Thornton Ash
Faction: Children of the Night · View the Gallery
Children of the Night: Level 6 — The Withered Leaves
Every feeding takes something. Not from the victim — from the one who drinks. Six centuries of blood and the Children of the Night remember almost nothing of what they were. They remember hunger. They remember the taste of particular years, particular fears. But the rest dissolves. Names. Faces they once loved. The reason they first agreed to this.
Thornton Ash remembers.
In 1887 he drew a line. He drinks animal blood — enough to remain animate, not enough to grow. Never a human vein since. He had noticed the pattern: the oldest among the faction were the most powerful and the most empty, walking appetites with no record of the self that had consented to the transformation. Every excess feeding bought more power and cost another piece of what he was. He decided the cost was too high and simply stopped paying it.
The result is what stands before you. Rank six, power barely registering, the runt of a very old litter. What he has instead is six centuries of unbroken memory — his own, and everyone else's. He writes down what the elders forget. He is the only one in Children of the Night who knows what The First One looked like before.
He considers this an entirely fair trade.