Parthenia Church-Horngold

Diabolic Parthenia Church-Horngold

Official Title: Greater Diabolic

Preferred Form of Address: Lady Diabolic Parthenia

Avatar Name: Parthenia Church-Horngold (PartheniaChurch)

Rez Day: 02/26/2011

Langauges: English

Background

• The Distant Past -- (I will be using third person to refer to myself here, because these events occurred so long ago, that from this vantage point they seem so remote, as if I am watching someone else go through these things).

• Parth was created as a devil at the dawn of time, but some of her siblings, perhaps the apostate ones, decided to try an experiment upon her: to dip her into the river of forgetfulness, the River Lethe, in a perverse form of baptism, so that she would forget her identity. It was the task of many lifetimes for her to re-discover her true self.

• The Lethe transformed her into a helpless human, and carried her off to a village, many centuries ago, in the year 75 BC, in a place called Britain. A mortal family that had tried and failed to have a child found this devil-in-the-shape-of-a-baby by the side of the river, and raised her as their own. As she grew, Parth learned quickly that she needed to adapt to her surroundings, and behave in a manner befitting her appearance as a young girl. But her mind contained the cognitive ability, if not the memories, of a thousands’-year-old supernatural being, and it became increasingly difficult to hide that from the superstitious villagers, who were always on the look-out for a scapegoat on whom to blame the famine, conflict, and disease that stalked the land. It would have been only a matter of time before the whispers about Parth being a cursed child who had brought misfortune into their lives rose to a crescendo of accusation, but a twisted kind of salvation came to Parth, courtesy of none other than Julius Caesar.

• In 55 B.C., as Parth’s twentieth human birthday dawned, the great leader Julius Caesar of Rome turned his attention to Britain in the wake of his Gallic Wars. The Britons fended off the invasion, but there were many advance scouts that fanned out into the countryside, one of whom was a native who came from way north, in the place we now called Scotland. He was the one that Parth knew would be her ticket out of an existence that she had come to despise. She knew it with a certainty that went beyond facts or reason; her ticket would arrive when needed, almost as if it were part of some larger plan that a part of her being could control without conscious understanding.

• This man for whom Parth waited, this vehicle, was a centurion in the army, one whom his fellow soldiers shunned because of his strange habits. His specialty was gaining intelligence of potential enemies. Because he was so good at reconnaissance, he was granted the privilege of never having to stir abroad when the sun was out, or to live within the army encampments.

• With no one to see her countenance, Parth smiled an evil smile the day she walked the cliffs near her village and saw the Roman ships coasting below. That night she walked out into the woods, trying to make herself as visible and conspicuous as possible to the creature she knew would be on the prowl. She closed her eyes and felt the creature’s hunger as if it were her own. When she heard the snapping of twigs and the footfalls on the path, she gasped as audibly as she could, trying to feign fear, and pretended to run away.

• He quickly overtook her, tackled her, and began a barrage of questions, which she happily answered, telling the whereabouts of all the villages she knew and the names of their inept leaders. When he foolishly thought that he had exhausted her knowledge, he drew back a bit, bared an enormous set of fangs, and plunged them into her neck. His intent was to kill, but at just the moment when his victims usually went limp and succumbed gracefully to their fate, Parth began to move more purposefully, and before he knew it, she was attempting to bite him.

• He could not believe it. It made him laugh that she thought she could do any damage with her puny little teeth. But then, the unthinkable happened. Suddenly he felt the fingers of his right hand grasp his knife and raise it to his own throat. He tried in vain to make his hand obey his brain. It would not, and then he saw those eyes, steely blue and rimmed with a blood red fire, locked onto his. Parth smiled, and he felt his knife fall and slice his wrist, but not mortally. Within a trice, Parth gulped as much of the crimson liquid as she could and staggered off into the forest, leaving her sire to survive – or not – as he would.

• It had not been the vampire’s intent to usher any humans into the world of the undead. Just as he maintained only minimal connection with those who had made him, so too did he wish to avoid the responsibility of teaching a fledgling the ways of his kind. It was hard enough to blend in and survive as it was, without having to worry about progeny.

• Parth found this attitude on her “sire’s” part more than satisfactory, and it was perhaps for this reason that she did nothing to hasten his final death. His experience as a world traveler, on the other hand, was useful to her. As she had gulped his blood, a mélange of images flooded into her mind, of places he had been, things he had seen. A place of deserts and tomb-like structures, which she learned were pyramids, called out to her -- a massive city of the dead, with gods whose names she had never heard, although they were familiar to her from a place within her brain beyond cognitive knowledge.

• Suffice it to say, Parth did what was needed to make her way to Egypt, where she learned the arcane arts, sleeping in the pyramids by day. Centuries went by, and she traveled Europe, manufacturing countless human lives to shroud her vampiric existence. She insinuated herself into the great houses of governmental ministers and nobles, so that she could learn the art of politics. She marveled at all the drama and purpose the humans packed into their gnat-like lifespans, wondering how they managed to convince themselves that what they did mattered. Whether, during a given life, she was in favor with the reigning humans or relegated to a place of insignificance, there was always something to be learned. Occasionally she crossed paths with others like herself, but mostly she avoided them, until some point in the seventeenth century, when she began to crave the company of her own kind.

