Jean-Louis Visigny-Winthrope/Introduction

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Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
That's why I hold with all I have; and I will die alone.
That's why I hold with all I have; and I will die alone.
Few men are sufficiently discerning to appreciate all the evil they do.

-François de la Rochefoucauld

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
-Eric Hoffer
Dark, sordid, vile and brutal.
Dark, sordid, vile and brutal.
Justice is the armor of Liberty.
Justice is the armor of Liberty.

 Not much is known of the one that calls himself Visigny. Not here in America, in any event. Even in Europe, where he hails from, he's probably rather obscure. Young, yet. Still a neonate, despite his pretensions to importance within the Carthian Movement of Vienna. Unless one is particularly tuned in to specific matters of foreign affairs, there's very little reason for Visigny's notoriety to have reached Philadelphia.

 Emphasis on unless. That unless is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

 Visigny is notorious in Austria, and certain parts of Europe for any number of reasons. Those who monitor the courts of the great cities of Europe will have seen his name mentioned as serving in a role akin to sheriff during a a brief flirtation with consular rule within the praxis of Vienna, and later as deputy to his successor in what came to be known as the Nachtsreich. He was a ghoul for decades to Player Juliette Rinaldi. A Daeva that just so happened to be a Kallisti. But, hey, no big deal, right? We can be sure Visigny never caused any trouble during the sixty years he spent as a ghoul to a kallisti that couldn't keep him blood bound. That's probably fine.

 Good thing he sought to be embraced before that secret came out. For him, that is. The Prince of Vienna, Moritz von Starhemberg-- who would soon be usurped by the Carthian Consulate --gave his permission for the embrace with no conditions. So Visigny fled the praxis to New York to meet a Spina he knew within the Carthian Movement. Yep. The guy ran from his "regnant", fled the Invictus, got embraced by a Carthian Spina in a different country nevermind praxis and then returned home to help with the overthrow of the Prince that gave him permission to be undead in the first place.

 Somewhere in all of that, his prior regnant died in terribly mysterious circumstances. But don't worry, he had an alibi when her car exploded. He was with Artje. (Probably looking through a pair of opera glasses as the blast lit up the Prater district.). But at least all those loose ends got tied up, right?

 And then when he went to Iran to visit the court of Tehran, he accidentally got himself in a duel and put a knight of the Prince into torpor. Everyone was very nice about it, and they taught him some talents and let him leave without killing him for not being Invictus. So that was decent of them. And then he got himself torpored by dueling a Crone over a point of honor between the two of them. They were decent enough friends before and remained so after, so goes the rumor. But, yes. Even though he's a Carthian, Visigny is still a Spina. Apparently he's willing to try to hack limbs off his mates when they offend him. So there's that to look forward to.

 And here you were probably thinking, "How does a Carthian Spina work?" As it turns out the answer is, "Overtime."

 By the end of it all he was Minister of Justice within the new Nachtreich. In time his disappointment in what had become of the grand experiment and his desire for new challenges sent him to New York once more to spend over a year in service to Dame Eleanor, his mentor and sire; Artje went with him, as they do in all things. In New York, he was reunited with Annikah von Steiger and formed a new coterie with her and Artje; the trio has come to Philadelphia for reasons of their own.