Madame Guil

The only justicar to retain her position in these turbulent nights, the Toreador’s Madame Guil is considered a necessary evil — very necessary, and very evil — by the Inner Circle. Even among the ranks of the justicars, Guil is noted for a decided lack of mercy; her skill at uncovering traitors and criminals in the halls of power is the subject of many dreadful tales.

The girl who would become Madame Guil was born in France, amid the squalor of the peasantry. Poor and usually hungry, she nonetheless blossomed into a creature of surpassing beauty. At the age of 16, she was betrothed to one Luc, a young wainwright from a neighboring village, with whom she had flirted at the previous spring’s fair.

And then the cold talon of the Baron Vollgirre dashed her life asunder. Vollgirre, the old and spiteful Kindred lord of the entire province, noticed the young bride-to-be as she danced at the harvest festival. Her beauty stirred something in his turbid blood, and so he had her summoned to his estate in the distant hills.

Apprehension at her fate quickly turned to horror, as the baron revealed his true nature to her and drained her of blood. She rose again, Embraced as Vollgirre’s concubine, but the color had drained out of her body and soul alike, leaving only a bleached and miserable thing. To Vollgirre, his newest prize was but a peasant girl for his entertainment tonight and dinner tomorrow.

Accordingly, it was a great shock to him when he awoke one eve with a stake in his heart and his castle in flames about him. Thus did Vollgirre, and his victim, pass from history.

The courts of Renaissance France were in many ways the apex of Kindred culture in the region, and vampires came from all over Europe to laugh, to dance, and to ignore the twin firestorms of the Reformation and the Sabbat. It was, thus, not so very remarkable to meet another immortal amid the pageantry and throngs, even one as delightful as Mme. Gilles. Mme.

Gilles’ natural charm and grace easily overcame manners that a few overly cynical Kindred might have dubbed “unpolished,” and the young Toreador was nothing if not a quick study.

Soon, she lacked little in the way of mortal or undead company — and if one, or even more, of her vampyr acquaintances were to disappear from time to time, why, the dread Sabbat and dire werewolves were on the roads at night, and Kindred took their chances beyond the city walls. Mme.

Gilles took pains to insinuate herself on the very periphery of undead society — always noticed, never overly noticeable. It was in the early 17th century that she met her Luc once more. When Mme. Gilles first saw him, at a courtiers’ ball, she nearly fainted, thinking him a specter or at the very least a distant descendant of her old love.

In truth, he was neither; upon hearing of her summons to Vollgirre’s court so long ago, Luc had left his village in grief and had struck out along the lonely roads. There, by night, he had been ambushed by a ragtag band of monsters, a remnant of the mobs that had terrorized the nights of the Anarch Revolt.

Neither wholly anarch nor wholly committed to the then-nascent Sabbat, the band of vampyrs led debauched unlives of murder and robbery. They had attacked Luc to slay him for his blood, but Luc’s heedless, valorous struggle had impressed them, and so one among the group’s number had cursed him with the Embrace.

Luc traveled with the band for a while, but most of its members were destroyed by a Sabbat pack, and the survivors had gone their own ways. Since then, Luc had existed much as Mme. Gilles had, living on the fringes of Kindred society and conducting himself quietly. They laughed, as they had done at the spring fair so long ago, and drank of one another several times. Mme.

Gilles told Luc of how she had found power in the blood of old and CHAPTER TWO 47 wicked Kindred, and Luc listened with interest as she described her habit of stalking and slaying what monsters she could. The lovers made a vow to rid the world of the Damned who had destroyed their mortal happiness, and for a time Luc and Mme. Gilles were the most monstrous diablerists in France.

Their crimes came to an abrupt end when the pair stalked and attempted to slay one of the childer of Francois Villon himself. The deed went horribly awry; Luc drew the brunt of the ensuing blood hunt upon himself, while the grieving Mme. Gilles fled into the wastes and once again passed from history. In truth, Mme. Gilles disappeared into the underground world of the anarchs.

Consumed with rage for the murder of Luc, she quickly became a monster among the outcast Kindred. When the Revolution sent France’s mortal and Kindred aristocracy to the guillotine, Mme. Gilles was in the bloodiest thick of the Terror. As history would have it, the Revolution quickly blossomed out of control, and Mme.

Gilles herself was nearly executed, surviving only through the sacrifice of many important pawns. Her allies were not so fortunate, and Mme. Gilles — now calling herself Madame Guil out of irony — allied herself with the venerable, venal Kindred she most despised, Francois Villon.

Latching herself to his power base and taking pains to hide her identity, Guil proved valuable in the rebuilding of France, and soon she was safely ensconced amid the institution she hated more than anything in the world. Over the next two centuries, Guil played the hand she had been dealt, and rose to the rank of justicar.

In this role, she has proved frightfully effective, and none are so expert at rooting out corruption amid the Camarilla’s roots as she. She channels her rage into exposing and destroying the sect’s elders, and nothing gives her more pleasure than slowly putting to death an old and heretofore untouchable Cainite.

Three years ago, on a routine investigation into the doings of a particularly effective Sabbat assassin, the jaded Madame Guil was taken aback once again by a specter from her past. Tracking the assassin to his lair, Guil discovered none other than Luc, who had escaped the wrath of the centuries-past blood hunt. To do so, though, he had been forced to throw himself on the mercy of the Black Hand.

Luc was now a templar in the service of the dread Sabbat, a veteran of centuries of war. The two Cainites, their blood singing, clasped one another in a sanguine embrace, vowing nevermore to be parted. Although their union was forbidden by both sects, thus far the pair has found means of making assignations through the years.

Now, though, Guil walks the narrowest of ledges between her rediscovered love and her unlife. She has neither given nor demanded secrets of her lover, but her duties as justicar must doubtless be compromised before too many nights pass.