Nigel Obertus

*So close, no matter how far*

*Couldn't be much more from the heart*

*Forever trusting who we are*

*And nothing else matters*

*Never opened myself this way*

*Life is ours, we live it our way*

*All these words, I don't just say*

*And nothing else matters*

*Nothing Else Matters - Metallica*

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Birth is a strange concept to a Revenant born Tzimisce. It is the job of the Obertus, scholars that they are, to serve moments after they are purged into the world and as such Nigel was nothing less. He was made to serve and serve he did until the day his maker met Final Death and never returned home. A freshly Embraced Cainite and only intellectually aware of the Sword of Caine and his membership and position within, Nigel did what anyone with an obsession to know and to understand would do with a whole wide world opened to him. He sought answers beyond the security of his once Haven into Boston proper.

It was the spring of 2004 when he first crossed paths with the child vampire Shara. The small spitfire of a Cainite took his hand and guided him amongst this loud world of new sights and sounds with patience and affection. Alien at that but not altogether unwelcome because it came from her. His little Shara. His murderous sprite, blood-soaked cherub that she was.

The pair of them would never been seen more than an arm's length apart if they could help it, the codependency lashing them together Ductus and Priest of their 'mighty pack of two' with it's occasional temporary additions until they joined the Bishop of Boston's pack in 2005. But they were not allowed entrance before it was expected for Shara to be 'fixed'; they were informed that Shara needed to blend better, hypocritical considering the Sabbat wasn't beyond every other unsubtle breach of the Masquerade inhumanely possible. He felt as though it should be her choice, but that opinion appeared to be in the minority, just another thing that he didn't quite understand but was expected to take at face value. What value at that seemed arbitrary what with how easily faces could be taken and changed out but who was he to question? But Shara wanted to be Big, and he couldn't deny her anything if he tried.

It took Nigel a good few months of testing and perfecting the exact measurements and silhouette to his liking and the sadistic Vicissitude master artist took to his masochistic subject. He had an immaculate record kept in regards to the process, dictating it all into his dictaphone set to record her reactions and his process for posterity. When he had completed his masterpiece nothing filled his desiccated heart with more delight than hearing Shara felt like she was finally herself for the first time in decades.

And while he spent the next few months fascinated with his created masterpiece, enthralled by his exquisite creature and the beautiful predator's elegance that suffused every limb, he noticed his Shara began to fade. The edges hardening, sharpening, blackening in frustration and rage. Dimming the fire that drew him in, the warmth that filled his own alien limbs with something more than vitae more than kine's blood and he desperately tried to understand what was wrong. He would do anything for her, his perfect masterpiece, his raison d'être, the pinnacle of metamorphosis that he had been chasing for years. Even when she gave him her 'hugs' she insisted upon, whatever reason and purpose they served was beyond him. Only that they meant that he was hers and she was his.

Perhaps it would have ended the way they wished if they hadn't tried to drive a wedge between them. When Shara came clean, begging him to follow her, to leave the Sword of Caine how could he say no? He was hers as surely as she was his; it would be impossible to abandon her after everything they had survived together. And while he may not understand it all, he knew her better than anyone. Inside and Out.

He stayed by her side even as she began to be rocked with night terrors and visions of a garden of thorn soaked with a sea of blood and tears. He followed her as she descended into madness, scribbling in journals and along walls the words and ciphers whispered to her in ancient and modern tongues. He stayed by her side as she finished rending the Path of Cathari out of her soul, a harrowing path started before they had ever left the Sword. He talked her back from the edge when her immortal damned soul hovered on that precipice of being lost forever before she found her footing back onto the way of the Mother. He followed her into that madness, that desperation, that revelation, that blissful peace blurring the edge of agony and ecstasy that only other Baharists could truly understand. It was a revelation of it's own, to finally understand her vices, her masochism, her idiosyncrasies that had previously bewildered and confounded him suddenly made crystalline clear. And he truly could say he loved her all the more for it. But he wasn't able to give voice to it yet, the sinew and chords paralyzed with the onslaught of these sudden emotions and discoveries.

Before he was able to explain to her she was consumed with the need to continue her gospel. This mad pilgrimage through the decades taking the pair of them across the world, with these confessions trapped in his throat. Eventually choosing a place back in Connecticut to call theirs, Shara insisted that Nigel stay while she descended into the other realms looking for answers whilst dodging Inquisitors of the Sabbat and the Alastors of the Camarilla. Rationalizing that it was better for her alone to face them as she could blend better than he could, what with her predilection to mimicking the fashions and vernacular of the era and he stuck in his beloved 80s when Revenant servitude gave way to Cainite freedom. He could keep a haven for them, experiment to his heart's content and not have to interact with mortal society. And while he understood it, he hated the thought of her being without him. His not so little Shara out there, alone again. Perhaps she wouldn't have left if he knew what combination to vocalize, but for now he would keep haven and wait. Always wait. The vigil broken up only by his August and his compatriots (Aya, Cyrus, Nyx, and Andi) seeking answers only an Obertus once Sabbat could supply.

It is unknown whether or not Nigel recalls the events of the Apocalypse.

After Rosalie returned to the party assembled at Nigel and Shara's Haven, Shara volunteered to rescue Serg from whatever clandestine spell blowback had trapped him in an unnameable Torpor. After rescuing Serg with Shara and Nigel recognized the Nosferatu from their collective time in the Sabbat (be it as spy or once devotee). Combining their collective intelligence in regards to the five cities that sprung up out of nowhere (currently described by Nigel as the Mycelium) the assembled party headed to Kingsport, MA in the hopes of further looking into The Apocrypha Murders with the offer of respite open should they need somewhere local to regroup at.