So we’ve been on
hiatus here for a bit at Black Wednesday’s trying to locate the last few
interviewees for you before my job here comes most literally to an end.
It should be
perhaps be no surprise then that the most recent bedraggled thing we managed to
convince to visit our studios is one severely diseased vampire. I’d say our
scouts were scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one but Ifryn Macier is
a stubborn old geezer who they have been trying to persuade since our doors
opened.
Ifryn, like most of his species, is of ord origin. This is mostly due
to the fact that the vampire species germinated from ords and vampires fare
best when they feed on similar blood types. Vampires sired from other species
such as fae or anthropomorphs tend to die younger unless they feed upon those
of their origin species. Worse still, some insist on drinking sugar-water and thus
sentence themselves to a slow and painful death, dying as young as 50 which is
a considerable markdown from the extended lifespan these beings are meant to
have.
A reasonable height
then for an ord at 5ft 6in tall Ifryn is still the most horrible mess of a
vampire. He is 137 years old and wow it really shows. Put in stark comparison
to Eyzith who is 150 and still fresh-faced you can tell how much his ills have
ravaged his body. His sunken face, hollowed eyes and accompanying scowl however
say more about him than his sickness because as it happens Ifryn really is a
grumpy old git.
Speaking to him it is clear that he dislikes everything and
everyone. The epitome of a nasty and nosy neighbour, your business is his business
and you’d better keep out of his affairs. A haggard limping and outwardly
offensive individual in all ways it’s difficult to even hold a conversation
with him. He gripes and snipes at every possible opportunity and generally
makes it impossible to communicate. Yes Ifryn hates you and us and life and the
universe. We tire quickly of trying to ask him questions, for someone so
elderly he appears sapped of any wisdom.
His sickened
state has no doubt left him vulnerable and likely angry; that is
understandable. That said we get the feeling that he’d probably be the same awful
person even if his skin were not slightly sloughing from his bones.
Alongside Eyzith,
Emmus and Dro’Zar, Ifryn is one of the few remaining old vampires who recall
the now obsolete way of siring and raising their kind; an outdated, well
documented and draconian method for selecting children to join the species which
has since perished. Due to its brutality it is hardly surprising to learn that
the old system was replaced.
This extreme method for choosing new vampires technically
didn’t exist when Ifryn was born as an ord and certainly was not meant to be in
use by the time he was sired. Of course, the practice was still being illegally
used at the time of Ifryn’s siring, and to this day there are reports of
similar set-ups occurring outside of organised society. But then maintenance of
population control for a society such as that of the vampires has never been an
easy thing to micro-manage.
Ifryn is then
both blessed and cursed by his illness. In one respect he has become a bitter, withering
old man far sooner than he should for a member of his species, in the other he
has been granted immunity from their laws of population control which means he
doesn’t have to pass any tests to validate the reasons he should be allowed to
keep living. Incapable of breeding they are quite happy to let the man live out
the remainder of his days in whatever agony the sickness brings, how nice of
them.
