Lucien Sullerot was born sometime in the beginning of the second millenium. Because his living days are something of a jumbled oil painting to him, he doesn’t remember the exact day or year he was born, or how old he was when he was Embraced. The change the Embrace brought to him made it impossible for him to even guess how old he was when he first died. Born during the Dark Ages, in the century that began the crusades that would last for centuries, Lucien’s life was easy for his time. He was the son of a minor merchant lord. He was technically a knight, and did learn swordplay during his time, but he was a scholar at heart. Since there wasn’t much need for a knight in the family; his father didn’t want to risk him as a mere caravan guard; Lucien was allowed to study. He read anything he could get his hands on.
In the year 1047, a Kiasyd who was only known to Lucien as The Changeling Embraced Lucien. He had foreseen a great war, and wanted someone to go to the war and record as much as he could. The Changeling didn’t want to risk his own hide, and he had just acquired a large library from the rubble left behind in an intra-clan Cappadocian war. It would take him at least a century to go through that library.
Lucien was allowed to read the Changeling’s other library while waiting for the predicted great war to begin. He found that he retained all of that information easily. He spent thirty-eight years in that library, reading whatever he could. After that, his sire came back and told him it was time for him to leave, that he would need to be in Rome. It seemed that the Turks were in Rome, and the pope was going to be requesting help kicking them out soon.
Lucien went to Rome. The trip took him slightly less than a year. A year after he arrived, an army came to Rome, and the Crusades began. Lucien documented what he saw and heard as much as he could. He witnessed the Church’s march to war for over fifty years. However, as the attrocities mounted, Lucien was forced into more than a few battles. He ended up fighting on both sides, working to save innocents. Certain leaders on both sides began noticing this, and began using him by purposefully putting their own innocents in the line of danger.
Realizing that he was as dangerous to mortals as he was their salvation, Lucien let all of those who had manipulated him know that such manipulations were not what honorable men do. Through judicious use of his faerie tricks (which was the extent of Mytherceria that he knew at the time), he made sure that each of those leaders were in the same place at the same time, and in the resulting battle, both sides became confused as to who was ordering what, and all of the generals, lieutenants, commanders, and so on ended up dead. The number of leaders that both sides lost in that battle was about equal, so chances are the net effect that Lucien had on the Crusades was probably about zero, but he hopes that innocents on both sides were spared because of his actions.
At that point, he left Rome and headed back to France. Remembering that he had stashed his inheritance in a secret compartment in the cellar of a vineyard storage building near his family’s mansion, he gathered what money he had and moved to Paris. There, he set up shop as a book merchant. After renting a small building from a landowner, Lucien barely had enough money left to buy books, pens, and ink for five books, as well as two old copies of the Bible, barely legible. From those meager beginnings, Lucien turned his amazing memory into a goldmine. Any book he had ever read since his Embrace was clear in his mind. Once he brought it out of his mental library, he could copy it verbatim. The money he made from selling the Bibles and the books that he copied allowed him to buy more supplies, as well as a few books that he hadn’t read. In this way, he increased his repertoire. He soon hired people to take his place at the front of the store, so he could spend all of his time writing and reading.
He continued in this fashion until 1668. In the 1660’s, he became intrigued with the new world he had been hearing about, and decided he was going to go. He collected his hirelings and hired a ship to bring him.
He spent the next three centuries copying his library and having his "family" purchase land at an unbelievable rate. He also purchased land from farmers who were not doing well. He allowed these farmers to continue to live off of the land. His only requirement was that the farmer’s family willed the land to his family when the line ended or they moved off the land.
Since arriving in America, Lucien has taken up a new hobby, flower breeding. His understanding of chance allows him to make a fairly accurate guess of which trait will breed true and which will fail.
He has come to the Cities to research the interesting happenings that have gone on. Lucien is 6’7", weighs about 175 pounds, has crystal-blue skin, shining raven-black waist-length hair, and tends to wear a combination of new styles and older French styles.
Lucien's current mortal identity is Lucien Sullerot XXXI. He is the owner of a vast business empire that is run by a relative. Lucien pays his taxes and makes sure that his reatainers do the same. He will not have some witless IRS agent uncovering the Masquerade when he calls Lucien in for tax evasion.
Lucien’s Personality
Lucien has come a long way from what his Sire expected of him. He was a young knight, someone his Sire could send into the Crusades to chronicle everything that happened. He has become a vampire on a mission to redeem himself in the eyes of God, to maintain his honor at all costs, and to find the truth of Kindred existence.
