Mason Wright

Art by Ichisip

**Mason Wright** was a Camarilla-loyal Tremere warlock that once served as the primogen and Regent of the Chantry in Savannah, Georgia in the 1960s. Accompanied by a coterie of like-minded Kindred deputized by Savannah's sheriff, Angeline du Courdray, he was among those who made the first efforts to combat the rising influence of the Sabbat and maintain Camarilla dominance. His inherent potency and intelligence saw him favored by his peers for his competence and admired by his students for his aptitude.
Mason originated from the Chantry of Austin, Texas, where he was Embraced and bound against his will to the primogen of the Tremere, a woman of peerless pedigree named Marilyn Lovelace. His rising hatred for his sire and his increasingly contentious behavior over the years provided many problems for the Prince of Austin who had only agreed to allow his Embrace to repay a debt. His quiet insubordination and anger proved a source of entertainment for his easily amused sire but swiftly became problematic as the structure of Kindred society in Austin began to come apart.

Following an explosive outburst in the Prince's haven when the war between the Camarilla and the Anarchs came to a head, Mason witnessed Marilyn diablerize the Prince in the ensuing chaos and was later suspected of playing a part in her death after her elevation to Prince. The accusation came too late, however: his arrival in Savannah was excused by the Chantry as a young neonate's lust for knowledge, and despite the clarification his new Prince required, he was allowed to slip into Kindred society in obscurity and bereft infamy.

## Personality

Though capable of being authoritative, Mason preferred a neutral, self-involved path. As such, the simplicity of his experiences in the coterie more often than not were the result of his apathetic investiture in the well-being of others, but his intense loyalty to the Camarilla and his Chantry saw his aid guaranteed. His dismissive, impartial and unsympathetic nature made him few friends, but his concerns often lay in far more important theaters than the need for companionship. His deceptively palatable but decidedly old-fashioned mannerisms led to many regarding him as a hard but reasonable man.

In private, he proved to be a force of constancy and undying loyalty to those he cherished, though the very whisper of betrayal and illegitimacy to a formulated relationship would often provoke a turned cheek and calculated coldness when he felt slighted. His temper remained the one human characteristic about him and manifested as a harsh burst of anger and impatience when his pride had been questioned or something of great personal value to him had been jeopardized. He frequently indulged himself in pleasures he enjoyed in life, such as whiskey and smoking, but nothing proved more gratifying than the pursuit of power.

## History

### Life

Mason was born one of two sons to Deacon and Anne Wright in Beaumont, Texas in 1845 and was raised in a household that valued the importance of discipline and integrity. A pragmatic traditionalist, Deacon instilled in him a particular brand of nationalism that did not accord with his son's growing interest in more leisurely pursuits, setting him with a responsibilities and ensuring that years of hard work would shake him of the "young man's restlessness". His religious, intolerant rhetoric served the purpose of preparing his son for the open discontent and rebellion that prefaced the beginning of the American Civil War between the north and the south. Mason grew stern as the conflict reached its pinnacle: when the time came to fight for his family, they were among the first infantrymen to join the Texas Brigade of the Confederate States Army in 1861.

For four years, Mason grew from a farmer's quiet boy into a man deadened to the horrors of war and served the prejudiced ideals of the Confederate States up until the Texas Brigade's surrender in 1865, bearing the loss of his father and distinguishing himself in the field for his bravery. His return to Beaumont was accompanied by a surge of self-doubt and a crisis of faith: months of struggling with post traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt, in which he relived the morally reprehensible acts he had done during wartime in the form of intrusive, recurrent recollections and night terrors, saw him convinced that he had committed crimes against God and with a desire to repent. His religious pilgrimage began when he threw the commendations he had earned during the war into the Gulf Coast.

Mason's arrival and proceeding troubles with a young woman named Delilah du Merse in Louisiana during his travels were unanticipated but a blessing that he could not deny. Beautiful, clever and effortlessly charming, Delilah enamored him and coaxed more smiles from him than he had known in years, and when he realized he loved her more than anything else he ever had, he was determined to make her his wife. She teased him endlessly for his stiff and traditional treatment of courtship, unused to his kindness in a world that had treated her unfairly and cruelly, but grew to love him deeply in return. After years of comfortable companionship, Delilah and Mason were married in the spring of 1872 and had three healthy boys: Dixon, the eldest, Samson, the middle child and Emmett, the youngest. As a father, Mason did not possess the same disciplinarian's hand as his predecessor and worked day in and day out to see that they had everything that he did not.

In 1875, Delilah developed cancer of the lungs, withering before the eyes of her sons and her husband until her eventual death in 1877. Heartbroken and haunted by her memory, Mason fell into a deep depression and resolved himself to a course of action that would ease the difficulty of raising three boys on his own and his inability to deal with the death of his wife. For the sake of his children, he returned to Beaumont and his mother, Anne, who had maintained their family lands at the side of his brother Willard, to see them appropriately schooled and in hands that would care for them while he mourned. He renewed a fledgling lust for knowledge as his youngest, Emmett, took interest in the world around him and how it worked, and his first burgeoning steps in learning to comprehend the great depth of everything he did not know served as the first point from which the Tremere primogen Marilyn Lovelace took interest in him.

Marilyn observed Mason for a period of three years, impressed by his forays, fledgling theories and subsequent desire to learn from more experienced scholars into complicated areas of study and charmed by the notion that he did it all for his son. Though by no means a terribly educated man, the ease with which he simplified and eventually learned even the most complex of concepts and his stubborn refusal to give in until he had mastered difficult challenges proved to be among his most valuable traits. She soon grew fonder and fonder of him until she knew him better than he knew himself, and impulsively, revealed herself to him but was both frustrated and titillated by the lack of interest he showed in her. Her obsession with him reached its pinnacle when she decided she had had enough of the pithy games they had played: whether he wanted it or not, Mason was hunted and Embraced with little ceremony and thrust into an eternity he did not want to live in 1880.

### Unlife

He is a vampire and continues to be one. I'm tired...