Midian City :: View topic - Alegria's Story (with preface) *Updated 6-6*

AlegriaDagostino · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 2:31 pm Post subject:

Hi all! When I first wrote my story on the picks tab of my profile, I had much to learn about Midian City. I still do, but for those of you who read it before, this is a much better explanation of how Al came to be, and it fits along with the lore and customs of Midian. It's insanely long, but I'm a writer... we tend to like words. Cool

Thanks for reading...enjoy!

Alegria's Story

Alegria Sofia D’Agostino was born to privilege in San Francisco, given a name meaning joy and happiness. Her father, an Italian opera singer and her mother, a renowned surgeon, raised her in a whirlwind life. Celebrity friends, world travel, grand homes across the country and the finest schools…only ever the best of the best for their one child. Alegria was a brilliant, creative child, thriving in her environment, studying ballet and excelling in her academics.

At the age of 8, Alegria started to learn of her powers of necromancy. A few days after losing a beloved dog to a speeding car, she raised him from the dead without realizing it. Her mother took the opportunity to explain her side of the family and the different lines of necromancers in her ancestry. Alegria learned that she was a part of the Bone Path of Necromancers and began learning from her aunt, her mother’s sister, about her powers and animating abilities.

Fifteen days past her tenth birthday, her parents were both trapped in a fire as the opera theater where her father performed burned to the ground. A young broken-hearted Alegria’s world was shattered, and she went to live with her aunt. Her aunt was a warm woman, doting on Alegria and raising her in love and security, even if it wasn’t the elaborate lifestyle she’d been accustomed to. Alegria gained a solid sense of herself through her early teen years, the years that would usually be tumultuous in a young person’s life.

After graduating high school at 16 years old, she traveled to Paris to attend the Paris Opera Ballet School. She possessed a sense of grace and beauty from her upbringing and natural talents. She became well known throughout Europe in the theater and social scene, which eventually led her to meet Michel.

Michel was a man of equal raising, son of an ambassador father and socialite mother. The two were instantly in love, and melded their lives together. During her final year at the School, they became engaged, and a gala wedding was being planned by Michel’s family. Scheduled to wed the very weekend her year ended, Alegria felt her life was nearly perfection. The only bits missing were her parents, yet she knew they were with her in her heart, watching over her and her future husband.

Two nights before the wedding, Michel was accosted by a group of vampires that had fallen out of favor with the Prince. They had not fed for some time, and they were crazed, wild. Michel stood no chance of warding them off, and was killed as they drained him completely of his blood.

On the day she should have been a bride Alegria was burying her betrothed. Her heart gone cold, she lost all interest in her dancing and the arts, and could no longer bear to live in France. She returned home to San Francisco, a mere 19 years old, and rented a dark, empty flat; living on her inheritance in a lonely, cold existence.

Within time, a long time friend of Alegria’s father heard of her sad tale. Angelo left his home in Venice to seek her out in San Francisco. It took him nearly three days to convince her to even see him, and he was devastated by what he saw in her home. She slept on a mattress on the floor, a single blanket to cover her. A television was always on, but never watched. The kitchen was nearly empty, the refrigerator holding only the barest of foods and far too much wine. The beautiful, vivacious girl he’d once laughed with was dead, and this dark, exquisitely sad woman was left in her place.

He stayed with her, bringing her new clothes, better furniture, healthier food, and fewer bottles of wine. Eventually, she agreed to learn a new trade. Angelo was a preternatural assassin, long-time member of a group known as the Network. As much as it pained him to see, the look of a dead soul was in Alegria’s eyes, and he recognized her as an excellent candidate for his line of work. He taught her weaponry and combat, martial arts and preternatural history. She learned of vampires, lycanthropes, and what it took to execute them all. And given her experiences in France, she had no hesitation whatsoever about practicing what she’d learned.

Angelo also convinced her to re-establish contact with her aunt and dust off her powers of necromancy. This time, Alegria embraced her talents and learned as much as she could from the elder woman. By the time she was 21, she was a known asset to the Network of preternatural assassins with a knack for using her otherworldly energies as a necromancer to seek out her quarry…and she was dangerously good at her job.

