Lou Parker
Former Cop
A former Atlanta Police detective, Lou Parker had a knack for not letting a case go. That served him well until it got him killed. Running down a lead in a whodunnit case everyone else had given up on, Lou started to see a pattern of killings in the city — heavy blood loss, people who wouldn’t be missed, etc. As he dug up old cases and pulled long nights, he found himself under pressure from above and without. Eventually scandal and a whispering campaign cost him his shield, but still he wouldn’t give up. What he found was a vampire, one who gave him the Embrace.

In the few years since. Lou has been unable to determine if his sire intentionally lured him in or even why he was Embraced at all. (Flip answers from his sire suggest only, “for your skills.”) Distanced from his sire, he has become something of a troubleshooter for low-level Invictus in the city, serving as a private detective and even maintaining his mortal identity as one. He had some standing in the First Estate and was a coterie-mate of Eric’s.

Lou disappeared in November, 2005, while working an investigation for the court at the bequest of his secretive mentor, Mr. Never.

(Lou was written and played by Phillipe Boulle.)

Muslim Preacher

Brother Cassius is a rigid, morally superior monster who was Embraced into undeath in the 1950s and found religion in the 1960s. Though he is a prominent member in the typically Catholic-slanted vampire church called the Lancea Sanctum, Cassius is an outspoken Muslim. Always dapper in his pressed suits and bow ties, always ready with a well formed opinion, Cassius is one of the most respected preachers and missionaries within Atlanta’s vampire society.

His views on mortal morality differ from his Christian peers — who are predominantly Baptist or Catholic — but his view on Kindred morality is very much that of the local Sanctified mainstream: Vampires are holy beasts, damned into eternal service to make the consequences of mortal sin manifest on Earth. Vampires must be impeccable monsters so that the darkness at the edges of civilization stays as fearsome as children are told it is. Vampires must be wicked, not to punish the sinful per se, but to make it clear that the world is vicious and that passage through this world to Heaven is not guaranteed.

“Do not cry. Do not be sorry. You have had your chance for those things. You are above the flock now as the wolf is above the sheep. And if Hell is what you get after this, then that choice was made for you already. You are not still walking, not still drinking, dead man, because you have another chance at their salvation. What is expected of you now is to hunt the flock. That is your glory now, child.”