Race: Vampire
Sex: Male
Real Name: Krispin (Khentimentiu)
Nick Name: The Eater of Souls
Birth Date & Location: 5th August 1504 BCE – Memphis, Egypt
Position: N/A
Group Affiliation: The Brotherhood
DESCRIPTION:
Krispin is not nearly as tall as the 6'10" Dathan--he is only 5'10". This was tall when he was a mortal but is not particularly so in the year 2005. While Krispin is aware that his height helps him to blend in so that the mortals he hunts do not notice him immediately, he would not mind being as physically impressive as Dathan is. His shoulders are neither unusually narrow nor remarkably broad, and his build is lean rather than muscular.
Krispin has thick black wavy shoulder-length hair, which he wears long so that he can, if need be, conceal his ears, which are large and taper to sharp points. Over the years he has explained the ears as being anything from a sign that he is part Fae to the result of plastic surgery when he was an eighteen-year-old Star Trek fan. While Krispin detests looking foolish or geeky in his enemies' eyes, he has no objection to being underestimated.
Krispin's skin is of a warm, golden-brown color, rather than the pallor considered so attractive by most vampires. His eyes, which were once dark brown, are now permanently yellow; like his ears, they have been transformed by the demon within him. If he needs to, he can hide the yellow color by using colored contacts (which he has in every shade), but he does not often bother. His brow ridges are impossible to conceal, and he does not even try. Since he has high cheekbones and a rather forward-jutting chin, the ridges simply look like distinctive bone structure.
(Krispin is played by Christian Slater)
BACKGROUND:
Krispin, despite his Latin name, is Egyptian. He was born in Memphis, Egypt, on the 20th day of the first month of Inundation, 1504 BCE, the same year that a girl who would later become the Pharaoh Hatshepsut was born. The son of a ka-priest or funerary priest, his original name was Khentimentiu, which means "destiny of the god of the dead."
Many families passed the position of ka-priest down from father to son. Khentimentiu was his father's only surviving child; all the others died before they reached the age of two years. Trained as a funerary priest from early childhood, Khentimentiu developed an inordinate interest in death, the afterlife and immortality.
Khentimentiu began seeking ways of achieving immortality and eternal youth that would not necessitate his dying, being mummified and being entombed in a small pyramid in his family's burial plot. He secretly pursued rituals of necromancy and demonic summoning. While most of the spells and ceremonies were utterly valueless, a very few contained enough magical power to call forth the servants of demons who were said to grant boons of eternal life and eternal youth….for a price.
Khentimentiu used his position as a minor ka-priest to find suitable offerings for the demons and their servants. He began by binding the spirit of a person who had died to that person's liver, performing a ritual of consecration to the demonic which removed the soul from the jurisdiction of Osiris, then anointed the liver with a chrism of oil and set it aflame. It was said that souls could be heard shrieking in agony as they were devoured. He also performed a number of "reverse blessings" on the families of the dead, cursing them with a compulsion to destroy others physically, mentally and/or emotionally. When this too paled, he "discovered" an ancient ritual (though it would be more accurate to say that he invented it) in which he infused the blood drained from a client's corpse with the magical power of the deceased. He would then drink this blood, and, as he did so, the evil spirits providing him with guidance would tear the soul of the deceased to shreds and then eat it.
Khentimentiu found that this ritual imbued him with more magical power than he could have hoped to acquire in a single mortal lifetime. He took to doing it regularly, as a matter of course. In this way, he accumulated a great deal of power…but he was still as far from attaining his goal of eternal youth and eternal life as ever, and time was passing swiftly.
Then disaster struck.
In 1476 BCE, when Khentimentiu was just twenty-eight, the River Nile failed to overflow and to inundate the land. Without the yearly flood to provide the rich topsoil needed to grow crops, a famine swept over Egypt…and, hard on the heels of the famine, came disease as well.
Many priests felt that since the River Nile was sacred to Osiris, Lord of the Dead, the river's refusal to overflow indicated Osiris's great displeasure. This opinion was confirmed when Imhotep, an old priest of Thoth, had a vision in which Osiris spoke to the people of Egypt, telling them of the false ka-priest who had destroyed hundreds, perhaps thousands of souls in his care, souls that should have entered the realms of the blessed. Until the false priest was found and slain, Osiris threatened, the people would die.
As the ka-priests were being investigated, the Master, who had been visiting Egypt, heard of the vision. With his supernatural connections, it did not take him long to discover who the false ka-priest was, or that the lower beings considered Khentimentiu worthy of being Embraced, as he was already more than half demon in mind and nature.
Shortly after this, the Master journeyed to the ka-priest's temple and offered Khentimentiu the eternal youth and eternal life he had always coveted. The Master admitted that Khentimentiu would lose his soul, share his body with a demon and forever after have to drink blood to survive, but to Khentimentiu, these details were of no importance. He jumped at the chance.
Khentimentiu remained with the Master and his brood for the next twelve hundred years or so, traveling all over Egypt, Asia Minor, Ionia and the Greek city-states. There are rumors that he visited India and China during this period as well, but that cannot be confirmed.