The Network never lacked for work, but during the war the rampant lawlessness and chaos gave the Network more work than they could handle, world over. At the height of the war, Alegria traded her weaponry for medical equipment and became a medic in a makeshift hospital near Rome. Healing became a skill more gruesome than killing; all the medical professionals had to relearn their jobs, fighting against infections never before seen and injuries from a new age of weaponry. The death and mutilation and biochemical destruction was far worse than anything she’d ever faced with the preternatural. Her soul took on a newer kind of bleakness as body after body passed before her young yet weathered eyes. The glorious days of Alegria’s childhood were no more than a fairy-tale in a dusty old book long ago forgotten.

Angelo stumbled into the hospital one dark afternoon dragging his wounded nephew, Nico, with him. Nico was also an assassin; trained by his uncle’s hand…but what made Nico unique in the trade is that he was a werewolf. Most of the assassins knew this, but trusted him only because Angelo was a legend well respected among them. Alegria assisted a surgeon in Nico’s treatment, never offering any reason as to his rapid healing. Nico remained undiscovered, the press of war and broken bodies too great for the doctors to spend time thinking over it.

Nico stayed with Alegria and Angelo even after he was healed. But when the blood is gone and the sounds of death and devastation are little more than echoes of the past, the war rages on in the minds of those who lived it. Nico was young, like Alegria, and saw in the mirror of her eyes the reflection of his own soul. Flashes of horrors that screamed in the wakes of his nightmares. They were kindred spirits, burned by the terror, trained to kill, but young and strong enough to still have a distant glimmer of hope that humanity and society would prevail and someday flourish again.

When the war ended Alegria ventured once again to San Francisco to find what was left of her world. Angelo and Nico followed, to see that she arrived safely, but intending to return to Italy. What they found of the city by the bay was much the same as the rest of the world: post-war chaos and pain paved the streets of every town, but people found reasons to keep going, slowly piecing together shattered lives and trying to adjust to a new reality. Angelo returned to Venice to find his life, and Nico stayed with Alegria.

Relatively quickly, communication along the lines of the network of preternatural assassins resumed and connections were re-established. In some cities, while a number of vampires and lycans thrived on the confusion of the public, some did what they could to rebuild parts of the communities that housed their packs and families.

In San Francisco and a few other cities throughout the world, it was foolishly decided by desperate city officials that vampires would become legal citizens if they were productive members of society and could live by the law. With that change, already strained law enforcement was struggling to manage preternatural crimes as well as the human factor…a human factor that now had to adjust to creatures on the streets that they’d only heard of in ghost stories and movies. The police faced not only new challenges in arrest and detainment (one officer was forced into early retirement for housing a vampire inmate in a cell with a window), but also in the specialized execution of vampires who were caught committing capital offenses.

Eventually word of the Network found its way to San Francisco’s city officials. Quietly, they sought out Alegria and Nico, and like a handful of other assassins throughout the world, they became sanctioned vampire executioners. Changes in government tightened the restrictions on citizen vampires, and removed their rights to trial. The new system worked remarkably well: seeing vampires hunted and executed without trial became a strong deterrent to less-powerful vamps.

Alegria and Nico managed to find a life among their strange new existences, and eventually were married in a simple and quiet ceremony. At 27 and 29 years old, that glimmer of hope for a bit of beauty in their lives was renewed for the couple, and Alegria was finally able to quiet the haunting memories of Paris and Michel.

Much to their surprise, Alegria and Nico conceived a son, born 10 pounds on New Year’s Day. Marcello Gianni, meaning “God of war” and “God is gracious” was so named because of the war that had brought his parents together and for the gift from God that he truly was.

Life ensued for the family. A strange reality in comparison to the world as the eldest members remembered life to be in the mid to late 20th century, but a reality nonetheless. Children were raised learning new technologies, new histories, and new professional paths than those of a generation before. Nico left his work as a vampire executioner and returned to the Network. Alegria continued to freelance, contracted by either the government for sanctioned vampire killings or by the Network if her specialties were needed. It was evident that motherhood had not dulled her fierce abilities to carry out a job, nor masked her lust for the kill.

Alegria had amassed a small fortune of her own, compounded by the compensation of Nico’s work. They prepared to leave both their professions and San Francisco, taking Marcello to live in Italy near Nico's hometown. For her final order, Alegria received an order of execution for the Prince of San Francisco.

