# Anatole
Anatole
of Note
Perhaps it was mere chance; perhaps there was something more at work. There’s certainly ample argument for the hand of Providence — for how else could a poor French man-at-arms with some faith and little wisdom rise to become the Prophet of Gehenna?
Anatole’s last name was lost somewhere along his long road; all that is known for certain is that he was a Parisian guardsman who was taken by Pierre L’Imbecile in the latter half of the 12th century. His human faith in God and the Church somehow survived the Embrace, but not unchanged; the young vampire began to see signs and portents that, he claimed, were bestowed by the Father as warnings of the coming of Gehenna. (And whether by “the Father” he meant God or Caine, none could say from night to night.) Over the course of the centuries, Anatole managed to win equal measures of fame and infamy. Although many a prince suspected him of diablerizing elders (as a form of “communion,” or so it was rumored), his prophetic warnings gained him a stay of execution. He kept company with similarly “dangerous” allies, among them the dangerous Lasombra antitribu Lucita and the far-ranging Noddist scholar Beckett. With their help, Anatole continued to wander Europe and America alike, often emerging on the cusp of strange and portentous events to offer warnings to his fellow Kindred.
Unfortunately, the stories of most prophets end in martyrdom, and Anatole was no exception. During the Week of Nightmares, Anatole began receiving impulses that the time was very near, and that one last “necessary” thing was left to accomplish before Gehenna broke wide Chapter Three: Shards of a Broken Mirror open. He followed his vision one last time to a cave in upstate New York, where he found a blasphemous sculpture of flesh and stone, pulsing with a power great enough to belong to an Antediluvian. The Prophet of Gehenna knew all too well what came next — and he offered himself up to the horrific sculpture, blending his flesh with its.
His last nights, spent fused with this strange work — and somehow connected to the power behind it — were nights of delirium more fevered than ever before.
Whatever visions he had, whatever he saw in the hours he spent still half-conscious — it drove him to scrawl his final words across the walls of the cave, penning near-volumes of garbled prophecy and Gehenna lore in his own blood. At last, he perished utterly, his task complete.
But although Anatole and his accumulated wisdom were lost to the Cobweb, his final ravings did not go unseen. Some of his writings were gathered up by members of his own clan; other fragments are rumored to be in the hands of the Setites, who no doubt are cross-referencing the convoluted forewarnings with their own clan’s Gehenna prophecies. And if synchronicity has had its way, a final portion of his vision might rest with the Salubri, or with the Tremere who succeeded them. But for now, nobody can say for sure.
Fabrizia Contreraz, Sabbat