Jaroslav Pascek

Born to a Slavic man and an itinerant Gypsy woman, Jaroslav was left for dead by his mother near the border of what would eventually be modern Germany. A Franciscan friar rescued him from death and brought the boy to a monastery, where the churchmen raised him as a “collective son”.

The brothers nurtured the boy and ground into him a fierce devotion to God and the certain knowledge that he was the product of sin, that he was part-devil due to his Gypsy heritage. The beatings he endured and the lessons he studied left Jaroslav with a towering fury he channeled into his views of God and Man. At age 18, Jaroslav found himself adrift in a crisis of faith.

His personal vision of the unity between Man and God, with the Church as compassionate and pure link, was constantly being exposed as a lie. Every time the young monk saw the lay clergy indulge in worldly sin or vice, he became that much more convinced of the need to cleanse the Church. Soon, Jaroslav convinced himself that he was God’s chosen instrument of cleansing.

A full century-and-a-half before Martin Luther, Jaroslav began his own Reformation. He swept through the rural northern areas of the Holy Roman Empire to preach his doctrine of purity and holiness. Jaroslav soon realized that preaching itself had little effect. CHAPTER TWO: PILLARS OF THE The Camarilla: the ivory tower.

Since its inception, the Camarilla has suffered the ire of its opponents and enjoyed the opulence of its noble origins. At once the corrupt aristocracy and the righteous shepherd of predators, the Camarilla nears the edge more and more each night. As it tightens its grip ever increasingly, vampires slip through like grains of sand.

The Gangrel have gone, the Sabbat has seized the East Coast, and the alien Cathayans surge into the anarch free state like the proverbial barbarians at the gate. How much more can the Camarilla lose before the ivory tower becomes a charred ruin? As headstrong as it is, however, the Camarilla is neither stupid nor complacent.

At a recent meeting of the Inner Council at Ghent (notable in its change from the traditional location in Venice), the most exalted Kindred of the sect reached a landmark decision. At last putting their petty games of Jyhad and one-upmanship behind, the sect’s leaders acknowledged the crumbling state of affairs as Gehenna draws nigh.

By electing the most capable group of justicars in any of the assembled vampires’ long memories, the Camarilla has risen to the challenge posed by the modern fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecies.

As the Sabbat rises, as the previously ridiculed Time of Thin Blood has inexorably arrived, and as an ominous red star has revealed itself in the night sky, the six mighty clans have accepted the mantle of responsibility with their undeath. Only time will tell if they are to succeed. CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 42 He and the small group of followers he had assembled added direct action to their words.

As they moved through the countryside, they undertook a campaign of terror. They murdered churchmen they judged as impious, they destroyed false relics and continued to preach against the vice of the Church. Jaroslav’s crusade might have started the Reformation a century early had it not been for a quirk of fate bringing him into the world of the undead.

During a nighttime rally that culminated in the fiery destruction of a cathedral, a crazed Jaroslav stood in front of the burning building and exhorted the mob to purify the corruption all around. But eyes that glittered with something besides fanaticism also watched him from the darkness. Others saw the strength and ferocity in the young man, and they wanted to use him for their own purposes.

A week later, two shadowy figures offered Brother Jaroslav a way to gain great power for his crusade. They spoke with magnetism and persuasiveness, and they radiated an aura of power. Jaroslav took these eerie, otherworldly visitors to be agents of God and agreed to join their cause. The Embrace changed Jaroslav’s faith in God.

No longer did he walk in God’s light, for the Lord had forsaken him to the darkness. Jaroslav felt he had given his soul so that he might more easily purify others. The tenuous grip he had on reality faltered, and he threw himself fully into the world of the undead.

His new “parish,” a coterie of Brujah who hunted in the city of Munich, convinced Jaroslav that the vampiric world was as full of corruption as the Church was. In fact, many undead supposedly masqueraded as clerics. These Brujah allowed Jaroslav to destroy vampires they demonstrated to be agents of Satan.

Often, these targets were simply enemies of Jaroslav’s coterie and sire, but soon Jaroslav branched out independently to ones who meddled in the spiritual realm, and he destroyed Cainites whom he believed to be taking advantage of gullible mortals. The coterie had no lack of enemies to persecute, and Jaroslav’s first century passed in a haze of blood and gore.

Those carmine nights ended with the founding of the Camarilla. After the Convention of Thorns, a tired Jaroslav decided to leave the ken of the world and trust this new sect to curb the excesses of the undead. He hoped that hiding among humankind would put an end to those Kindred posing as angels or spirits. Upon finding an ancient Roman crypt, Jaroslav entered torpor.

Jaroslav rose again in the mid-17th century. The Camarilla was still strong, but during Jaroslav’s long sleep the Sabbat had attained some prominence. Jaroslav saw fighting these Kindred as his new calling, perceiving in them every trait and evil that he had railed against centuries before.

Gathering a coterie of other vampires, he established himself as the scourge of the wicked Sabbat to strike fear into even the most secure of cardinals. For the next 200 years, Jaroslav continued his crusade, and for his efforts was officially made an archon in 1834.

Jaroslav served nominally under the old Brujah justicar, Carlak (who served multiple terms as justicar), but the archon often acted alone. With a diligence and directness that bordered on obsession, he and his agents rooted out Sabbat or anarchs who ignored the Traditions. By the mid20th century, Jaroslav had come full circle.

He stood at the vanguard of an institution as calcified and corrupt as the Church had been in his youth. Jaroslav’s election to the post of justicar is a move to add some experience and drive to the new corps of Camarilla enforcers. He has many tried and true methods of investigation, judgment and punishment.

Most of these techniques are quite severe, if not vicious, in their execution, involving mutilation, coerced “confessions” and worse. Indeed, Jaroslav seems to have taken his cues from the Inquisitors of yore. Some other archons and justicars, notably the Tremere, Anastasz di Zagreb, have noted that Jaroslav’s edicts and actions have lately become bloodier and swifter.

Recently, Jaroslav has received intelligence from agents in and around Montreal, which has prompted him to set up an intelligence center in Ottawa. He plans to topple the oldest North American Sabbat stronghold as a message to all Kindred and a personal jab in the eye of the powerful Cardinal Strathcona.