Domitia Sabina Philomathes

Vampire Name: Domitia Sabina Philomathes
Birth year: 176 CE
Origin: Alexandria, Egypt
Background: Domitia comes from a modest noble family in Rome. She was sold as an adolescent bride to a wealthy Roman administrator bound for Alexandria who mostly ignored her except when he forced himself on her until he died of old age while she was in her 20s, leaving her free to live her life. She's a patroness of the Library of Alexandria and often disguises herself as a man so she can gain access herself.
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Domitian Diaries

Memories

Memory 1

Experience 1

I am Domitia, mother of Marcus, Claudia, and Lucilla, recently widowed and left with an estate in Alexandria.

Experience 2

My estate is gone. I wandered for decades and seeing my former home in ruin drained the bloodlust from me.

Experience 3

Memory 2

Experience 1

I taught Claudia how to read and write by candlelight, copying scrolls to sell to scholars and gift to officials for favors.

Experience 2

I wandered so long, my children are now all dead. I don't even know who I'd ask about them, who they grew up to be. (Meta note, yes, she killed two of her children, but she doesn't remember doing that.)

Experience 3

Memory 3

Experience 1

I was inducted in a mystery school, the ceremony conducted in a secret chamber under a temple in the south of Alexandria.

Experience 2

Experience 3

Memory 4

Experience 1

I finally birthed a son. Maybe now my husband will let me be. His shriveled dick barely functions anyway.

Experience 2

The hunger was like nothing I'd ever felt before. Marcus came to me in the night, crying with bad dreams, and the next thing I remember, I was holding his limp body, my hunger abated.

Experience 3

Lucilla was always a perceptive child. She looked upon me with suspicion after the death of her younger brother who she'd been closer to than anyone else. It broke my heart to drain her, but the bloodthirst won out over the love I had for her.

Memory 4

Experience 1

While searching for another like myself, I stayed out too long and the sun began to rise. I snuck into a room that turned out to be the bedroom of a child who thought me an angel.

Experience 2

Experience 3

Memory 5

Experience 1

For weeks, it seemed like someone was following me as I made my way through the dark of night to the chambers of the secret room where the mystery priestesses gathered. Before he sank his teeth into my neck, he said he could smell my hunger for knowledge and was granting me immortality to satiate it, at the cost of a hunger for blood. He called himself Neb-Atem and said he'd seen the building of the pyramids.

Experience 2

I narrowly escaped the vampire slayer Marcus who trapped me in a storage room and set it aflame. But my hands did not burn and I was able to break out before I succumbed. I fled to the catacombs.

Experience 3

Skills

Resources

Characters

Mortals

Immortals

Marks

I have ink-black irises. I wear veils over my face when in the presence of mortals so they cannot see them as it disturbs most people.

Prompt Roll Journal

Roll 1
d10-d6
[3]-[6] = -3
I start with prompt 1.
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Roll 2
d10-d6
[5]-[1] = 4
I move to prompt 5.
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Roll 3
d10-d6
[6]-[1] = 5
I move to Prompt 10.
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Roll 4
d10-d6
[6]-[5] = 1
I move to prompt 11.
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Roll 5
d10-d6
[8]-[1] = 7
I move to prompt 18.
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Roll 6
d10-d6
[3]-[5] = -2
I move to prompt 16.
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Roll 7
d10-d6
[7]-[2] = 5
I move to prompt 21.
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Narrative

I am Domitia Sabina Philomathes. I was born in Rome and at the age of 12, my father sold me to a decrepit Roman official in order to settle his debts. I was taken to Alexandria where my husband was sent to administrate the grain shipments back to Rome.

At 14, I gave birth to my first daughter, Claudia, and Lucilla was born three years later. Another four years, and my son Marcus was born. I was grateful - my husband wanted a male heir, and left me alone after that. He died when Marcus was 2, leaving me a widow.

I was inducted into a mystery school that gathered under the Serapeum at night and it was only after the final rite of induction that I learned the nature of the Living God that the priestesses worshipped. He'd stalked me for weeks before turning me - a gift of immortality at the cost of blood.

I'd never known hunger like that before. That first night, in a frenzy, I drained my dear son Marcus, finding his lifeless body when my mind returned from the feral blood frenzy induced by that hunger. I mourned, but the loss of children was not unusual. Easy enough to pass off as sickness, and with no other male heirs, the estate came to me. (Roll 1, Prompt 1)

Lucilla had always been close to Marcus. She was a perceptive child, and showed signs of being gifted with the Sight at an early age. She came to me one night, screaming that she knew I'd killed Marcus. That she'd seen the monster that I'd become. I tried to reason with her, but as she came closer and closer to me in her anger, all I could smell was the blood, and that raging hunger took me again. My mind leaves, I become nothing but the monster she said I was, and once again, I came back to myself holding the limp body of one of my children in my arms. (Roll 2, Prompt 5)

I wandered the streets of Alexandria not caring about anything but satiating the hunger for blood. There was never a shortage of victims. Time became a blur. Memories grew fuzzy. When I came back to the estate, there was nothing left but burnt timbers and rubble. (It's now approximately 304 CE) (Roll 3, Prompt 10)

The shock of seeing my home in ruins brings me back to myself. I look at the stars, scratching the depths of my knowledge to remember how they shift and realize it's been a century. My children are long dead (meta note - I struck the memory of the death of her children in response to the previous prompt, so for all vamp knows, they grew old and died while she was allowing the bloodlust to rule her), I have nothing binding me to the mortal world. I am free. This somehow invigorates me. The hunger for blood sates and I get a glimmer of that hunger for knowledge Neb-Atem claimed to smell in me all those years ago. (Roll 4, Prompt 11)

I walk past a small home at night and hear chanting. That's not unusual, but the smell of their blood is different, enticing. I can't resist it. I drain them all. A whole community of Christians. Something about prayer makes the blood irresistible. I can no longer find the bronze stylus I'd carried for so long, but I take a vessel of consecrated wine. (Roll 5, Prompt 18)

I'm being hunted. I should have expected this. I've been careless. Especially with that church. His name is Marcus. That name feels so familiar but I can't remember why. He trapped me in a storage room and set it on fire, but my hands resisted the heat of the flames and I was able to escape, fleeing into the catacombs below the Serapeum. (Roll 6, Prompt 16)

Since Neb-Atem turned me, I have not met another of my kind. But there must be others. I spend my nights feeding and searching for another. One desperate night, I stay out far too long and face the sun. I have to be careful where I hide, there's too many people starting to come out, the merchants readying for the day. In desperation, I slip through an open window and discover myself in the bedroom of a child who is still sleeping. I resist the urge to feed and slip into the shadows of a dark corner, hoping to remain unseen. I just need to hide for the day, but the child awakens and sees me. She reminds me of my daughter, Claudia. I think about draining her, to silence any scream she might make, but no scream comes. "Are you an angel?" she says. I let her live. Her name is Aelia.