Archbishop **of Note** She was never meant to be successful; she was appointed out of spite, not respect. Nobody expected the mad neonate to actually be able to hold the reins of power. Nobody thought she’d be able to control Miami, much less orchestrate the conquest of several more Camarilla cities. But those of Malkav’s line are full of surprises. Fabrizia was a helplessly insane prisoner in a Mexican penitentary at the time of her Embrace, chosen as cannon fodder for a skirmish in Houston. However, Malkav’s blood, while still tainted with madness, gave her an unusual gift of lucidity. She became her sire Licero’s lover rather than his pawn, and the two of them were as infamous among the Southwest’s Kindred as Bonnie and Clyde. When Licero was lost in the Miami siege, his regent, Galbraith, blamed Fabrizia for being a distraction. Rather than openly work revenge on the youngling (which would certainly be seen as ludicrously petty), Galbraith instead appointed the distraught Fabrizia archbishop in the hopes that the position’s demands would destroy her. The regent was sorely disappointed — Fabrizia proved remarkably alert, exceptionally organized and meticulously patient. Ironically, Galbraith could not have asked for a better, more committed, more effective archbishop. And Fabrizia has been a vampire for only 15 years. Tonight, Fabrizia is more than a thorn in the side of the East Coast Camarilla — she is a barbed spearhead. She monomaniacally plots to capture more and more cities from the Camarilla, and has placed agents in several key cities in anticipation of further movements. Atlanta’s recent fall to the Sabbat has caused quite a stir in Camarilla and Sabbat circles alike, as the various Kindred try to figure out just how much of that conquest was due to Fabrizia’s planning. It’s tragic, really. All she ever wanted was to spend the rest of her nights with her beloved Licero. Now the East Coast will bleed for her loss. The Ankou Camarilla or Sabbat, every clan has its tales of ancient terrors stalking the night, creatures that kill their grandchilder without remorse or pity. One such legend, at least among the Malkavians, is that of the Ankou. The Ankou is the Reaper itself a thing of grave earth and rust, of rot and wormwood. Where its legend has filtered into human lore, it is depicted as a remorseless, lifeless monster that silently treads lightless country roads with ox-cart and scythe, coming upon its victims as suddenly as a sickness, cutting their lives from them, Clanbook: Malkavian and heaving them into its cart. And it is in this form that it will sometimes appear in a Malkavian s dreams or visions, if always fleetingly. Those Malkavians who know of the Ankou treat its legends with equal parts reverence and loathing. A few have said that it is the first of the serial killers, or possibly their patron saint. The most reliable visions hint that is a Methuselah not one of Malkav s direct childer, but a grandchilde and faithful servant to its 4th-generation parent (who, perhaps thankfully, remains nameless). If rumors can be trusted, it was birthed in the days when agriculture was a budding art, and was perhaps even slain and Embraced as a sacrifice to some earth-goddess. However, its duty to the earth did not end with death. Its powers are seemingly so great that it can roam the back roads of Lupine territory unmolested, or even vanish from one place to appear miles away. It can also, if tales can be trusted, travel with its spectral cart invisibly and intangibly through even the most bustling neon downtown visible only to its victims, and even then only as a faint smell of corruption and a heavy blow from behind. Vampires, particularly Malkavians, are known to vanish from their hunting grounds without a trace all the time but sometimes after a disappearance, the word drifting along the Network, repeated in neural whispers, is Ankou.
