The Telling of Nabu-sharrum, Once of the Children of the Night

A fictional character Telling. Meet Nabu-sharrum.

I was born in shadow when Babylon still stood proud beneath the gaze of Marduk, when the ziggurats drank deep of moonlight and whispered secrets to the stars. My mortal life was spent among princes and priests, my hands stained with ink rather than blood—until he came. Until my sire plucked me from the courts like a withered leaf torn from its branch and made me something more. Something less.

For centuries, I climbed Children of the Night as a scholar-warrior, my tongue sharpened by forgotten tongues, my fangs honed on philosophy as much as flesh. I reached the Sixth Rank—The Withered Leaves—those who cling longest to wisdom before crumbling into dust. But wisdom is a blade that cuts both ways.

When my sire commanded me to erase an entire lineage—a house whose ancestors had once broken bread with mine in sunlit halls—I refused. Not out of mercy (we are vampires; mercy is a myth we tell fledglings), but because their erasure would have burned scrolls older than empires, silenced voices that even death should not claim. Knowledge is our only true immortality, and he asked me to murder memory itself.

So I was cast out.

Exile is not merely banishment; it is uncreation. Children of the Night does not release its children gently. They strip you of sigil and station, sever the crimson threads that bind you to your kin, and leave you hollow as a reed flute with no breath to sound it. For three nights I wandered Ur's ruins, listening to ghosts chant my name like a curse. The desert wind scoured me clean of allegiance until even my shadow hesitated to follow.

Then they found me—the Dark Masons.

Where Children of the Night builds upward in ruthless hierarchy, the Masons dig downward, carving sanctuaries in time's bedrock. They are archivists of endings: scribes who record collapse as diligently as kings record conquests. Among them, I learned that exile is not an end but an excavation.

Here in this lodge of stone and silence, I rebuild myself tablet by tablet.
- My hands trace cuneiform tales older than vampirism.
- My fangs sip from cups filled with ink mixed with vitae.
- My voice whispers dirges for dead civilizations none remember but us.

And yet... sometimes at dusk, when shadows stretch long like accusations across these walls... I hear echoes from The Ladder: laughter turned venomous now that I am no longer part of its chorus; whispers debating whether my defiance was bravery or madness (as if those are different things).

But this is what exile teaches:
All towers fall eventually—even yours will crumble someday into some other exile's waiting hands… And on that day? Someone must remember how they stood at all.

So let them call me traitor while they still have tongues left to speak it.
Let them forget while I remain unforgetting.
Their punishment became my purpose when they cast me out—
Because oblivion fears nothing so much as a witness who refuses to look away.

Thus do I endure:
Not climbing,
Not kneeling,
But keeping.

Visual

Withered Babylonian vizier with deep bronze skin turned ashen, long dark beard streaked white, sunken ancient eyes, layered ceremonial robes embroidered with cuneiform, gnarled hands clutching clay tablets, carrying the weight of buried ziggurats in his posture.

Faction: Children of the Night · View the Gallery