What is known is that Khentimentiu left the Master around 300 BCE, to stir up trouble in the nascent Republic of Rome. His manipulations helped bring about three bloody wars between Rome and Carthage between the years of 264-146 BCE…and, ultimately, the destruction of Carthaginian civilization.
It was during this period that Khentimentiu acquired his nickname. Dathan was working with Khentimentiu for the first time, as the two had discovered that their differing approaches to achieving chaos meshed well. However, Dathan was unable to refrain from taunting Khentimentiu that when he returned to the Master's side, he would no longer be so favored as he had been in the past; he would no longer be the "curly-haired boy." Khentimentiu insisted that he would, and from then on Dathan referred to Khentimentiu as "Crispus," or 'curly-haired one.' The nickname stuck. Later, after Rome fell, Crispus used other variants of the name: "Krispino" in Tuscany, Calabria, Naples and the Papal States; "Crépin" in France, Burgundy, Brittany, etc.; "Crispo" in Spain; "Krispijn" in the Low Countries.
The re-named Crispus returned to the Master's side in 126 BCE. The Master was quite angry for a time, but gradually came to realize that Crispus's subtle, manipulative nature, his eagerness to travel and his willingness to spend decades trying achieve one goal made Crispus invaluable--Crispus could work for the Master's goals even when the Master was not present. The Master did not stop to consider that his goals and Crispus's might not always coincide.
Thus it was that Crispus remained strongly linked to the Master, but did not spend much time with the Master's inner circle. Instead, he spent a great deal of time traveling throughout Europe and Asia, developing intelligence networks, working with (and sometimes eliminating) allies and advancing his own goals as strongly as he did the Master's.
As the Master aged, he became more and more obstinate about being the sole power in the lives of his childer. Krispin became aware, due to his missions for the Master, that his Sire was planning on founding a death cult. This did not disconcert Krispin unduly, but he was not pleased to discover that the Master would be the sole power within the cult.
Krispin decided to bide his time and take over the cult eventually. However, two years of living in an area infested by the Black Death and the surrounding populace's conviction that the plague was being brought about by ghosts, demons and vampires forced him to flee Europe in 1349. Over the next few centuries, he, Valerian, Nicholas and Dathan spent a lot of time working together and struggling to survive. The rest, as they say, is history. [See History of Valerian.]
Personality Goes A Long Way ~
Krispin is the most spiritual of the Brotherhood. Dathan craves worship and poses as a god of destruction. Krispin does not wish to be worshipped but to worship, and he sees destruction only as a means to achieve evil…and not always the most effective one. Where Dathan longs for destruction and chaos, Krispin pursues evil in an oddly orderly (and often ritualistic) fashion. Destroying life is not enough for Krispin; given his choice, he will make certain that his victim loses his mind before he loses his life, and that the victim loses his soul thereafter. What Krispin likes best of all is long-range planning in which a family, a tribe, a society or a nation is manipulated into collaborating in its own corruption and destruction.
Krispin is not a leader type, nor does he desire to be. He much prefers being a power behind the throne rather than the one who is obviously in charge, as he can accomplish so much more when no one is paying attention to him. He is the most patient of the Brotherhood, willing to take decades, even centuries, to accomplish a particular goal.
He is not especially vain, but he does recognise that if his features change much more, he will have a great deal of trouble moving about human society with ease. Because camouflage is useful to Krispin, he always dresses in the height of whatever the current fashion is for young men. He also favours bright colours.
Unlike Valerian, Krispin is not attracted to human females--or to human males, for that matter. He will only indulge with humans if doing so will help bring about destruction, corruption or insanity for a large group of humans somewhere down the road. Krispin much prefers mating with demons, as he feels that by doing so, he is strengthening his bond with his demon and weakening what little in him is still human.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Diminished Visibility ~
Krispin has the ability to become dim--not so much invisible as unnoticeable. He uses this skill frequently while gathering information. However, he has a hard time remaining dim when he is hungry; he just can't seem to concentrate enough.
Clairvoyance ~
Another ability that Krispin possesses is the power to see possible paths that a person might take as a result of a decision. This has helped him manipulate many people into taking paths that he wanted them to take.
Transmogrification ~
Krispin can morph into one of two forms: that of a man with snake-like scales, reptilian eyes and a venomous bite and (more rarely) that of a massive serpent. He doesn't like changing into a serpent, as it is difficult for him to maintain control over his mind in that state. He also has the typical abilities that all ancient vampires posses: thrall, immunity to telepathy and mind control, resistance to Holy Items, ability to gain minions, toughness and super-strength.
ITEMS:
None. Neither things nor people are very important to Krispin. The only thing that matters to him is the accumulation of power. Krispin believes that the more people he destroys or helps to destroy, the closer he gets to his goal of annihilating all of his humanity and becoming a hellgod, a creature of purest evil--much as a devout Catholic might strive for perfection so that he might achieve sainthood. Whether or not a vampire can become a hellgod is not known, but it has been Krispin's dream for nearly thirty-five hundred years.
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