Pei

Name: Pei

Sire: Droot

Clan: Ravnos

Generation: 13th

Apparent Age: 25

Gender: Female

Born: 1970s?

Embrace: 2000

From scrounging for every meal as a bar girl in Bangkok, I thought I hit it big time when I joined the M.V. Valparaiso as a singer. The first mate would make me sing in his cabin and keep me there for days. I liked him enough but I ran away with his wallet when we docked in Singapore. It didn’t take long for him to find me partying with the crew from another ship. In tears, he said he would have given me everything, but I didn’t want any of it. And so he gave me to them, the Valparaiso’s crew… and a few depraved passengers. I am long undead, but I remember – I feel – everything.

What I don’t remember is how I ended up on the shore with an old but wiry brown man watching over me. He tended to the little broken bones of my fingers. He called himself Droot. I had never known a real family until I met my Sire, and he says he too has lost most of his family just last year (the Week of Nightmares) He says he spent the year searching for me , his last living ‘descendant’, and invited me to join the Everlasting Night. I saw no family resemblance, he looked like he’s from India. Maybe he was just a little kooky but I accepted his offer. How could I complain? There was nothing left for me to return to; an outcast on land, now an outcast at sea.

The Embrace was hard and crazy. I had nightmares of  thousands of what was my ‘family’ cannibalize each other. Terrible visions of what was to come.

And I gave this to them, the Valparaiso’s crew… and most of the passengers. I was strong enough to feed, but not strong enough to share my blood with others. They just died.

Droot arrived to arrest my feeding frenzy. In his strong voice, kind eyes and vicious grip to my throat, I then knew what family meant to me and my Sire. He showed me how to make ghouls of the few who were spared. I invited him to join me as part of my crew. But we also both understand how big of a thing independence is. I see him every so often on the docks, kooky as ever.

He warned me of the Kuei-Jin. I never liked them anyway. They seemed more dead than I am. So far, business with them, had just been that – business.

Lonely as the sea is, and the strange as the night is, I made a lot of new friends – those who need the docks at night, those who are hungry. And with all the undocumented migrants boarding, business has never been better.