Rurik Rakoczy

Little did the Rakoczy family know, so many years ago when it departed the Old Country, that it would be running right into the tentacles of the very Fiends it had fled. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Ladislav Rakoczy and his family, tired of quivering beneath the Lord on the Mountain, quietly packed their bags and stole away on a train to Durrbs, in Albania.

From there they caught a slow ship to Ellis Island, disemenclave of Sunnyside. The trip had not been entirely successful, however, for an even greater terror from the Old World had preceded the Rakoczys and found its way into the ground beneath the city of New York.

Treachery from Romania followed, too, as the uncle who had accompanied the family on its trip carried inside him the twisted seed of one of the descendants of the Eldest. For a few years, the Rakoczys lived a quiet, new life. But then, Ludmijla was born, and with her came all of the nightmarish reminders of what they had fled.

Ludmijla spoke with the spirits of the land, even so many miles from where they made their homes, and their tales drove her mad. Her crippled body confined her to bed, yet somehow an entire brood of children grew in her belly - and only the more secular of the Romanian community suspected that leering uncle.

Before long, despite its distance from the bloodthirsty lords of the Old World, the Rakoczy family was once again the thrall of eldritch powers. Rurik was born into this warped clan. Transplanted revenants of the Obertus family, the lineage bore the taint of their Tzimisce masters even after choosing to leave them behind.

Thus, Rurikgrew up inareluctant but newly resolute community of New World Obertus, never knowing the ignorant security of life untouched by the Damned. As proof of his devotion, Rurik killed his sister at the request of the debased Tzimisce Ludmijla, who turned her remains into a skin-mask that adorns her abandoned haven to this night.

Demonstrating such commitment in spite of the cowardice of his family, Rurik was drawn into the ranks of the Sabbat. Tonight, Ludmijla remains the matriarch of the Rakoczy family, attended by ghouls and miserable Cainites who helped move her bloated bulk toNew Jersey after the Camarilla sacked the Sabbat in New York.

Rurik remains in contact with her, poring over the cryptic messages she sends him that claim some legacy or another of the sect slumbers beneath the filthy streets of the city. While she cannot risk her ownunlife to make her haven there or risk the family’s existence, he tracks down this mystery for her.

She has told him of Istvan Zantosa, of the Nosferatu warrens that confuse the Tzimisce legacy with some horror of their own, and of the veritable miles of subterranean passage she has dreamed of that lead to a chamber of transcendent illumination. More and more, Rurik has had to withdraw from his duties to the remains of Love’s Easy Tears.

This has put him at increasing odds with Hester and Rashid, both of whom suspect him of growing soft or abandoning his duty to the sect. He wants to tell them what he’s been up to, but this is a matter for the Tzimisce first and then, perhaps later, the rest of the Sabbat second.