so his relatives were told!
But death sometimes is not exactly what it seems.
Sebastian was the latest child of a poor family who lived in the dirty, overcrowded, poor district of Paris at the start of the second millenia.
Their home, a former pigsty, had no windows, no floor and an old rotten blanket was used as a door.
Even the roof had holes and during heavy downpoors water would drip inside making the floor muddy.
They lived, they slept, they cooked and sometimes they would even bathe in that place.
The only water water to them was coming from the nearby polluted river.
That was life in the poor district of Paris back then.
Sickness and death were everywhere around him in his early years.
Diseases were the most common cause of death while murder was the second.
Murder for a loaf of bread or a single copper coin.
Sebastian vowed that his children would not have to live like that, he would either be rich or he would not start a family.
Soon he realised the first part of the vow was almost impossible while a man's urges made the second part very hard to achieve.
At the age of 17 a girl that he had been using to satisfy his urges announced to him that she was pregnant.
Like him the girl was also from a poor family and her only destiny was to become a cheap whore or marry.
Fate decided that she would have to marry.
And so Sebastian would be the lucky father.
Despair hit him but in that difficult hour the hope of a new life gave him the power to rise up again.
He found an abandoned hut at a slightly better spot in the district and found a job at the nearby graveyard, digging new graves and cleaning the old ones.
With the years passing he transformed that hut into a wooden house which even sported a separate bathroom inside.
In the next two decades his family grew bigger giving him four more children.
He considered himself lucky until the plague hit.
First he lost his parents. Older people were the most vulnerable to the plague.
The plague hit the children shortly after.
His last daughter died at the age of three.
All the people were crying for help from the king, from the church or from God himself.
No help came, the poor were left to rot abandoned in the poor distinct.
His wife was the next to suffer and finally die.
He was barely 40 surrounded by the miasma of death with one child dead and three more to care for and no wife.
That was when his sanity started leaving him.
In his despair he found beauty in death.
Death was pure, life was incomplete.
Death was final while life was everchanging.
More and more he would spend his time in the graveyard.
He could swear the dead were speaking to him.
After some time in this state he was actually inviting death to visit him.
And death answered his prayers.
Her name was Lamia.
Once upon a time she was a priestess in ancient Greece.
Her own creator made her because of the devotion she showed to the arts of necromancy.
She as her creator belonged to a clan of vampires infused with the power of necromancy.
For her the revelation of undeath was a heavenly gift. She had aeons now to experiment with the borders of life and death.
One of her trips brought her to Paris.
What could be a better place to study death if not a city where death manifested everywhere each day.
For days she stalked that man walking inside that graveyard talking as if the dead could hear him, even inviting death to come for him.
Finally she decided to grant him his wish, for her death was not the end after all but just the begining of something new and better.
The man hadn't eaten for days so when she attacked he could barely defend himself.
Soon he was lying dying on the ground with his neck torn open by her teeth.
-How does death taste now? she asked him in a cold tone.
-Finally...the man managed to whisper.
-Are you not afraid?
-I am released!
The woman found only truth in the man's voice.
He wanted to die. He had earned his peace.
-NO! You are not going to die that easily. She tore her wrist's vein and let some of her black blood drip in the dying man's mouth.
-I curse you to live a life eternal, damned by God himself until the end of time.
Sebastian would never forget that night even if ten thousand years or more passed.
The next night he awoke inside a crypt. His creator was near coldly smiling.
In front of him lay two diseased bodies of young women waiting for him to satisfy his hunger.
It took him months if not years to realise his new state.
Even his body had changed. Being a member of the necromantic clan his body had changed to resemble that of a dead one.
For a poor educated man with a strong Christianic faith believing in his vampiric state was one of the hardest things he had to do.
But once again he found hope in his new state.
Necromancy could give countless opportunities as he discovered.
This time he vowed he would become the best necromancer the world had ever seen.
After the first century his creator left, the plague had ceased but Sebastian remained in Paris.
He continued his research on the boundaries of death.
He knew vampires were not the only supernatural beings in the world and he knew that there was a world behind our world. A world hidden behind the veil of death. A world for the dead.
Years became decades and decades became centuries but Sebastian was learning and experimenting all this time.
His fame spread among the rest of the damned as one of the best necromancers in existence.
His sire had already fell to the ''great sleep'' under the weight of her age.
Even the prince of Paris granted him boons and favors for services and the poor district of Paris was Sebastian's domain.
Then treachery hit his clan.
The creator of his clan was murdered by one of his own creations who now claimed that he was the ruler of the clan and had started a deadly hunt for anyone who would not accept him as such.
Sebastian was almost 400 years old then.
He was consdiered one of the powerful vampires but Sebastian was never a fighter.
He could fight and win against even the most powerful ghost or wraith but fighting a vampire was a lot different.
Soon that usurper sent for Sebastian. He would either accept this murderer as his ruler or he would die like many others of his clan had.
He tried to contact his creator, Lamia, but she was nowhere to be found.
He had no intention to betray his clan and join the murderer but he did not intend to die either.
In his despair he contacted a member of the mage clan, he promised to teach them his gift of Necromancy in exchange for his protection.
The mage clan gave it no second thought. Centuries now they had been trying to explore death but unlike their magic which was strong, their necromantic powers were weak.
They offered Sebastian a place near a vampire lord of tremendous political and military status in the southern France as his councilor in return for his teachings in the necromantic arts.
That way Sebastian found himself in Vienna at first and after some years on the side of lord Victor, vice king of France and ruler of the southern provinces.
For about half a millenia he stayed there continuing his experiments hiding from the eyes of his would be murderers, offering his arts to his ally and expanding the goals of his patron clan.
What he hadn't achieved in life he had achieved in death.
Lord Victor was not only powerful but he was also rich, one of the richest men on Earth.
At his side Sebastian became rich too.
During the dark years of Inquisition he and Victor became friends rather than mere co-workers.
During all the wars that France endured he and Victor tasted the same wins and defeats.
And they earned the trust of each other, a thing rare between vampires.
Sebastian almost never left Victor's castle's dungeons where he was free to commit his experiments.
But times changed...
Victor was now a known industrialist, a major part of the political and economical scene of France and also Europe.
While the world had changed Sebastian was left behind.
He knew that after this only the ''long sleep'' would follow.
He had to find something knew to give his life meaning.
Rumors had it that his creator was still alive hidden somewhere in Greece.
That was a sign for what this new meaning in his life could be.
He made the arrangements with his patron clan and his friend Victor and soon he was in the city of Thessaloniki where his friend had arranged for the local prince to accept him in his town.
Sebastian did not need much, a small place hidden from prying eyes, preferably near or inside a graveyard.
Prince James out of respect for this vampire's age arranged for him to have just what he had asked for and gave the order that his research not be disturbed.
Sebastian believed that this new ''quest'' had refreshed him and if he was to find his sire many new possibilities would present themselves.
He found way more than he expected though in the city of Thessaloniki.
And most of it came in the company of neonates.