He was shaped by his upbringing, but he was tempered in the Crusades. His soul cried out against the attrocities of honor that both sides committed, and he resolved that he would not become like these soldiers did. He swore that he would make himself more honorable than humanity at large, so that he could rise above them in morality. He believes in being virtuous. He might have even ended up on the Road of Heaven if he had more respect for the mortal Church.
Because he did not have anyone to teach him the Path of Chivalry (indeed, it was still relatively new when he was Embraced), Lucien turned to various sources, both internal and external, to guide his moral code. He is very lucky that he managed to find a scrap of the Chronicle of Shadows early in his newfound Path. The scrap happened to contain the Rules of the Canaille. These rules, which Lucien believes were penned from Cain's own words, set the basis for Lucien's code of honor.
Lucien is strange, even for a Kiasyd. This is probably because he is an offshoot of the bloodline, closer to the Changeling side than most Kiasyd. He does not seem to care much one way or another about the war between the Sabbat and the Camarilla. However, he dislikes the Sabbat just because they always want to study him. This does not mean that he doesn’t deal with individual members of the Sabbat. If they come to him for help and it’s something he feels they need help with, he will do so.
He lives by the Book of Nod. He draws insight from it, and remembers it at every challenge. He is also rather religious, although not precisely Christian. He believes in the Christian God, and in the idea that Christ died for humanity, but has watched the Church be corrupted by mortal and Kindred meddling so many times that he does not believe that any of the current Churches has any right to claim sole providence (pun intended) over human salvation.
Because he has spent most of his time in libraries, hidden away from the world, Lucien only has a basic understanding of his beauty. He realizes that he is attractive, but he doesn't understand just how gorgeous he is considered to be. His nonchallant attitude combined with his unearthly looks could cause a riot, and he is oblivious to this fact.
He frequently seems somewhat scatterbrained, although he is very intelligent and fairly quick-witted. Nobody has ever pointed this out to him, and if he was asked, it would be dismissed. In truth, this slight craziness is a combination of his need to keep all of the information he has in his head in some semblance of order and the fae blood coursing through his veins.
Lucien is usually looking for something interesting to document. This is the reason he has headed to the Twin Cities. He will also always help if it’s something that mortals wouldn’t be able to deal with. (For example, if the Sins start creating problems)
He is trying to discover the truth of Kindred existence. He has, in the past, sought out elders, fragments of books, or anything else that he feels may contain a piece of the Kindreds' raison d'etre. His path would have actually brought him to the Path of Caine, but he has been too human and not ruthless enough. His honor won out over his wish for understanding.
Like most Kiasyd, he believes that feeding directly from a vessel is vulgar. He will only do so in the most dire of circumstances, or when he goes into a frenzy, of course. He has blood stored in refrigeration. This is from the Wiccan cult that he maintains as a herd. He prefers to hunt, however, and always tries to get blood in this way. He prefers feeding from beautiful people. Artists, especially ones who put their heart and soul into their art, especially attract him. In the World of Darkness it isn’t hard for him to find a goth artist who is willing to bleed for him. Of course, if he is in a city that follows the Masquerade (as most do) he upholds it. He also hunts killers, rapists, and people with such a toxic personality that they become an actual physical drain on those around them. These people are killed outright. If they are unarmed, he will arm them and duel them.
Lucien has been studying Golconda, and is thinking about beginning the road to it, but he is also afraid of it. Since it is a condition that is almost completely unproven among Kindred, there is no way of knowing exactly what it is. He continues to study it, but until he either gets more concrete evidence about Golconda (several detailed corroborating accounts of Kindred who have reached Golconda), or a big reason (or a bunch of little reasons) why he absolutely needs to be better than a normal Kindred, he is not going to seek it out.
Lucien has watched, over the past thousand years, Kindred society be shaped by the world. As mankind became more efficient in dealing with monsters, he watched even the Sabbat go into hiding. He understands that, because of the large-scale mistakes the Kindred have made in dealing with the Canaille, the time of war that Cain said would happen if the Kindred were to become as gods to the Kine has come. Because of this, Lucien believes very firmly in the Masquerade, although in the end he cares not whether other Kindred abide by it. He thinks that Gehenna will come before the Kindred can introduce themselves to the world again. Since the humans are always going to hunt those known as vampires, Lucien feels that as long as he stays hidden, he'll be ok.
Lucien has been given the name Crystal Rose by several men in the Camarilla who were jealous of his appearance and how he attracts the beautiful Kindred women. The name was meant to be an insult because of its feminine nature. Lucien, however, missed the joke, and went along with the name. Aside from Lucien, the only people who really don't consider the moniker to be an insult are the Toreador.