• She crossed over to what was called the “New” World in those days – North America as it is styled today. Gradually, through a series of events too labyrinthine to relate in this short space, she learned of a vampire society organized around six great arch vampires, several beings called diabolics, and a magnificent originator of everything, known as The Source.

• She joined and soon became ambassador of a clan, only to find that her sire had migrated to North America also, and committed a heinous crime for which all vampire society reviled him. She exiled him from her land and expelled him from her clan, forcing him to join the ranks of the rogues. In the process of handling this crisis, she became aware of a whole set of annoying relatives that her now-rogue sire had never told her about – vampires who had never reached out to her before, but who now came crawling out of the woodwork in an attempt to control her actions, probably because they knew she had established a thriving family, regardless of her humble beginnings. Luckily for Parth she had, with her queen Suraya, affiliated herself with the great Ravens Claw bloodline, pledging loyalty to them, and asserting the principle that a community of intention and choice is more binding than one formed around the accident of consanguinity. Parth was perhaps a renegade before that term was even evented, and suffice it to say she no longer gave a backward glance to the tiresome "relatives" who had tried to block her path.

• Not very long after all this occurred, a machine was invented by which one could change one’s blood, and Parth “re-sired,” as the most bountiful Source called it, to the talented Arch Lledge Eames, from whom she learned a great deal. She also became acquainted with the Greater Diabolic Oberon, with whom she had many scintillating conversations and eventually became his Infernal and worked on his various projects.

• As she became acclimated to the vampire society as it existed, she advocated for a rule of law from which all vampires could benefit, seeing as she had experienced a certain amount of tyranny herself. The centuries slipped past, and Parth became mother and grandmother and great great … well so many greats that she could not remember....to many vampires. The great Source granted her a bloodline of her own, and she became an Arch, and settled in to a very busy existence, not only taking care of the thriving family in the ways she always had, but also fostering the rise of new leaders and rejoicing as she began to see them reach their goals.

• Then a fateful night came. There were many scrolls that Greater Diabolic Oberon needed to sort through, as he was preparing to launch on a project for the realm that would involve presenting its history for a new era of vampires. He gave Parth the job of vetting a huge stack of files from the archive, and so she fed early and then settled down in the diabolical offices to do her work, losing all track of time until she realized with a jolt that sunrise was almost upon the land. She got up from the desk and found that she could not move, was somehow blocked from the normal means of transport that she always used to return to the safety of her own castle and coffin. What cruel magic could this be?

• In a moment, a mystical portal opened, and into the room strode Diabolic Oberon. But he was different. He was somehow more substantial yet more ethereal all at the same time. A huge burst of light pierced the darkness in the spot where he landed. Parth stepped back a bit, wondering what could be happening here. She tried once more to open her own portal, but it would not work.

• Frantic to get out of the sunlight that began to filter into the room, she kept retreating farther and farther into the shadows of the cavernous room until she ran out of shadow. She instinctively closed her eyes, as if that would somehow stop what was happening, but after a few long moments went by with no searing pain racking her body, she allowed one eye to flutter open just a bit, to see if the process of dissolution had begun. Much to her amazement, she saw that she was intact, and as she opened her eyes, she could see the bemused look on Diabolic Oberon’s face, and noticed that it seemed there was a new title on the name plate on his desk.

• The bemused look lasted just for a split second, and then he went on just as before, as if she had not spent excruciating minutes worried about the final death, expecting to see her thousands’-year-old existence go up in ignominious flames. Her mind wandered – she wondered why it was those religious people who coined the phrase about the body being one’s temple when it fit so much better for the vampire, who had no prospect of a life beyond with pearly gates and fluffy clouds. There were many other pointless trails that her mind traveled as she tried to make sense of her fortunate failure to launch into non-existence, until she became aware again of now-Apeiron Oberon’s presence in the room.

• “Parth,” he said, and paused for a moment. At least the cadence of his voice was still the same, and the way he rolled passed the “r” in her name, as if his busy lifestyle had no time for certain consonants.

• “There was something I have been meaning to talk to you about …. ”

• The Present Era

• Well, suffice it to say, Apeiron Oberon spoke to me of the unrepeatable mysteries of being a diabolic, and explained the secrets of apotheosis. No longer an arch vampire, but a devil, I emerged from that transformative night, leaving my family in the capable hands of my beloved husband.

• As diabolic, I primarily work in producing the Progeny Magazine, and ensuring the integrity of the Progeny brand. I am Patron of the Arts always looking to help those who wish to showcase their writing or artistic talents. Please feel free to contact me in world with any questions about Progeny in general or the specific aspects I oversee.