When at last she had secured the daytime resting place of the Prince, Alegria planned her afternoon carefully. She effortlessly found her way to his chamber and slowly adjusted to the utter blackness of the room. In a searing flash of light, torches around the circular stone room ignited, filling the dark space with firelight. A shuddering sigh punctuated the illumination and Alegria turned to find Nico bruised and weak, held by a tall blonde vampire holding a gun. Alegria glanced at the vampire’s face and he nodded and spoke. “Silver shot.” Even worse, a dark female vampire was holding the slack body of Marcello. A voice from behind her made a low sound and she spun again to face the Prince. He offered a deal to her…one of her loved ones for his freedom. Her eyes sought Nico’s; weary in his bloodied face atop a badly broken body, and the depth of his eyes was filled with the memories of his work, his family and the knowledge that he was prepared to die for his son’s life.

Knowing she was hopelessly outmatched, Alegria looked to the stirring body of her 14-year-old Marcello and silently traveled to the quiet place in her soul that had allowed her to kill so easily for the past 23 years. In an utterly frozen voice, she spoke to the Prince. “My son lives.”

The Prince nodded once, slowly and motioned with one pale hand toward the gun on Alegria’s left hip. She shook her head slowly then went still as the realization sunk in that her Nico would die by her own hand. They met eyes again, and he blinked slowly, mouthing the words in a whisper, “I love you.” Knowing for the first time that her place of cold darkness could not shield her from this killing, she drew her weapon and whispered back to Nico. He smiled once, and closed his eyes, as did she, before firing once and ending her husband’s life.

Fighting the tears that burned behind her eyes, Alegria looked toward her son. The sight was the final door slamming shut on her soul…the Prince was killing her son, feeding on his young blood.

Alegria went wild. She pulled a small semi-automatic from her back and opened fire on the three vampires, knowing her son was in the way but feeling that his soul had left his body. She caused enough damage to slow them, knowing it would take a while for them to heal. She threw the gun back over her shoulder and bent low to her son, touching his young face. In a single catlike motion, she leaped, stake in hand, and drove it through the Prince’s heart, pinning him to the ground as she landed on his bloodied body. She dragged her dead husband and son from the chamber and into daylight, assured the healing vampires would not follow to the fading sun.

Alegria sat motionless in the county morgue between Nico and Marcello’s bodies. Where does one go when one cannot even retreat to the solace of one’s soul? When at long last the light was gone, she left.

She contacted Angelo, who was retired in Paris. He told her that word had spread instantly of the Prince of San Francisco’s execution and that his brother in France had sworn revenge. With nothing left but her skills and a dark soul, she left San Francisco, wanting to be done with vampires forever.

She knew of Midian City, a city of destruction and desolation, but she knew vampires were only ‘rumored’ there. Alegria slipped into the streets of Midian, hoping the nature of the city would keep her safe from her pursuer, and possibly allow her to forget that vampires existed at all. Her heart was closed, reduced to simply an organ meant to keep her alive. She wandered the city aimlessly, sickened by the thriving predators and prey, her weapons always close at hand. She introduced herself as Al to the few people she spoke to, no longer feeling any of the meaning of her given name.

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In time, Alegria’s soul thaws enough to try and be of some service to the city. The town has a painful shortage of medically trained personnel, so her skills as a medic start to be relied upon more and more. Finding the police department in desperate need of responsible officers, she joins the force and tries to fight the reputation of the MPD and its sketchy history. She starts to talk to people, to learn the town’s dark and dismal history. The city is a dark, disgusting, demoralizing place, but she finds people with hearts of gold on its streets.

As fate would have it, Alegria finds herself in conversation with a man one afternoon by the shore. His tall, muscled body calls to her before she even learns his name and she finds herself increasingly fascinated by him. His eyes hold a distant bleakness like her own, and she feels a frightening yearning to be held by his powerful arms, to run her fingers through his long hair and be lost with him in that dark quiet place. She vowed never to love again, but love has come to her, found her in the unlikeliest place, in the form of a man who matches her in every way. He refuses to call her Al. Speaking to her of the happiness she brings to him, he tells her that her name Alegria is most appropriate, and eventually, she relents willingly. Passion and hope have once again found their way into her soul. Love has found its way into her heart and is healing her one kiss at a time…and his name is Markko.