Character Name: Rafael De Corazon
Clan: Toreador
Player Name: NPC
Email Address: Pending
Background Information:
I will hide my face from then…" he said, "and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful."
The Bible, Deuteronomy 32:20
As the forces of the Inquisition and the legions of the anarchs surrounded the scattered, quarrelsome and indecisive forces of the vampire clans, one voice rose above the clamor. Rafael de Corazon called upon the vampire elders to forsake their direct ties to the world of men and pass forever
into shadows and nightmares.
His Life
Bloody religious strife between Spanish Christians and Spanish Moslems tore apart the beautiful countryside of Navarre during the turbulent twelfth century. To the peasant caught in the endless civil war, the Church served as the only refuge from the emotional upheaval of the factional fighting.
A cherubic peasant boy named Rafael de Corazon caught the eye of the Bishop of Navarre. The bishop lifted the sweet-voiced child out of poverty and into the exalted world of the Church. Rafael loved the opulent robes, musky incense and reverberating hymns, and found refuge in the dark, somber
chambers lit by breathtaking multicolored stained glass windows. He became an altar boy - the most beautiful boy in a building full of beautiful boys who resented Rafael's status as the bishop's new favorite.
The boy tried to stay out of harm's way by keeping a low profile, but quickly learned to use his favor with the bishop to covertly lash back at his tormentors. It was his first taste of power, and he liked it.
Just as he was learning how best to exercise his dominance, younger, more attractive boys arrived, and the bishop's attention wandered. Rafael used his diminishing resources to protect himself from the older boys who were eagerly awaiting his fall. Before his influence completely ebbed away, he begged the bishop to put him in training for the priesthood instead of shunting him off into the monastery with the other aging altar boys.
Rafael had little talent as a priest, and was once again a small fish in a big, dangerous pool of men who had won their positions through hard work or political power. Because he could not distinguish himself through his works or talent, he again found great value in keeping a low profile. To advance his power within the clergy, he sought stewardship over high-profile projects. He lost many plum positions, like supervising new cathedral construction, but eventually won a lesser assignment overseeing the creation of cathedral mosaics and illuminated manuscripts.
Though the Church officially frowned on vanity, the bishop conferred great status on the priests and monks who created the most exquisite art, wine and music. Rafael claimed credit for the finest pieces created by his monks, and warned them not to challenge him. But the bishop ignored Rafael's works, and the young man again felt the sting of plummeting status. The monks he had mistreated quietly whetted their knives in preparation for his fall. He had cultivated too many enemies to hide in
quiet anonymity again.
To regain the bishop's attention, Rafael took a great risk. He knew the bishop's tastes intimately, and brashly catered to them by making his artisans devise sexually explicit illuminated manuscript. The bishop loved the new works, and Rafael gloated over his renewed status within the cathedral.
His Death
Rafael's life changed forever during a late-night visit by a mysterious, unmarried noblewoman named Callisti y Castillo, who was rumored to be an immortal pagan witch of ancient lineage. Some clergy called her a spawn of Satan, given to public blood drinking and occult practices. The bishop
knew that if he could convince her to convert, she would help the Reconquista to reclaim Spain for Christendom. Pagan practices were far less immediately threatening than the Moors.
His spies told him that Callisti dearly prized art, and leaned toward supporting the Moors only because of their rich artistic heritage. He planned to woo her favor with the cathedral's art offerings. Some priests
scurried to make every detail of her visit perfect, while others railed against the corrosive influence of demonic outsiders.
She swept into the cathedral at midnight; a stunningly sensual woman with a phalanx of warriors and an entourage of sweetly attractive young male attendants. This scandalized the priests, who blithely accepted the extravagant displays of sexual licentiousness from men, but greatly resented sexual power in the hands of a woman.
Monks crept from their beds to catch a glimpse of the woman capable of ousing the church at so late an hour, and the priests scrambled to keep the celibate monks from stealing a glimpse of her provocative beauty. Callisti knew the scandal her presence caused, and smiled seductively.
The bishop browbeat the priests into making a great show of hospitality. He presented Callisti with gifts of mosaics, stained glass and their most exquisitely painted Bible. But she found them all wanting, and rejected conversion.
Rafael lusted after the arrogant woman, who radiated raw sensuality and wicked passions. During the uproar, he gave her explicit manuscripts depicting graphic nudes of Adam and Eve engaged in wicked fornication after the Fall of Man. She praised the great beauty of the work, and accepted
full conversion to Christianity on the spot from an embarrassed, appalled and bewildered bishop. She made a sizable donation to the Reconquista, and offered the use of her fortresses.
Callisti asked to bishop for permission to take the talented young priest with her. He refused the unseemly request, saying it was not part of their original agreement. However, upon seeing Rafael grow pale and wan over the following days, he relented and let her take him. The bishop did not know
that Callisti was a powerful vampire of the Toreador clan, and had drained Rafael's blood every night in his sleep.
Once Rafael was hers, Callisti Embraced him, turning him into her childe. He was shocked at the sudden reversal of his fortunes, but could do nothing to resist.
She demanded he paint more erotic art for her. The art he produced was mediocre at best and, when he admitted his deception, she flew into a rage and nearly destroyed him. As his precious blood drained away for the second time, he begged for his undead existence. He insisted that his deception showed a special kind of artistic talent, and that his very life was a work of art. Amused by his appeal, she spared him.
In another reversal of fate, he found himself the lowest of the low in an entourage of beautiful, talented, jealous male vampires. He again found comfort in anonymity, carefully disguising his aspirations and ambitions from the others.
His Unlife
When the Inquisition flared up, Callisti wanted no part of the war against the mortals. She had grown weary of Christian art, finding it increasingly arid and lifeless. She set off for India, where she had heard that a new erotic art style flourished, and left behind inter-clan politics. Rafael quietly volunteered to run her affairs while she was gone, and she consented with little interest or enthusiasm.
In her absence, Rafael shamelessly exploited her power, using her authority to propose treaties, form alliances and launch territorial fights. He created numerous childer while hiding behind Callisti's authority.
His mediocre artistic talents gave him little status in the Toreador, so he became a great patron of the arts. He knew the talented Toreador did not respect him, so he covertly used his power to damage and embarrass them.
As the Inquisition and the anarch rebellion gutted even the greatest Kindred families, the remaining clans gathered to formulate a unified response. Some wanted to strike back at the presumptuous mortals and ungrateful neonates, greatly reduce their populations, and rule them with an iron fist. Others found all this suicidal, and proposed trying to trick the anarchs into fighting the Inquisition.
Rafael exploited his mistress' authority to address the elders. He stepped before them, and simply read the Fifth Tradition of the Kindred to them, saying "Thou shall not reveal thy true nature to those not of the blood."
His words met with stony silence, so he read the Tradition again and again. The elders booed and called for him to be dragged from the dais. As they came for him, Rafael warned them away, railing against the elders for abandoning so sacred a tradition. He said, "WE are to blame for this! We have lost our claim of blood by living so conspicuously among mortals!"
Amid the shouts of elders clamoring for his blood, he cried out above the din, "Living openly among mortals has been our ruin! We violated the spirit of the Fifth Tradition, and we pay for it in blood! Mortals are too numerous and too jealous of our power. They will try to destroy us as long
as they know of us! It has always been so! We must turn our backs on them. We must hide our faces away from their envious eyes!"
His impassioned speech reached even the closed minds of the Ventrue and Tremere elders. He turned the tide of thought from a craving for all-out war with the mortals to subtlety and subversion. The vampires went underground and covered their traces. They covertly changed the intellectual climate. Their human agents mocked eyewitness accounts of vampires and ridiculed the old legends. The vampires survived the Inquisition, and within several generations humanity turned to science and
scoffed at superstition.
Rafael, the hero of the day, used his new status to help press the war against the anarchs and keep the neonates down. He hates them the same way he hated the younger, rival altar boys in the Navarre cathedral. But while he rides high on the respect of others, he lives in terror of the return of his sire, Callisti. He fears her anger over his abuse of her power. Thus far, she has not returned from India…
His Nature
Many Toreador consider Rafael the symbolic heart of the clan. Renowned for his extraordinary beauty and notorious for his cold, calculating style, the talentless vampire casts a long shadow over his fellow artists. Like his sire, Rafael surrounds himself with a coterie of achingly beautiful male and female childer, all flawed in some way so as not to overshadow his own great beauty. Though he is not the oldest, most powerful, or most talented of the Toreador, Rafael is the most influential. He won the hearts and minds of his clan during the Inquisition, and has not released his hold on Toreador
thinking since.
The Camarilla venerates him for contriving the Masquerade. Many vampires believe that Kindred society survived the ravages of the Inquisition only because of his scheme to hide all signs of vampiric presence from mortals.
Rafael finally has the admiration and respect he always wanted. His child Mathias is the current Toreador Justicar.
